The moonlight caught on the metal beading of his locks and beard, and his silver capped teeth glimmered as he mischievously grinned.
Sandrine was not pleased to see him, though she had expected he might resurface. “I haven’t seen you in years and that’s the first thing you say to me? I thought you’d have learned by now that I don’t anger easily.”
Poseidon shrugged, causing his jewelry to jingle like a set of keys. “One day I’ll succeed in riling you up.”
“I am not chasing Cahira—she is like a sister to me,” she informed him. “I don’t have time for romantic entanglements. Now how do I know that you are really you and not one of Angelique’s illusions?”
Before she could dart out of the way, he grabbed her face and kissed her quickly on the lips. She didn’t react, though she was jolted by memory. Instead, she crossed her arms and waited until he was finished, maintaining her indifference. “That proves nothing.”
“We can try something else,” he suggested with a metallic grin.
“That has never worked out well for either of us,” Sandrine reminded him with a sigh. She tried not to envision them swept up in the heat of passion in Athena’s temple as it was swallowed by sea, floating dreamily afterwards as schools of fish fluttered by, the entire island submerged.
“Unlike myself, who is tethered to the sea with no realm for anyone to destroy, Athena is dead,” the old god pointed out. “I can still feel the Olympians whose souls have remained, which is actually why I decided to approach you. Though it was hard for me not to intervene when I felt the hydra entering into my sea.”
“You did the right thing,” she assured him. “There is a reason we chose not to intervene in each other’s lives.”
He grunted, letting her know he was still unhappy with the arrangement.
“Must I remind you that Athena murdered me when she found out about us and nearly ripped apart the entire pantheon in her quest for revenge? And that when I finally came back to life, you were so desperate I remember you, that you sent me to a chaos goddess who turned me into an abominable creature—the creature I am today? My reasons for not swooning into your arms are valid. Besides, there is nothing quite like immortality to quell human instincts. I could live out the rest of my days without ever having to take a lover.”
Poseidon scowled, his black eyes glinting like polished obsidian. “I shouldn’t have come.”
Sandrine merely lifted her shoulders, blatantly unaffected.
He put his hands on his hips and stared at her, as if waiting for a break in her resolve. “Fine,” he growled when he didn’t receive it. “Discordia knows you are all here. Ares is on his way to kidnap Cahira and she’s hired an army of sirens to attack the harbor. You have a few moments, at most.”
“Are you planning on joining the fight?”
He showed his back to her as he slid back into the ocean. “We have an accord not to intervene,” he called over his shoulder.
She sighed, watching the water swallow its king. Though she had managed to convince both of them she was no longer interested, a small piece of her wanted to rip off his jacket the second he was near, fill her mouth with the briny taste of his, and feel the coarseness of his locks running over her bare skin. But she didn’t enjoy being vulnerable, and her walls served her well. Love, lust, whatever it was, only served to dismantle her.
In response, she abruptly shifted into Medusa, the hiss of her snakes calming her with their presence. She is sending sirens, she told Cahira. I am waiting on the shore.
She shifted back, knowing Medusa’s gaze was useless against females. It was the only part of her legend that was true; Athena was so overcome with jealousy that she’d cursed Sandrine to lose control over her power—any man who looked into her eyes would be turned to stone, but never a female. The memory poked at Sandrine’s resolve, waking up the pieces of fury she often pulled forward in battle. It was an old skill taught to her by Queen Hangbe, who trained her warriors by way of torture to never let their emotions get the best of them. She asserted that the key to true strength was in its proper channeling.
Sandrine kept her rage in a small box within her mind, one she opened only when she had to fight something stronger than she was, a secret weapon carefully guarded after years of practice. Etched on the front of the box was the image of Athena, as a reminder of the years she had faithfully adored her and was met with nothing but scorn, only to finally fall in love with someone else who truly loved her back and have it ripped away from her. Not because Athena loved her, but because she was exerting her dominance. Sandrine took the key and unlocked it when she saw the siren heads bobbing up from the ocean’s surface, their shrill cries beginning to stab the quiet air.
She glanced up to see that the moon had disappeared, obscured by heavy black clouds that moved at an unnatural speed. She realized they were no ordinary clouds, but flocks of ravens, signaling that Morrigan and Cahira had come to join her. She was glad that they’d arrived, for she always thought fighting was best shared with others, but a secret part of her knew it didn’t matter how many soldiers were alongside her. There was nothing in the world more powerful than her rage, and Pandora’s box had already opened up inside her.
morrigan
She was shrouded in total darkness, the only sound the screeching birds above her, demanding that she rise. The scent of raw earth in her nose betrayed her position, laying under layers of cold and heavy mud. She wondered if she was blind until she felt someone gently brush the wet dirt away from her eyelids, and she wrenched them open to behold a man smiling down from above her.
She abruptly rose, sending him toppling backwards from his crouched position, knocking the torch from his hands. As he fumbled for it, she took a minute to take in her surroundings, confirming that she was indeed sitting in a pile of slick brown muck, her naked body covered in it, the night echoing with shrill crickets and the song of distant wolves.
The man was able to right his torch before it went out, revealing his features in its glow. She could see the outline of his thick auburn beard and wild hair, with bright green eyes that flashed underneath his brown, hooded cloak. “Do not be afraid. I came into the world just like you. ‘Tis unsettling at first, but ya adjust.”
She stared at him blankly, trying to understand what he was telling her, his accent strange to her ears. A single crow loudly interrupted their exchange, drifting down to land on her bare shoulder.
“Never seen crows at night,” the man remarked.
“I think,” she tried to speak, her voice hoarse from lack of use. “I think...they belong to me.”
“Amazin’.” He climbed to his feet and extended his arm to help her stand.
She took it, her legs shaking as she used them, but able to hold as she observed the man’s height and stockiness, admiring the length of his beard. He had grown quiet, staring at her with his jaw slack, when she remembered she wasn’t wearing clothing. “Did you bring that for me?” she asked, pointing to the cloak he’d tied with twine to his waist.
“Oh!” He fumbled, handing her the garment. “Forgive me, they dinna tell me you were a woman when they sent me to fetch ya.”
She smiled, slipping the cloak over her head as her companion crow found a nearby branch to settle upon. “Who are they?”
“Yer family, the Tuatha De Danann,” the man explained. “Yer a goddess—a descendent of Danu.”
“Who are you?”
“Ah, forgive me manners. They call me Daghda.”
Morrigan bolted upright in her bed, panting. The dream faded as her room came into focus, snowflakes trickling in through the windows she’d left open. The panic subsided as she realized that she was only dreaming. She threw off her sheets and grabbed her robe, stepping out onto the balcony. She saw vapor as she took several steadying breaths, the frosty air nipping at her skin as she gazed up at the night sky. Since they arrived in France, she hadn’t been able to sleep, though the gentle snowfall that persisted since the day of their arrival had proven quite tranquil. She couldn’t recall dreaming after she became immortal, but they had become so vivid she had trouble discerning their authenticity. She had a sinking feeling it had something to do with David being so close by.
Her last solid rest was when she awakened groggily on the ship to discover Jacob had passed, but before she could wrap her mind around it, Cahira announced they had reached France. Her bewilderment had only increased when they stepped off the boat at a private port in Calais, where Lucius was greeted by a handful of well-groomed lawyers whom he had apparently given warning to ahead of time. They stood patiently in the building snow until they all unboarded, with strange dark eyes and very light hair, before ushering them around with indifferent efficiency, unloading what was salvageable of their luggage and hurrying them into the carriages they’d provided. No one amongst their entourage made a comment except for David, who caught her eyes as they climbed aboard separate coaches, giving her a sideways smile accompanied by a shrug. “You can always depend on Lucius to take care of things in style.”
She knew he was right. Although Lucius rode with her in contemplative silence, gently clasping her hand, the second they arrived at the chateau he owned under a different name, he began ordering around the help that awaited them like a natural marquis. Within moments, he’d appointed a man responsible for acquiring a hearse to transport Jacob’s coffin, a man to make funeral arrangements, one to guide each guest to their rooms, another to call about his ship and crew, and still more to order clothing and supplies for each one of them to travel. At one point, she wondered if he even remembered she was there, until a tiny slip of a human approached Morrigan to guide her to her chambers.
“Put her to the west,” he instructed him.
Morrigan slid him a look when she realized David had been shown the eastern rooms. He responded with a playful wink before turning back to continue his arrangements.
