Chapter 14
Tethys felt like a damned fool. She’d made the mistake of allowing Procyon to choose which gowns the servants packed for their formal processionals through Canissa.
Now, she sat beside her husband, drowning in a litany of pastel ruffles, ruching, and tulle. Her bodice, dripping with an exaggerated lavishness, dug into her ribs, restricting full inhales.
After a night of restless sleep, they’d ridden saddleback for most of the morning. Although an experienced rider, Tethys strained against the sheer weight of the gown as they traveled. By the time they’d reached the Canissaen outskirts, her thighs trembled with fatigue.
Although she swam beneath seemingly endless layers of lush fabrics, fighting the urge to tear free from the laced corset, she would sit pretty and posed if it brought them one step closer to cooling the heated conflict between realms. So, with a silken gloved hand, she waved gently at the city folk as they passed.
Procyon grasped her hand as they rode alongside one another. A symbol of their undying union. A solid force amidst so much contention. His grip was near painful, though, as their horses trotted down the sloping dirt roadway.
Sweat glistened on her brow in the cool midday sun as they crossed roofed bridges and brook-side hovels where children gathered to collect truffles and river moss.
Tethys smiled at a small boy as he rose from the riverside with mud caked knees and straightened under her gaze.
She expected no warmth from the Canissaens.
They were a hardened people with hearts just as callous as their palms from endless hours of tending to crops and livestock.
As she passed, the city folk received her with indecipherable eyes and tight lips.
“Smile, my queen,” Procyon growled, low enough for only her to hear. “Do not forget, your attitude is a direct reflection of mine. That perfect little pout will not undermine me.”
She fought the urge to vomit. Although his tone remained playful, it was still laced with a threat.
Keep quiet. Obey. Be the perfect little bird.
“Apologies, husband,” she said, stretching her cramped lips.
Her powder blue skirts rustled along the white mare’s sturdy abdomen as their pace quickened to a trot.
She thanked Eos above that the parade was nearing their final destination, Procyon’s temple.
Astraeus himself constructed the temple, now adorned with sunflowers and decorative gourds for the upcoming Harvest feast.
A rounded stone door, embedded into the hillside, marked the entrance to a vast network of underground chambers and tunnels.
Tethys supposed it was fitting for the realm, having a temple built into the rolling hillside they cherished so much.
But she couldn’t help but pause at the thought of slithering beneath the frozen earth.
Eos give her strength. Although only a few paces in the distance, she wasn’t confident her legs would hold out.
Her body, with strength even an adolescent could outmatch, pleaded for reprieve.
She gripped the reins tighter, as if the hold on those thin leather straps could stifle the agonizing exhaustion now blazing through her muscle tissue, and continued up the rocky, unkempt path.
“I swear to Astraeus, Tethys, if you falter on your mount and make a fool of me...” Procyon’s murmur was no longer playful in its nature.
She nodded and willed herself to continue. Whether it be from fear of showing weakness or Procyon’s retaliation, she pushed her body’s protests away.
When finally they reached the temple and their mounts slowed to a stop, Tethys allowed herself to exhale the breath she’d been holding. Only a few more hours and she could escape to the quiet solitude of Procyon’s estate, if only for a moment, while Procyon carried out the Harvest celebrations.
The feast was the most sacred of traditions to the Canissaens, and so she hadn’t been invited. They’d finish their promenade and return to his home before dusk.
Procyon dismounted and extended a hand to her. In the villagers’ onlooking perspective, this act may have been heartwarming—a husband aiding his wife—but she knew he simply held out his hand in fear of her collapse otherwise.
Her knees, nearly giving out as she dismounted, cracked stiffly beneath the sheer weight of the innumerable layers of skirts.
The gathering villagers followed her as she approached the base of Astraeus’s temple, now mere loose rock and cracked rubble. She envisioned what this temple had looked like at its beginning. That was probably centuries ago, and with time, the primordial’s priestesses had long since died out.
The two immortals ascended the cracked steps and turned to face the village with gleaming eyes.
Tethys shut herself down and became the sweet, soft queen.
Not a shred of the wild, untamed beauty she’d once prided herself in was visible as she waved once more at the gathering crowd.
Just as Venia had become an artificial landscape of springtime greenery, she, too, found herself cutting away the ugly roots of truth.
“Thank you all for joining us here on this fine Harvest day,” Procyon said, having become the jolly, good-natured god the Canissaens adored wholeheartedly.
“While these are trying times, the treaties in place have grown strong, just as our love has. Let us celebrate together as we embark into peacetime.”
The city folk applauded at his pause. However, Tethys swore she saw a handful of hateful flashes amidst the crowd.
Beneath her mask, anger writhed like coiling vines.
If only these people knew of the horrors she’d endured since exchanging the marital vows.
What would they think of their jolly king had they seen the yellowed bruises spattered along her thighs?
Or that the foundation of their union was merely a calculated facade to suppress their voices and end a war?
Heat glazed along her brow and she couldn’t draw her breath deep enough to remedy the dizzying speckles of black that bordered her vision.
Procyon grinned and continued his speech, but Tethys had long since stopped listening. Scrutinizing eyes blazed into her like brands, drawing sweat down her brow like blood. These weren’t her people. She wasn’t their queen.
Tethys needed to get out of here, to free herself from the sweltering layers of this ridiculous dress. Eos above, give her strength. Her knees quaked, threatening to give out. At the least, she needed a moment to collect herself.
Procyon threw her a warning glance. Frantic for something, anything, to brace herself against, Tethys’s eyes darted from face to face in the crowd.
Her eyes locked with a woman. Two tiny knitted boots dangled from a scarf wrapped tightly around her torso.
Tethys thought of the blonde half god the old crone saw in her runes.
Was the babe simply fiction? Even if the vision was false, she couldn’t shake the thought of him.
If tensions didn’t simmer, an immortal heir born of both realms would be an alternative solution.
And if Obscuros didn’t push for a child, Procyon would.
The woman bounced her rousing infant, keeping her tired eyes fixed on the steps.
Tethys hadn’t considered motherhood in her future.
She didn’t consider her future at all, in fact.
Time was an endless commodity, and yet, she couldn’t envision even the next sunrise.
How could she possibly subject an innocent babe to the cruelties of this world? Even for the sake of peacetime?
Procyon’s grip around her wrist ripped her from her thoughts, and Tethys’s skin crawled as she realized every face was turned to her. Every scowl. Every frown. All attention focused, like a blazing beam, on her.
Procyon clenched his jaw. They were waiting for her to speak. Had he asked her a question? Were they expecting a speech? Tethys swallowed the bile rising in her throat and glanced back at the woman and her babe. She’d turned away from the steps.
Unimpressed and unconvinced.
Seconds ticked by as Tethys debated her words carefully.
“Canissa is a beautiful realm. Thank you for allowing me into your city,” she said, shielding herself with a dazzling smile. Snickers and murmurs rose from the crowd.
“Forgive our queen. She’s had a long journey from Venia,” Procyon said. Pain shot up Tethys’s arm as his grip tightened to near bone breaking strength. “Recite the Harvest prayer for us.”
The goddess froze. Procyon knew how sacred the verse was. He also knew it was forbidden for another Immortal Child to recite them. They belonged to him and him alone. And yet he asked this of her? Had he lost his damn mind?
“Shouldn’t you recite the verses, Proc?” she whispered beneath her cramping smile.
“Say the words, Tethys,” he growled.
His grip tightened. One small jerk of his hand and her bones would snap.
Her body reflexed against the pain, but she forced herself still.
All eyes remained on the immortal couple, watching, waiting.
Their expectations were set. She swallowed the panic rising through her body and grounded her feet into the earth beneath them.
The Canissaens were silent with held breaths and anticipation.
“Ex terra. Ex Caelo. Ex mari. Ex Astris.”
From the earth. From the skies. From the seas. From the stars.
The prayer was opposite the verses said during Venian’s equinox celebration, Ostara.
Another reflection of the opposition between Canissa and Venia.
Death and Life. Dusk and Dawn. Not only that, but they were forbidden outside of the western realm.
The words caught on her tongue like cotton to sandpaper as the crowd shifted and snickered.
Tethys felt the verse in her bones, the utter wrongness of it coming from her lips.
Regardless of dormant ripples of magic under her skin, every fiber of her body tensed.
This wasn’t an honor granted; it was a curse.
Procyon proved his ownership over her, over the realm, gods, even over Venia itself.
This journey to Canissa, she realized, had never been about promoting peace or their unbreakable union. It was a power play. To force such a public display of his strength over her, Procyon secured his claim over Tethys and Venia along with her.
“Let Harvest commence!” he exclaimed, throwing his hands in the air. Tethys’s wrist throbbed with its release. She didn’t need to glance down to know it was already bruised.