He tucked her face against his throat and drew a sheepskin over them. There she shuddered until her breathing and heartbeat slowed beneath contented heaviness. Gradually, the cara loosed its grip and Aridela drifted, holding her lover close. She listened to the soft voice inside her head, merging like her lover’s kisses.
Nothing can ever part us.
* * * *
A hand tightened on Aridela’s shoulder. Limp, sore and weary, she pushed it away, but it returned with selfish insistence.
“Aridela.” A whisper, hissed.
“What?” The brightness of the flame in an oil lamp stung Aridela’s eyes, making her blink.
Selene crouched beside her. “We must go. Now, while they sleep.”
She groaned.
“Come, Aridela. I need your help with Iphiboë.” Selene pulled at her.
Aridela rose onto her elbows. Her lover had his back to her. His long hair pooled over the crumpled sheepskins. She touched it, surprised at how soft it felt.
Selene made a sound of disgust in her throat. “Do you still dream it was the god? You can see it was not.”
“Look at his hair. He’s a foreigner.”
“I can see that. What if he goes bragging that he lay with the princess of Kaphtor? She who is promised to the oracle and ordered to remain untouched?”
The man shifted and sighed. Both women stilled.
Selene set the lamp on the cave floor and picked up Aridela’s tunic, dropping it again with a grimace. “Barbarian love,” she whispered. “His is the corrupted horse-seed of Poseidon. They enslave women. They keep their goddesses weak. Their worship of the Venerable Mother is a sham. This I know. His people and mine have a long history.”
Shiver after shiver coursed through Aridela. How strong, almost terrible, the passion she’d experienced. Did cara cause it, or some alchemy this male owned? She’d lost something. He’d drawn it out in his kisses as he kept her dangling in space and made it clear that he alone could give her what she wanted. He’d taken something from her, and he would keep it. She would never again belong entirely to herself. The fear she glimpsed during their coupling had become truth.
Perhaps this was the punishment for defying Themiste. Perhaps it was the reason for the oracle’s command to remain untouched.
Then the memories revived, of his embraces, his kisses, of joining her in the leap, and she didn’t want herself back. Surely no other mortal had ever experienced such rapture.
Without the sheepskin and warmth of her lover’s body, her teeth began to chatter. Thankfully, she’d discarded her hooded robe before the men came. Selene fetched it and Aridela pulled it over her head.
A hand clasped her thigh while her head and arms were still buried in wool. She turned, pulling the material down, and drew in a startled breath. Here was yet more mystery. A face she knew laughed up at her and she careened into the intimacy of the mountain dream.
“You,” she cried. “You.”
This mouth, in vision, had made a vow. Nothing can ever part us.
Selene slid between them, shoving the man away.
“No, no,” Aridela said. “Let me touch him. Let me see him. He means me no harm.”
She gently pushed Selene to one side.
He rose on one elbow, his expression solemn yet pleased and triumphant, after the brief sneer he sent Selene.
“How can this be?” Aridela touched his hair. It sprang from his temples, as virile as the manes on the lions her mother kept in the arboretum. A darker beard covered his cheeks and chin, adding to the lionish impression.
She looked on the cave floor as far as the light would allow, but saw no mask. Lady Athene must have created the fancy of him as a lion to serve her purpose, to hide, perhaps, his exotic strangeness so Aridela wouldn’t refuse him.
A foreigner.
A foreigner ushered her into Kaphtor’s holy rites. A barbarian left his seed inside her. The ways of the Goddess were truly enigmatic.
“No man will have you but me,” he said. Again she heard the accent. His pronunciation was atrocious.
He pulled her face down, and kissed her lips, eyelids and nose. He lingered against her ear. “Only me.”
* * * *
“How did you find us?” Aridela ran her hands over his shoulders, feeling hardened muscles and a warrior’s scars. “Did the Goddess lead you?”
He was a replica, but for the beard, of the god who seduced her on Mount Juktas. The lamplight revealed the green of his eyes. Even that detail was the same.
He pushed her down, pinning her. “My princess.” He said it like a king, his nostrils flaring. So he knew who she was. There was no use then, in creeping away as though ashamed of what she’d done, and no matter what happened, even if Themiste found out, she was glad.
The ends of his hair tickled her throat.
“I don’t understand,” she said. She wanted him again, longed for him as though she hadn’t just spent many hours being pleasured by him. “Yet somehow I cannot regret your taking what is so sacred on Kaphtor.”
Her own father, Damasen, was a foreigner. Helice had told her many times how much they loved each other.
“Regret?” He snorted. “It’s moera, our share of fortune and fate, written before the sky was formed. I am meant to love the royal princess of Crete. I alone.”
Drawn to his bold confidence, she released a delighted laugh, though others would be shocked at his profanity. Then she wondered, with an unhappy wrench, if he thought she was Iphiboë.
“My lady.” Selene lit another lamp and gave her a cold stare as the shadows retreated.
One of the shadows moved. It was the other man, the bull-god. Still partially disguised in a webwork of darkness, he sat some distance away, watching her. Now that his mask was gone, she saw his dark hair, and a closer beard than her lover’s. The light was too faint to determine more, but there was something about his face. It must be another mask.
“The rites are complete,” Selene said. “It’s time to go.”
The blond foreigner scowled. Aridela touched the furrow between his brows with one finger. His arrogance seemed innate, highborn. Who are you? She wanted to know, yet left it unasked.
“Send her away,” he said.
“No, she’s right. We must go.” She pushed at him and sat up, drawing her hair over one shoulder and turning her back on the bull-god’s uncomfortable stare.
“Princess Aridela.” Her lover grasped her arm fiercely.
She shivered in a wash of relief. He knew who she was. His words of possessive desire were meant for her, not Iphiboë.
He clasped a lock of her hair and kissed it. “I will see you safely back,” he said, and stood, making no effort to hide his nakedness. He picked up his tunic, pulled it over his head, and fastened his belt.
A flurry of pebbles fell off the ledge by the entrance, echoing as they landed. Leather soles grated on stone.
The lion-god dove for the scabbard on the floor, but too late. A blurred flash speared the air like a streak of lightning and sank into his left bicep. Had he not moved so swiftly, it might have slipped between his ribs and into his heart.
He staggered, grimacing, lifting his hand to the engraved hilt of a dagger protruding from his arm.
Selene shoved Aridela behind her even as the bull-god leaped to his feet. Grabbing the torch he’d brought into the cave, he shoved it into the nearest lamp, lighting it again. He thrust it into Selene’s hand and backed away, melting into the shadows as she lifted it high, sending a flare of light through the cavern.
Aridela’s lover pulled the heavy dagger from his arm. He threw it down and seized his sword in his good right hand.
More dust and pebbles tumbled over the ledge. Light from the torch illuminated a man standing at the edge. He gripped an unsheathed sword. His lips stretched over bared teeth like a snarling dog’s.
“Harpalycus, the prince from Tiryns,” Aridela whispered.
Selene pushed a resistant Aridela farther back. “Ho
w did he find this place?” she said quietly. “How did he know we would be here?”
Aridela shook her head. “How did any of them know?”
Harpalycus sprang off the ledge. He levied his blade in an arc toward Aridela’s lover, who parried it even as blood soaked an ever-widening swath down his bare arm. The sound of clashing metal was deafening in the enclosed space.
Harpalycus thrust again, shouting something in the language of the mainland.
Would this man, who had so delighted her, who offered mysteries she longed to explore further, lose his life before she discovered his name? Never before had Aridela experienced such helpless fear for the life of another.
“He knows how to fight,” Selene said with a hint of admiration.
Aridela pinched Selene’s shoulders in an agony of frustration. “Let me go. I want to help.”
“Maybe we can.” Selene searched for a rock, muttering that she would bash Harpalycus’s skull, or at least knock him unconscious.
Before she found one, the blades paused. Harpalycus stepped back, breathing hard.
The wounded foreigner stared him down.
“I heard you were here.” Harpalycus spoke in the mainland tongue, his voice harsh and furious. “Aren’t you afraid of losing to me?”
“You see how afraid I am,” the foreigner replied in kind.
“A thief. A coward.” Harpalycus raised his blade. “Hiding in the day, sneaking through the night. You dishonor the princess.” He cocked his chin towards the women. “Do you know you picked the wrong one?”
Aridela watched her lover, fascinated even in the face of danger. She discerned a tic pulsing beneath his eye. His jaw muscles clenched as his sword-point touched Harpalycus’s. “Come test my cowardice.”
Before he could, Selene’s love partner stepped into the light, the point of his sword aimed at Harpalycus’s belly.
Looking from one to the other, Harpalycus backed toward the ledge, his sword blade wavering between the lion-god and the bull. Fury grimaced his face.
“Someone always watches over you, Chrysaleon,” he sneered. “You’ve cheated the holy rites. How did you find them?” His lips whitened as they closed over his teeth.
“How did you?” Chrysaleon returned.
“She told me. She wanted me to come.”
Punctuated with a cynical laugh, Chrysaleon replied, “The finest fruit is early plucked. Have you not yet learned that?”
“Stop.” Aridela stepped around Selene, standing with her back as stiff and straight as she could make it. The three men turned toward her in unison.
“He who found me did so at the command of Athene. If she had chosen you, Harpalycus of Tiryns, nothing could have kept you from finding me first.”
For a long moment the only sound was Harpalycus’s harsh, rapid breathing. Thoughts and emotions curled over her like blanketing smoke. She fought to keep a calm stance as she realized neither she nor Selene had a weapon.
“We didn’t ask you to come here,” she said. “Return to your country if you wish, but don’t interfere with our ways.”
Harpalycus’s nostrils flared and his chin lifted. “As you command, my lady,” he said, bowing stiffly. “I only wanted to protect you from a man I know to be dishonorable.” One more glance did he send Chrysaleon as he sheathed his sword. “My sister will hear of this,” he said then turned, leaped onto the ledge, and vanished into the night.
The two remaining men glanced at each other. Aridela now saw that the oddity she’d glimpsed before on the bull-god’s face was a disfiguring scar, but there was no time to dwell on it, for he scrambled up the ledge after the prince of Tiryns.
Aridela approached her lover. “We must halt this bleeding. Selene, fetch cloths and balms from the lower chamber. You’ve lost much blood, my lord. Come with us to the palace. Our healers can stitch it up.”
“No.” He gave a definite shake of his head. “My man will tend it.” Yet his face was losing color.
Giving him a blatant stare of warning, Selene went off to gather the supplies.
Long dark lashes shadowed his eyes as he stared down at Aridela.
“‘Chrysaleon,’ he called you,” she said. He was taller than most of the men she knew. Packed more solidly too, with muscles trained to wield heavy shields and throw spears long distances. She leaned against him, trembling in the aftermath of the attack, the cara, and the long, sleepless night. “Who are you… Chrysaleon?”
His good arm slipped around her. Strong and supportive, it made her feel she could close her eyes and relinquish every obligation to him, at least for a moment.
“I am the man chosen by the Lady to find you and love you.”
“It is odd,” she said, savoring the scent of his flesh. “How you found this place over every male Kaphtor has nursed to manhood. I was uncertain what fate Goddess Athene set for me tonight. I thought I was prepared, but this. I never expected this.”
“She took pity. She knew I would overturn every hill and dig up every cave on Crete to find you.” His voice softened. “No man will have you but me. I vowed it the first time I saw you.”
His words were sacrilege, yet rebukes died unspoken and she simply nuzzled closer.
He added, low and private, “For as long as the pyramids stand in Egypt.”
Was he part of the divine course Athene designed for her? His gaze didn’t waver as he bent his head and kissed her on the mouth.
How far would she follow him?
Chapter Fifteen: Moon of White Light
“Did you sleep, isoke?” Helice asked as her daughter entered the breakfast hall.
“A little.” Aridela accepted a cup of milk from the maid. “What of Iphiboë?”
“She’ll be along soon.”
No man will have you but me.
The cave lover’s words kept calling her back to the forbidden adventure, rousing memories, desires, and a lurking fear that she might never again see him. For as long as the pyramids stand in Egypt. Legend claimed the pyramids were as old as the earth itself. Surely such a promise as that would construct a way to reunite them.
Helice tore a hunk of bread and stared at it. Making sure there were no serving maids nearby, she said, “This is the last time. I’ll refuse any more requests from her to take part in these rites. I fear Iphiboë shall never lie with a man.”
“Even so, she can turn things to her will if she has the courage.” Aridela shrugged. “Her consorts can lie with surrogates. The children will be as honored as if she bore them herself.”
“Yes.” Helice sighed. “If she is courageous. Many things can be done, right or wrong, by a leader with courage.”
Aridela, hearing a strange note in her mother’s voice, remained silent.
After a moment, during which the queen frowned at her bread, she abruptly asked the maids to leave them. When they were alone, she turned the full force of her discerning gaze on her daughter. “I waited all day yesterday for you to tell me the truth. How long do you intend to lie to me?”
“I— how have I lied?” Aridela cursed the betraying squeak in her voice.
Helice waited no more than the intake of one breath before she said, “The prince of Tiryns, Harpalycus, had words for me yesterday morning after he returned from the cave.”
Aridela’s heart skittered. “She begged me to go with her. She was afraid.”
“Oh, I’m thankful you were there, for Iphiboë’s sake, yet I wonder, Aridela, if you are capable of ever learning obedience. Now tell me. Are you still untouched, as Themiste commanded, or did you lie with that man Harpalycus said was in the cave with you?”
So the queen didn’t know everything. Aridela thought rapidly. Harpalycus had come after the four were awake and dressed. He could only guess what had transpired; she could deny whatever accusations he may have spoken.
“No, Mother.” For an instant she felt guilty, then defiance burned it away. Neither Helice nor Themiste felt guilty about tossing her against her will into the cave shrines,
leaving her to wither while she memorized boring prophecy and spoke endless prayers. The world would soon forget she’d ever been born.
She wasn’t sorry for what she’d done. At least she would have a memory to savor.
“I did nothing to be ashamed of,” she added, allowing her chin to rise slightly.
Helice didn’t notice; her gaze veered from the skylights to the bread slowly being shredded in her fingers. Her brow crinkled. “Who was this man in the cave? Harpalycus didn’t say yet I sensed he knew. Do you know him?”
“No.”
“Themiste mustn’t find out what you did,” Helice continued without pause. “Do you understand?”
This wasn’t right. Queen Helice was famous for getting to the truth in all matters. Aridela had never seen her mother collude in a lie. Shocked disquiet flared.
“The prince of Tiryns worries me,” Helice said. “His slaves are terrified of him. Oneaea saw, as I did, what a dangerous, reckless man he is, in thrall to his own rage. Our efforts to calm him failed. I was at the point of having him confined, but his eunuch, Proitos, managed to bring him to reason at last.”
“Why was he so angry?”
Helice blinked and dropped her gaze to the table. A flush rose through her cheeks. “I— I don’t know.”
Aridela stared, certain her mother was hiding something. But what? The steward entered the morning room, followed by three hesitant serving maids who assured the queen they’d tried to prevent his interruption. The steward waved them away and bowed as he announced, “Our runner brings news, my lady, from Amnisos. Two men approach. Royalty from Mycenae, he says.”
“Mycenae?” Helice’s attention veered to the steward. “Could it be Idómeneus? Surely he wouldn’t come without my knowledge. Do you remember the king, Aridela?”
Aridela shook her head, relieved at this convenient distraction.
“Of course not; you were a baby when he last visited. Perhaps he means to offer advice on the plots of the Kindred Kings. Go ornament yourself in your finest garments. You’ll give the greeting in Iphiboë’s place. I’ll send an escort to meet them.” Abandoning her untouched breakfast, the queen began issuing orders; serving-women followed her like a trail of ants.
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