by Hazel Hunter
The voice was thin and ragged, but there was an affection there that made Liona blink. She turned to the man in the next cell, who had been sleeping when she was brought in. Now that he sat up, she could see that he was a black man with narrow features. She could see that his right cheek was terribly scarred.
“Are you Titus, of the Roman legion?”
“That I am, madame, though I cannot really render you any Imperial assistance at the moment.”
“A man named Lucius Magnus is looking for you.”
Titus’s eyes widened.
“Still after all this time? I would have thought he would have given me up for dead long since.”
Liona grinned.
“If you have soldiered together since you were boys, I believe you know how stubborn he can be.”
Anything else she wanted to say was cut off by a clash of metal. Two men came down the stairs again, this time accompanied by the man she had met in Londinium.
“So here we have the seer,” he said quietly.
Liona glanced at Augusta and Titus. They both sat quietly with their heads bowed. By her side, her sister was shivering a little. In this position, she could see the fresh wounds at the nape of her sister’s neck.
“Yes,” Liona said angrily. “By what right do you hold me here?”
“By the right of a god who will walk again. You will not speak to me like that. When you address me, you will refer to me as ‘priest’ and nothing else.”
Liona started to say that she would do nothing of the sort, but Augusta’s hand squeezed hers tight. To her shock, tears were falling down Augusta’s face. The expression her sister wore was one of pure, abject misery. It curbed her tongue the way nothing else could.
“Yes, priest,” she whispered.
The priest considered her for a moment, then he nodded.
“It will serve, or at least we say it will. Bring her.”
They pulled her out of the cell and dragged her to a door at the end of the row of cages. As she went by, she could see that there were at least a dozen people in the cells. They all looked at her with pity and a certain relief that it was not them.
The room was simple enough. There was a table at the center of it with a drain in the floor. On the wall were a series of tools that could be found in any blacksmith’s shop. But here, they created a panic in her that she had to swallow. A wide hearth across the far edge of the room lit it with an uneasy light. Most oddly of all, there was a fine writing desk in the corner. This is where the priest sat himself.
As Liona watched, he slowly sharpened his quill with a small knife and removed a bottle of ink from his robes. He did this with a calm deliberation that frightened her as much as the iron tools did.
“We are seekers of the truth here, young woman. Right now, your talents are more useful to us than your blood. In your own best interests it is best if you give us the truth, because rest assured, we will find it.”
“Yes, priest.”
Liona’s voice was small and strained. The large man beside her was completely immobile, still as stone.
“Now, then. Your name.”
“Liona.”
“What is your power?”
“I see the future.”
“Very well. How far can you see?”
“A person’s life. Sometimes that is a very long way, and sometimes it is very short.”
“Do you know who the golden god is?”
“No, priest.”
“He is the one who will rise and walk. He is the one who will rule his followers and rain fire on the undeserving.”
The priest gestured at the carved face above him, which Liona had not noticed. The face was narrow and fanged, and where the eyes were, the stone was carved to represent flames. Liona knew the gods and goddesses of Rome, who wore human faces and had very human appetites. This god frightened her.
“Look into his future.”
“Right now?”
The priest didn’t look up. He only gestured at the man who stood by her side.
A meaty hand slapped her to the ground. Her ears rang with it, and a sharp cry was forced between her lips.
“Of course right now,” said the priest patiently.
She climbed to her feet, wiping away the blood at her lip. It took her a few moments to calm herself. She closed her eyes, seeking outwards for the truth. She focused on the sharp face, the flaming eyes. She had never sought after the fate of a god before.
Liona opened herself to the future, and it streamed forward with a vengeance. There were images of swords, of fire. She saw the face being smashed under a huge hammer, a figure rising above it to spit down on the broken image. She saw people dragged from a temple. She saw flames. She saw people dying.
Without knowing it, she fell to her knees. The man behind her hauled her up again as if she was as light as a kitten.
“Speak, seer.”
She took a shaky breath and relayed what she could of her visions to the priest. Instead of being angry or frustrated, he wrote down her words with care and accuracy, stopping often to ask for clarification.
“And that is what you see?”
“Yes.”
“Change it.”
Liona looked at him in confusion.
“I cannot change what I see…”
The priest gestured to the man again. The blow knocked her down, but at least this time, she was ready for it.
“Look again.”
She did as he said, her head swimming. The vision was the same, and she gasped it out to him. The priest watched her with eyes that were as colorless as water.
“Let’s see if we can make you change what you see.”
The man heaved her up on the table, strapping her down so that she lay flat. She could not move at all. To her terror, he pulled her shoes from her feet, leaving them bare and completely vulnerable. He reached for what looked like a very thin rod from the wall. She flinched when he tapped it against her bare soles.
“Now, let us see if there is another vision in you.”
• • • • •
“Gods above,” Hailey muttered through clenched teeth. They had both curled on their sides, Hailey behind Liona, her arm encircling her midriff, and her grip on the other woman fierce. “How did you stand it?”
Hailey recalled her time with the Templar and couldn’t suppress a long shudder. Liona covered Hailey’s cold hand with her own, rubbing it gently.
“I did what I had to do, dear one,” she said. But Hailey heard the strain in her voice. “We all do.”
• • • • •
The man dragged her back to the cell because she could not walk. Her voice was hoarse with screaming, but despite it, she had not changed her story. Something about the visions were too powerful. When she was in pain, they were all she could spit out. She didn’t have the presence of mind to lie. They had never changed, no matter how hard the man had struck her feet, no matter how much she cried out. It always ended with the broken face of the god on the ground and with people being slain.
The man dumped her in the cell with Augusta, who came forward to hold her.
“We need to get out of here,” was the first thing that Liona said, when she could speak without whimpering.
Augusta’s laugh was hollow.
“That sounds very familiar.”
The days fell into a certain pattern. Liona learned to cringe when the door opened, for she was never sure if it would bring food or a new onslaught of terror. To her shamed relief, they hadn’t come for her again. Instead, they would take one of the others, either to the room at the back or up the stairs. She learned to shut her ears to the terrible screams from the back. Sometimes, people who went up the stairs never came back.
She and Augusta shared the food that they were given. Though she had longed to see her sister again, there was nothing for them to say. Instead, they sat in the dark. Liona was waiting for her chance, but Augusta was merely sitting, glad of any moment that did not bring pain.
They were in the dark for what felt like years, but from the meals that were brought, irregularly and often rotten, she knew it had only been a few weeks. As time wore on, she could feel the darkness gnawing away at her. It was harder to think of escape plans, easier to simply hope that whoever they were coming for that day, it wasn’t her. She realized that all of the people in the cells had powers that could not be used to harm. They could bring rain, they could heal wounds, they could read minds, but none of them could be considered warriors.
Augusta, who could control fire, explained why she had stopped fighting.
“They killed a man for every wound I inflicted.” She said it flatly, but the horror was with her still.
Liona was quiet. She thought, she pondered, and she discarded idea after idea. The prison was taking away her ability to think and to plan, to do anything beyond survive. She hung on to the idea that it was not permanent. It could not be.
Then they came for her and Augusta.
CHAPTER TWELVE
LIONA KNEW THERE was nothing to do but follow their captors up the spiral staircase. When they gained the top, she and Augusta both flinched from the light that was streaming through the glass window high above. It had been a long time since they had seen it.
There were perhaps twenty worshipers around her, all hooded, all wearing the sigil of the golden god. The alter was situated high above the carved face of the god, a sculpture which was at least three times as tall as Liona herself. To Liona’s terror, the face was streaked dark with dried blood.
The man tore Augusta from her, dragging her up a short flight of stairs to the altar. She watched with fear as they tied her down. She could see the funnel her sister had spoken of which would gather the blood and spill it over the face of the god.
The priest stood up by her sister, a knife in his hands.
“Fellow brothers of the golden god, we are well met under the spirit of the dragon. Today we have before us a seer of power, a woman who will tell us the future. She will offer us a future of glory and victory, or she will offer us a sacrifice of pain and blood.”
“No, please,” Liona whispered, unable to take her eyes off Augusta.
The man turned her around so she could face the crowd. She saw eyes that were cold and brutal. She wasn’t a person to them. She was a tool, something to offer up in sacrifice.
“Speak, seer,” said the priest. “Tell us the future that you see.”
At his words, the vision came forward again, the same death, the same battle, the same terror. She nearly threw up trying to hold it back, but she did.
“I see…” her voice broke and she had to try again. “I see a great victory. I see the face of the golden god on every temple in Rome. I see streets lined with cheering people, terrified and joyous. I see the Senate of Rome cleared out, making way for the face of the god…”
She spat forth as much of the false prophecy as she could. Whenever she faltered, Augusta was pricked with a knife. Terrified, she continued until finally, drained, she fell to her knees. Her voice was gone.
“The seer speaks the truth. We dedicate this death to the golden god.”
From above, Augusta started screaming, and Liona’s mouth opened in horror.
Then there was a terrible crash, and the assembly was littered with shattered glass. People where shouting and screaming. The man by her abandoned his post to go to the aid of the priest above.
Amidst the robed people trying to flee, she could see the dark form of a maddened wolf. It landed all four paws solid on the ground, but that was all the pause it took before leaping at a man close by. It ripped out his throat as casually as a woman would wring the neck of a chicken, and then it was on to the next. Liona heard a heavy flapping that whooshed by, but she was too frantic to pay it any heed.
As soon as she realized what was happening, she raced up the stairs towards her sister. The priest was clutching his heart as if struck by a bolt of lightning, his man trying to carry him away. Augusta was bleeding from a wound above her collar bone, but besides being terrified, she looked whole enough. Liona worked on unbuckling the straps that held her in place, cursing the fingers that were shaky with starvation and fear.
“What’s happening? What is that wolf doing here?”
“He’s saving us,” Liona promised.
One wolf against a crowd of men, it still would have been too much if the gates below hadn’t clanged open. A mass of filthy furious people boiled out, and though they might have been mind readers and weather witches, there was no reason they couldn’t take the metal implements from the room of torture and use them to deadly efficiency.
Liona had just gotten Augusta free, when a hand lashed out, striking a vicious blow across Augusta’s head and snatching Liona up by the nape.
“Halt!” the priest screamed. “Halt unless you want to see this one die!”
To Liona’s horror, the battle did stutter to a halt. Gaius, covered in blood, stared up at her with terror. Lucius in his wolf form growled but stilled. The others paused, confused.
No, this cannot be, Liona thought with despair. It cannot end like this. It cannot.
The priest was speaking, talking about failure and the just cause of the god. She couldn’t take it. Her powers for seeing into the future were great, but useless when she was simply being held. She couldn’t take it.
She thought of Augusta, lying so quiet and limp. If only she had Augusta’s power. If only she had that fire, that heat. Her hate could have fueled it, she would devour them all.
There was a great noise that sounded like ripping silk. The air around her heated. For a moment, she was blinded by the flash of light, but amidst the cries, she opened her eyes and could see clearly.
The entire platform above the god’s head was on fire. The priest and the man who had been holding her burned, their skins blackening in the space of an instant. Augusta had fallen clear, and Liona burned with a white hot flame. Through the heat, she could see Gaius and Lucius, a man now. Her flame dwindled to embers and then went out all together. Liona fell to the ground, every part of her exhausted. She could hear two voices calling her name, but then it all went dark.
• • • • •
Hailey let out a long breath that she hadn’t been aware that she was holding. Despite the fact that she lay in the crook of Liona’s arm, a leg protectively thrown over the other woman’s, she had been afraid for her. Even in her short life, she knew that there were wounds that you could carry forward without showing. She thought of the scars at her side from the Templar’s hot poker.
“How strong you must be,” she whispered, clinging to Liona, resting her head on her shoulder. As the twilight chill had seeped into the room, they had gotten under the blanket.
“I didn’t feel strong at the time,” Liona said.
Her voice was light. More than a thousand years stood between this woman now and the girl who had been tortured by monsters wearing human faces.
Hailey sighed a little, drawing the blanket up over them a little more snugly.
“I don’t know if I could have been as brave if it were me.”
Liona’s laugh was soft as she encircled Hailey in her arms.
“We are more alike than you think. We are survivors, you and I.” She paused, as though considering. “Wiccans yes, but also women. We share the same spirit, and perhaps even the same desires.”
There was something about the way that Liona said the last word that brought warmth to Hailey’s cheeks.
“I understood what you meant, I think,” she murmured. “When you loved two men, I can see why you would love both. I am grateful that you never had to choose.”
“One thing that I have learned over the course of my long life is that anyone who would force me to choose may be a fine friend, but they will never be my lover. I have had many friends and lovers in my time. Both are a pleasure. Some cross the line back and forth.”
“Cross the line…?”
“Mmm, yes. From frie
nd to lover and back again, over the course of the years.”
Liona’s voice was almost dreamy. Hailey could find it in her to be envious of the other woman’s obvious good memories. She realized, however, that at some point, she would be able to make her own.
“You’re blushing,” Liona whispered. “Why is that, Hailey?”
“I don’t know,” Hailey mumbled. “You’ve lived such a long time. You’re in my bed. You’re telling me about…about…”
“About all the pleasure I’ve had, as well as the pain? The pain passes, dear one, as does the pleasure. Nothing really lasts. I have come to learn that we must take pleasure where we find it.”
Hailey became aware of the way that Liona was rubbing her back. Relaxed and unhurried, her hand moved up Hailey’s spine and then back down. Her fingers gently kneaded the flesh at its base. Had Liona’s touch gone from one of comfort to something more? Hailey’s heart jumped a little at the thought, not quite sure. But then the barest pressure of Liona’s hand nudged her hips from behind. Tentatively, Hailey let them move forward. She pressed herself into Liona’s side, the connection electric. Hailey’s heart fluttered uncontrollably.
“Do you…want to find pleasure with me?” Hailey asked, her voice breathless.
In response, Liona drew her close and kissed her. Her soft mouth enveloped Hailey’s, gentle beyond belief. Hailey had never felt the like. Liona’s lips caressed hers, clinging and then stroking in equal, rhythmic measure. It was as though Hailey had never been kissed before. She tilted her face up, yearning for more. But when Liona’s tongue finally tested her, it wouldn’t breach her parted lips. Instead, it danced in the space between them. They had already been lying so close, but now Hailey could feel the luxurious warmth of Liona’s body along her own.
“Oh please,” Hailey murmured, and Liona laughed a little.
“I won’t wear you out, because the infirmary master would be quite cross with me, but my story has been so sad. Let me give you something else to think about. Lie back, dear one.”
