Chapter Fifty
We walked back in silence, our hands interlocked, taking the path that wove around the outskirts of the village. I did not fear being seen. My home was far enough away from the festivities. Besides, in our furs and leathers, we could have been anyone.
We walked in silence as we stepped through the gate, and only then, my hand braced against the door, did I turn back to speak to him.
“I need you to know I do not want marriage. Not yet.”
Cleon’s lips pressed tightly together, though he did not speak. Instead, he offered me the space to continue.
“Ninniya is evolving. There is too much to do here. I cannot consider the distractions of a husband.”
“But it is a possibility for the future?” he asked.
“I will not rule it out.” I opened the door, expecting Cleon to follow me in, but instead, he remained outside.
“Otrera.” The hesitation in his voice struck me. Hesitation and possibly even fear. When I faced him, I found his complexion as pale as when he had insulted me. “Otrera, I have not done this before,” he said.
I did not hide my surprise. Goatherds roamed through small villages; there would have been plenty of opportunities for him to have been with women, either out of passion or payment, yet I could tell he spoke the truth. Wordlessly, I reached out, took his hand, and led him inside.
The music drifted through from outside as we slipped off our thick furs.
I had left the fire burning, smoldering with small logs, so that the space did not lose all its heat while we enjoyed the festival.
I lit an oil lamp in the corner of the room, which spluttered and flickered before catching into a full flame.
The light danced on the walls as if it could hear the drumbeats outside, and while Cleon stood rigid, I poured two cups of wine.
Though he took the cup I offered him, he did not take a sip.
Instead, he set it down, stepped toward me, and laid his palm against my cheek.
A surge of energy flooded through me, although it was not one of pleasure.
Instead, I became acutely aware of the knife strapped to my thigh.
Morsimus had cupped my face in such a manner before, normally right before he slammed me against a wall or threw me to the floor.
I was ready to act should I need to. But Cleon did not slap me or throw me.
Instead, he tipped his head down and placed his lips against mine.
My legs trembled as I gasped. This was not like any kiss I had experienced before. This kiss sent sparks down my spine, warming my body, heating me from the inside and setting my bones alive.
As Cleon’s hand slipped to the back of my neck, I pressed against him.
I needed more of him. I needed his closeness, his pressure.
As if he were reading my mind, his hand shifted again, briefly passing over my chest, only to settle on my waist. I reached to the place where the thin fabric of his robe separated my skin from his, and when I touched the hardness between his legs, it was his turn to gasp.
The sound spurred me to continue. I moved my hand in a long, firm stroke, yet I had barely raised my palm back up when he pulled away.
“You do not wish that?” I said.
“Oh, I do. Very much. But there will be time. For now, it is you I wish to explore.”
He led me back to the couch, hands on my waist, and lowered me down to sit on the edge. I expected him to push me onto my back and take me the way I had invited him to, but instead, he knelt on the floor and parted my legs before his head disappeared beneath the fabric of my robe.
As I lay there, my legs wide, his lips and tongue creating a rhythm in my body, I thought of the freedom I felt riding on the back of the horse.
This was a freedom too. Freedom within my body.
Freedom to gasp and cry out in pleasure.
To buck my hips deeper against his mouth and drop back when the feeling became too intense to bear.
Morsimus had taken me hundreds of times, but never had he done this.
Not once had he made my body rise in pleasure or made me bite down on my hand, other than to suppress my tears.
I will confess that until that moment, I did not know that such pleasure could be gained from this act. It is sad, is it not? I was a wife, a murderer, a leader, yet I had never known the pleasure that could be found within my own body.
Wetness soaked the couch, and after my body writhed and contorted for the third time, I could take it no longer.
“I need to feel you within me.” I groaned, pulling Cleon upward. He did not resist. Smoothly and gently, he shifted me farther back onto the couch so that I lay flat, anticipating the feel of him inside me. I was not disappointed.
A great groan of relief rolled from both of us as he pushed himself into me, once and then again.
Each time, my pleasure rose. My hands traced the muscles of his arms as his soft gasps echoed in my ears while we found a rhythm in the movement of my hips and his.
We could have continued in such a manner long into the night had a sound from outside not jolted me back to reality.
My hands on his chest, I pushed Cleon upright.
“Is something wrong?” Panic struck his face. “Did I do something wrong?”
“I heard a noise.” I forced him off me.
“There is someone in the house?” His panic grew as he hurried to right himself, adjusting his robe.
“No, I heard something outside.”
He sighed heavily.
“Otrera, my love, there is a festival outside. There are plenty of noises tonight. Come, I would far rather hear those noises you made again.” He took my hand to lead me back to the couch, yet I hesitated.
My attention remained piqued as I waited for something I could not place, an explanation for the prickling that had risen all the hairs on my neck.
I was still there, in a heightened sense of awareness, as Cleon ran his fingers down my arm.
“Come, lie down with me. They will all be fine without you. I need to finish what I started.”
I shook my head. “No. Something has changed. Surely you can hear it? Can you not?”
Cleon parted his lips as if he was about to argue with me, only to stop and frown. It was more than just a shift in volume. There was a tangible motion to the air. Something had changed.
“We must go.” I grabbed at the fabric of my robe, twisting it up and around my shoulder before reaching for my knife. “Now.”
“Otrera, wait!” Cleon’s voice called out into the night behind me. “Please, wait.”
I did not turn back, for I was already out of the house, still fixing my garments and holding my knife between my teeth as my bare feet pounded the cold earth. Ice crystals encrusted the long grass, yet I paid no mind to the sharp sting.
Instead, my heart trembled faster and faster, each step confirming my fear. Something was wrong. There was no music, no singing, no laughter. It was as if the festival had been struck by silence, and I could not fathom what could have caused such a change.
Phile? The thought caused a sickness to seize my stomach. She had grown frailer, and her pestering cough had refused to shift. But it was a common affliction of winter, was it not? Surely the gods had not chosen this night of all nights to take her from us?
I was still racing toward the crowd, certain I knew why the mood had altered, when I saw her.
Phile was there, standing on her own feet, her gray hair rippling in the heat from the fire.
Even from the back I knew it was her, though it took me a moment longer to realize the shoulder her hand rested on was Iphinone’s.
Iphinone was kneeling on the ground. Another surge of pain struck me. Was something wrong with Iphinone?
It was as if people did not know where to look.
Some eyes were fixed on the ground, many on Iphinone and Phile, while others were staring at Hirtus as he stood in front of the group of young men.
That was when I saw it. The segregation.
The young men and boys were on one side of the pyre, the women, girls, and children on the other.
This was not how it had been when I left.
Then, the sons had danced with their mothers.
Brothers had joked with their sisters. The fire had been a place around which they had come together. Now it separated them.
With another step, I noted the wariness that clouded all their eyes, men and woman alike, yet it took another step before I saw why Iphinone was kneeling on the ground.
“Aina?”
Aina lifted her head from where it was buried against her mother’s chest. Her large, wet eyes met mine, and her lips trembled for only a moment before her face disappeared again into the folds of Iphinone’s furs.
Had she fallen from Myrina? That was my first thought.
Or perhaps something had happened to the steed she loved so dearly.
I racked my mind for anything that could have caused the strongest and most fearless of all our young women to collapse on the ground, looking so broken, when I noticed the one young man at her side.
Ereas. He looked straight at me, begging me to see the truth.
Still unable to shake my unease, I moved in a circle, trying to take in every person, though several refused to meet my gaze. That was when I knew. Bile stung the back of my throat. Thick and caustic, it ignited a fire within me, a red rage that blinded all else.
“Who?” My single word resonated between us as I faced the young men, though none replied. Then, as I stared at their shaking frames, I saw the answer in front of me. He stood a distance away, the slightest of smirks gracing his lips. “Kakos.”
“What?” There was an oiliness to his voice, while his face said everything it needed to. “I have done nothing. I was with these others all night, was I not?”
He glanced to the other young men, undoubtedly bribed alibis, who could not raise their gaze to meet either mine or his. Instead, they only trembled. Kakos’s expression darkened at his friends’ reluctance to speak for him, yet he refused to drop his smirk entirely.
“It is her word against mine,” he said.
Fury exploded within me as I lunged forward, only to be pulled back.
“Otrera, stop.”
“Let me go, Cleon,” I snarled.
Cleon released his grip, only to sweep around me and block the path between Kakos and myself. A new wave of nausea struck me.
“This was your plan,” I said, remembering the knife still gripped in my hand. “This is why you wanted me to take you to the shrine. So Kakos could take Aina and…and…”
“No, Otrera. I swear. On the gods, I promise. But this… Whatever he did, you need to wait. You need to—”
Cleon did not get a chance to finish his sentence.
I was strong now. Pushing him aside, I lifted my hand. And with a flick of my wrist, I threw the knife through the air and straight into Kakos’s heart.