Chapter 11
Aloose wheel jolted Tethys upright, ripping her from the rest she’d finally found. It’d been three days of grueling travel since they’d left the clearing. At Procyon’s request, the convoy only stopped for a few hours at a time.
Now, Tethys’s neck ached from the position she’d slumped into amidst her dreamless sleep.
Although their chariot was adorned with a narrow cot, she preferred the cushioned bench.
The sway of the chariot-house as it rocked over ruts sent her stomach sprawling.
At least seated upright she could lean her blazing cheek against cool glass and steady the churning in her stomach.
Her breath shallowed in a brief moment of panic, having forgotten where she was as she awoke. Milky white eyes still lingered behind her lids, sending shivers of residual terror down her spine. Inhuman clicks and guttural growls haunted her with each bump along the uneven cobblestone road.
She’d been so powerless in the midst of the attack.
So helpless.
So pathetic.
Obscuros words rang true. Such a waste. Left with the options of humoring her husband in casual conversation or wasting away from her own self-disgust, she’d chosen the latter.
Now her thoughts coated her tongue in a grimy film.
Even without magic, she could’ve done something.
Anything. Instead, like a pathetic little girl, she ran.
“Leave the fighting to the males,” Altair once said to her when she’d asked to join her brothers’ training session. In her adolescence, she hadn’t questioned his authority. Now, regret poisoned her like an insidious toxin. Had she insisted further, maybe she could’ve at least aided in the fight.
With some self-defense training, she could’ve at least protected herself. Instead, she cowered and ran to her husband for aid.
When slowly her mind normalized, she glanced at Procyon. He, too, had fallen asleep with a shallow rise and fall of his chest. Although only hearing the end of their conversation, it seemed she’d arrived just in time to extinguish whatever fire blazed between the two men.
Talking Procyon down from his temper was even more of a challenge than she’d expected. Even now, she wasn’t convinced he believed the truth of what happened in the clearing. She knew he’d keep her chains taut for the rest of the journey, especially in Araes’s presence.
And what of the lieutenant? Save for the sweat glistening on his brow, there hadn’t been even a scratch on his skin. Was he truly that excellent of a fighter, or had Procyon stepped in? His labored breaths suggested the former. It wasn’t just the death wielders that haunted her dreams, though.
The warmth of his body against hers in those startling moments left her breathless, and the curve of his pectorals felt like silken marble on her cheek.
How confusing it was to decipher such a rebellious feeling.
She replayed those moments over and over again, and yet, even amidst terror, her cheeks heated.
The carriage jolted once more, sending Procyon lurching toward her. His elbow cracked against the metal supports in the interior wall.
“Damned fools, can’t even steer their own chariot correctly.” He scowled.
“The roads haven’t yet been repaired from the war, Proc.
It isn’t their fault the cobblestone was neglected,” she replied, fixing her eyes on the dark horizon line between passing trees.
Bile crept up her throat and left a sharp tang on her tongue.
She exhaled fully, suppressing the urge to spill her stomach’s contents over the floor. How much longer until their next stop?
“Always the compassionate soul, little bird.” He smirked, nursing his bruised elbow.
“My king, we need to stop for a moment,” the driver called, knocking on the latched door. Thank Eos above. Finally a moment of peace from this incessant rocking. Procyon grumbled and wiped the crust from his eye.
“Why?” he boomed. In response, the vehicle slowed to a halt. Two sets of boots thudded to the ground and a moment later, the carriage door swung open.
“My apologies, Your Highnesses, but we’ve lost a wheel.
The roads are simply too rugged. I can replace it with the spare for now, but there’s a village about a mile or so down the road.
We’ll have to make more adequate repairs there,” the driver said, dipping his chin before returning to the shadows of early night.
Tethys didn’t argue. Her calves ached for a stretch. The confines of the chariot were stale and riddled with Procyon’s stench—rotting leaves and sickly sweet spices.
“Let the caravan get some rest, Proc. It’s been a long journey. The horses need water and the staff, a hot meal.” Before her brother could protest, she leapt for the exit.
The chill in the night cooled the warmth from her cheeks as she inhaled it deeply.
The drastic shift in climate between realms never failed to amaze her.
Unlike her siblings, who could dissipate and reappear a hundred miles away, Tethys didn’t travel much, if at all.
In her lifetime, she’d only crossed the Venian border a handful of times.
Rather than enriching her with a full sense of wonder as it did in the past, the shift now only offered shockwaves of dread.
She glanced over her shoulder and located the jutting stone wall marking the Venian border. Although only a handful of miles in the distance, her home now felt worlds away.
? ? ?
Once repaired and a short dinner was served, the caravan resumed its journey.By dawn’s light they approached Algola, a lesser village of the western realm just along the border.
Even behind glass, the cold air prickled Tethys’s nose. Brown-speckled leaves of reds, yellows, and orange dripped from gangly oak branches, blanketing the stone roadway as they traveled.
Tethys’s stomach cramped with the onset of a raging storm. She needed fresh air. Now.
Algola wasn’t much of anything. The single row of stone cottages and fenced enclosures were littered with singe marks and crumbling foundations. It’d been in the direct line of fire during the war, and clearly, none of the Canissaen nobility seemed to care enough to approve its repair.
Lowborn Canissaens lurked in the shadows of their homes, peeking from cracked windowsills or around broken stone hearths.
“The lowborn in these parts can be…small minded,” Procyon said, rising from his seat.
Tethys nodded to her husband, feeling the lingering, curious eyes creep down her spine like spiders, and hedged into the shadows of a near-empty market front. She needed a moment to collect herself, and maybe rid her stomach of their last meal.
“Excuse me,” Procyon’s voice boomed down the narrow, dusty street, nearly quaking the stone foundations with its command. “We’re in need of a wainwright.”
The pounding nausea deafened the rest of his words as Tethys braced herself against a cool brick wall. Repugnant, decaying leaves taunted her nostrils, filling her airway with their rotting smell.
She closed off her nose and focused on shallow, mouthfuls of the chilled autumn air.
This place, so starkly contradictory to her own realm, stank of death and frost. She yearned for the wild coastal breeze that carried sweet pea blossoms and fluttering swallowtails, or the shimmering, iridescent trout dancing along the eastern river’s rapids.
She was an outsider here.
An invasive species to this land.
The Canissaens wouldn’t welcome her or accept her as one of their own. Nor did she want them to. This wasn’t her home, this land of dying light and withering forests.
Before she could lock it down, a silent sob escaped her lips with a cloud of misty condensation.
“Are you alright, miss?” a female voice asked from behind her tensed shoulders. Tethys wiped the salty sadness from her cheeks and straightened.
“Yes, my apologies,” she said, turning to face a crone-like woman. The elder, buried under wrinkles, stood on frail legs. Her draping wool shift nearly devoured her whole as she approached the goddess.
“During my youth I often traveled with my husband. Could never stomach the chariot rides, though,” she said. The old crone’s dialect was thicker than Tethys had ever heard. Her cheeks heated as the ancient, old thing stared at her, awaiting a response.
“Oh…um, I don’t think I ever will either, I’m afraid,” she said, smoothing back her golden curls.
“Peppermint tea helps,” the woman sniffed, hobbling toward a stack of aged wooden crates.
She struggled on cracking knees to take a seat and retrieved an unfinished orange scarf, woven along two wooden needles.
Tethys watched the frail woman’s hands as she twisted a loose strand of yarn around her left needle with shocking fluidity only years of practice could achieve.
“Is this your shop?” she asked, gesturing to the open-windowed cottage behind the woman.
“Why yes, although can’t say we’ve gotten many a customer since the war.
Perhaps I can entice you, though,” the woman replied, not glancing up from her knitting.
Her casual demeanor disarmed Tethys. Maybe the woman didn’t realize who stood before her wares.
Or maybe she did, but was too ancient to care.
Age dulled the power of authority. Many a Venian elder hadn’t batted an eye in crossing paths with their goddess, and, Tethys supposed, this woman witnessed far too much throughout her lifetime to bristle in the presence of immortality.
Nonetheless, it was a refreshing reprieve from her typical interactions with the humans.
“What do you sell?” she asked.
The woman’s eyes lit beneath their sagging lids. “Secrets,” she whispered.
Tethys straightened. Had she heard the crone right? “I beg your pardon?” she asked, closing the space between them.
The woman merely continued with her scarf, pulling slack from the ball of working yarn in her shift pocket.