Chapter 32 Rada
RADA
Goran spent the next three hours trying to convince me not to go to Pict.
Alexios spent them sulking and trying to hide it, because I hadn’t told him everything about the bargain.
I pretended to listen to them for a while, working my way through the entire box of cakes and not sharing a single bite, then fell asleep halfway through Goran arguing with Alexios about why the boat was still going due east, even though my valet was doing everything he could to tack away from our destination.
I slept for hours, dreaming of battles that raged in the sky and under the waves.
Fish died by the thousands, and canyons were dug into the icy rock where the fighting monsters engaged, while I floated as ethereal and useless as a cloud above it all, wearing a gleaming white shirt and nothing else.
The nautilus pendant had been broken and tossed on a beach, beside another nautilus.
But this one turned into Alexios, who kept leaping into the sky to join me, but falling onto the rocks until he was cut to ribbons.
For some reason, there were swords on the beach all around him, and an army of flame-eyed warriors approaching from behind. I screamed at him to pick up a sword, but he shook his head, shouting, “I’m not your sword. I’m your shield.”
Completely weaponless, I had to watch as the army buried him, stepping on him with burning feet until he was ash. I screamed endlessly, but my vocal cords had burned away and taken my voice. Another voice in the dream was what woke me, shaking with fear.
Don’t they understand? If they kill each other, my daughter will fall. The plagues will start again.
I gasped when I woke in the dark and sat up to take my bearings. I had a sword at my side, a leather bag under my head as a pillow, and two males beside me. One was enormous, and the other was my best friend.
“Lex?” I breathed. I was wedged in between him and Goran, all of us lying on the deck of the boat like sardines. Goran was still sleeping on my left, but something in the air smelled awful. I could almost taste the foulness on my tongue.
“It’s smoke from the volcano,” Alexios replied grimly. “The plume stretches for miles.”
“How many miles?” I tried to stand and fell, waking Goran.
He grumbled, grabbed my hand and pressed it to his lips, then turned onto his side.
My cloak was caught under him, but I tugged it free, staying on my hands and knees as I crawled to the side.
The boat was sailing itself, shooting through the water quickly.
The sail was still furled, though. So it couldn’t be the wind doing this, at least not all of it.
“Who’s steering?” I asked, feeling slightly seasick. No one was at the rudder.
Alexios crawled to my side. “It’s a current.
A warm one. Feel.” He leaned over the side of the boat with a cupped hand and brought it to me.
The water was silty, and when I dipped my hand into it, far too warm for any ocean.
I’d felt lakes this warm, in midsummer. But the water had a sulphurous tinge to it, and the current was so strong, it stung my fingertips.
“Do we have drinking water?” I asked.
Alexios crawled to the small hold, pulled out a jug, unstoppered it, and handed it to me. I drank sparingly, not knowing how long we’d need to make it last. “Drink more, and eat, mistress,” he urged.
“Not unless you do, too.” He nodded once and brought out a small package of dried fruit. I shook my head. “You need that. I’ll eat fish, if we can catch some in this current. It’s so fast.”
Alexios’s lips tightened. “Too fast. Not natural.”
“It’s him. He’s bringing me to him.” We both went quiet, lost in our thoughts.
“Your pendant,” he said at last. “You really didn’t know it was protecting you? You never took it off.”
“I really didn’t. The only time it came off was when the Mirrenese guards took it.” An odd thought surfaced. “When you met up with Goran in Mirren, you gave him my cloak.”
“Yes,” he murmured absently. “I had to go back for the bags, though. They’d fallen onto the pyre.”
That didn’t make sense. “My cloak, boots, and my pendant. The guards took them—I’m sure I heard them say they were giving them to the Mirrenese king, proof I was the real Ratter of Rimholt. How’d you get hold of them?” When he didn’t answer, I asked again, “Where’d you find them? How?”
“Does it matter?” His voice sounded weird. “Didn’t the kraken say he made the pendant to protect you? Who knows what kind of magic he used. He made you invincible.”
I scowled, wondering why he was avoiding my questions. But then my mind snagged on that last word. “He did what?”
“He told us about the pendant before he brought us to you.”
“Yeah, the one that made me forget about him? What about it?”
“It made you forget, but it also made you invincible.” He lifted an eyebrow. “You didn’t know?”
My mind spun for a moment, remembering the past five years. So much made sense now. The poisonings that should have been lethal, but only gave me the runs. The wounds that had healed far faster than they should have.
“You really didn’t,” he murmured.
I laughed. “Do you know how lucky you are that I had no idea? If I’d known I couldn’t die when I had it on, I would have done the craziest shit imaginable.
Can you imagine how much I could’ve won in bets alone?
I could have fought my way through to the crown jewels of every country I worked in and not had to sneak around so much. ”
“You love sneaking around.” He stuck a piece of dried fruit between my lips.
I chewed it, thinking. “Yeah, still. I wish I’d known.”
He yawned and muttered, “Good thing She did.” His voice trailed off, but I caught the flash of panic in his eyes.
I was shocked. Alexios never kept secrets, but he was definitely hiding something from me. Something about the pendant, maybe? I couldn’t be sure. No matter how I pestered him, though, he wouldn’t tell me what he’d been about to say.
But I had ways of making a man talk, and I wouldn’t even have to use one of the serums I’d devised to loosen the tongue. Not that I had any of those anymore.
I made a rude gesture in the general direction of the island we’d been on, and the scaly thief I’d left there. If Lusca didn’t kick Skadi’s ass for me, I’d go back to do it myself for stealing my supplies. Who knew which one would win in the fight? What happened if one of them killed the other?
Lusca wasn’t a god. He was practically immortal, but not truly all-powerful. And on land, he was far too weak, even if he did have my dagger.
A dagger that could kill Skadi. Damnit, if anyone stabbed him, it was going to be me.
I breathed deeply, fighting a wave of fear that one or both of them would be hurt. Fighting the creeping certainty that they were both my Goddess-destined mates. “What was She thinking, giving me two monsters?”
“That you needed protecting,” Alexios replied, staring to the east, where the plume of smoke narrowed as it got closer to its source.
I glared at him for a long moment. “I do wish I still had that pendant. What with the Goddess not watching over me anymore.”
His head turned to me so fast, his neck popped. “Why would you say such a thing?” His brow dipped in a frown when I only shrugged. “Mina, you’ve hinted at that before, that you thought She couldn’t hear you since you left Goran. You have to know that’s not true.”
“It could be. I rejected Her, Lex. I pushed Her away. When I was in the fire, when I was burning alive, I called out to Her and asked Her to rescue me.” He made a sympathetic sound, but I needed him to understand. “I betrayed my own vow to myself, when it came down to it.”
“What do you mean?”
“When the fire started on my feet, I told Her I’d give up my freedom.
By the time it reached my ankles, I’d thrown in the rest of the Omegas.
The ones on Pict, the ones like my mom. I’d start having heats and babies and give everything up, even saving them.
I would have done anything to stop that pain. She knew that and didn’t answer me.”
“She sent me,” he whispered.
I thought about what he’d told me, about finding Goran’s horse, and how he’d left the warlord to rescue me and gone back to get my saddlebags. “Like a good valet should,” he’d teased. He still hadn’t told me how he’d recovered my cloak and pendant… No. He was hiding that from me.
His whisper was louder this time. “I prayed, and She answered.”
I tried not to laugh. “You think She answered your prayers by having you find Goran’s warhorse?
” I wasn’t going to lay out the differences between coincidences and divine providence; I knew that he wouldn’t see it my way, being raised in the temple.
And I knew that the Goddess worked far more directly when She meddled.
“By the time you got there with Goran, I’d already broken down and promised myself to the evil god who did answer.
” I let out a shaky breath. “I’d had a suspicion that I’d fucked up by refusing to do what She wanted.
But She made it incredibly clear then that I wasn’t forgiven.
I may never be. And the end of the deal is months away, and I’ll be… ”
I swallowed hard. I wouldn’t mate the fire god, or breed little lava babies, or whatever the fuck twisted plan he had.
I’d take my own life before I let that happen.
But Dustin had seen how unprepared I was.
No cloak, no dagger, nothing that might help except stubbornness and close to three decades of stored-up rage.
“I’ll probably be dead by the time our deal is up. ”
“No, Mina. She sent me.” His tone was stark, and I finally looked away from the east and to his face. His expression was bleak, but a hint of anger, or something, lurked in those dark eyes.
“What do you mean? In Mirren?”
“I mean the night before you showed up on my island, almost five years ago. I had a vision in the courtyard of the temple. The other priests saw it, too. She appeared in the moon, a translucent face, weeping tears of gold. She spoke, not in symbols or signs, but in words. I was packed to leave by the time you arrived. She gave me a command, and I followed it.”
What was he saying? “A command?”
“She told me to wait on the steps for my charge. Do you really think She would have let you be unprotected all those years? It was the greatest honor one of Her priests has ever been given, the task of caring for you. You were protected all along, it seems, but She insisted you would need a priest. I was assigned to you.”
“An ex-priest. Assigned to me.” It felt like he’d kicked me in the stomach. All along, he’d been taking care of me… as a job.
“I’m to be your valet,” he’d told me back then, with something like mischief sparkling in his eyes.
He dropped his solemn gaze now. “I’m not an ex-priest. I am still in Her service.
In Mirren, when you were taken, She appeared to me again.
She sent me to the room where they had your belongings.
She opened the door and hid me from the guards.
She sent me to the stable where I found the horse.
I didn’t save you; She did. She’s never stopped watching over you.
She just had to find another way to protect you. ”
“You… didn’t quit the priesthood.” Suddenly, the depth of his betrayal was clear.
He’d kept his vows, not out of some sense of guilt, or habit.
Somehow, I managed to stand and stared down at him, horrified at myself.
“You’re not a valet, you’re a priest.” I stepped back, knowing if I remained close enough to touch him, I’d kill him.
I balled my hands into fists that I would not use.
He wouldn’t hit back, but not because he cared. “You’re not my friend. You’re a spy.”
The Goddess’s spy.