Mythos (The Descendants, #1)

by Vrinda Pendred

  * * *

  Itzy realised she was alone with Aidan. Alone and far from anything that made any kind of sense. She shivered with anticipation.

  ‘So, Melody didn’t take the break-up very well,’ she broke the silence.

  Aidan’s face drew in surprise, and he laughed. He shook his head. ‘She didn’t,’ he said.

  He let his words sit in the air, amongst all the other things they weren’t saying to each other. Not yet.

  ‘Was the mummy right,’ he asked, ‘when it said ye knew who held the Wisdom?’

  Itzy shuffled in place, feeling desperately uncomfortable now that this moment was upon her. She couldn’t believe just that afternoon she’d been in such a rush to tell him this.

  ‘I think,’ she said carefully, ‘you have it.’

  She could not have predicted the look of horror that now filled Aidan’s steel eyes. ‘Me?’ he said. ‘Why?’

  ‘Because my father wrote about you, in a journal,’ she told him. ‘He said we were all in trouble because he’d been wrong: the Wisdom was already here on Earth, and now that you’d attracted the attention of the Ancients, they’d come back to find it - without caring what it did to the child who held it.’

  Aidan listened to her with rapture. ‘But why me?’ he repeated.

  ‘Who else?’ she said, her face full with…awe.

  Yes, that was it. She was in awe of him, of what he could do and what he did to her. And awe carried a degree of trepidation, which was also appropriate.

  ‘If it’s true,’ she went on, ‘- and the mummy didn’t refute it - then my father only found out when he started speaking to you.’

  He shook his head in denial. ‘It can’t be,’ he said. ‘I don’t hold the Wisdom. I’d know if I did…wouldn’t I?’

  ‘He said the keeper of the Wisdom didn’t know he had it.’

  ‘Perhaps he meant yer brother,’ Aidan insisted. ‘Or Seth.’

  Itzy stepped forward. ‘I don’t think he did.’

  Aidan stepped forward, too. They were almost touching. And almost, she realised, just wasn’t good enough anymore.

  She reached for him at the same time he reached for her, and they folded each other into an embrace. His face burrowed into her hair. His breath blew across her bare shoulder, sending shivers down her spine. He dropped a light kiss on the bottom of her neck, making her tremble.

  ‘Are you really mine?’ she whispered.

  She felt him laugh silently against her. ‘I was about to ask ye the same thing,’ he said, his words clouded in her skin and hair.

  ‘Where were you today?’ she asked. ‘I kept ringing. You wouldn’t answer. I thought….’

  ‘Don’t be thinking that,’ he said. He pulled away just enough to look at her, their faces inches away from each other. ‘I went for a drive to clear my head. I do that sometimes. I don’t like everyone being able to get in touch with me all the time, so sometimes I switch off my mobile and go somewhere with no reception.’

  ‘What were you doing?’ she wondered.

  He shrugged. ‘Daydreaming, mostly.’

  ‘About me?’ she found herself asking.

  Aidan grinned at her. ‘Aye, actually I was.’ He grew thoughtful. ‘Something I need ye to know is I don’t just let people in like this. I mean, this?’ He drew one hand away to gesture at himself, before replacing it around her. ‘This isn’t me. At least, not the me everyone else knows. And last night sort of terrified me.’

  ‘But why?’ she asked in surprise.

  ‘Because ye have me acting like I’m gone in the head. I don’t even know ye and there I was, walking out on everything I knew and ringing ye up in the middle of the night. And then ye - ye did what ye do,’ he euphemised, ‘and suddenly I was out of control. And that’s not me. I don’t get out of control. I’ve worked very hard not to get out of control.’

  A new flood of heat rushed through her at these words.

  ‘I don’t either,’ Itzy told him. ‘Not like you mean. Ask Devon - my best friend. I’ve never done an impetuous thing in my life. And there I was, coming with you in the middle of the night, and making you do things.’

  She laughed at herself. Then she placed one of her hands against his chest, feeling the race of his heartbeat.

  ‘But I’m not afraid of it,’ she told him.

  ‘Then yer braver than I am,’ he said solemnly.

  He put his hands on her face and pulled her to him for one more kiss. It was long and lingering and left them both breathless when it finished.

  ‘I’d better get ye home,’ he said. ‘I promised yer brother.’

  Reluctantly, Itzy let him take her hand and lead her to the museum exit.

  When they reached the door, Aidan turned a scheming smile on her. ‘Would ye be interested in seeing my way of walking through walls?’

  Her eyes lit up with mischief and she nodded. ‘Go on,’ she said. ‘Impress me.’

  He released her hand and turned his attention to the heavy doors that stood between them and the outside world. Then he closed his eyes. It was beautiful to watch him. He shimmered all over, and power radiated from him in waves, settling warmly over her own skin.

  There was a sound like something imploding. The doors began to wobble like jelly, like the feeling in Itzy’s own stomach as she beheld what he had done, and he turned to her.

  ‘C’mon, then,’ he said as he took her hand again.

  ‘We’re going through that?’ she squeaked in amazement.

  Aidan laughed. ‘Just trust me.’ The Celtic lilt to his accent was beautiful.

  She let him pull her to the doors. She put out her free hand and brushed their surface. It was unstable and bent at her touch, but it left her fingers dry. Aidan watched as she pushed her whole arm through the strange substance, and then withdrew it again, twisting it from angle to angle and examining it. Deciding it was safe, she stepped into it, and Aidan stepped in with her.

  There was a moment when everything turned the brown of the doors and she couldn’t see him, though she felt his hand clutching hers, erasing any sense of claustrophobia before it could sink in too deeply.

  Then they pushed their way through the doors and found themselves outside. Aidan turned back to the doors and stared at them until they solidified.

  Itzy slid her arm through his and leaned against him. ‘You might be the most magnificent creature I’ve ever seen,’ she told him. She meant it to be funny, but her voice betrayed how seriously she meant it.

  Aidan twirled around so they were holding each other again. He pushed her messy hair out of her face and smiled. ‘If that’s the reaction I get, maybe I should show off more often.’

  She sighed heavily. ‘Do you think we’ll be okay? You said we were all in danger.’

  ‘Maybe,’ he said. ‘You may believe I hold the Wisdom, but I still feel mithered by it all. I don’t have any useful answers for ye.’ He stroked her cheek. ‘But one thing’s certain: whatever happens, I won’t be letting anyone hurt ye.’

  She smiled and reached up with her head to kiss him again.