Chapter Thirty-Eight
Nicole
IT WAS THE GASP THAT DAMNED HER.
The minute Nicole’s body was submerged in the painting, water rushed into her shocked mouth. Her eyes burned with it, so dark she didn’t know which way was up, body unnervingly light until she realised the shapes in her vision were the stalks of lily pads, and above, legs.
She was in the painting, and in the water.
Her body convulsed as she swam quickly upwards.
When she burst through the surface to gasp in a breath and wipe the water streaming into her eyes, she found it exactly like the image in the gallery.
Nicole coughed and sputtered, her airways burning as scents slammed into her: potent, heady florals and a wildness that hurried her heart.
She couldn’t help but wonder if this was what the god Pan’s forests had smelled like: adrenaline and dopamine and intoxication.
It was nearly a drug.
She reached for the shallow bank where Hylas was currently kneeling, half tangling herself in flowers and the tall, grass-like leaves of some non-blooming plant.
Her hair was stuck to her head and shoulders, and her clothes were soaked, including, she realised with no small twist of grief, her mother’s jacket.
Her legs kicked beneath the water, as she tried to understand how she got in here, and how to get out.
Hylas didn’t even look at her.
But every Nymph stared with those unnervingly dark eyes as they stayed afloat effortlessly.
Glistening between them all was the lily, sparkling and – glass.
They could see her. She could see them.
But what was she supposed to do?
Her eyes darted over the women.
They were even more ethereal here, and didn’t have a painterly texture or seem like moving depictions. No, everything looked real. But was it some kind of illusion? Or a portal to a location that looked like it had sprung right out of Homer’s Odyssey?
If we told you you were not allowed to take it, what would you do? came a voice inside her head.
Nicole startled, splashing as she reached to further drag herself onto the bank, looking between all the Nymphs to figure out whose hypnotic tone had spoken into her mind.
‘I – I’d ask if you know why I’m here; why it’s so important,’ Nicole rasped.
One of the Nymphs swam closer. She made no sound and formed only the slightest of ripples. Despite the fact the tableau suggested they were luring Hylas into the water, there was no kill scent permeating this dark glade. They didn’t have an aura of danger or hunger.
Then something caught her eye.
A flash of metal to her left, bright in the gloom, and Nicole moved before she’d formed a coherent thought.
Hylas’ hand had twisted into the Nymph’s hair he’d been leaning towards and he hauled her glowing body out of the water, ready to slit her throat.
‘Hey!’ Nicole roared, throwing herself up the bank. She slammed into him, snatching his knife and tearing it from his grip, but splitting open her hand in the process.
Blood spilled onto the bank and over the flowers.
She caught the crazed look in his eye as two other Nymphs grabbed him and dragged him beneath the water – silencing his shout.
Nicole scanned the other banks for more intruders, the knife gripped in her swiftly healing hand, but all was still.
Steadying her breathing, she cautiously reached out to the Nymph who’d been half hauled onto the floral shore. ‘Are you okay?’
The creature looked up.
You didn’t use his attack as a distraction to grab the flower.
‘What? No. I didn’t come here to steal it. I came to ask if I could have it. I need it for—’
The painting of secrets.
Nicole blinked at the phrasing. ‘Yes. I suppose so.’
You passed the test, she said. Your drive is to protect, not conquer.
One of the Nymphs swam closer, scooping up the lily with both hands and raising it to Nicole, soaked arms sparkling.
Nicole put down the knife and reached out carefully. ‘Thank you,’ she breathed, a minor shudder rippling through her at the touch of the Nymph’s cool, moon-pale fingers.
The glass flower was set in her palms, exquisite and glistening with glade water.
Greet your mate with a kiss from us.
Suspicion darted through her stomach. ‘How did you know about—’
Before she could finish, they grabbed her and hauled her back beneath the water.
Nicole barely had time to breathe and close her fingers around the flower, before she felt herself being spun and pushed.
She gasped as her head breached some invisible boundary, air rushing back into her lungs.
The gallery—
Nicole hauled herself through the painting, pushed by a wave, and fell onto the table as water crashed to the gallery floor.
‘Mother of gods!’ Remi cursed, fighting through the small flood rushing from the piece and dragging Nicole off the table as she coughed. ‘Are you all right?’
Hair plastered to her face and shoulders, water pooling at her feet, and the great wet palm of a lily pad draped over her shoulder, Nicole held up the glass flower.
‘I got it.’
Remi’s eyes were wide. Then, the timer on the device went off. She hauled Nicole up. ‘Time to go!’
Water still poured from the painting, making them slip and stagger against the flow.
Already, there were shouts of surprise and concern from the humans and staff running past them.
‘Your coat,’ Nicole gasped, as Remi grabbed her under the arms and helped her walk.
Remi laughed. ‘Dylan would never let me live it down if I let you get eaten by a painting.’
A rasp of relief broke out of Nicole’s throat in the form of a laugh as Remi hauled her to the doors. Her legs still felt unsteady, her body reeling as the sweet, cloying scent of the Nymphs followed her.
‘Why aren’t the Centaurs after us?’ Remi asked.
‘I didn’t steal it,’ Nicole said, ‘they gave it to me.’
People pointed and a few children gasped as they passed.
‘Live art piece!’ Remi explained. ‘So amazing!’ Then, to Nicole. ‘Tell me everything.’
‘Your flower,’ Nicole said nearly two hours later, putting the glass lily down as delicately as she could on a pile of art books in the Muse’s apartments.
Nicole’s still-damp hair smelled of pond water, despite trying to use a hand-drier in a café bathroom while Remi ran to grab her some new clothes.
It didn’t stop her spreading her hands on the table, and leaning closer to the enigmatic creature who sat sprawled in one of her luxurious dress robes, hair like liquid copper, eyes satisfied.
‘Now,’ Nicole said. ‘The painting.’
For the first time since they’d met, the Muse smiled.