Chapter Twenty-One #2
“If how Kai and I feel is any indication, Sowelan and Menon hate this,” Lina grumbled, brushing her arms and legs as though Sowelan was a serpent, a segmented belly slithering up and down her body.
“Sowelan didn’t choose this, and Menon wouldn’t’ve, either.
” She pressed a palm over her heart, sensing His displeasure.
“Trust me,” she murmured. “A god wouldn’t inject themself into a mortal body on purpose. ”
Ione shifted uncomfortably, her eyes darting. Thinking. “I was born with Her,” she repeated, desperate. “My hair, my skin – Mother said that the high priests saw me and knew I just had to be Menon.”
Lina gaped. That was what they told her? She thought of the albino peacocks on Oseidos, treasured, supposedly Menon-blessed. And the scores of brown chicks hatching from eggs, sold off, disposed of.
Her hands clenched into fists. “If the high priests were the ones who called you divine,” she ground out, “then it was one of them who did this to you.”
She imagined Ione as a baby, her parents overjoyed to behold her. And the high priests, seeing not a child but an opportunity, a fitting candidate. A cage for a god.
Ione gripped a fistful of her dress, her jaw clenched. She swallowed hard. “Why you?” she managed, hoarse. “For Sowelan – why you?”
“He wanted my brother. Apparently this was what Castor was working towards.” Lina huffed out a mirthless laugh.
“Successor. I thought that meant he was angling to take over as archpriest after Rigel retired. Shows how much I was listening.” She sighed.
“With Castor dead, Rigel had to change tack. Find someone with a magical signature as close to Castor’s as possible.
And me stupidly walking right through those doors saved him a lot of trouble. ”
Finally Ione lifted her head, her wide eyes boring into Lina’s. “So…” She trembled – not from fear, Lina realised, but from rage. “Your magical signature had to be… similar to Castor’s?”
Slowly, Lina nodded.
Ione stared ahead, still shaking. “So mine and Kai’s – Because we – ” Fury twisted her mouth. “Because we – grew close, our magical signatures…”
Without warning Ione launched to her feet, pacing, eyes down as she wrung her hands together.
“That’s why,” she hissed, “He was so pleased when we announced our engagement. He hadn’t even seemed surprised, just – happy.
” She stifled a disgusted curse. “He would ask, sometimes, at dinner. ‘How are you getting on with our warden?’ I thought he was just mocking me, reminding me how powerful Kai is, how much he liked him – ”
Saros. Of course. Lina hadn’t been the only one to notice how he looked at Kai, covetous, inciting more than a few crude jokes from some of the Caelosi. But it wasn’t that sort of desire, but the desire, instead, for a tool, a shiny new weapon.
Ione whirled, looking like she wanted to break something, hurt something, and Lina rose to catch her, fold her into her arms. Hold her together, like Ione had held her when she woke up from Sowelan’s possession.
Ione sobbed, the tears finally coming. “This was what he wanted. Get Kai close enough to me so that he could switch Menon over to someone he could control. Glorify a Mahina son, bring in all their money and influence and naval prowess…” She heaved, made a choking sound. “He wanted us to – expected us to – ”
Lina held her tighter. “We’ll run,” she whispered. “We’ll leave. Go south, hide away somewhere. We’ll never see any of them again.”
Ione didn’t seem to hear her. “Years of disappointments. Hundreds of failures. Countless burdens on my shoulders – save our people, do more, be more – and when I couldn’t carry it all, he just took it away from me.
” She pushed herself out of Lina’s grasp, her eyes burning with a hatred deeper than words could describe.
“I’ll kill him,” Ione whispered. “Lina, I will fucking kill him.”
A response died before she could give it breath. It was good, right, for Ione to know the truth – but the last thing Lina wanted was for it to lead them right back to Caelos, where Menon and Saros and thousands of enemies awaited them.
She held Ione’s face, stroked her cheeks until her breathing slowed. “If we return to Caelos,” she tried, “Kai will kill me. He may not mean to, but he will.”
Ione considered it. “Kai was fine until he got too close to you.”
Lina sighed. “Ione.”
She lifted her chin, the same proud, lofty way she used to. “Saros, and then Rigel. I will kill the men who did this to us.”
“You’ll kill the only men who know how to undo this to us.”
Ione flared. “And will they, Lina? If I bring you to Saros, do you really think he’ll sit you down like the kindly old man he is and remove Sowelan from you?
” She waited in vain for Lina to respond.
“You know what he’d do. You know what Rigel will do.
They have hurt us, and they will continue to hurt and hurt and it’s only right – ” She held up a hand before Lina could speak. “ – only right for them both to die.”
Sowelan heated, hackles raised, and Lina fought to retain control. Quiet, she thought as sternly as she could. Count to ten.
She did. They did.
“I know you’re scared,” Ione whispered. “I’m scared, too. But I can’t run, Lina. Not from this.”
Scared didn’t even cover it. Lina’s mind whirred, fear and hatred and a desire for vengeance all vying to come to the surface like a shark’s fin cleaving a tranquil sea. She had spent most of her life running, avoiding. She was afraid – gods, she was afraid – but maybe Ione was right.
Maybe there was no running from this.
“Lina,” Ione was saying, “Sowelan’s equivalent to a seleneschal – what is it called, again?”
Lina blinked, still dazed from thoughts of violence. From the image of Rigel, dead and bleeding, in her mind; from the startling, terrifying jolt of gratification it gave her. “A – it’s called a heliade.”
“A heliade,” Ione echoed. Her mouth spread into a slow smile, although there was nothing sweet about it. “Despite my best efforts, I was never anything Saros wanted me to be. Fine, then. Let me become something truly abhorrent to him.”
Ione lowered to her knees, her smile softening. “Lina,” she breathed, “Until we have our revenge and can figure out how to release Sowelan from you, please permit me to be your heliade.”
A surprised laugh broke free and Lina stooped to help Ione back up. “Gods, you don’t need to kneel.”
“You must have thought I was stupid before, offering you my protection when I could barely protect myself.”
Lina squeezed her hands. “I never thought that.”
Ione’s eyes sparkled in the low light – from tears, but also from some grim determination that Lina felt all too keenly. Ione kissed her eyelids, her cheeks, her lips. “I asked Kai to protect me, and my gods, look how that turned out,” she whispered. “Let me prove myself, then.”
She kissed her again, every featherlight touch an ember.
Lina melted, pulled her with her, the backs of her knees hitting the edge of the bed; gravity shifted until they found themselves thrown into a heap on the old mattress.
Ione rose onto her elbows, her hair falling in a curtain on either side of Lina’s face, and in the lamplight she thought Ione looked more divine, more celestial than Lina ever could.
Her eyes flicked unbidden to the bust of Ione’s dress, the loose fabric falling open and revealing a swathe of skin, the swell of her breasts.
Ione followed her gaze, her cheeks tinged pink. “It’s not mine,” she said, one hand playing thoughtfully with the strap. “The dress. There weren’t a lot of clothes in my size.”
Lina shrugged, her heart in her throat as Ione worried at the strap, threatening to push it off her shoulders.
She peered down at herself, at the gold-threaded gossamer glancing through the opening at the front of her cloak, at her own peaks and curves all too visible through it.
“It’s better than what they had me wearing. ”
Ione nodded, her eyes smouldering. “This, too,” she murmured, pinching the delicate fabric between thumb and forefinger, “I’ll avenge you for.” Her mouth tightened. “Dressing you up and treating you like a spectacle.”
Lina caught her hand, held it against the gilded silk. “Don’t think about them right now,” she said, watching Ione blush deeper as she guided her hand. Pushed the silk off of her shoulders, bared herself.
Ione’s throat bobbed as she swallowed. “I’ve – I’ve read extensively on this, but…” She loosed a breath, looking at Lina, and then away, and then back again, like she wasn’t sure if she was allowed to. “I’ve… never been with a woman before.”
“It’s all right,” she said, pushing gently until Ione laid back. She suppressed a breath at the feel of Ione’s skin beneath her palm, the unbearable softness of it. “I have.”
Ione’s eyelids fluttered at Lina’s touch, her hands finding the laces to her own dress and prising them deftly apart.
Lina watched, her skin scorching, and imagined those fingers on her, imagined what they could do to her.
Freed from the faded, donated clothes, Ione was like a star against the rough duvet, skin flushed and eyes bright with want – and that was the last thing Lina saw before they became nothing but a tangle of limbs and the hungry slide of their mouths.
Ione said her name like a prayer, a summoning. The flickering shadows of the room faded away around them, and Lina arched as Ione massaged her in slow, tortuous circles, eyes squeezed so tightly shut she saw stars – but none so bright as her.
“You,” Lina mustered, rocking a little against Ione’s hand, her own hand working, working, “are doing just fine.”
Ione smiled against her skin. “I’ve thought long and hard about it.”
Heat dripped down Lina’s wrist. Her breath hitched, unable to take it anymore, and she pulled Ione’s arm away and lowered, pressing her hips into Ione’s.
Ione lurched, biting her mouth shut to muffle a surprised gasp as Lina moved against her, desperate and in love with every needy sound she could coax from her.
Every breath was like fire in her lungs, her core molten as she inched closer and closer to climax.
Ione cried out first, nails digging into Lina’s hips, and Lina followed, felt like she was diving off a cliff into the sea as hot waves of pleasure barrelled through her.
Her vision blackened at the edges until she was aware of nothing but the feverish pulse between her legs.
And Ione’s sweet voice, calling her name.
They returned to themselves in dribs and drabs, their chests heaving, their skin slicked with cool sweat. Ione pressed a kiss to Lina’s lips, to the base of her throat, to the space between her breasts, right over her pounding heart.
“Tomorrow,” she whispered, breathless. She slid an arm beneath Lina’s head and curled up tight against her, the worn duvet suddenly pillow-soft in their exhaustion. “Tomorrow, we’ll go to Caelos.” She smiled, glittering with certainty. “We’ll be safer there than here. And soon…”
She trailed off, her eyes falling shut, and Lina swept a strand of hair behind her ear. Soaked her in, the tranquillity of sleep, the peaceful rise and fall of her chest.
Soon, Ione had meant to say, they would have their revenge. And while that made some deep, dark part of Lina’s soul sing, it would not release Sowelan from her, nor Menon from Kai.
Be good, she thought when Sowelan resounded, a single sharp bolt that made her bones quiver. This is my body, godsdamn you.
They would meet Kai soon. Menon. And Lina prayed to Sowelan, to any god that might be listening, that Kai’s face wouldn’t be the last thing she ever saw.