Page 11 of Minas (Dying Gods #4)
Sira
“The pretender is dead.”
Malia’s announcement echoes off the soot-stained walls of Potina’s temple, the wood soles of her sandals clattering on stone tiles. I look up in time to see her leaning against the broad doorframe, round cheeks red from exertion, her breasts bared and heaving as she struggles to catch her breath.
“The sea took her,” Malia continues, kohl-lined eyes sparkling with the excitement of someone chosen to relay a message. “Swallowed her up. I saw it myself.”
My fingers tighten around the wet rag I’ve been using to clean the temple frescoes, the familiar ache of grief hollow behind my ribs, though I can’t really say why. I never even saw the false goddess. She certainly wouldn’t grieve for me, the third daughter of a minas, forgotten even by her own people.
And yet…
I blink; the faded frescoes of crocus flowers being picked by monkeys blurring in my vision.
“The monkeys symbolize death. Playful, wild, sometimes cruel, and always completely unpredictable.”
I can still see Britomartis, the first day I met her, sharp as freshly dyed cloth in Potina’s temple, one eyebrow raised as she tried—and failed—to exhibit the patience required of a priestess. As she condescendingly interpreted paintings I knew as well as my own soul.
“The crocus flower symbolizes eternal life, a flower reborn from the same bulb time and time again, undefeated by its harvest.”
“Death can sometimes be predicted,” I had retorted, sharper than I intended. “And a careless harvest can destroy the bulb.”
I had hoped. When Malia had described Adrienne yesterday, pale and strange, nearly glowing with power, defiantly facing my sister… I had hoped.
“We need fresh herbs for the braziers,” I say, my voice even despite the lump in my throat. “And the oil lamps in the hallway are getting low again.”
I dip the rag into my bowl, then squeeze the excess water from it. A few muddy drops fall to the tile, darkening it, turning the faded tan a dusky red. The color of old blood.
I shiver.
“It’s a pity you couldn’t be there,” Malia comes up close to me, her earlier excitement tempered. “All the lawagetas were there, and their daughters. They asked about you, you know.”
I give her a disbelieving look and almost smile at her lie.
A year ago, I might have believed her. Might have thought that the young women who had woven my newly-grown hair into a crown for the olive harvest festival would come to my rescue. That they would at least visit me or ask for me. I had hoped. Fool that I was, I had hoped.
“My sister will be pleased,” I say, turning back to the frescoes. “And the son of the Minas Thera, will he be pledged to her soon?”
“The Minas Crete was pleased.” Malia’s usually light tone is sharp with warning as she emphasises Xenodice’s title. A stolen title. A title that belonged to my mother, to my eldest sister. A title that should never have been hers. “I am not so sure about Kitanetos. He seemed… distracted. His sister too, though of course Britomartis took pains to hide it.”
I give a curt nod, but don’t dare look at her. The false goddess had been Britomartis’ friend. Friend, not lover. Britomartis had assured me of that well before I had any right to the possessive jealousy currently tightening my stomach.
Not that I have any right to the feeling now. Especially when that friend is dead.
“It will not reflect well on either of them,” Malia muses, leaning heavily against the section of wall I’ve just cleaned. “To have brought a pretender into our midst. To have spoken for her.” She gives a disapproving tsk. “Not that anyone blames Britomartis, of course. She has acted as she should.”
I swallow at that, my mouth suddenly dry at the thought of Britomartis, grieving the loss of her friend and forced to conceal her sorrow. She’ll do it well, too. She’ll give my sister unreadable smiles and placating words, and do everything in her power to make her brother appear to advantage.
But nonetheless, she will grieve.
“Do you expect her to visit you today?” Malia asks, her voice honey sweet, eyes narrowed with sharp interest.
I give her a bland look, blinking slowly, as if my heart isn’t thundering at just the thought of seeing Britomartis again.
“She has been here nearly every day this half-moon cycle.”
My cheeks heat, but I hold her gaze. “She is the first acolyte to Potina at Akrotiri, second only to the high priestess there. She has every right to visit Potina’s temple here on Knossos.”
Malia smirks. “And you have been very welcoming.”
“Should I be otherwise?” I ask, widening my eyes in mock innocence. “She is my sister’s ally, is she not?”
Though I doubt even Xenodice would demand that I entertain her allies in my bed. And I doubt Britomartis would call my sister her ally, not when her friend lays somewhere in Poteiden’s depths at Xenodice’s hand.
“The Minas Crete,” Malia reprimands, more gently this time.
“Yes,” I agree, tilting my head in acquiescence, though my lips still refuse to form the title. “May Potina bless her.”
Malia frowns but doesn’t rebuke me for the blessing. Outside these walls, the saying would be common enough. Except we know better, us women who serve the goddess. We know that Potina’s axe swings both ways. That everything has its balance.
That a goddess’ blessing is not always a welcome thing.
When Britomartis finds me, the sun has long set and I am pretending to dutifully light the braziers in the temple’s entrance room.
“You’re back,” I say, blinking tiredly at Britomartis through a haze of smoke. “What happened?”
In response, she strides across the room, wrapping me up in her arms, burying her face against the side of my head. My own arms wrap around her waist, pulling her close, until our bodies are flush. Like they had been that day in my room.
It seems like an eternity ago now.
She lets out a broken, shuddering sigh, and I feel the memory of my own grief rise up in answer to hers, like some ketos emerging from the deep.
“Shh,” I murmur. “Shh. What happened?”
She pulls back, taking my hands in her own as she stares down at me, her eyes glittering in the firelight. “What have you heard?” she asks.
My jaw ticks and I turn to glare at the open doorway that leads to the inner chambers of Potina’s temple. To where Malia no doubt lurks, doing whatever it is that she does when she isn’t watching me. “Let us go to my room,” I whisper. “Malia is around somewhere, but the high priestess is away. I doubt she will be back for some time…”
To my surprise, Britomartis agrees, following me to that place she’s only ever been once before, despite my entreaties. It could raise suspicions , she’d argued. If your sister thinks we’re intimate, she could try to keep us apart. Or, we shouldn’t, Malia is watching us . Or, I have to return to my brother soon.
I wish she’d just tell me the truth, whatever it is. That she’d lain with me out of pity, and nothing more. That Astarte’s arrow struck me, and me alone. That once she had me laid bare before her she decided I wasn’t quite what she wanted after all.
I suppose the only reason she is following me to my room now is that she knows I would never try to seduce her when she is deep in grief for her friend.
“I heard about Adrienne,” I whisper, sitting awkwardly on my mattress and tugging my knees to my chest. “Heard that she returned with my brother and his… lover. That they both pledged themselves to her. I heard they proclaimed she is a goddess, that she is Astarte incarnate. I heard that my sister didn’t believe them and ordered a trial.”
“There was a trial,” Britomartis sinks down beside me, careful as always to keep the distance between us, her eyes fixed on the floor. “Adrienne was made to jump off the cliffs near Amnisos today...”
She pauses, her fingers picking nervously at a loose thread on my bedspread as she gives me a searching look. Though, what she is looking for, I cannot say. I have given her every secret my soul possesses. There is nothing left for her to find.
“She did not emerge from the ocean,” Britomartis says, telling me what Malia has said already. “But, goddess willing, she is safe. For now.”
I blink at her in confusion then pity as the meaning of her words sinks under my skin. She has still not accepted the loss. Even now, she is holding out hope.
Britomartis gives me an apologetic grimace. “She is safe. I cannot tell you how. The secret is not mine to share. But my brother will be helping her—perhaps even this moment. Taking her far away from Crete.”
I nod slowly. There is no point in arguing with such belief. She will come to realize the truth eventually, just like I did when they told me my mother was dead.
“It was supposed to be Jadikira helping her,” Britomartis continues. “And Asterion was meant to be on the cliffs watching the trial. As a decoy. A distraction. But Asterion wasn’t there, and there is every reason to fear that something has happened to both of them.”
My heart skips a beat, my breath stuttering to a stop as all the blood drains from my face, my fingers going cold. My brother? What has happened to my brother? But of course, my sister will be punishing him. Punishing both him and Jadikira for daring to pledge themselves to that false goddess.
“Potina help them,” I whisper.
“Actually, it is I who will be helping them,” Britomartis says, and there’s an urgency to her words, to her posture. To the way she’s sitting on the edge of my bed, her feet planted on the floor, her every muscle tense. “I need to find them, to get them to Asterion’s ships.”
“They could be anywhere,” I reply mournfully, thinking of the winding halls of my childhood home. Of the hundreds of guards. “My sister could have them locked up anywhere at Knossos and no one would know.”
“But you must have an idea?”
I shake my head, feeling renewed shame in my own inadequacy. Why hadn’t I paid more attention? Why had I been so complacent?
“When my mother lived, I was her baby, and she kept me hidden away from court life, until I was old enough to come here. I barely know the names of the principal lawagetas and their daughters. She certainly never showed me where we keep our prisoners.”
Britomartis frowns, tapping her fingertips against her thigh. “What about Malia?”
“She might know,” I concede reluctantly.
“But you don’t trust her?”
“I don’t know. Maybe?”
When I had first come to Potina’s temple, I had thought I could trust Malia. But that had been na?ve. Built on the unfounded hope that someone would care about me, fight for me.
“She doesn’t agree with me being locked up here, but I’ve never heard her speak up against the high priestess, and she’s always quick to obey orders.” I pick at my cuticles. “She’s the daughter of a doulos and served in the lowest ranks in Potina’s temple before being promoted up the ranks.”
Meaning, of course, that she will probably do anything to keep her station in life. Even if that means imprisoning me.
Britomartis is silent for a long time, staring at the solitary flickering flame lighting up my room. Then, without warning, she stands, her skirt fluttering heavily at her ankles with the abrupt movement.
“Are you leaving?” I ask, wide-eyed, my stomach in my throat. But the way she is standing, vibrating with energy and movement, like a caged beast ready to fly—I already know the answer.
“Only for a short time,” she promises. “I’m going to find Asterion and Jadikira, and then I’ll come back for you.”
“Come back for me?”
Does she mean she will visit me again tomorrow, like she has these past several days? That she will continue to be the sweetest moment in my captivity? That she will not leave me here alone after all?
“To bring you with us.”
A rush of longing courses through me, biting sharper than any hunger pangs, headier than even those blissful moments with Britomartis in my room.
Bring me with her.
I can imagine it. My feet naked on the rough wood planking of my brother’s ship, Britomartis at my side, her hair whipping behind her, wild and untamed. Her eyes sparkling with the power and freedom of a woman able to harness her own fate, like the sails harness the wind.
And then I think of old Aletheia. Her wrinkled hand outstretched and trembling as I pour the sacred silphium seeds into her waiting palm. The women who come seeking prayers for their dead, their eyes swollen with grief and lips parted with hope, truly believing that Potina will listen to my demands any more than she would listen to theirs.
The image of freedom flutters away, as if caught on the same wind that propels Britomartis and the sails of my brother’s ship, and I am back here again. In my room, with one lonely flame dancing mournfully.
“I can’t leave.”
Britomartis stares at me, incredulous. “Your sister has locked you away. She tried to have your brother killed. And you would stay here, at her bidding?”
I stiffen. “It’s not like that.”
“Then what is it?”
“I can’t leave my people. They need me.”
“I need you.”
Those three words, they’re almost enough to crumble the thin wall of my resolve, to have me agreeing to everything, to have me abandoning my people. But she doesn’t need me. Not really.
I push off the bed, ungracefully scampering across the room, taking her hands in my own. “And you have me. You always have me.” I want to press my face against her neck, to burry myself in the wild, loose curls and breathe her in.
Instead, I lift my chin, giving her what I hope is a look that speaks more determination than I feel, and say, “But I cannot leave them.”
Britomartis stares at me for a long moment, eyes scanning my face as if expecting to see some truth there. But I have given them all to her already.
“Your brother can’t stay here,” she snaps, stepping back. “If he stays here, your sister will kill him.”
“I know,” I rasp. I would be a fool to think otherwise. If my brother is still alive, he will not live long in my sister’s clutches. “Which is why you have to go. If anyone can find him, and get him out of here, it’s you.”
“But… you won’t come?”
“No.”
Only the gods know what that response costs me. Especially when Britomartis gives me a look of disappointed reproach, as if she really does feel the same pain that I do at our separation.
I press one hand to my stomach, swallowing against the burn in my throat, against the sting behind my eyes.
“Oh, Sira,” Britomartis whispers, her expression softening. And then she’s pulling me to her, slamming her lips against mine. It’s a bruising and angry kiss, as if she means to steal my very soul, to swallow me up whole.
I moan into her mouth, melting against her, my body softening as she grips the back of my neck, tangling her fingers almost painfully in my hair.
That fire from before rushes through me, so strong it’s almost bitter, and my hands flutter between us, trembling and grasping fruitlessly at the ties of her tunic, dipping into the fabric, desperate to feel her. To touch her. To see her. To taste her, like she tasted me.
Britomartis pulls back, leaving me panting, my lips swollen and cheeks tear-streaked as I stare wistfully up at her.
“Britomartis? Britomartis, please?” My hand trembles against her waist. She steps back again, and it falls away, dropping to my side.
Her throat bobs, and for a few beats of my racing heart, I swear she looks at me with a hunger that matches my own. But then it’s gone, replaced by the mask I’ve seen her wear a few times before—that first day she met me, and when she’s speaking with Malia. The mask of a priestess. Cold, strong, implacable.
Icy embarrassment rushes through me, burning cold against my heated skin.
“My apologies.” She offers me a forced smile. It might as well be a blade to the heart. “May the goddess protect you, Sira of Crete.” A small bow. “And may we meet again, in this life or in Potina’s great halls.”
And then, she is gone.