Prometheus' Priestess, page 15
Seeing her standing in the doorway, safe and somewhat annoyed, if the little furrow between her eyebrows was anything to go by, Prometheus felt the punch to his solar plexus knock the wind right out of him. He had missed her.
He had always known Aphrodite was cruel, but he had no idea she could be so ruthless when it came to getting what she wanted. And what the goddesses wanted, as Prometheus had well and truly learnt these past few months, was to get their way ... no matter the cost to those involved. No matter who it hurt.
“What are you doing here?” Amara demanded, setting the mop against the wall and stalking out from behind the counter.
“You’re dripping wet,” she muttered.
He suddenly noticed he had dripped water droplets all over the freshly mopped floor. The heavens had opened just before he arrived, a bout of summer showers soaking him.
Amara pulled out a chair and insisted he sit, before taking a seat opposite him. She can’t help it, he thought, hostessing was in her nature. The table, the one closest to the door and smack bang in the middle of the café floor, seemed to be her version of a firm barrier between them. Prometheus realised she wasn’t just annoyed; she was angry.
“I’m sorry I haven’t been around since we last saw each other,” he began.
“It’s fine. It’s not like I needed babysitting,” Amara bit back immediately, followed by a roll of her eyes and a muttered string of French under her breath, where she implied he liked to rescue damsels in distress or those with daddy issues, for which he was a bastard.
She didn’t know he spoke the language fluently.
Rain continued to lightly trickle against the windows in a tapping pattern that was both soothing and irritating in equal measure. Demeter was sobbing. Her daughter was due to leave for the underworld soon, and she had begun her grieving period on the Earth early it would seem. Autumn was still a while away yet. But that was no matter to Prometheus at present. He was far more concerned with the anger of the woman sitting opposite him.
Amara wouldn’t look him in the eyes, her body turned towards the door in such a way that suggested he leave immediately. It also only gave him a side profile of her face. But she’d told him to sit down, and he saw the tear brimming at the edge before she managed to blink it back.
So she wasn’t angry. She was hurt. She needed reassurance.
He couldn’t blame her. Knowing her history, her longing to belong, the abandonment wound she held, he wished he had some explanation that wasn’t the ludicrousness of the fact that he had handled the situation wrong. That he hadn’t known what to do because he hadn’t told anyone he had fallen in love with them in … centuries. Not since his wife, Hesione, and, well, that hadn’t worked out. Clearly.
“There is something rather distasteful, I find, about the men who prey on the women craving their father’s love. Says rather a lot about his character, I’m afraid,” Prometheus said.
He got a look of pure loathing for his efforts at a joke. Humour really was not his forte.
“Amara,” he tried again, gently but firmly.
“So you can speak French? What else don’t I know about you?” The words were clipped, the tone sharp. The words of a defensive woman, a woman who had been vulnerable and then not been given safety in exchange. The eyes, ah the eyes, gave her away. They were agonisingly scared of the answer he might give.
He tried something he would never have imagined himself daring to.
Reaching across the table, he took her hand in his and then gently began to stroke the inside of her wrist with his calloused thumb. Her dainty hand felt tiny cupped in his big, bronzed one, her flesh soft. He imagined she must keep hand cream by her bedside, rub it in every night. The images that followed sent an inappropriate jolt through him and back into the present moment.
She sucked in a breath, but she didn’t break the contact as he’d expected her to.
“I had no intention of abandoning you.” He put it bluntly. It was the only way he knew how.
Her lip quivered, and she brushed a tendril of hair behind her ear, using her hand to keep her face hidden from him. Still she didn’t say anything. When she did turn back to look at him, confusion glittered in those sparkling, shattered, jade-coloured eyes.
“And yet you did,” she said in a whisper.
“And yet I did.”
He went to tell her then who he was. Who cared if she thought he was crazy, if it would unlock her soul’s memories. He would do it. But when those memories were unlocked, she might think that he was standing in her way, and he found − thanks to Aphrodite’s influences − that he didn’t want Amara thinking of him in that manner. It clawed at a primal part of him.
It was only in this moment, on the precipice of knowledge, on the impact of seeing her, that he realised just how clever the goddesses had been. If he was to protect Amara from their onslaught, he couldn’t simply reveal what he knew, because she would now just think it was some elaborate excuse. He was going to have to find another way to do it.
She slid her hand away from his at his silence. Before he could take it back, they were interrupted.
“Amara, you ok, love?” Alice boomed from the doorway that led out into the kitchens and the back entrance.
Amara abruptly stood.
“Sorry, Alice ... let me just finish up.”
Alice shook her head. “Ah, nah hen, leave it until tomorrow. You and your ... friend head on off now so I can lock up.” There was a glint in Alice’s eye that said she’d wanted to say more and was only holding back, as her boss, to spare Amara any embarrassment. Amara kept her head bowed as she ducked behind the counter to grab her bag and jacket.
Prometheus frowned. He wouldn’t have expected a former priestess, particularly of Athena, Artemis, and Aphrodite, to be so meek with another woman. Men, he could understand, given what the goddesses had subjected Amara too. But still, they tended to pick their priestesses with more backbone. He worried that the fear had begun to seep a little deeper into Amara’s bones, into the depth of her being, altering her on a fundamental level while he’d been gone. After all, nothing good had ever come from being in the human world for long. It was why he had given them the lifespan they had.
Then Amara threw him a look he couldn’t decipher. One full of hurt and pain and ... something else.
“Don’t come back, ok?”
So she had a backbone after all.
But before he had a chance to respond to that heartbreaking statement, which revealed the depth of the cut he’d caused, she walked out the door without him.
CHAPTER XXII
Aphrodite had asked him to make sure that Amara and Prometheus’ union bore fruit. She had stoked the flames, she told him. Now it was simply a matter of letting inhibitions get the better of them. But after leaving his sisters, Dionysus had begun to hatch a plan of his own.
Always, Tyche managed to belittle him ever since she rebuffed his advances. To make him out like he wasn’t good enough for her because he was merely the enabler of others’ plans, that he never had the balls to take care of anything himself, that he wasn’t man enough for her.
Well, her chance would be a fine thing. For what would Tyche’s mother say if, after their priestess drove herself to subconscious abandon, Amara chose to end her life instead? What would the Goddess of Ill and Fair Fortune have to say for herself then? If he was merely an enabler and she the greater executor of plans?
That she would pick that stoic Titan Prometheus over his company was baffling too. What did she see in a man that had no sense of play? He was always so serious about everything. All doom and gloom and premonitions that stopped the fun of the humans in the first place. The fact his plan would hinder the Titan as well as Tyche in the eyes of his sisters was an even bigger incentive. So they would lose the priestess; it was no matter. There were plenty of other priestesses to choose from in Olympus. This opportunity to stick it to the goddess who had turned him down was too ripe to miss.
Tonight, while the priestess licked her wounds in a bottle of wine, Dionysus would make sure there were no boundaries inhibiting her from taking that final step off the precipice. After all, Aphrodite hadn’t specified which inhibitions he had to lower.
Implication was a cunning mistress.
CHAPTER XXIII
Amara had thought that the busyness of the day had done the trick, until Theo had shown up. The minute she was home, too exhausted to cook or do anything other than plonk herself in front of the TV with a show that she wasn’t really watching, her thoughts started to intrude on her again.
Why had Theo shown up today of all days? Had he seen her last night? What had Kiaria said to Alice? Would she lose her job even though she worked so hard today? God, had Alice known today? Had John said more had happened than it actually had?
She was starting to get an onset of a headache that she undoubtedly deserved, but her tastebuds craved more than water. So Amara wandered into the kitchen. She found an unopened, dusty bottle of wine that had been sitting at the back of the liquor cabinet no one in the house really used and grabbed the corkscrew. She twisted and pulled until she heard that satisfying ‘pop’ and the sweet sound of the first glug as the wine began to fill the glass. She drank it steadily, a slight dribble of red liquid escaping out the corner of her mouth in her haste, until the pangs of hunger disappeared and her head felt woozy.
At least those damn intrusive thoughts weren’t bothering her anymore. She went to refill her glass and settled in to watch whatever mind-numbing thing was on the screen. As long as it would keep her thoughts off how good Theo had looked, smelled, felt ... that look of pity in his eyes that said he cared. She’d been fine.
One glass turned into another, and another.
By midnight, two bottles of wine and half a bottle of whisky down, the headache had returned. Rising unsteadily to her feet, she stumbled into the small bathroom across the hallway. Opening the medicine cabinet hard enough that it thwacked her in the forehead, she stumbled backwards.
“Ow.” She rubbed at the place that was sure to bruise.
Blinking her eyes open, she began to scrounge around, looking for anything to take the edge off a headache that had just got infinitely worse.
“Paracetamol will do the trick.” She hiccupped and murmured to herself.
That was the last thing she remembered before waking up in the bright lights of a hospital bed.
She’d never been in a hospital before, but this one didn’t seem like the ones she’d seen on TV. For starters, it seemed to be a private room, with curtains on the window to her left and against the window at the foot of her bed. There was also a chest of drawers with a vase full of sunflowers at the foot of her bed. The room smelt nice, not at all like disinfectant. The only reason she knew she was in a hospital of any kind was because she was in a gown with a plastic tag around her wrist noting her full name and the time she had been checked in: 1 a.m.
Holding the hand that was attached to that braceleted wrist was a dishevelled Theo, whose bloodshot eyes said he hadn’t slept at all. Not that Amara felt like she’d slept. Her head was heavy and groggy, her throat drier than sandpaper. Her stomach and ribs felt bruised. She felt more like she’d been beaten up rather than taken care of.
“Wh—” Amara tried to clear her throat and felt like shark skin was shredding her vocal cords. Theo lifted an ice chip to her lips, which she gratefully accepted, letting the cold water soothe her, before trying again. “What happened?”
Theo’s eyes glanced back down. He couldn’t even look at her.
“I know you said to not come back, but I wasn’t going to abandon you when I’d emotionally ambushed you like that. That’s on me. All this is on me. You hear me?”
“What are you talking about?”
His calloused thumb began stroking her own and it reminded her of hours earlier, in the café, still as equally soothing in gesture as it was irritating in texture.
“When I came by, the door was unlocked. When there was no answer, I was worried. And when I found you in the bathroom barely breathing ... I had no choice but to call the ambulance. They brought you here, pumped your stomach and are currently rehydrating you.” Theo pointed with his free hand to the IV drip on the other side of Amara’s bed that she hadn’t even noticed.
“Oh God,” Amara hung her head and tried to pull back her hand to hide her face in shame but Theo wasn’t letting go.
“It’s on me, my love, not you. Never you. I should have never left you to do this alone.”
Amara didn’t understand what he meant, her brain still foggy. She continued to refuse to look at him until he cupped the side of her head in one of those huge hands and stroked her hair.
“It was my fault. I won’t abandon you again, ever.”
A tear slid down her cheek. “Don’t make promises you can’t keep,” she whispered as she turned her head away and fell back into a dreamless sleep.
CHAPTER XXIV
Prometheus had proven true to his word. He had wooed Amara with trips to all the local haunts initially, walking her back through their short history together. Reinforcing the memories. He had even taken her to the tartan shop that specialised in clans of old, only for the pair of them to find it had been closed for several months.
It had been a ploy, he admitted to himself. An easy out for him if Amara could discover her lineage for herself. And while she had been disappointed, Amara had still remained hopeful.
“There’ll be other stores and answers out there somewhere. I have faith,” she told him gently, taking his hand and leading him away from the empty storefront.
It reminded him of what she had told him the first time they had met, when she’d still been in her immortal form. Her resilience, her level of faith, after all the goddesses … after what he had put her through, despite the fact her alchemy continued to elude her, floored him. The fact that she had also given him a chance to prove himself, hesitant as she was that he meant it, told him that she wanted to believe him a man worthy of her faith. He wanted to believe himself worthy of her.
Everyone who had become acquainted with Amara’s world soon became acquainted with him too, particularly the regulars at the café. The mothers with their prams swooned over him, though he never offered them more than a courteous smile, his eyes clearly for Amara. Rhonda and Bessie cooed over him too, and for them he would make time to sit with them as they regaled him with stories of their youth. When he would finally excuse himself, always after a respectable amount of time, they would turn to Amara and remark on what a wonderful man he was, which always caused her to smile. As if she was not aware.
“Oh, dear, we forgot to tell you,” Bessie said one day as Prometheus and Amara had joined their table. “We showed that tartan of yours to one of the historian enthusiasts in our prayer circle and she recognised it!”
Prometheus and Amara both sat up to attention. Amara leaned forward expectantly.
“Did she know where it was from?”
“Yes, she did! She said it was old Caledonian. What did she say that was? Oh yes, what the ancient Greeks called Scotland. She said your lineage must be of the ancestors of old.”
“Oh,” Amara replied, a look of puzzlement on her face. Prometheus could tell it hadn’t been the answer she was expecting. In fact, it just left more questions.
“Of course, there’s not much left on the knowledge of the ancestors before the ancestors …” Rhonda chimed in, oblivious to Amara’s reaction. But Prometheus knew well what it was like to be of ancestry forgotten.
“If there are more questions there will be more answers,” he told her, reading those questions in her eyes.
“You’re right,” she said, shaking off the disappointment and smiling brightly. It didn’t quite reach her eyes but the two ladies didn’t notice. They were too busy cooing over how well matched Theo and Amara were.
Prometheus kept his eyes on Amara though. And he kept his eyes out for signs that the gods and goddesses were interfering again. But, as if they sensed him watching, they were nowhere to be found. Perhaps they now knew he was watching out for them. Perhaps they did not want to anger the one rule breaker who’d dared defy Zeus and lived to tell the tale. Even a Titan’s reputation could make him a larger-than-life legend in their eyes. He was vigilant, keeping Amara close enough to know that she was wanted but at arm’s length in case he got swept up in whatever sick game Aphrodite and Athena had decided to play next. It was clear to him that the two had, at some point, decided to use him. If they wanted to play a game of covert chess with human pawns, he would beat them at their own game. They would not be using Amara.
But as the weeks passed and the cool kiss of autumn pressed herself deeper into the streets of Edinburgh, Prometheus began to believe that Aphrodite had truly thought that true love would keep Amara safe. Still, something in the back of his mind nagged at him. How could they keep Amara safe and yet still do the Fates’ bidding?
That night, at Kiaria’s, a bottle of red wine lay breathing between them. All three glasses on the oak coffee table were full. Kiaria sat cross-legged, innocently, in purple and black splashed yoga pants and a matching loose-fitting black top, on the two-seater grey sofa. Prometheus was on a brown beanbag closer to the TV, which was currently off. Kiaria, despite her love for conversation, only liked one sound at a time and it was usually the sound of her own voice. Prometheus’ legs spread to accommodate Amara between them, both of them facing Kiaria. Between them was the coffee table. There were already three empty bottles of the same brand of wine sitting by the recycling bin.
From what he gathered, the pair had fallen out. But when Prometheus had appeared on the scene once again, Kiaria had smiled sharply and forgiven Amara. Amara naively called it a misunderstanding, but Prometheus was no fool. He hadn’t missed the glint of Kiaria’s canines that said she smelt fresh blood and bathed in it.
