Chapter 44
METILAI
The room Xoran had found for them was spacious, but had a musty smell. All of the furniture was shrouded when they’d first arrived.
Migela helped Cassandra pull them off the table and chairs. Vassori had gone into the bedchamber and snapped the curtains open, stirring a flurry of dust. She coughed as she ripped the coverings off the bed.
“It’s too cold to open the windows!” Cassandra had snapped.
Vassori gave her a disgruntled look over her shoulder. “And it stinks in here. A few minutes of discomfort won’t kill you.”
She crossed to the bed and grabbed the blankets off, hauling them to the windows to shake them out. Cassandra shivered, watching Vas go about her work with a mutinous look on her face.
“You know, not all of us are from places so cold it’ll freeze your nose off as soon as you step outside. Some of us are from climates with beautiful, sunshine-filled warmth, where birds sing and the water is so crystal clear you can see the colorful fish darting about.”
“Where is that?”
“Troy,” Cassandra grumbled, her face falling as her thoughts drifted away. Terena sat in a chair at the table in the adjoining room, her head in her hand as she watched the two argue.
“Never heard of it,” Vas said as she took the pillows over to the windows. She grabbed a brush from the vanity nearby and wiped it on her pants. Using it to beat the pillows, she glanced over her shoulder at Cassandra. “Where is it?”
Cassandra sighed. “It’s… not in this world.”
“What?” Vassori snapped upright, dropping her arm and the pillow as she regarded the seer. “What’s that mean?”
“Cass is from a world called Earth,” Terena called out, her head slipping into her palm. She shrugged when Vassori gave her a quizzical glance. “She was Apollo’s lover apparently, although she never did tell us the whole story.”
“Well,” Vas flapped her arms out after tossing the pillow. “We’ve got time now. I want to hear more about this place that was so beautiful you left it to come here.”
Terena chuckled as Cassandra crossed her arms in fury.
“I didn’t choose to come here,” Cassandra snapped.
“Then why are you here?” Vas flashed her a skeptical look before turning back to the bed. Flopping down on it, she crossed her booted feet and wiggled her brows expectantly.
Terena looked up at Cassandra from her contemplation of her fingernails when the silence stretched. The woman had a haunted, faraway look in her eyes and the hand she raised to the necklaces dangling from her neck shook.
“There was a war,” Cassandra said in a low voice, and Terena leaned forward. A sense of inevitability settled around them. Terena exchanged a look with Migela, who sidled closer to the seer.
“I am not Greek,” she continued, swallowing. “I am Trojan. My father is… was… King of Troy. And aye, a more beautiful city you’ve never seen. In my years here, I’ve not seen a city to rival its splendor.
“When the Greeks invaded, I was in Apollo’s temple. I ran.” She rubbed at her forehead. Her voice was small, shaking. “I wasn’t fast enough.”
Migela moved to sit beside Cassandra, her hand wrapped around the woman’s arm.
“Cassandra…” Terena started before her mouth went dry.
The seer shook her head and tears slipped from her eyes as she aggressively wiped them away.
“By the time Agamemnon, one of the kings of the Greeks who invaded my country, brought me to my father, I…” She wiped again at her face and shuddered. “Apollo had forsaken me. I was the one violated. I was brutalized by those men, but Apollo punished me.”
Terena gripped her hands together so tight they shook.
“He could not take away my gift,” Cassandra continued, her voice breaking, “so he altered it instead.” She laughed bitterly. “He raged at my infidelity. He wouldn’t even listen to me, even when I pleaded with him, telling him I loved him. The god made it so no one believed my visions afterward.”
Lifting her gaze at last, Terena was struck by the rage blazing in the woman’s slate blue eyes.
“Do you know what it’s like, to see the ruin of your home, the deaths of your family and countrymen, and not be able to do anything but watch as it happens? I warned my father. I warned my brothers.” She shrugged. “No one believed me.”
“How did you escape?” Vassori asked, sitting up in bed as she stared at the seer.
“Believe it or not, one of the authors of our demise was my savior. The goddess, Athena, favored the Greeks during the war, but she was angry when she’d seen them defile me.
And angry with Apollo for punishing me for it.
She arranged for my freedom. I cannot explain the details but, suffice to say, she helped and now I am here. ”
Terena’s fury was a living thing, twisting and churning in her gut. She hated that a few cowardly men had taken away her friend’s dignity, her safety, her power.
One of the most fearless women Terena had ever known, Cassandra hid her gifts behind a playful, irreverent mask, numbing her trauma with drink and magical herbs.
Despite how they’d met, Cassandra was one of them now, and Terena would ensure nothing like that ever happened to her or any of her friends.
Cassandra’s soft, ragged breathing was the only sound in the room for a long time. Her small hands shook, and she clutched at the fabric of her skirt.
Migela reached out and covered them with her own. When the assassin lifted her gaze, her eyes were glassy with tears. Her hands flew, signing faster than Terena could decipher.
“What are you saying? Slow down—”
Cassandra whimpered, covering her face as a sob wracked her. Terena rose from her seat, alarmed.
After a moment, Cassandra lowered her hands. Her face was bleak. She reached out and hugged Migela, whose tears flowed freely now.
“What happened?” Terena demanded, taking a step closer to the two women. Glancing up at Vassori, the tracker shrugged, equally baffled.
“Migela,” Cassandra started, her voice cracking. The assassin looked up at Terena, her hands flying again as she signed something else. Terena didn’t understand everything she said, but she understood one of the words.
Killed.
“Migela,” Cassandra said again and took a deep breath.
“When she was a child, her village was attacked by soldiers on their way to her country’s capital.
They attacked her family, killing her father and two brothers.
They cut out Migela’s tongue because she started screaming while they raped her mother.
When she was old enough, she tracked down those men and killed them all. It’s why she became an assassin.”
Fury writhed through her insides, and Terena hung her head. Lifting her head at last, she looked at her friend.
“I am so sorry for what you went through, Migela. I’m glad you’ve avenged your family.
Those men deserved everything you did to them.
And we will avenge you, Cassandra. We cannot make those men pay for what they did to you,” Terena said to Cassandra, her throat tight as she snapped out the words.
“But, I can make Apollo pay. And the day he and the rest of the Olympians return, is the day I honor this vow.”
Cassandra swallowed and hung her head for a moment. She remained stiff as Migela continued to hold onto her hands.
Despite the tears falling unchecked, Cassandra’s expression was harsh now, her jaw tight and her eyes gleaming with resolve.
“Aye,” she whispered, smiling ruefully. “I know you will. Because I’ve seen it. And when that day comes, I will be at your side. I’ll be at your side through it all.”
They settled for the night, Terena taking the bed and insisting it was no bother for Cassandra to share the bed with her.
Vassori took first watch in the antechamber and Migela slept on the couch in the small common area.
Hours later, a sharp stab of pain in her belly made Terena pitch forward, her hands grabbing hold of the bedding on either side of her. She panted, blinking rapidly as another wave of intense pain speared through her middle.
Rolling off the side of the bed, she fell to her knees.
Terena gasped as another sharp ache stabbed her insides and she reached to clutch at her stomach.
Cassandra’s voice beside her was dull and unintelligible, as if she spoke underwater.
As Terena panted, she saw Migela and Vassori run to her side, their mouths opened but she couldn’t hear their words.
A million memories flashed behind her eyes. Most from this journey, but going backwards, further back before her earliest memory, back before she’d arrived in this realm. Tears fell as the memories bombarded her mind and she went back
back
back
back
to the first circle.
“You have to kill her!”
Terena swung her terrified gaze away from Sonah to Lerek.
“What are you saying? Stop! I’m not the—”
“Kill her, Sonah! Before she kills us!”
“Lerek, stop!” Terena took a step closer to Sonah, but stopped when her sister raised her bow.
Terena froze.
“Ren!”
Terena spun to see Daris sprinting toward her. He slid to a stop when he saw Sonah with her bow trained on Terena.
“Daris, this doesn’t concern you,” Sonah said, her voice hard.
Lerek pointed a finger at Daris and snarled, “You’ve done enough damage, Liodari.”
“Sonah, please,” Terena whispered, her eyes pleading with her sister. “Listen to me. He’s lying to you.”
“Sonah, put the bow down and listen to your sister!” Daris yelled.
“I’ve listened to her before and look where it got me! Lerek speaks true, Liodari. You dripped your poison in Terena’s ear and now I cannot trust her!”
“Sonah,” Terena’s voice broke and she swallowed, her hands up. “I love you. I —”
“You love me?” Sonah seethed, the hand on the bow shaking. “You love me? You left me there to die! You let them—”
Sonah hung her head, her words ending on a sob.
Shame flooded Terena and she could not speak. Daris’s hand folded hers within his warmth. She chanced a glance at him, but his eyes were on Sonah.
“You chose him over me!” Sonah continued in a voice so filled with pain, Terena felt it break her own heart. She deserved Sonah’s wrath.
She’d failed her sister.
“You will always choose him! That’s your fate!”
“No, no, Sonah—”
“You made your choice. Now face the consequences.”
Terena ripped her hand from Daris’s grip and raised both in front of her, her eyes going wide a second before Sonah released the arrow.
“Terena!”
Terena’s hands dropped from her head where she’d been clutching her hair, and she struggled to breathe. Strong hands clutched at her shoulders. She couldn’t breathe.
Can’t breathe!
“Terena, what’s wrong? What’s happening?”
She knew that voice.
Rydon?
Blackness filled her vision.
When she finally opened her eyes, Terena blinked up at Rydon, bent over her. His face was contorted. Angry. Scared? How was he even here?
“Thank the gods,” he whispered, closing his eyes for a moment before he turned his hard gaze on her again. “What the fuck just happened?”
So much had happened. So much had changed in just a few hours. And now she was realizing that everything she’d ever done or will ever do might not matter.
Every one of the last circles was doomed from the start. Something—someone—was behind the sabotage. Someone who didn’t want her and Sonah to succeed.
Despair and impotent rage warred inside her as she thought about how futile it all seemed.
How could she fulfill the prophecy if forces stronger than her conspired to stop her?
A moment of panic seized her and she thought again of what had happened to her in Ravos, when she’d lost control of her powers and destroyed half of the duke’s men without thought.
Maybe whoever or whatever hidden force was working against her did so to stop her from becoming exactly what Duke Ravos claimed she was.
An abomination.
Terena’s hands shook as she reached out to touch Rydon’s face.
“I remember. I remember everything, Rydon.”