Promise nothing will come between us, Chrysaleon.
Aridela had extracted that vow on Crete, before the blazing autumn star had risen in the heavens, before he thwarted his oath of death. Before he himself had come between them.
Yes. Face your truth.
“You caused it!” he shouted into the driving rain. “You’re to blame!”
He collapsed against the rocks, suffocating in that moment when Aridela’s neck had snapped and she had slumped, lifeless, against him.
The sound of crashing waves faded. Before him lay not Scotland’s green, dewy coast but the arid island in the Mediterranean where it all began.
Flanked by a wary Menoetius, he stepped into the palace courtyard at Labyrinthos. Sunlight beat against the paving; he could feel yet the blinding heat ricocheting from those stones. Sensations and images flooded him, of carved pillars supporting gigantic stone awnings, of vibrant frescoes displaying black bulls and blue flittering birds. He’d heard of Crete’s magnificent architecture, but the reality left him awestruck.
A line of women approached, richly garbed in open-breasted blouses and tiered skirts covered with shiny hammered disks and shells. In the center stood Aridela, Queen Helice’s daughter.
He would carry that fateful moment with him forever, no matter how many centuries passed. A million couldn’t dim it. Her black hair, dusky skin, and enormous eyes were flawless perfection, yet while those surface attributes were what had initially captivated him, it wasn’t hair, skin, or eyes that made her unforgettable. It was the innate royalty, the pride and majesty that called to his, the courage, passion, and wit, the spirituality, and most especially, her loyalty— once given, immutable. An amaranthine being, she bound him to this day. He was her willing, eager prisoner.
Legend called her the daughter of Velchanos, Athene’s son and lover. Daughter of the Calesienda.
And oh, the bull leap, the way she had laughed as she’d landed on its haunches then cast herself into the arms of her half brother.
Prince Chrysaleon had recklessly declared she would be his. He would win her, no matter what he had to do.
Would he, had he known the full price?
He heard again Themiste’s echoing prophecy. Curse the usurper, the changer of the Way. He shall follow without rest, without joy, without relief, until the final devastation of the heavens. He shall follow begging, but love will run from him, and he will receive only sorrow and regret until the world is old and tired, and razed by war.
Alexiare had also tried to warn him. Selene said you and I would follow, and that we would beg for death.
Curses mean nothing to me. Chrysaleon’s unwavering insolence sent a shudder through the older, wiser Aodhàn. Have you forgotten my grandfather’s motto? Fortune favors the bold.
Rain beat against the coast. Cold wind buffeted him. Aodhàn’s arms strained as his psyche warred, one part trying to thrust over the edge, the other clinging to life and hope.
Yes. For you, I would do it again.
What if Olivia died? Morrigan would be freed of her maternal obligation.
Curse it though; she might never recover from the bothersome child’s demise. That wouldn’t work.
Fortune favors the bold. Favors the bold.
What if Morrigan died? Aodhàn could kill her then himself. After a hazy interlude of nothingness, both would be reborn somewhere else. They would find each other in the magical way that always happened. Morrigan wouldn’t remember Curran or Olivia. She would have a new name, a new body.
Athene’s gift of forgetfulness used to his own advantage.
But would it unfold that way? So far, every time he’d tried to trick or defy Athene, it was he who paid, and, indirectly, Aridela.
He had killed her once. For all he knew, that was the act that sent them on this pitiless journey.
In the first life after Crete, the life of flailing ignorance and mistakes that was Cape Wrath, he hadn’t known there were limits on what he could do. Remembering his reckless stupidity in that incarnation made him wish he could drive a stake into his brain.
He had done everything wrong that could be done wrong at Cape Wrath. He had worsened the curse upon himself, and her, threefold.
But he’d learned from his mistakes, in that life and every life since. Each blunder and subsequent punishment changed his course, refined his purpose.
There were unbreakable rules to Athene’s game, the foremost being that he couldn’t kill Menoetius, and he couldn’t reveal the past. Those two edicts were embedded in his very soul.
Not since Crete had he killed Aridela, but every instinct warned him that if he couldn’t kill Menoetius, then surely the punishment would be a thousand times worse for attempting such a crime against the Goddess’s beloved daughter.
In the life on Barra, he’d attempted a different ruse by ordering Greyson to kill Daniel. With Daniel dead, nothing stood between him and Lilith. They married. For eight years, there was no retribution.
But Athene was simply biding her time.
The sanctions continued to this day, with Morrigan married to Curran, separated from Aodhàn by her own incorruptible loyalty.
If he tried any new machination to break that bond, Athene’s punishment would undoubtedly descend again, worse than he could imagine.
He wondered sometimes if it was Athene who punished him, or Harpalycus. Was Harpalycus Athene’s instrument, or was he unconnected, self-governing?
Aodhàn didn’t know. Every existence brought new questions, new doubts, and increasing exhaustion.
What if Seaghan was right and Curran never brought Morrigan home? He could become an absentee landlord. He could hire a steward to live at Kilgarry. There was a distinct possibility Morrigan would never be seen in Glenelg again.
If Aodhàn could put his hands on some currency… but his Barra wealth was gone and his real fortune, the priceless treasure from history, was hidden in the mountains on Crete. He had no way to get to it, and he couldn’t go so far anyway, not now. What if Morrigan left Curran to come to him, and he wasn’t here? He couldn’t take that chance.
He imagined appearing in London a rich man, showing her that he could be as good a provider as Curran.
But Aridela had never been impressed with such things. Loyalty motivated her, and love. Bloody Curran had her loyalty.
Aodhàn was afraid to think she might love him too.
What if he could compel Morrigan to kill herself?
If she took her own life… but he knew it was too fine a line, as ordering Greyson to kill Daniel had been. Such distinctions would not protect him. Athene would blame him, and she would retaliate.
Had that merciless deity really forced him into this corner, with only one safe choice, living in dreary shadows, half-man, half-corpse, ever watching her from afar and too timid to do anything about it?
Perhaps he should jump. Give her to Curran in a selfless act of generosity. Better that than existing without her, in the living death of the last two decades. Now that he’d seen her, touched her hair, drunk in the taste of her, he couldn’t survive that emptiness.
Surely he could end his own life without being punished.
He laughed harshly, for he really didn’t know about that, either.
Beyond all this, deeper and more wrenching, was what he had observed since he had regained his memories. He’d seen it on the Endeavor, and later, when he kissed her in the forest. He had seen it at the wedding cèilidh, though he hadn’t understood then. He saw it the night of Saint Brigit’s Eve, when she brandished her sewing scissors at ghosts from nightmares.
Morrigan was different from her predecessors. Where Aridela’s courage was woven into every fiber of her being, Morrigan was timid, shy, always trying to mold herself into whatever she thought would gain acceptance and love. Eamhair was willing to die rather than allow her father to sell her, but Morrigan had meekly consented to marry Curran on the orders of her aunts and the demands of the world in which she lived. Caparina had defie
d the terrifying papal inquisitors; not even the threat of the stake could make her confess to witchcraft, while Morrigan said nothing as William Watson denigrated her from his pulpit, and all of Glenelg listening, watching. Lilith laughed at the sanctimonious gossip of Barra’s villagers, to her ruin, while Morrigan shrank from judgment.
Everything that made Aridela unique was decaying. She was slowly being crushed, one life at a time. His proud, ancient queen was nearly lost.
Had he fought all these centuries only to lose her to this world’s joyless new order— the world he helped create when he caused the destruction of Crete and the last stronghold that honored women? If he finally succeeded in destroying Athene, would he also destroy the woman he loved?
She could eventually become ordinary and lose the mark of the Goddess. He dreaded the prospect of her looking at him without the subliminal recognition he had always counted on. At some point the revelation of their amazing story might get no reaction from her but blankness, ridicule, or fear.
The rain slackened. Sunlight struggled through breaking clouds.
Perhaps this was the final ending Athene had plotted from the beginning— that as he neared his ultimate moment of victory he would lose Aridela to the same defeated spirit every female the world over endured, sooner or later.
If that possibility existed, then what was he fighting for?
An eagle sailed, stretching its wings to ride the currents. Long ago, Aodhàn had watched Morrigan in the secret glen. She stood before an eagle, possibly the same one who now scrutinized him from one stern eye.
Puny weak human, its sharp glance seemed to say. With one negligent flap of its wings, the raptor circled lower, disappearing over mist-shrouded Skye.
“Aodhàn?”
He turned. Eleanor Graeme stood on the wet, windswept grass, a covered basket on one arm, gazing at him curiously. At the sight of his face she exclaimed, and set her basket on the ground.
“Come here at once,” she said. “I cannot climb out there to you.”
“Leave me alone.”
She placed her hands on her hips. “Either jump into the sea or let me tend you. You’re bleeding.”
He lowered his face to the black stones, tasting them, absorbing their relentless chill. He realized he was shivering. The burn and throb of his injuries returned.
“Come, Aodhàn,” she said.
He obeyed, too worn out to argue.
She took him to her home, threw a blanket around his shoulders, and sat him at her table with tea while she ground herbs in her pestle. Bringing the bowl to the table, she washed his face then applied a stinging mixture of some kind to the cuts.
For a moment she worked in silence, frowning, then she said, “You blame yourself for them going away.”
He had long ago recognized the spirit of Themiste inside this woman. Once upon a time, she was the sacred oracle, a woman famed throughout the Mediterranean for her beauty and wisdom.
She was quite different now, large and rather plain, with a telltale greenish aura around her head. But she was still intelligent and intuitive. He hated her, distrusted her, and always avoided her. He regretted the lapse in judgment that had brought him here.
Queen Helice was here too, in the body of the easily dismissed, frivolous Aunt Ibby, still loyal to her child, always loving, but nowadays, not a reckoning power. He didn’t think she had any sense of him, or of Curran, and he detected only the slightest yellow emanation around her. She didn’t concern him.
Diorbhail was another matter. The colors surrounding her were strong. That night he’d carried Morrigan off the mountain, they had nearly blinded him. Her unexpected appearance was frightening. Selene was a deadly force. Her loyalty rivaled Aridela’s, and she’d stolen the knife. Who knew what could come of that?
The followers didn’t appear in every life, and he had never seen all three together like this before, not since Crete. Now here they were, and though none had the memories, they were drawn to Morrigan, and Morrigan was drawn to them. Not an hour passed that he didn’t wonder what had taken place between Diorbhail, Eleanor, and Morrigan when they were alone in that bothy for three days.
All of them converging was yet another suggestion that they were near the end.
“Well?” she said, holding his chin.
He jerked free.
“I’ve seen the way you look at her,” Eleanor said. “We have all seen it. Go away, Aodhàn. Let her be happy.”
Aodhàn wanted to break her nose. He rose, nearly knocking over the chair. “Thank you for whatever you did,” he said tightly. “The pain is much less. I’ll be off.”
She shrugged and started to let him go, then said, “If you need somewhere to sleep, I have an extra bed,” and waved him on his way.
Next thing he knew, he was standing in the clearing. He gazed at the boulder and the cave for a long time.
I dreamed of you, before I came to Glenelg. You were young, and you called me Lilith.
Never, ever, had she excavated memories by herself in such coherency. Dreaming of herself as Lilith, and of him, without the use of the cara mushroom or his own prompting…?
Had she found out about the mushroom and used it, or were the memories bubbling up on their own?
Everything about this life was different, and that was terrifying.
She had asked him to explain. He’d wanted to. The need had almost overwhelmed him.
I’ve given Curran my vow. Leave us alone, Mackinnon.
His heartbeat slowed. He would go to London. To hell with these rules— rules that applied to no one but him. He would do everything in his power to coax her away from Curran. He would use all his knowledge, every cajoling word he’d ever learned.
And if she still wouldn’t leave her husband, he would cause a confrontation. He wouldn’t kill Curran, much as he longed to. Killing Curran would make Morrigan hate him, and would set the law on him. Let Curran age alone, as he had these last twenty years.
He would kill Morrigan, then himself. No matter the punishment. He would defy Athene as he’d done on Crete. While he was at it— he might as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb— he would tell Morrigan of their past, of every life and all they’d shared— the good parts, of course. He had to see her eyes light up with the magic of it one more time. He wanted to hear her ask for details of their long, long love affair… once more.
If they were truly coming to the end, Athene could choke on her rules. He would seize his boldness; he would do what he should have done long ago; force her hand.
And he would win, once and for all.
CHAPTER FOUR
“RAMSAY— CURRAN RAMSAY!”
Curran and Morrigan stopped, searching for the source of the shout.
“Up here,” came the call again. “I knew it had to be you. Don’t move, I will come down.”
The afternoon was sunny, forcing Morrigan to squint as she peered upward.
“What the devil?” Curran said, then louder, “Whistler?”
Morrigan saw a flash of white before the second storey casement banged shut. “Who was that?”
“A friend, I think.” Her husband grabbed her hand and grinned. “Prepare yourself.”
She followed him through a half open doorway into a dim entry hall tiled in blue and white. Footsteps bounded down the staircase.
“Damnation, Ramsay, how long have you been in London?”
The man stretching out his hand had a compact body, delicate long fingers and a weathered face. A patch of white sprouted at the top of his deeply lined forehead, as though a pigeon’s feather had lodged in his hair.
“Only a few days,” Curran replied, shaking his hand. “Allow me to present my wife. Morrigan, this is Mr. James Whistler. Do you live here, Jimmy? Have you moved?”
The man gave Morrigan a dismissive nod before returning his attention to Curran. “This place has a large studio and gives me an excellent view of the Thames. Come upstairs.”
Merry, she thought. So merry he’s fo
rgotten his manners, or never learned any.
Whistler led them to the top floor and into a bright chamber crowded with tables, easels, papers, and strewn canvases. The aromas of tobacco and paint, carrying an undertone of the river, permeated the air.
Curran and his friend began catching up, leaving Morrigan to look around the room.
Belatedly, Whistler tugged the bell pull. Soon an enormous fellow shouldered his way through the door with a tray holding a pitcher of lemonade and glasses.
Morrigan’s throat was dry and she was hot. The moment they’d arrived, London had turned torturously muggy. Corsets, bustles, and layers of fabric stuck to perpetually damp skin.
But the men paid no heed to the refreshments. Morrigan waited, then decided she might die of thirst before an invitation came. She poured some and sipped it, pressing the cool glass to her cheeks as she explored, studying the mixture of half-finished portraits and vague seascapes along with reproductions of bridges overlaid in dim, hazy light.
As their host had claimed, there was a good view of the Thames from the window. She leaned on the sill, hoping to catch a breeze. Barges and pleasure-boats crowded below, sounding their bells and horns. Laughter floated to her.
Beads of sweat gathered on her neck under the weight of her hair. She relinquished her attempt to follow the conversation behind her and took off her bonnet to use as a fan, gasping when her braided bun was seized from behind.
She straightened and swung around. Without a word of warning or excuse, Whistler moved to her side and pulled out her hairpins, causing her braid to fall.
Curran smiled indulgently as he observed this from the center of the room.
“Divine.” Whistler rotated her towards the sunlight. “Skin like mother-of-pearl. I swear I have never seen hair this shade. Mahogany?” He brought up the end of her braid, perusing it intently through his monocle. “No,” he said. “True russet. And those highlights. I missed those before. You’ll allow me to loosen it, won’t you?” he asked, as he removed the band and unraveled her hair, spoiling all the work the maid had gone to that morning.
The Sixth Labyrinth (The Child of the Erinyes Book 4) Page 62
