Chapter 25 HYPATIA CALLS YOU #2
“Girl,” someone wheezed, and my heart gave a painful jolt at the sound of someone shifting on the dirty ground. Sofia went ramrod stiff at my side. “Child!” they hissed.
I tried to turn back toward the gravelly voice, but Sofia squeezed my arm painfully tight.
“We should keep moving,” she whispered and tried to pull me onward faster.
“Sofia!” the voice rasped as if the name had just come to them from foggy recesses in their brain. “My girl!”
Sofia was shaking and tears were gathering in her eyes when I slowly turned toward her. I put my arms around her and held my friend until the tension finally dissolved from her body, and she was hugging me back.
“Did they hurt you?” I asked her. Such a thing had not occurred to me until that moment, and I felt foolish for all but forcing her to come along with me.
“No, never,” she whispered right away.
“Then we should help them,” I urged her gently.
“We cannot. She is gone,” Sofia sobbed, shaking her head as she squeezed me even tighter.
“But she knows your name,” I pointed out.
“She is gone. She died with him. She said so when she came here! She does not want help from her family.”
And suddenly I knew exactly who was sitting behind us in the dark.
Sofia had said that her mother had become a shell of herself after her mate was killed trying to get his family back from her grandsire.
The one who had tried to keep Sofia and her mother from her father, and then told her awful lies about him.
“Castor is your grandfather,” I realized aloud.
No wonder he had sent me here if his daughter would not accept his help. And no wonder Sofia thought he was an evil man when he must have been the one who killed her father and then lied about him…
“I have spent my life distancing myself as best I could from him, but he insists on meddling!” Sofia snarled.
“We will not say a word,” I swore with a glance back at Helena who shifted. I knew how much Riordan disliked Castor and knowing Sofia was his granddaughter would probably only make him distrust her too. “Helena.”
“Fine,” my guard grumbled.
Sofia released me and stepped hesitantly back in the direction of where the voice came from. Someone shifted in the dark, and I saw a filthy woman with a broken wing drag herself into a shaft of light.
“You know my name this time,” Sofia whispered as she knelt on the dirty floor.
“Sofia, my darling,” the woman cooed at her with a vacant smile as she cupped Sofia’s cheek with a trembling and gnarled hand. “The heart knows. So pretty now.”
“Thank you,” Sofia breathed as she clenched the hand resting on her cheek. “Momma, will you please allow me to give you my cloak this time before I go?”
“No! No helping,” her mother objected and recoiled with a nervous glance around.
“See?” Sofia said over her shoulder to me, but I was not deterred in the least. I recognized this behaviour.
“She doesn’t want to be given anything to make other homeless people want to take it by force,” I explained while kneeling next to Sofia. “It would make her a target. What if we come back with enough blankets for everyone here next time?” I asked the shrinking woman gently.
“Everyone would get one?” she verified.
“Exactly. No fighting over food or blankets,” I swore. “We will bring enough for everyone. Would you take it?”
The woman seemed to consider this a moment before she gave a jerky nod.
“I would take a blanket then.”
“Good. Is there anything we can get you right now? Perhaps a healer?” I suggested with a saddened glance at her wing that lay awkwardly behind her.
“Will everyone be healed?” she asked cautiously.
“We will come with healers for everyone,” I insisted, and she nodded. “What is your name?” I asked her.
She seemed to think about it while Sofia tentatively brushed her fingers through her mother’s tattered hair in an attempt to tame the frizzy dark curls.
“Despoina. I am Despoina Ariti,” she finally declared with a proud tilt of her head.
“It is nice to meet you, Despoina. I am Amira.”
“Consort,” she blurted at me, and I blinked in surprise that she would recognize my name.
“Yes. I am King Riordan’s consort,” I confirmed.
“Good king. Just too late,” Despoina whispered with a shake of her shaggy head.
“Yes. I am sorry,” I told her carefully with a glance at Sofia who had stiffened again.
“Many enemies. Many enemies,” Despoina continued, beginning to rock back and forth as she shook her head in growing alarm. “So many enemies coming after you.”
I hesitated as her words prickled my intuition.
“You know our enemies?” I asked, trying to keep my voice as calm and conversational as before.
Despoina lifted her arm to sweep it over our heads so suddenly that we both ducked. Her sunken eyes appeared distant as if she were seeing something else in our place.
“Armies to the horizon. Fey and Fuath. Blood magics that pierce the veils,” she rambled.
“What are you going on about—” Sofia began to ask, but I grabbed her arm to stop her from interrupting.
“The fire is listening. The queen of decay is moving! Light and dark clash in the heavens,” Despoina continued, raising her eyes to the ceiling. “An ancient rage answered by an unforgiving wrath!”
“Despoina, do you know who the king’s enemies are?” I asked her calmly and ignored Sofia’s sigh.
“So many fey sacrificed. The power is in their blood. He trusted him! But they are all beholden to the Spider,” Despoina hissed before her face slackened as if she were listening to something. Then she blinked, her eyes clear again as she looked at me directly. “Hypatia calls you.”
“Hypatia?” I repeated.
“I think that is enough for today,” Sofia broke in with a firm look at me, and I nodded reluctantly, although I was already planning to return. Sofia might see it as mindless muttering, but there were just too many chords of truth in her words for me to discredit them entirely.
We bid Sofia’s mother goodbye and promised to come back soon.
“Thank you,” whispered Sofia, clenching my arm once we were outside again.
“I never would have considered that giving her things would have made her a target and that was why she was rejecting help,” she said tearfully.
“I’ve left her here all this time because it was too painful to see her and not be allowed to help her!
Now I know that I could have helped her if I had just been smarter. ”
“You could not have guessed such a thing if you never had to experience it,” I insisted. She nodded, but I could still see the guilt weighing heavily on her.
“Thank you, Amira. I’m sorry for how I acted before,” she breathed as she swiped away her tears.
“No need to thank me,” I told her, turning to face her as I squeezed her arm affectionately.
“You are far too good for this place,” she muttered.
“Oh, please,” I laughed, shoving at her and turning to continue on toward the docks where Helena would have enough space to take flight.
“I am serious,” Sofia pressed. “Are you not the least bit unnerved by what you have learned today?”
“What is unnerving—Wait!” I gasped as I suddenly remembered something else. “Castor wanted Riordan to choose one of his daughters as a mate!” I recalled.
“It was my aunt that Castor wanted to mate to Riordan. As if the king would have ever accepted anyone but you,” Sofia laughed dismissively.
She was oblivious to my discomfort as the reality of the age differences between me and the griffins around me became crystal clear. But at least they did not look like they were centuries older than me. Right?
“Did your mother always have such visions?” I asked in order to distract myself, and Sofia scoffed as expected.
“Those are definitely not visions. She started speaking like that after she came here,” Sofia assured me, but I was simply not convinced.
“So then who is Hypatia?” I asked her.
“That would be the enuksha,” Helena spoke up behind us when Sofia shrugged unknowingly. The look that the warrioress gave me let me know that she agreed with me. Despoina’s mutters, while disorganized, were simply too uncanny not to be worth listening to.
“Then I guess I need to go see the enuksha,” I mused as the guard reached down to lift me into her arms.
“You will have to ask the king. I absolutely refuse to take you against his wishes,” Helena warned me.
Sofia smirked as I narrowed my eyes on Helena while she lifted me into her arms. “Why?”
“Why?” Helena nearly choked out as her golden eyes widened at me. “After the king, Hypatia is perhaps the next most powerful being in all the Vale! And I do not see Riordan being comfortable with you visiting her alone.”
“Fine. I will ask him. Although I resent it.”
“So glad to know you resent my determination to keep my head attached to my shoulders,” Helena muttered.
She launched into the air before I could reply.