The Stone Queen (The Dark Queens Book 9)

by Jovee Winters

Covering one foot with my other, I thinned my lips. That movement drew his eye back to me.

  “Does it bother you if I keep this?”

  A little. Though I would not tell him so. So instead, I rolled my wrist and affected a nonchalance I was far from feeling. “You’re a god. You don’t need to ask.”

  The air suddenly seemed to cool by ten degrees, and I shivered as he softly said, “I’m a god of honor. I do not keep what is not mine. Might I keep this, Lady Medusa?”

  I swallowed, my tongue feeling swollen and my mouth suddenly as parched as a desert. I couldn’t begin to fathom why he should want it. But suddenly, I wasn’t so bothered by the notion that he should. I was more curious than anything else. “But why? It is just an insignificant feather.”

  His lopsided grin made my heart feel as though it would race out of my chest and run away. My stomach swam and swirled.

  “Then if it is insignificant, surely you would not miss it?” He tipped the glimmering feather toward me.

  Mother always hated my molting. It always happened in the spring. She would become industrious with the feathers, though, and most of the mattresses and pillows in our home were filled with my down. I still couldn’t fathom why he would want such a silly thing, but I shrugged. “I suppose I won’t.”

  Before I could even blink, the feather had disappeared, gone to only god knew where. He gave me another one of his lopsided grins that did incredibly strange things to my insides. I wet my lips and glanced to the side. Dear gods, he was a potent one to be around. That was for certain.

  I heard the rush of tall grass shifting before I saw the shadow of my mother spring into view. She wasn’t an overly tall woman, nor did her looks give away her true heritage, that of a water deity. She looked completely human in both form and mannerisms. Her hair, once a vibrant silky brown, was now threaded through with thick veins of gray. Her skin, still youthful for her advanced age, sported deeper wrinkles along her eyes and mouth lines. She wasn’t fat by any means, but she was plump in the midsection and broad in the hips. For all that, she was one of the most beautiful women I’d ever known, both inside and out. Mother radiated warmth and calm. Usually.

  Not right now, though. Right now, she looked spitting mad and was glaring my way.

  “Medusa!” She wagged her finger at me, and I knew I would pay for this transgression later.

  I began a mad scramble to my feet to try to explain, but she did not give me even a second to speak my piece.

  “There you are, you terrible child! How dare you make me wor—” Mother’s irritation instantly turned into a mewl of distress when she glanced to the right of me and caught sight of Ares. Then she did the most astonishing thing ever, and all words fled me in an instant. She dropped to her knees and dipped her head, never looking at Ares full-on. And even from this distance, I could tell she trembled.

  “Brother War.” Her voice squeaked but had lost its angry edge, and in its place was what sounded a lot like fear.

  I frowned.

  “Why have you come? What has my daughter done to you? I… I will surely keep her—”

  Cocking my head, I stared at her as though for the first time. Why was Mother acting so strangely? Even a blind person could have understood that it was not anger that gripped her now but rather a sudden and powerful fear.

  Ares held up a glowing bronze finger. He blazed as radiant as the flame he’d been when he’d first come to me. “Do not worry so, sister Ceto. I am the cause for your daughter’s late return. I had matters to speak to her about, and she was kind enough to hear me out.”

  “As you say, my lord.”

  What?

  I curled my nose, more confused than ever. Since when did Mother ever, ever debase herself in this manner? She was a bold, no-nonsense woman. She was not this squeaky nervous thing, ever.

  “Do you still require my daughter’s presence this evening, Great God of War?” Again I could hear the strain in her tone. She was terrified. But why? Ares had been a perfect gentleman.

  He sighed and shook his head as he slowly got to his feet and dusted off his backside. “I do not. I have all that I’ve come for. I will bother you no longer.”

  “Never a bother, Ares. Please say hello to your father for me, and tell him that I have done all that was requi—”

  “If your fear is that I am come on Father’s behalf, rest easy, sister Ceto.”

  The moment he said it, Mother’s shoulders and stiff spine instantly relaxed. She chanced a peek at him from beneath her long, dark lashes but still did not rise.

  Should I have genuflected in that manner as well? Indecision kept me locked in place. Had I come close to the hangman’s noose and not known it? It was my turn to swallow hard as a pinch of nerves began to wind through my lower belly.

  “Thank you,” Mother whispered, and I swore but there was a reverence in her tone.

  Mother was hiding something—something big enough that made her tremble like a sapling in stiff winds. An uncomfortable feeling began to wind through me.

  Ares looked at me, the fire in his eyes now mostly a dim glow. “Good night, woman,” he said in his deeply accented voice with nothing but reverent consideration before tipping his head at us both in farewell.

  I bit my bottom lip and nodded, fighting a grin because I understood what my mother would not when he’d referred to me as such. It was silly and it was ridiculous of me to feel warmed through and through from it, but I did. And I couldn’t help but wonder if I would ever see him again. Wondering why he’d even come. And wondering what it was that they both knew that I did not. I sensed they hid a secret from me, though I wasn’t sure why.

  Ares once more became that raging pillar of flame and fire. I smelled the char of the land wherever he touched, and then, with one last violent spark, he vanished into the night.

  Chapter 6

  Medusa

  “Medusa, come here!” Mother cried the instant he’d left.

  Finally finding my will again, I ran to her, nearly tripping over my feet in my haste. She grabbed me up, and I was sure I would receive the beating of my life. But I was shocked when instead, she wrapped me up tight and began to sob wildly against the crown of my hair. Wherever her tears landed, baby crab sprang up, scuttling through my hair and nipping at the tender flesh of my scalp. I winced, but I did not force Mother off of me.

  Instead, I sank into her warmth, confused, silent, and even a little scared. Mother was never, ever like this. She held onto me securely for what felt like hours but could have been only minutes.

  Finally, when the sky seemed at its blackest, she gently pushed me back and began to flit her hands over my face and body. “He did not harm you, did he, love?”

  I shook my head. “He did nothing other than speak with me.”

  She nodded. “Good. Good. And you gave him no part of yourself, yes?”

  “What?” I asked, my brows twitching high upon my forehead.

  “Medusa”—she went calm as a serpent about to strike—“please tell me that you did not allow him any liberties with you.”

  “Mother, what is this ridiculous line of questioning all about?” I snapped, anger and frustration and confusion suddenly pouring out of me in one mighty surge. I shrugged out of her arms and stared at her probingly.

  But the fear that’d gripped her while Ares was here was back again, and she hugged her arms to her chest. “This isn’t the time for your childish games. Answer me truthfully, did you give him part of yourself?”

  “What? If you’re wondering whether he and I had relations, then you can rest easy, Mother. I’m still very much a virgin!”

  I’d thought my words might shock her into silence or even shame her a little. What kind of female did she think I was? Yes, there were some who would throw away their virtues for a night with a god, but I was not that type. But Mother did not look shamed. In fact, she breathed a deep sigh of what sounded an awful lot like relief.

  “Good. Good. That’s good.” Her long lashes flu
ttered, then her shoulders pinched tight, and she stared hard at me. “You didn’t let him have any part of you, though, did you?”

  “Mother, what is this?” I could not conceal my frustration from her any longer, but more than that, I was starting to feel a sharp nip of worry because I had, in fact, given Ares a part of me. “What are you keeping from me? Why did you and Ares seem to have a shared secret?”

  She scoffed at that and shrugged, rolling her wrist as though to bat away my words. Now it was her time to go on the defensive, and I was more baffled than ever. The feeling of fear was growing and intensifying in me so that I felt sick to my stomach and like I might vomit. What was she hiding?

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” she said, almost aggressively. “Of course we shared no secret.”

  I thinned my eyes, thinking suddenly of all of Mother’s strict rules when I was growing up and how I could not be alone with men. Any man. How I could never even kiss one or hold one’s hand. How I was never even to look any man, woman, or child directly in the eye, and how if I should shed even one feather, I was to retrieve it and either give it to her or burn it to a cinder.

  I trembled and bit onto my bottom lip.

  I’d always thought Mother eccentric and strange. Her rules, while nonsensical, came from a good place, a place of caring, of knowing that her daughter was different and wanting to help me fit in with the rest of the world as much as possible. She was an excellent mother, after all, but now with Ares’s arrival and Mother’s obvious fear, I began to worry that I did not know everything as I probably should.

  I looked at her, at that softly wrinkled face I loved and had thought I’d known so well, seeing her now through new eyes. She held very still, her dark eyes holding my own, but in them, I read something I’d never seen in her before—guilt. And it was stark and breathtakingly raw. I softly shook my head, denying what my heart already knew was truth.

  “You’re lying to me.” My voice shivered with hot threads of bitter disappointment. “You do know something. What is it? What do you know?”

  She laughed and took my hand, turned, and began walking us toward home. She was still trembling, and the quivers traveled through her palm to mine. I let her guide me, because even though I felt the sting of betrayal, she was also my mother, the woman who I knew loved me above all else.

  “Your father and I never wished to give you concern. There was really no need to ever share this legacy with you before. And it’s silly, truly.” She laughed, and the sound was high-pitched and almost frantic but enough to let me know that she didn’t fully believe the words she peddled, even now. My heart felt as though it were breaking into a thousand fragments, piercing my sides with each breath I was forced to take.

  “But with Ares’s arrival, I think that maybe…” She sighed and stopped walking, pulling me to a stop with her.

  She looked at me with familiar and loving eyes. Her hand feathered along my cheeks and brow before she tucked a strand of hair behind my ear. And though I ached at all the lies and deception, her touch soothed me as it always had. I’d never been in any doubt of her love for me and still wasn’t.

  “We are primordial gods. No longer valued amongst the mortals and allowed to live freely only at the Olympians’ mercy. As such, we are required when we have children to seek out an oracle so that our children’s fates might be known. If a child will bring harm to any Olympian, they are required to be put down immediately, no questions asked.”

  My lips parted. That was barbarous. Not that I couldn’t understand it. Obviously, no god would allow anything to exist that could one day pose a threat to them. But how could I possibly ever be a threat to them? All I had were wings. I had no other powers or abilities. I might as well be human for all the good these feathers did me. My flesh prickled at the idea that Mother must have learned something truly horrific for our fates to be what they were now.

  I swallowed hard before asking, “I never knew. And… am I—”

  “No.” She laughed airily, the sound too forced to be true. “Of course not. You could not have survived the birth if you’d been given a truly bad reading.”

  I blinked, hearing what she was not saying. “So I was given a dark reading.”

  She laughed that high-pitched and slightly manic laugh again. “Child, you’re such a silly thing. Think about it, daughter. With your head and not your heart. You could not be if I’d been given a truly terrible prophecy. Truly.”

  But for the first time in my life, I didn’t entirely believe her. Disentangling my hands from her tight grip, I gently shook her off. “Mother, stop lying. Something was foretold. You and I both know it. Whatever it was, it just wasn’t dark enough to justify my end. Yet. But it was bad enough that you should tremble before the Lord of War. You have to stop lying to me and tell me the truth. For once. ”

  She squeezed her eyes tightly shut and sighed from the depths of her soul. Wrapping her arms around her middle, she turned and stared at the expansive waters of our homeland. I would often catch her out there, high upon the bluffs, speaking with Father as only they could. The waters were her solace, and as a child, I’d always wondered why she’d looked so heartbroken and sad when she spoke with Father. I’d always thought that Mother had chosen to bring my sisters and me to this tiny island in the middle of the Mediterranean channel of her own volition. But now I wasn’t sure that was true. In fact, I wasn’t sure that everything I’d ever thought I’d known hadn’t all been lies.

  “Oh, Medusa,” she said softly. A tear squeezed out of the corner of her eye as she deeply sighed. “You were always much brighter than you had any right to be.”

  When she opened her eyes again to look at me, they were full of tenderness and sorrow. “You are unlike any other creature in the existence of the world. One of a kind and very, very special. You’ve the wings of a sylph and the temperament of an angel. You’re the very best of your father and me. And we love you so much.”

  I cocked my head, my heart hurting because I knew there was so much more to this tale than what she was saying. “But?” I prompted.

  She thinned her lips before saying, “But. Had we all remained on Olympus, a terrible savagery was to be your destiny, a crime that would alter the very course and fabric of your existence forever, culminating in a most terrible of fates I would never even wish upon my worst enemy.”

  A chill like black ice skated down my spine, and for a moment, I almost forgot how to breathe. I clutched at my neck with fingers grown suddenly numb and croaked, “What? What curse?”

  “Oh, please, child.” She reached out for me, but I refused her touch, not because I didn’t want it but because I knew if I let her hold me, I would lose what little control I still held over my fragile emotions.

  She gave a stuttering sob before hugging her empty arms once more.

  Pain and panic warred within me, coming out as anger. But I couldn’t help it. What was to be my destiny? What had the oracle told her?

  “Mother, its time you tell me everything. Everything! Why all your rules? Why have we been forever separated from Father? And why in the gods’ names did Ares seek me out tonight?”

  “Of Ares, I do not know,” she quickly responded, holding up her hands in the manner of one who wished to calm a wild beast. “What did he tell you?”

  I shook my head, still as lost as I’d been when he’d first introduced himself to me. “That I am to be his great love.”

  Mother’s face crumpled, and a sound like a dying animal squeezed out of her throat. She swayed on her feet then suddenly dropped like a heavy sack to the ground. I was so scared by her reaction that I shook my head in disbelief as I ran to her side and picked up her now cold hands and gave them a gentle squeeze.

  “Mother, do not fear. I told him that it’s impossible. He spoke of a woman of both venom and stone, and that’s not—”

  She almost screamed, then her strange murmurings turned to heavy sobbing wracks of deepest despair. I held her tight, rocking back and forth with her
, comforting her as best I could even as, inside, fear began to eat away at me like a slow-leeching poison. The ringing of my pulse in my ears was clear as bells.

  Then her wailings turned into wildness. She clawed at my arms. Her eyes were wide, and the whites nearly obliterated the pupils. Her face was a mask of maniacal fanaticism. “You must stay away from the male gods, Medusa. You must! Vow it to the sacred mother of the hunt! Vow it!”

  I was so scared in that moment that I did what she bid. “I… I vow it, Mother. You’re scaring me.”

  The fanaticism instantly fled, and she wrapped me in her arms, embracing me as though she wished never to release me. I could hardly breathe. “Mother, please,” I whimpered.

  But she was lost to her panic and didn’t relent even an inch. “I don’t know who, but one of them is destined to hurt you. So badly, so cruelly that you will never be the same again. And who else could it be but War? You must never see him again. If he comes to you, turn in the other direction. Never look at him, never acknowledge him.”

  I gasped sharply. “Mother! He could smite me should I dare.”

  She pushed me back so that I looked her eye to eye. Hers were bloodshot and glazed. “Better death than what will happen to you! Do you hear me, child? Never acknowledge a male god. I am only grateful that you have been so faithful in your worship of Athena.”

  I sucked in a sharp breath, and the words came tumbling out. “I… I am sorry, Mother, but I’ve never worshipped her. I… I… I—” My stutter grew so thick that I could speak nothing else.

  I was shocked by the glacial fury that burned in her eyes. “Where have you been all these years, then?”

  “A… a boy.” I shook my head. “A friend. Persiu—”

  Smack!

  The crack of her palm to my cheek was instant and shocking. My flesh throbbed with scarlet heat, and I stared at her, dumbfounded, even as my eyes filled with tears.

  “Run to your room. Lock the door behind you and do not leave tonight. I am most desperately vexed with you and do not wish to do you any more harm than I already have.”