Thirty-four
Ariadnne
She was late.
She was never late.
Even in the worst fits of teenage rage she would be the first to the sands.
Ariadnne’s mood was dark as she stalked the corridors. She’d thought about not going at all, consequences be damned, but her restless mind wouldn’t settle. The walls felt too close, the sky too far.
Nieve had pleaded, again, for her to run away while entwined in her arms. Ariadnne had told her she’d think about it, and right now she was thinking about it. Damn the curse.
Melixanthe was already on the sands with Garth, boot tapping as she measured the position of the sun. Ariadnne refused to look at her. Instead flinging a blade, handle-first, at Garth.
‘Let’s go,’ she growled, attacking before he had a chance to raise a brow.
Reckless, her moves lacked her usual finesse as she hacked at him in a storm of fury.
Garth sent her sprawling, skins smarting from his well-aimed kick. ‘Sloppy,’ he grunted, twirling his blade with a shake of his head. ‘Moves like that will get you killed.’
Ariadnne’s eyes strayed sideways to Melixanthe’s face, drawn and grey, her mouth fixed in a firm, unyielding line even as her fingers played incessantly with the carved stone at her throat.
Ariadnne wished she would stop.
‘Isn’t there anywhere else you could be?’ she snarled, unable to keep the venom from her tone.
Melixanthe’s eyes widened.
‘What’s the matter?’ she stepped forward to offer her hand, but Ariadnne swatted it away, ignoring the look of hurt that flashed in her handler’s brown eyes as she scrambled to her feet, chest heaving with betrayal.
How dare Melixanthe go behind her back to rip Nieve from her life?
With an angry cry, she flung the sword at her feet. Unspoken words bubbled across the tip of her tongue, but their release would change nothing. She clenched her fists and spun on her heels. As an added insult, the guard turned to follow.
Walls echoed as she pounded back to her quarters, ears ringing and breath coming sharp. Cutting. Rage, pure and feral, billowed through her. Melixanthe’s drawn face had done nothing but add fuel to the inferno threatening to boil over.
Slamming the door behind her, Ariadnne hoped it broke her guard’s nose. It would serve him right for dogging her heels. She needed space.
A hint of pine still laced the air. Eyes closed, Ariadnne stopped to breathe it in—soothing her beast for a heartbeat. Hot, silver tears pooled in the corners of her eyes.
It was so new and delicate, her bond with Nieve, she had only just begun to learn it, to learn what it was to want, to need, and it was being ripped away.
Five more heartbeats and there was a bang behind her. Her door was flung open and Melixanthe strode in, voice hard as she begun a lecture.
‘Ariadnne—’
Her step faltered as she noticed Ariadnne’s tear-streaked face.
‘Oh. Ari. What’s going on?’
A bitter laugh. ‘You know what’s going on.’
Melixanthe stilled. ‘She told you, didn’t she?’
Ariadnne’s eyes burned with enough hatred to crack stone. ‘How could you? You know how it is for me here. How alone I am. I finally found something, someone, and you—you took her from me!’
‘I’m trying to protect you,’ Melixanthe said, her hands low as though approaching a wild animal. ‘You don’t know what the Guild is capable of…’
Ariadnne scoffed. ‘You’re trying to control me. And don’t talk to me about what the Guild is capable of. I know—’
‘You don’t.’ Melixanthe snapped. ‘You have no idea.’
‘No, you don’t understand,’ Ariadnne growled. ‘She’s my mate.’
Stepping back, Melixanthe’s eyes widened, lips parting. ‘Ari—'
‘So don’t tell me that what you did was for me.
There’s nothing you can say to make me forgive you,’ Ariadnne spat, stepping away as Melixanthe reached for her.
Her handler’s sympathy meant nothing, a deluge of emotion cascading through her as she spun on her heel and stalked towards her bedroom, blinded by hot, angry tears.
‘I had a mate, once.’
Ariadnne froze. There was a raw sound behind her, a sucking of breath so broken it could have cleaved the world.
‘She was beautiful and smart and strong, but it didn’t end well. The Guild has a habit of destroying beautiful things.’
Ariadnne’s pulse thudded in the silence. There was a brush at her elbow as Melixanthe stepped past to lower herself onto the couch, keeping her injured leg straight. One hand unclasped the pendant at her neck, her thumb stroking its carved surface reverently.
‘Please. Sit.’ Her eyes flicked to the door. ‘There’s a story I’ve been forbidden to share with you.’
Ariadnne’s feet remained planted, but she tilted her head.
‘What story?’
She studied Melixanthe’s face, noting the slight tremor of her jaw.
‘Will you sit?’
‘No.’
‘Fine.’ Melixanthe sighed, tucking the pendant into her fist. ‘I need to go back for this to make sense. Once, believe it or not, I was young. I was also na?ve and stupid, and headhunted by the Guild for my maternal lineage. Descended from dragons, my line has a habit of throwing varanyen young.’
This was new. Melixanthe had never shared her history with Ariadnne, preferring to maintain that line in the sand. Despite herself, her ears pricked.
‘I was honoured by their interest in me, blinded by their zeal and passion for the varanyen race. Your greatness and potential. For years, I did everything they asked, fought every battle, strove to become the best. Then, after a century of service, quite recently by our years, they approached with a different request. You see, I was ageing and had never chosen to have children of my own—something they had hoped for, circling like vultures. They asked if I would honour them and my ancestors by continuing my line and I, fool that I was, said yes.’
A faint rouge dusted Melixanthe’s cheeks.
‘They chose a partner from a good bloodline. It was a transaction, purely business, but our efforts were successful.’
Something like horror clawed at Ariadnne’s throat. Melixanthe had been coerced into exactly what Leth had threatened her with. Despite her anger, pity made her nauseous.
Melixanthe continued, oblivious to Ariadnne’s turmoil, ‘Shortly after I discovered I was pregnant, I was fortunate enough to meet my own mate. Zolif.’ Her voice cracked.
Ariadnne looked at her. Having a mate and a child were major revelations.
Her anger muted to a dull pressure in the back of her skull as she processed the new information.
Melixanthe lifted the stone in her hand. ‘This was the first gift she gave me.’ The ghost of a smile touched her lips. ‘I think she would have wanted me to share this story with you sooner.’
Ariadnne’s eyes followed the stone, which gleamed a dull grey in the faelight. It was hard to imagine Melixanthe with anyone in that way, soft and tender, or feeling even a fraction of how she felt for Nieve.
A curl of dread licked her as she asked, ‘What happened to her?’
Melixanthe shook her head. ‘I’ll get there—I have to tell it all.
’ She leaned back. ‘I thought it would last forever, our time together. After the birth of my child, we raised her for those first few years, falling in love and forgetting the Guild’s claim.
We assumed the chances of her being varanya were tiny. That we would be able to keep her.’
Ariadnne slumped into a chair, the wheels of her mind turning as a heavy stone settled in her stomach.
Her nightmare flashed before her eyes; being dragged screaming from loving arms.
‘We were so happy, Ariadnne. They let us move into the family wing with our baby. Oh, she was adorable. She had the most perfect round cheeks and grew into the fieriest toddler, but Zolif could calm even her wildest mood. I was always too stubborn. It was Zolif who knew when to bend and when to steady. Then, one morning our little girl’s eyes shifted to violet, and we knew I had bred true, that things would never be the same.
‘I have never felt so much fear as in that moment. It’s one thing to agree to produce a child when the idea of handing them over is an abstract concept. It is quite another to hold that child in your arms, to love her—only to have her ripped, screaming, from your grasp.
‘We tried to prevent it, to hide the change. We thought about leaving the Guild, but of course they found out before we could finalise our plans. The child was taken from us—’ Melixanthe’s voice choked.
Hand covering her mouth, Ariadnne’s jaw fell slack.
‘Laelin. We’d named you Laelin.’ Melixanthe’s voice trembled, her warm brown eyes lined with tears as they pleaded wordlessly.
Ariadnne’s heart stuttered and stopped. She was that child.
‘How…?’ Her mind reeled. It wasn’t possible. How was Melixanthe her handler?
‘They changed your name, as they do all the varanyen young, erasing ties to your past. We were forbidden to see you, and you were raised by a nursemaid here at the Guild, though they allowed me news of your progress. I watched you from afar as much as I was able.’ A small, tentative smile pulled at the corner of her mouth as though a memory was surfacing.
‘Gods, you were spirited. Gave your maid a real run for her money. You made me so proud.
‘Zolif and I mastered the art of appearing loyal, so we could stay close to you. Despite my ‘reluctance’ to hand you over, I was still a favourite of theirs. They wanted to believe I had come to my senses, moved on. That I’d merely been caught in a flurry of hormones.
The Council must have been fooled, as a few years later they approached again to ask if I would be willing to try for another child. ’
Ariadnne’s fists clenched. The audacity of the Council to try and use her again when they’d already harmed her family so much; they were a bunch of self-entitled pricks, and her heart pulled at the raw pain building in Melixanthe’s eyes.
The general’s facade cracked further as she inhaled a long-shuddering breath.