Chapter 23
IbrOS
They had ridden most of the day until they neared the border to Elis.
As dusk fell, the waning sun took all the warmth with it, and Sonah found herself shivering uncontrollably until Fane had taken pity on her and called a halt for the day. Now, Sonah huddled closer to the heat from the small fire Melanos had built.
“Are you not warm enough yet, little one?” Melanos asked in his deep baritone. Sonah glanced at him and shrugged one shoulder.
When her teeth stopped clattering she sighed. “I’ve spent much of this past year on the road with my friends and yet I’ve not spent a winter outside of the White Palace. I long for the warmth of my bedchamber.”
“This is no normal winter,” Melanos said. “Although I do not feel it as you do, it is still unpleasant. And unusual.”
“There was a catastrophic event in the north,” Fane said as he chewed on a twig. “Almost two years past. It buried the north in ice and snow. Affected the rest of the continent in various ways we’ve had to adapt to. Some of us had never seen snow before.”
“What is this event?” Melanos inquired, settling back against his saddle.
Fane shrugged and shifted onto an elbow as he gazed at the fire. “I’m not sure. The scholars have varying opinions. Stories range from the wrath of the Titans to cosmic realignments.”
Melanos grunted. Sonah watched him out of the corner of her eye as he frowned down at his thick hands. They toyed with the edges of his cloak.
“What is it?” Sonah asked softly.
Melanos glanced at her, surprise in his eyes before shrugging it away. “’Tis nothing.”
“Your face suggests otherwise.”
The god’s lip curled up. In the months since she’d last seen him, he’d allowed his ashen beard to thicken, and she wondered if it was in response to the cold.
“I do not know of any cosmic realignments from my time, but I do remember the gods affecting the weather similarly.”
“Oh?”
Melanos looked up at Triodos, one of Fane’s Spartan brothers, who watched him with an intensity that made Sonah scoot closer to the god.
“Aye. I’ve seen arguments that have kept Helios from riding his chariot across the sky, forcing weeks of darkness on the rest of us all because of a spat.
I’ve seen that wretch, Poseidon, fly into a rage and take out his frustrations on the coastal towns of what was once Sierras, a beautiful island in the Gulf of Heroes.
Eventually, the entire island was buried beneath the waves. ”
“Oh, aye!” Yianni, another Spartan soldier in their group, spoke up excitedly. “I’ve heard sailors speak of ruins beneath the waves while they patrolled the gulf!”
“If Terena were here,” Sonah sighed, “she’d be able to tell us all about it.”
Melanos laughed and nudged her shoulder with his big hand. “We don’t need your sister for that, little one. I was there when it happened.”
For the next hour, Melanos regaled the group with stories of the gods. Sonah looked around at their small group and saw them listening with rapt attention. She too, listened in fascination, but she also longed for her sister and their friends. Loneliness pressed in on her and tears stung her eyes.
Sighing, she settled onto her side and pulled her thick cloak around her while the men talked on. A few minutes later, she felt something heavy drop over her and her eyes slid open to see Melanos had draped his cloak atop hers.
Too tired to protest, she closed her eyes once more.
The sound of rushing water made Sonah’s heart speed up as they neared the falls where only a few short months ago, Terena and her friends had found Bethana’s lair.
“Do you think we’ll find her?”
Before Melanos could answer her, Fane shouted back at them. Yanni waved his arms, both men grinning at them.
Sonah jogged beside Melanos’s long-legged stride and when they reached the others, Fane pointed to the left. “We found an entrance!”
Following behind Melanos, Sonah rubbed her arms with her gloved hands and huffed her way to the dark cave that swallowed the others.
Inside, it was colder still, and dark enough to make her squint against the change. She heard Fane murmuring to the Spartans as she closed in. When her eyes adjusted, Melanos was making his way further inside, into a narrow corridor.
Sonah followed the others at a much slower pace. If any of them ran into the serpent, they’d deal with her long before Sonah was in sight.
Digging beneath her cloak and leather jacket, she grasped her dagger and unsheathed it from the belt. If she was the last line of defense, gods help them all.
Sonah froze as a long, low hiss sounded in the cavern, bouncing off the wet stone walls around them. She moved closer to Fane, who held out his hand for her without looking back. Tucked into his side, she felt slightly safer as her eyes darted around the dim cave.
“Bethana!” Melanos’s deep bellow made Sonah jump. She clutched at Fane’s bicep with her free hand.
Silence and the roar of water was the only response to his summons. They stood there, frozen, at the edge of a large pool of water, the glassy surface reflecting the stalactites from above. Sonah swore she might faint from the anticipation.
“Bethana! It is I, Melanos!”
Sonah shuddered and tightened her grip on Fane.
Hissing sounded behind them and Sonah whipped her head around, eyes wild. Fane shoved her behind him as he spun, holding his sword ready.
“Melanos.”
The voice was otherworldly, sinking into Sonah like a stone and making her stomach drop. She shook from head to toe, pushing closer to Fane.
The water rippled and the serpent emerged, multifaceted green scales shifting as water sluiced off the magnificent creature. Sonah’s mouth dropped open and her heart stopped.
Melanos strode to stand in front of their small group, his large frame blocking out her view of Bethana. Fane took several steps back, pulling Sonah as well.
Peeking over his arm, she watched as the serpent lowered her head, her forked tongue flicking out as she regarded the god who was once her lover.
“Bethana,” Melanos said, his voice making tears spring to Sonah’s eyes. She squeezed Fane’s arm, her lips trembling as she watched Melanos drop to his knees before the former nymph.
Sonah felt Fane stiffen beneath her fingers and she dared a look up at him to see he, too, gawped at the prostrated god.
“Centuries I’ve waited for you to come,” Bethana hissed, slithering closer to Melanos who knelt before her with his head bowed. “Centuries in which I lost so much of myself.”
“I know.”
Sonah’s heart ached for the god who humbled himself now for the woman he loved. They all watched the scene and Sonah felt the need to turn away.
She tugged at Fane’s arm and when he looked down at her with a frown, she motioned with her head. His brow furrowed, glancing back at the god and his nymph before he gave her a curt nod.
Stepping slowly so as not to draw the serpent’s attention, they edged back far enough away to hide in the shadows of the corridor they’d come from.
“I was cursed too, my love,” Melanos was saying and Sonah craned her neck to see beyond Fane. “I could not leave the cave that wretch put me in. But not a day has gone by that I did not think of you.”
“The daughter of Ares said you were in a cave not far from here,” Bethana hissed, her head lowering to Melanos’s eye level.
“Aye, my love. And yet it was still too far.”
The serpent regarded him in silence for a long moment. Sonah squirmed to move around Fane so she could get a better look. Her foot caught on someone’s boot and she stumbled. Fane’s hand snaked out and grasped her wrist, but not before the tumble of loose stones broke the silence.
Bethana’s head snapped up and her tongue flicked out as she hissed long, low and mean. Everyone froze. Fane’s hand was a vice on her wrist.
Melanos lifted his head as Bethana moved around him, her focus on the interlopers.
“I smell her,” the serpent hissed, narrowing her slit eyes. “Come out, baby Ares.”
Fane’s grip tightened and Sonah winced. He shook his head slightly at her.
“It is not—”
“Do not lie!” Bethana swung her head around before her attention was back on them. “It is her. I can smell her. The taint of Ares is all over her.”
“She is the younger daughter,” Melanos said in a soothing tone, his hands out to placate the serpent. “Both of these young gods are not like their father. They are unlike any of the Olympians—”
“You dare defend them to me?” Bethana’s voice sharpened and Sonah felt her pulse thud in her eardrums.
“I am not defending them,” Melanos muttered, his hands splayed as he rose slowly. He was almost as tall as Bethana. “They broke my curse. I thought, perhaps, they could break yours too.”
“Where is the other?”
Sonah’s heart stuttered as Bethana continued to watch them in the dark. Although Sonah felt certain the shadows hid them, she was less certain Bethana’s eyesight was as bad as hers.
“I don’t know,” Melanos said, his voice hardening. “But Sonah is here, and she wants to help us. Help you.”
Seconds passed in which the serpent continued to regard them, the unnatural tilt of her head and the way her tongue flicked in and out not reassuring Sonah at all.
But Sonah trusted Melanos and the others to help her if needed.
And so she edged around Fane, snapping her wrist out of his grip, and stumbled forward into the cave.
She jerked back when Fane grasped her cloak, momentarily choking, before she twisted sharply and his hold slackened. Taking a few tentative steps forward, Sonah shot her gaze between Melanos’s scowling visage and Bethana’s eerie eyes.
“He’s right,” Sonah said, proud her voice only had the slightest of tremors. She swallowed and held her hands out like Melanos. “I told Melanos I wanted to help you and that is why I’m here. Although, I don’t know how.”
The serpent watched her through eyes that made Sonah shiver and drop her gaze. She began to fidget with her hands. Catching herself, Sonah tucked her hands beneath the folds of her cloak and cast Melanos a beseeching look.