Chapter 23 #2
Cait charges toward the guards while Sylvia looses arrow upon arrow at them. With a wave of his staff, Guy creates a line of stone behind the men so that they’re literally fighting with their backs against the wall. Then he rushes to my side.
Tara flings a dagger after dagger at the three guards on the right who are running toward Sylvia.
I can feel Joshua’s song energizing everyone in our party.
He’s dancing now, and I swear all of my friends’ attacks are to the same beat as his skipping feet.
Cait is actually glowing now as she slaughters our foes with wild abandon.
In fact, everyone is glowing. I lift my hand to see I am, too.
I can’t just let my friends fight without me. When I see a guard racing toward Guy, I dash between the two men and raise my staff. “Charm!” I shout.
The guard stops in his tracks, and his eyes take on a soft pink hue.
“Go kill the other guards!” I command him.
He pivots around and races back, lancing straight through one of his former comrades.
“Whoa,” Guy says. “You’re kinda scary.”
I forgot all about Miko, but my memory is refreshed when she rushes forward with an armful of grapes from one stall.
She flings them at the guards. This seems useless at first, but then the fruit drops to the ground at their feet, causing our enemies to slip around on the crushed grapes as they try to dodge our attacks.
“No one’s hurting my new friends!” she yells.
One guard punctures Cait’s side with his lance.
My breath stops, but to my surprise, Cait doesn’t fall.
Instead, she grabs the spear in her side and head butts the guard.
This knocks him out, and she pulls the spear out.
This leaves a gushing wound, but she’s still swinging her great axe around.
Her barbarian nature is stronger than her pain, but it can’t negate a life-threatening injury.
I lift my staff and shout, “Heal Major Wound!”
In an instant, the gaping hole in Cait’s side is gone. She’s so busy decapitating a guard that she doesn’t even notice. Joshua also gets the sharp end of the spear, but this one is in his leg, and he howls in pain.
“Heal Major Wound!” I cry out.
Immediately, Joshua is healed and back to playing another song. I think it’s Led Zeppelin’s “Immigrant Song” this time.
How is he able to play all these on the fiddle? He’s really bringing his A game!
One by one, our enemies fall until there’s only one left, the guard I charmed. But now that all his comrades are dead, my spell has worn off, and he descends to his knees, screaming. He stares at his bloodied hands, knowing he took part in killing people who were probably his friends.
“Run,” I tell him in the gentlest voice I can muster.
The guard shakes his head. “There is no running from my sin, you beauteous monster,” he hisses at me. Then, he breaks his spear in half, turns it to face his chest, and drops himself onto it.
Now the market is quiet enough for the winter wind’s keen to sound like a teakettle spouting off at my side. I stagger back, exhaustion slamming into me like a tractor-trailer as I do. “Holy fuck,” I whisper. “What have I done?”
“You saved me,” Princess Idaea says behind us.
We each turn to face her as she stands up on wobbling legs.
Now that she’s no longer curled up on the ground in pain, I can see her clearly.
Her hair is a mass of knots, and her face is a landscape of welts.
She’s peeking at us through the narrow slits between her swollen lids.
Her royal garb is in tatters, and she has to hold up a scrap to cover one of her breasts.
“I thought for sure he would kill me,” she says. “When my stepsons raped me, my husband believed me at first. He blinded them for me. But their mother convinced him I’d lied and…and…”
Idaea stops to sob and then raises her head to the heavens. “Oh, gods, how you test me! First my stepsons assault me, then my husband threatens to kill me, and then my father nearly does!”
She’s so pitiful, and my heart cries out for her. I can’t leave her alone, so I take her in my arms and allow her to cry on my shoulder. “You’re safe now,” I whisper.
“But for how long?” she asks. “I thought I’d be safe coming home, but that wasn’t true at all.”
“Lauren’s right,” a familiar woman’s soothing voice says.
I look up to see Aphrodite. Aphrodite! I didn’t even know it was possible for a god to leave the temple or Olympus, but here she is, standing on the other side of the princess crying on my shoulder.
Idaea turns to see who it is and falls to her knees the moment she realizes she’s face-to-face with a deity. “My goddess, I’m so sorry! I shouldn’t have questioned the gods.”
Aphrodite strokes Idaea’s bowed head. “You’re only human,” she says. “Though, now, you are somewhat more. You are a queen.”
“A queen?” Idaea asks and looks up at the Goddess of Love.
“You will sit on your father’s throne in the city of Dardanus, and you will take his place as ruler of Mysia,” Aphrodite says. “And if anyone questions that, they will know my wrath.”
I wince, knowing that her wrath sometimes means genitals falling off.
“As for you,” the goddess continues, facing me with a scowl, “you ignored my quest.”
“I…I don’t understand,” I say. “I helped Dolius and Cyrus get together.”
“You were supposed to seduce Dardanus,” she says.
“But he’s a monster,” I argue. “I couldn’t sleep with a man like that.”
“Who said you had to sleep with him?” Aphrodite asks. “The next step in the quest was to poison him before he could have his way with you. That would have resulted in a lot less bloodshed. I should punish you for disobeying me.”
On instinct, I slap one hand between my thighs and an arm over my chest. “Please, no,” I whisper.
“It’s my fault,” Cait says, coming to my side. “I got emotional, and I didn’t think.”
Aphrodite appraises Cait with a calculating expression, and then a mischievous smile lifts the corners of her mouth. “You’re the barbarian. My lover’s chosen, I believe.” She chuckles. “Yes, you got a little emotional, didn’t you?”
“I’m so sorry,” Cait says.
The Goddess of Love returns her attention to me, tilting her head inquisitively. With a nod, she says, “Forgiveness granted for the lot of you.”
Our collective sighs echo through the mostly empty market.
“Thank you,” I say. “I’m so sorry.”
“Never deny my quests again,” Aphrodite says in a stern tone. Then, she leans close to me and whispers, “Especially this next one.”
Aphrodite pulls back and winks at me before walking away and disappearing like a slip of smoke on a breeze.
I check my quest log to see what she’s talking about. “Kiss Her” is all it says, but that’s all it needs to. The Goddess of Love took one look at Cait and one look at me and decided. As her cleric, I’m sure she knows my desires, but does she know Cait’s?
Guilt and horror twist my stomach into knots. Aphrodite wants me to break Guy’s heart—and potentially my own.