33 - Iona
F or a moment, she isn’t quite sure what disturbs her, finding it difficult to concentrate with Ariadne’s lips against hers, their bodies pressing together in a warm embrace, as she loses herself in the kiss. Then she breathes in and marks a distinct, alarming abnormality.
Ariadne does not smell of gardenias, nor of cloves. She always does, in the mornings when they wake in each other’s arms, every day they sat beside each other in their classes at college, and especially after she bathes in a tub filled with white gardenia petals, as she tends to do.
Then a sharp, unfamiliar pain shoots through Iona’s chest, making her go rigid in Ariadne’s arms.
“Wait,” Iona says against Ariadne’s lips, but she won’t release her, even when she struggles. “I said wait!”
She wrenches herself out of Ariadne’s grasp, unable to fathom her behavior.
Ariadne never ignores her when she expresses her wish to stop.
She reaches out through the bond, but there is a barrier there that she has never before experienced, something so potent and unyielding, that she cannot see beyond it.
Wisp snarls angrily, stepping in front of Iona with her fangs bared.
Without snowflakes obscuring her vision as it had moments ago, Iona squints against the dimness so that she might regard the woman standing before her, her mannerisms, her appearance, and the more Iona looks, the more she knows.
It’s a masterful likeness, it’s true, but not Ariadne.
Not her love, who she has memorized just as Ariadne had bid her to do more than a year ago on Samhain.
And just as Salvador told her it would, the illusion melts away into nothing, an effortless revelatory unveiling, even without the pendant augmenting her magic, revealing Rebekka’s face instead.
“Rebekka?” Iona raises her fingers to her lips. “How could you? How…”
Her eyes are white voids, her stormy green irises missing, her white shirt soiled and tattered from the many cuts littering her arms and hands, and a newly made gash across her neck that seeps blood onto her collar.
“What has she done to you?” Iona whispers, though she already knows the answer. This is blood magic, just as she’d read about in her grimoires, and just as Ariadne had described to her at college after she herself was subjected to Elise’s infernal spell.
Rebekka stares at her with a vacant expression, as if she’s been left without a puppet master to pull her strings. Iona admonishes herself for her speech, hating that the Crone will have heard it when it was only meant for Ariadne’s ears.
“Rebekka?” Iona backs away, wondering if she might attack, but Rebekka only turns and runs in the direction of the forest. “Wait!”
Iona goes to run after her, then hesitates when she remembers the pendant is still upstairs and the Crone is now aware of that fact.
She must retrieve it, she must find Ariadne wherever she’s wandered off to, and they must fight the Crone together, or risk Rebekka meeting the same fate as poor Euphemia.
Ari? Iona calls, but there is no answer.
She searches for the architect of the illusion along the border of trees below the mountaintop upon which the manor sits, but there is no one in sight.
Her heart pounds in her chest as she crosses the snow dusted courtyard and climbs up the stairs to the second floor, meaning to go to Ariadne’s room when another door opens and Moira steps out.
“Moira,” Iona gasps. “I think… I don’t know…”
“Whatever is wrong?” Moira asks, as Marina comes up behind her.
“The Crone. She’s here in Thessaly,” Iona says. “She’s inflicted blood magic on Rebekka.”
Marina’s face goes pale as she reaches for Iona’s hand, and glances at Moira with dismay, “Where is Mother?”
“She’s left already, but we should send word to her at once,” Moira says. “The covens may well be in danger, too.”
“What do you mean?” Iona asks, then remembers Xiomara mentioning the Winter Solstice. They will all gather here for the Yule ritual.
Moira draws her wand. “We must warn them.”
“I must find Ariadne first,” Iona says. “Keep your wits. The Crone has resorted to illusions. Strong ones.”
“Of course, I will help you search,” Marina says, her hand drifting to Iona’s shoulder.
Then Moira’s gaze lowers to Iona’s neck, her eyes widening in disbelief. “For goodness sake, put on the pendant! What are you doing wandering the grounds without it?”
“I…” Iona doesn’t know how to explain, and merely says, “I’ll fetch it.”
She hastens down the hall, throws open Ariadne’s bedroom door, going straight for the bedside table, but…
the pendant isn’t there and neither is Aster.
She searches frantically, throwing back the bed sheets, scouring the floor, knowing without a shred of doubt that she’d left it there, but there is no sign of it.
An impossibility, given that no one alive is capable of even touching the stones, except…
Ariadne, please answer me! Iona calls, but the empty silence remains unbroken.
She cannot feel Ariadne’s essence as she usually can, as if the bond has been severed, but somehow, she knows that isn’t so.
There is something else warding her off.
She wonders if it might be one of Ariadne’s shields, until she notices the staff left leaning against the wall.
She takes it, hugging it close to her chest, as she examines the room for any clue as to where Ariadne has gone.
She must have been here recently and without the staff’s portals, she can’t have made it very far, unless she used a carriage.
Not knowing what else to do, Iona keeps the staff and draws her wand, running downstairs and down the hall to where Marina and Moira were, but the sitting room is empty. She checks every room in the manor, but all are empty and dark, the candles snuffed out.
Unwilling to waste another second, she runs outside and into the cold. Wisp leaps through the thickening blanket of snow, sniffing the ground and trilling nervously as Iona trudges after her, using the staff to steady herself.
“Ariadne!” she calls, her voice echoing against the towering monoliths of stone.
Her breath is too loud in her ears as she waits, but still there is no response.
She knows well that she could be overheard by Rebekka, or the Crone herself, but she doesn’t know how else to find Ariadne within the vast wilderness.
Perhaps the Crone already has her, and that is why she can no longer feel her.
The thought has Iona running ever faster, stumbling farther down the mountainside, until she reaches a clearing.
There sits a pianoforte of dark wood, the bench pulled back and the keys exposed. Iona goes to it, searching frantically for any footprints in the snow, but the flurries of snowflakes fall around her, already covering her own steps down the mountain.
“Ariadne!” she calls again.
“Where are we meant to go?”
Iona shrieks in fright, then sighs angrily when it’s only Ksenia in a simple black dress shivering with her arms wrapped tightly around herself. She must have just arrived for the solstice ritual.
“I’ve no time for you. Go find the others on your own.” Iona turns on her heels and trudges onward.
“I beg your pardon?” Ksenia huffs. “Oh, I see. This is about the dragon.”
Iona stops short, her brow furrowing when she looks back at her. “What dragon?”
“I did what I must to incapacitate it. You’d have done the same,” Ksenia says.
“What are you on about?” Iona asks, observing her shivering. “Conjure a cloak before you freeze to death.”
“Don’t you think I tried that the moment I stepped through?” Ksenia snaps. “It seems my wand has disappeared. I cannot imagine what Morgan expects us to learn without the use of magic. This entire ordeal has become rather tedious.”
Iona blinks at the mention of Morgan, then her mouth falls open. “Stepped through? The moonstone arches, you mean?”
“Yes, of course! What else would I be referring to?” Ksenia throws up her hands in frustration. “I swear, Ariadne must have rationed every ounce of patience to court the likes of you.”
“But Ksenia, I am not…” Iona shakes her head, unsure if she should divulge the future, then deciding she hasn’t the patience to consider the potential ramifications. “It’s been many months since the trials. The pendant has already been claimed.”
Ksenia’s ice blue eyes widen, then narrow with mistrust. “You’re tricking me.”
“I swear it,” Iona insists. “The arches are portals through time. I claimed the pendant. It’s done.”
Ksenia studies her with shrewd suspicion but seems to believe her. She looks away in a rare show of uncertainty. “But why would Morgan send me here, then? Is she mocking my efforts?”
“She doesn’t seem like the sort of witch to bother with that,” Iona says, recollecting her own journeys within the arches. The magic always sent her to a witch in need. “I must find Ariadne. She may be in grave danger.”
“Call to her through your bond,” Ksenia says.
“She’s blocked our connection somehow,” Iona mutters. “I must track her down on foot. She must have been here.”
She gestures to the pianoforte, but Ksenia only stares with indifference.
“Off you go, then,” she says, and when Iona glares at her, she sneers. “Who am I to interfere in a lover’s quarrel?”
“She was once your friend,” Iona says. “Did those years mean nothing to you?”
“She’s more than capable of protecting herself, and if you were adept enough to usurp her, then I see no reason for my involvement, even if I did have my wand.” Ksenia’s gaze drifts to Iona’s bare neck, prompting her to frown. “If you claimed the pendant, then why are you not wearing it?”
Iona bites her lip. “I haven’t time to waste on explanations. Either walk with me or-”
“Fine,” She huffs, though it is difficult to comprehend past her chattering teeth.