Chapter 6
One cheek soaking in a shallow tidal pool, her lips caressed by the salt of this unknown sea, Kore whined. A keening moan of pain that broke through the dregs of fitful sleep. Anguish that radiated out from a broken heart, only to throb in a shattered body.
Bruises bloomed across pale, water-logged flesh. Trauma so violent, it had left her legs speckled in a mosaic of molted black and green. Etched with shades of vibrant purple and speckled with a sickly shade of yellow.
Evidence of what she’d endured at the bottom of the Aegean Sea. The damage that should have been enough to end her, but wasn’t.
Groaning, Kore turned her back to the sun.
Hiding her face from Apollo’s blistering gaze—it was an unconscious action, but one that held significant weight nevertheless, for even in her delirium, she turned away from her lord.
Water dripped from the ceiling above. Splashing across her brow. Lapping at her cheek with gentle, insistent waves.
Kore flinched, jerked from a dream of glittering scales and sheets of impossible, undulating muscle, she sucked a breath between chapped, dehydrated lips. Spluttering as she worked to peel her lids apart.
He’d returned.
Lying just there.
Sleeping on his side, half in, half out of the water. The tide was high. Water lapping at the mouth of the cave, enabling him to block the only exit with a body she couldn’t make sense of.
A body straight from the annals of myth.
Blinking in the gloom, Kore stole the chance to really look. Scarcely daring to breathe, she inspected the impossibly broad expanse of his back, where dense muscle became elegant scale and man became leviathan.
Wicked spines were laid flat, almost flush against his scales.
Harmless in their net of gossamer webbing, dozens of fins were tucked tight to his tail.
It was a limb more than three times thicker than she was wide, the first mighty fluke rocked above the surface in time with the pulse of each gentle wave, while the second was submerged in dark waters.
Peaking above the surface, it flicked with an unconscious grace that begged to be returned to the sea.
In slumber, his breath was rattling and heavy, but as steady as the ocean itself. In any other, that rattle would hold the ominous jangle of death.
But in a creature such as this?
She shivered.
A wave splashed against his scales.
He flinched.
Spines flicking high as his fins flared, it was an unconscious defense that sent Kore cringing back. Away. Clinging to the shadows at the back of her lonely, sodden cave. Terrified that he would wake and turn his attention upon her once more.
To what end, she did not know and couldn’t begin to guess.
She stayed like that for countless, frantic beats of her heart. Unblinking. Her breath shallow as she waited to drown beneath the next crushing wave of despair the gods might send to test her faith.
And there she remained. Cowering in the dark.
Knees drawn up and pressed to her chest. Sitting in a shallow pool of tide water warmed not by the sun, but by the heat of her body.
Unmoving until it occurred to her that she should not be alive enough to know fear.
Not warm enough to heat water. That she should have died with the other priestesses, if not by drowning, then crushed to nothing beneath the weight of a broken ship grinding her into the sea floor.
Her pelvis had been crushed.
Her legs pulverized beneath the weight of a ruined slave ship.
But she was… whole.
Frowning, Kore looked past her knee. Inspecting the mottled colors blooming beneath her once-golden, sun-kissed skin. She flexed her toes, noting the sluggish response from the digits on her left foot. The swollen, disfigured contusion jutting out just beneath her right kneecap.
An injury that should have been crippling, but wasn’t.
Ugly though it was, she could scarcely feel the pain.
Clouds shaded the sun’s ferocity, sending shadows to dance across the foamy peaks lapping at the cave entrance and the creature blocking her exit.
And then she noticed it.
The glow.
A spiderweb of eerie blue lines pulsed beneath her skin. Delicate as spider’s silk, it was the exact shade of lightning when Zeus’ temper flared—and just as shocking for it should not exist beneath her skin!
Veins filled with something more than a commoner’s blood, she had been infused with something… else.
Swallowing, her throat ravaged and dry, Kore tore her eyes away from the disturbing sight. Choking back the nausea, she moved. Stealing forward on legs impossibly free of pain. Placing one trembling hand on slick moss, she pulled herself forward, inch by silent, quaking inch.
Crawling across the slime exposed by the retreating tide, skating around the tiny things that thrived in tidal pools, she timed her every breath with the crash of the next wave. Approaching Poseidon’s son until she was close enough to see his scales shift with each rattling, disturbing breath.
Fingers twisting, she paused long enough to call on her Lord. Silently begging Apollo to intervene. To deliver her from this lonely spit of forgotten land.
The sun only sank deeper behind the clouds.
A rattling breath snared Kore’s attention, and she looked. Eyes catching on the flutter and stretch of that peculiar sound.
Gills.
It was the rattle of gills clapping together as the beast worked to draw breath outside of his natural element.
Sweat dappled Kore’s nape.
For she knew.
There was only one way off this island.
And this, her only chance to do something.
To try, no matter how futile the hope that she could win.
That she might outswim a son of Poseidon and find freedom, claim the chance to return to her homeland, and help them rebuild the temple of Delphi with the intimate knowledge of the divine she now clearly possessed.
Crouching low, she took careful, timed steps toward the beast. Aiming to slip between the fluke of his tail and the cave wall, she toiled. Back aching. Legs trembling. Her every breath hissing between lips pressed thin and bloodless.
Only when she was close enough to touch did she dare to tear her eyes from his grotesque form and sight her exit.
Three steps.
Just three careful, diligent steps, and she could slip into the waves of this unknown sea and swim. To where, she didn’t know and couldn’t bring herself to care.
There was only the hope that this could be the beginning of her freedom. An end to the series of events that had landed her here.
Setting one dainty, bruised foot atop a flattened stone, Kore shifted her weight forward. Careful not to lend too much to the movement until she was certain the footing would not betray her.
Success made her dizzy, and she let go a silent, trembling breath as she balanced between the next step and a fate she couldn’t begin to comprehend.
Reaching for a handhold, she found an anchor in the stone and moved to claim her next step.
It happened in a blur.
A misplaced hand.
A rock gull, nesting where she couldn’t see.
And a gust of wind that seemed to mock her, by dispelling the cloud cover in a brilliant, blinding instant.
With a honking cry, the gull took flight.
Composure shattering, Kore gasped and staggered back.
And the creature jolted.
Spines flaring, he reacted. Instinctual. Primal. Impaling Kore when she tried to scramble for purchase and found herself clawing at empty air until her feet were beneath her once more.
Crying out, her hands went to the spine embedded in her thigh, and she pulled.
Wrenching herself free with a sob, she scrambled back from iridescent scales.
Back from the flex and twist of an impossible body.
Away from the leviathan as he woke, and luminous, alien eyes scoured the dark in search of his prey.
Her lips parted on a scream that was murdered before it had even been born.
In its place, liquid fire gushed through her veins.
Gasping, she looked and found the wound. A gaping, inky hole leaking sluggish blood tainted black. Big enough to fit three fingers inside—with dark, ominous veins spidering out.
Venom.
Horrified, she watched the toxin move. Spreading with each frantic, terrified beat of her heart, it pulsed as it surged through her veins and made her skin bulge.
Sobbing now, Kore turned to flee. To retreat into the dank, dark little cave and its harmless puddles of misery.
And in so doing…
… exposed her back to a predator…