What Sleeps Within the Cove, page 17
“What is that?” I asked, standing in the boat to try to get a better view. The creatures that the statues had been modeled after were enormous, monstrous things crafted from my worst nightmares. Some were larger than cave beasts, the teeth curving out of their open mouths far longer and bigger than the creature I’d once fought to defend Estrella. The thought that she might have been forced to face them down on her own sent a pang of unease through me.
She was alive. I knew it without a doubt.
But that didn’t mean she was safe.
“The Gorgons were here,” the ferryman said, his mouth pursed into a tight line. The sheer volume of creatures—both humanoid and not—that they’d turned to stone was horrifying, knowing that they’d never stood a chance against the simple stare of the very creature Estrella had come here to seek out.
Fuck.
The ferryman continued rowing, the tension in his face the only sign that any part of him cared for the woman we rowed in search of. “What if she’s one of those statues?” I asked, turning back to him with wide eyes.
He paused in his rowing, his arms stilling as he stared at the water of the river for a moment. When he finally turned to face me, his golden eyes glowed from beneath the fabric of his hood. “She isn’t,” he said simply, tipping his head to the side as he studied me.
I couldn’t see beyond the glow of his stare to anything that might have resembled a man beneath the hood, as if the ferryman was nothing more than the energy of the Fates beneath his cloak. I wondered what I might find if I pulled it back, if it would be an all-consuming darkness or the shadow of a man. If his face would pull tight with his annoyance or his brow would rise in his confusion.
“You can’t know that,” I said, attempting to ignore the way I felt that gaze slither against my skin.
Kharon guided the boat around the corner, using the shoreline to maneuver us so that we entered the transparent, toxic waters of the Acheron.
“Your mate will not be harmed by the Gorgons,” the ferryman answered, guiding us to the shoreline ahead. A small group had gathered there, women with snakes for hair standing on the sand. I recognized Fenrir even from a distance, his sisters standing in his shadow as he nuzzled his face against something that remained hidden on his other side.
Three women with different-colored hair took a step toward the water, speaking to the woman that emerged from behind Fenrir and approached the dizzying green water that made me sick to even look at. Estrella’s hair was bound into a tight braid, black, tailored armor covering her body from her neck to her wrists and feet.
She shook her head, and I could imagine the disdain-filled scoff she emitted as she stepped into the edge of the water.
“Estrella!” I shouted, but we were too far for her to hear me over the rushing of the Styx at my back.
My mate dove face-first into the Acheron, disappearing beneath the surface as I scrambled to the front of the boat and frantically searched the waters for her. Kharon rowed us forward, swiftly approaching the place where Estrella had gone under. They stopped only when we were alongside the group she’d traveled with, allowing me to step over the edge and place my feet on the shore.
I searched the water from my new vantage point, stepping into the river and shrinking back from the sudden, burning agony that shot up my legs. I fell to my ass in the sand, my legs trembling as the muscles felt like they shriveled and died.
“Estrella!” I shouted, searching the water for her once again. There was no sign of her within the waters, as if the silt at the bottom had swallowed her whole and claimed her as part of it.
Forcing myself to my feet, I dove headfirst into the water after her. Pain tore through me, making my muscles lock up as the agonizing cramps and burning filled me. I couldn’t move, couldn’t function as it stole through me and trapped me in the river itself.
I screamed, water filling my mouth and pouring down my throat. It lit me on fire from the inside, sinking me deeper as my body could not fight to swim. Something gripped the back of my tunic, a monstrous force pulling me from the river. As we slid along the sandy bank, the pain lessened with each moment of fresh air on my skin.
Fenrir stood over me, shaking his massive white head at me in what I had to guess was disappointment. I sighed, reaching up and petting him in thanks even as I stared at the river where Estrella had disappeared. Had she not felt the pain? Was it a consequence of not truly having a body to protect me from the magic of the river?
“Where is she?” I asked Fenrir as I sat up, ignoring the small, pained whimpers of Lupa and Ylfa at my back. They pressed their noses into my spine, offering gentle assurances that I did not ask for. I scrambled to my feet.
“Where is my mate, Fenrir?!” I asked, throwing a hand out to the river.
The three non-Gorgon women stepped forward, coming to rest beside the wolf that should have protected Estrella at all costs. “This is not your test, God of the Dead,” the woman with the black hair said, her amber eyes shining in the dim, green lighting of the riverbank. “You should not have come.”
“She shouldn’t be alone,” I said, raising my chin as I stared down at her. Whoever the women were, there was something eternal in their stares as they watched me.
“Estrella Barlowe will never be alone in Tartarus. This is her home,” the black-haired woman retorted, her features twisted in anger. Lurking beneath that eternal stare was affection, as if my mate had wormed her way beneath the skin of her companions here as well as she did in the land of the living.
“The Child of Fate is among family. You may return to your realm, Caldris,” a Gorgon said, stepping up beside me. I noted the stance of her feet, the relaxation of her posture even as I refused to meet her gaze. I knew what would happen to me should I discover the color of her eyes.
A snake stretched toward me, appearing in my line of sight and placing itself beneath my chin. It applied pressure there, the strength in the curve of its body taking my breath away as it forced my gaze to meet the Gorgon’s.
Her eyes were the same mossy, serpentine green of Estrella’s, like looking into a mirror of what I’d seen in my mate’s eyes every day since meeting her. “You have nothing to fear from me, mate of my blood,” she said, and though I felt the cold, stonelike magic of hers pressing over my skin, it did nothing to turn me solid.
“I don’t understand,” I said, my brow furrowing as the snake left my chin. I looked around the group in confusion.
“Just as your magic lives within Estrella, so does hers live within you,” the Gorgon said, turning her gaze down to the river where Estrella had vanished. “You have simply never considered what the reality of your bond with her means, probably because you do not understand who or what she is. You’ve spent centuries believing you would be given a weaker human mate and your mind has not caught up with your reality.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You may be a God, Caldris,” she said, scoffing as if the magic I possessed came down to mere parlor tricks. I’d made cities tremble, destroyed mountains in my rage. “But you are nothing next to my daughter. None of us are.”
“Medusa,” the black-haired woman warned, forcing the Gorgon to take a step back. The name washed over me, the reality that Estrella had already found the very being she was intended to search for.
And the very same creature was her mother.
TWENTY-NINE
ESTRELLA
I sank through the water, until the ground beneath me gave way. Dirt fell through the opening, the chasm spreading until I fit through the riverbed. Looking toward the surface, I would have sworn I’d seen the familiar ashen white hair of my mate through the shimmering water.
Just before the river swallowed me whole.
I fell through air, the wind of my fall whipping against my skin as I dropped. The surface I landed on was soft, leaving me to bounce off a cushion filled with the plushest of material. My cheek came to rest upon the velvety smooth surface, my fingers running over the buttons sewn into the cushion as I forced my body to sit.
The area around me was a tropical oasis, the clearing surrounded by trees and lush greenery. The vines that hung between the trees were longer than the roads in Mistfell, the trees taller than the ruins I’d seen in Calfalls.
Across the way, a single obelisk stood with a handful of people waiting at the top. Khaos stood front and center, his face as expressionless as I’d ever seen it as the Primordial who oversaw the trials. I wanted nothing to do with the lack of emotion and care I found there as I got to my feet, the fresh wounds of Medusa’s words bleeding like open sores.
Whatever Medusa thought to be true of the man that was supposed to be my father, there was no trace of that affection as he stared down at me.
Gold jutted out from the earth below me, a single spike striving for the sky and the river that flowed overhead. A scale hung from a support beam overhead on either side, and it was on one of them that I stood.
I looked toward the other, finding the figure of a woman who glowed with golden light. It was far more faint than Khaos’s own light, as if she was a step removed from the power he possessed. Her skin was milky white, her hair split down the middle. One side of her head was straight hair the color of night, and the other was the complete absence of color. The pure white of it shown against the night sky of her other side, and the colors of her dress mimicked the pattern of her hair.
She nodded at me slowly, glancing down to the ground below us. An enormous lion prowled through the grass of the clearing, pacing around the scales that held us aloft. Its fur was the softest muted gold, each of his paws the size of my head and tipped with claws that would easily tear the eyes from my skull. Its face was surrounded by a mane of darker brown that framed its broad-chested, long body.
“Melinoe is the Goddess of Nightmares and Madness,” Khaos said, his voice carrying over the distance between us. “She will guide you through a series of nightmares, giving you pain and fear in unison. It will be your job to overcome each and every one, for every nightmare that you fail to pull yourself out of, for every dream that you succumb to and fail to overcome your greatest fear, your side of the scale will drop.”
“What if I do not succumb?” I asked, glancing toward the Goddess who took her seat on the scale. She laid back, staring up at the river overhead as I lowered myself to sit once more.
“Then she will lower. By the end of the trial, only one of you will survive the beast’s hunger. The Fates have chosen this as your trial for the River of Pain,” Khaos said, forcing me to look toward the other woman. With her own life on the line, she would do whatever it took to make me suffer. To make me forget who I was and where I was.
She’d bring me back to the weakest moments of my life, and I couldn’t even blame her for it.
I laid my head down, staring at the waters above for a moment before my eyes drifted closed unwillingly. It should have been impossible to fall asleep under the circumstances, knowing that a test and trials of my worst imaginings would wait for me as soon as I did.
The warm shimmer of magic coated my skin, forcing my eyes open to find specks of golden light falling from the river above. Melinoe stood on her own platform, holding my gaze as the magic in that golden light turned my insides warm and brought me comfort, easing my path to sleep.
My eyes drifted closed once more, the sounds of the onlookers fading as my ears rang.
And the nightmares began.
* * *
The cool wind of autumn blew across my face, teasing my skin with the familiar smell of home. The salty brine of the sea lingered just beyond the scent of freshly harvested earth, the tingle of Twilight Berry sweetness tickling my senses as I slowly pried my eyes open.
All sense of comfort faded as I watched the High Priest take his place at the edge of the Veil, the upturned earth between him and I telling me more than I cared to know about the time of year. His face was less weathered by the elements, less wrinkled with the stain of time to hint at a much younger age. I vaguely remembered a time when he’d looked this way.
He ran his thumb over the edge of the ceremonial dagger, testing its sharpness on his own skin as my throat caught in horror of the day that had changed everything for me. For my mother and my brother, for the path my life had taken for the next fourteen years. That first drop of blood sliding down the edge of the blade had been forever committed to my memory, a slow and tormenting glide that I saw when I closed my eyes.
To relive this moment all over again, as an observer watching one of my worst memories unfold …
This was true agony.
“Macario Barlowe,” the High Priest announced, raising his chin as sighs of relief echoed through the group of villagers gathered at the edge of the Veil. My mother’s familiar sob caught my ears, forcing me to look back to where my family stood.
My father’s mouth dropped open in shock, letting me observe the subtleties I hadn’t seen when I was a girl and so lost in the grief that consumed me. Brann’s eyes closed, his arms wrapping around himself as if he could shut out the desire to interfere. At the time I’d thought him just as lost as I’d felt, but I saw it now for what it was.
Restraint.
My father pulled my mother into his arms, ignoring the soft encouragement from the High Priest at the front of the gardens. His words were lost to time, the ringing in my ears drowning out all traces of sounds around me. Lips moved, but I couldn’t see past the pain in my head that came with that ringing.
I watched their gazes hold steady, stepping closer in an attempt to hear those words he’d given to her that had escaped me. The childlike version of me stood at his side, clinging to his legs desperately as he held my mother’s gaze and murmured to her with their foreheads pressed together. I snagged Brann’s gaze finally, something in that familiar warmth chasing away the ringing in my ears.
Sound rushed in all over again, so quickly that my head throbbed and I couldn’t help the whimper of pain. No one noticed me, no one but Brann anyway, an unseen intruder watching an event of the past.
“No one can know, Elora. Promise me,” he said, waiting until my mother nodded through her tears and glanced down at me. My father pulled away from her, reaching down and grasping the younger me at the waist to lift her into his arms. He propped her up on his hip, wiping the tears away from her cheeks with the warmest expression I could ever remember until seeing the way that Caldris looked at me.
“Don’t cry, Little Bird,” he said, touching his forehead to hers. I hurried closer, stopping behind him so that when he turned I’d be able to see the warmth of his face for myself. “I gladly make this sacrifice. Do you know why?”
She shook her head, her lips pursed tightly as she tried to keep her sobs quiet. The suffering of a child made the grateful people around us shift uncomfortably with guilt. It was a strange mix of feelings, to be both thrilled that one’s own loved ones were safe all the while feeling horribly for our neighbors. It kept families ostracized from one another, and I supposed that was the point.
Loyalty to the faith above all else became far, far easier to achieve if they could limit the people we cared about and turn us against one another. It was easier to keep us subservient if we were stranded islands living in proximity to one another, rather than a community that looked after our own.
“Why, Daddy?” the younger me asked, sniffling through her sobs. Watching the exchange, I shoved back the surge of emotion that made the inside of my nose sting and closed my throat. I knew the words that came next. They’d haunted me all my life, following me with the inevitable feeling that he’d be disappointed in me.
I hadn’t managed to do the one thing he asked of me.
“Because it means you’ll be safe here for another year,” he said, and the words took on new meaning with all I now knew. With all he’d known in that moment about what I was—who I was. “But promise me, when the time is right, you’ll leave this place. Fly free, Little Bird,” he said, and my heart clenched as he lowered me to the ground and stood. He smiled at her one last time, his cheeks tipping up even from behind as he turned toward me slowly.
He paused, as if he could see me lingering in the nightmare of this memory. I held his stare, the mossy green of his eyes searching mine as I waited for him to continue on. To turn away from the adult version of me, just as he’d had to turn away from the child. I didn’t know that he could see me, not until he gave me the smallest of smiles. It was a bittersweet thing, as if grateful for the opportunity to see me grown, as if he knew I was there watching.
Reliving.
He cleared his throat, a single tear trailing down his cheek that I hadn’t seen when I’d been a child and his back was to me. It was the final straw in my restraint, pulling a strangled sob from my throat. I pressed the back of my hand to my mouth to try to suppress it as my childlike voice rang out when he took the first step forward.
“Daddy, no!”
He stepped through me, the mists of my dreamlike body parting to allow him to pass as I turned to watch him go. He put one foot in front of the other, and I had a newfound appreciation for the strength required in something that seemed so simple under other circumstances.
Knowing he was walking to his death took a different kind of strength, a peace with one’s life that I didn’t know I had any longer. There was so much left for me to do, so many wrongs left to right.
It had been easy enough to walk to my death when there was no one counting on me. It had been easy to justify it to myself. The world would go on, my loved ones would heal in time, the wounds of my loss scabbing over enough to get through the day.
I may not have been a parent, and I didn’t know if that was ever in the Fates for me given what I knew of the evils of this world, but I knew what it was to feel responsible for the lives of others now. I knew what it was to feel the pain of letting them down.
“Hush now, Child,” a deep male voice said behind me. I spun to glare at the man who had taken up his place behind my six-year-old self, placing stern, rough hands against my shoulders. I stilled, everything in me going taut as I realized this had been the place where it all began. That the tears streaking my cheeks had been what made Byron spend the next fourteen years tormenting me, preparing me for a life as his wife even then. “What’s her name?” he asked my mother, lifting a lock of wavy, dark hair from my shoulder. He twirled it around his fingers, forcing me to glance back at him.
