27 - Iona #3
She opens her eyes. No longer floating beneath the surface of the water, instead she is lying on her back in a very comfortable bed.
The ceiling above her is strikingly familiar and when she looks to her right, she can make out the dim design of symmetrically patterned blue flowers with green leaves adorning the white wallpaper.
A heavy sigh makes her tense and look to her left to find Ariadne lying on her back beside her, her dark curls fanned out across her pillow, her eyes closed in peaceful sleep, the bedsheet pooled at her waist, and the glossy selenite dream talisman resting between her breasts.
It seems not only moonstone can elicit a praephora vision, to Iona’s great disappointment and slight fascination.
She looks down to find the pendant in its place around her own neck, indicating that she must have traveled to a time after the trials.
She doesn’t give herself much more than a brief moment to marvel at her unexpected journey through time, as she doesn’t know how long she can expect to stay.
Gingerly, she slides out of bed, takes her wand from the bedside table, and strains her eyes to search for her discarded chemise, a pile of white fabric on the Turkish rug.
She pulls it on over her head, takes her robe hanging on the back of the bathroom door, and pulls that on, too.
Wisp trots up to her, yawning, and Iona scratches the top of her head, then beckons her to follow.
Aster’s head lifts up at the sound of her lacing up her boots, but she motions for him to stay.
He obeys with a heavy sigh, resting his head against his paws.
Once outside, when the cool mountain air fills her lungs, a peace fills her unlike any she’s felt in months. The moon is not quite full, but its light is enough to bathe the grass and trees with a white glow.
Lysander Forest calls to her as it always does, and she runs into the thicket to behold a dense array of blackthorn trees, their crooked branches sharp and angular, with tiny sprouts of green leaves.
The ground is littered with blooming snowdrops, their white petals stark against the otherwise barren dirt.
Part of her wonders if Elise is hidden away nearby, performing some ritual or other to prepare for her imminent attack, then Iona decides she doesn’t care. She’s grown so exceedingly weary of fear that she’s beginning to become desensitized to it.
“Iona.”
The gentle whisper has her heart racing, until she recognizes the voice.
“What on earth are you doing wandering about on your own?” Morgan asks, her form materializing in a haze of mist. “The malefician is still out there.”
A litany of emotions rushes over her until she settles on anger, for it’s all she has left.
“Why did you do this to me?” Iona asks.
“I beg your pardon?” Morgan asks, her green eyes narrowing.
“I am not from this time,” Iona says for her benefit. “Months from now, the world is in utter turmoil because of your inability to properly choose a worthy champion. What were you thinking giving your pendant to me?”
Morgan’s shock is a satisfying sight. Iona hopes her words incite an inescapable regret.
“What has happened to make you say such awful things?” Morgan asks.
“Do not feign ignorance of the future,” Iona says. “How is it that you knew of Elise and not-”
“I am not omniscient, whatever your assumptions may be,” Morgan snaps. “You shall need to explain yourself, or otherwise I shan’t decipher the brazen accusations you lay at my feet.”
With great impatience, Iona recounts the events of the past several months, explains her praephora powers, and the breadth of the devastation the Crone has already wrought on the innocent.
She even tells her of the Zerynthos coven’s true calling, thinking that the rules shouldn’t apply to a centuries old ghost. By the end, Morgan’s indignance turns to utter astonishment.
“Why did you give me the pendant?” Iona asks again.
“I did not,” Morgan says. “Ariadne did.”
Iona scoffs, “Then why did you let her?”
Morgan’s eyes shift away. “I shall not force my pendant upon someone. She could have taken it and chose not to.”
“Neither would I have accepted it if you hadn’t planted the notion in my head,” Iona says. “I never would have considered it possible if not for your intervention on Samhain, with your inscrutable warnings of Elise’s schemes. Why is it that you came to me and not Ariadne?”
Morgan sighs, and for the first time, Iona can perceive her humanity beyond her guise of divinity. She is no more than a witch, capable of fallibility and doubt.
“Younger maleficians are far less disciplined in their efforts at concealment. They wreak of dark magic, leave traces of it everywhere. I knew there was one somewhere on this campus but did not know precisely who it would be. That was your mystery to solve,” Morgans says.
“I’ve already expressed my admiration for you, my hopes for your future as my champion, so I can only assume your original question is more so an inquiry regarding my view of Ariadne, rather than yourself. ”
Iona nods, her ire receding in the face of Morgan’s calm.
“Ariadne is a prolific witch, it is true, but in her I saw a soldier, an avenging angel, with the capacity to become a tyrant as Katrin had been. That is not the future I sought, as I told you in the orchard. I desire a peaceful diplomat to craft a future were violence is no longer necessary and the disparity between bloodlines could be a thing of the past. Perhaps it was an idealistic hope,” Morgan says, then shakes her head. “If I’d known what Katrin had done…”
“You didn’t know?” Iona asks.
“No,” Morgan says. “I knew of her empire, her sovereignty, and her bloodline’s alliance with Hecate, but I had no knowledge of this secret order of malefician slayers.
Perhaps Hecate shrouded her coven’s true purpose beyond what clairvoyance or prophecy could perceive, if what you say is true.
Even I cannot defy the will of a Goddess. ”
“Then we are all of us truly powerless in this,” Iona says bitterly.
“I am just as much a pawn in fate’s game as you are,” Morgan says, “even in death.”
Before Iona can respond, Morgan reaches out a hand and lightly taps her finger against her forehead, and all goes dark.
Her lungs burn when she jerks awake, the movement making her muscles ache terribly. Still, she pushes herself up onto her elbows and reorients herself. She’s no longer floating in the lake but rather lying in Ariadne’s bed in the Villa Mitriora.
“I trust your vision was worth the effort?” Ariadne’s voice is lifeless.
She sits in a chair across the room by the small fireplace with her head turned away, so Iona cannot see her expression, but she can feel Ariadne’s distress.
Iona clears her dry throat. “What happened?”
“You drowned,” she says, “Or you nearly did, but Xiomara revived you, then drew her runes upon you again, and that seemed to help.”
Iona reaches for her throat. When she attempts a deep breath, the air gets caught and she coughs. The slightest taste of a healing potion still lingers on her taste buds.
“Where did you go?” Ariadne asks.
“Lysander College,” Iona rasps. “In May, I think.”
“Fascinating,” Ariadne says, her voice still devoid of warmth.
“I did not know it would happen… Or even could happen,” Iona says.
“Yet another method for you to die,” Ariadne murmurs. “Can I leave you alone to bathe without worrying you’ll drown in your own bath water? Can you go anywhere at all without slipping through time at an inopportune moment?”
The thought makes a shiver run down Iona’s spine. “But I thought moonstone was all that could cause it.”
“Apparently it’s your own mental state that sets it off,” Ariadne says.
“The moonstone actuated the ability, but Aunt Xiomara claims it can be entirely random, and so some consider it more of an ailment than a skill. She said it is why you’ve lost time.
It was not the Crone at all. I suppose I should have guessed it… Stupid of me.”
“But I have not traveled to the past since Pari’s class,” Iona argues.
“Your future self traveled into their past,” Ariadne says, “inhabiting your current body.”
Iona stiffens, then shakes her head, unwilling to accept it. “But… why would my future self ignore you all those weeks? Why would I not explain what was happening?”
Ariadne shrugs. “Perhaps we are at odds sometime in our future, and you could not bear to converse with me.”
“No,” Iona says. “Of course not.”
“You cannot know for certain,” Ariadne says. “Who can say what I may have done to deserve it.”
“There is nothing you could do that would…” Iona says, then trails off when a realization dawns on her.
She slips out of bed and approaches Ariadne where she sits.
By the firelight, her heart sinks when she finds Ariadne’s reddened face abused with tears.
She dreads to ask, “Did you feel me drowning?”
Ariadne’s face contorts with pain as she breaks down in awful sobs.
“Oh, Ari,” Iona kneeling before her and reaches for her hands, but Ariadne wrenches them away.
“I shouldn’t have forced you through the portal! I did not know you would hate me for it! I only knew I could not live without you, even if… I did not know what to do!” Ariadne’s every word is punctuated by a gasping breath.
“I do not hate you,” Iona cups her cheeks, and doesn’t let her pull away. “Ari, look at me.”
She wipes Ariadne’s tears with her thumbs and pushes her errant curls from her eyes.
“You saved Kokuro’s life. If I’d have been there, you would have only been distracted and the Crone would have used that against both of us,” Iona says, though it pains her to admit her shortcomings, her weakness.
“You left me,” Ariadne says with such dejection that Iona’s heart breaks.
“I know,” she whispers. “It was wretched of me. I shouldn’t have done it.”
“I thought you may never come back,” Ariadne whispers.
“That’s not possible,” Iona says. “I love you too much.”