Page 46 of Minas (Dying Gods #4)
Sira
“Brita? Brita, are you in here?”
The question chases us just as Britomartis is unwinding the damp linen towel from around my shoulders and Lykos is lighting the spare lamp in my bedroom.
“Brita?”
This time, it’s followed by a tentative knock on my bedroom door and then hushed whispers from the other side. Astarte and her men. My brother among them, most likely.
Once, jealousy would have whispered beneath my skin. Now, despite the tender ache between my thighs and Britomartis’ whispered promise, there is only mild disappointment. Gratitude too, warm as the mint and lavender tea Britomartis had thrust on me when I stepped out of the bath.
Britomartis regards the door with momentary indecision, as if she means to leave a goddess’ calls unanswered merely for the opportunity of laying with me. I shoot her an alarmed look and pad barefoot to the door, wrapping the linen sheet around my damp body.
“She’s in here,” I say, sounding more breathless than I should. I swing the door open, coming face to face with the goddess who led me from Potina’s endless darkness. “Come in, Astarte.”
The pale goddess wrinkles her nose at the name. “Please. Call me Adrienne.” She flicks me a brief smile, that unsettling gaze darting past me until it finds Britomartis. The smile falls, a look of uncertainty darkening her features, like a shadow passing over the moon. “That is what my friends call me, at least.”
I draw in a shaky breath and step back to let her in. Friend . Would she offer me that title, after everything? After I have only ever silently cursed her and her gifts? After I have slain one of her own servants, and done my best to disregard the others? When I have never even deigned to worship at her temple?
My thoughts are interrupted by strong arms surrounding me, breath gusting out of me as Asterion follows his goddess into the room and pulls me into an abrupt embrace.
“Sira,” he croaks. “By all the gods… I am so sorry.”
I wrap my arms around his waist, pressing my face into his chest, as if that will assuage the burning behind my eyes. “You have nothing to be sorry for,” I lie.
His breath hitches, a laugh or a sob, and I feel as he shakes his shaggy head. “I abandoned you,” he argues. “I should have never left Knossos without you. I should have known she would do something horrible to you. I was… I was a fool, Sira. Blind, selfish. Lost as an unblooded youth at sea on a starless night.”
He releases me, gripping my shoulders and stooping until his face is level with my own. There are new lines between his brow, and dark circles beneath his eyes. Eyes that are so much like my own, I could be staring into a disk of polished bronze.
They are not our mother’s eyes, I realize. Hers were full of shrewd awareness, tipped up at the corners. Hawkish, almost. Ours are an owl’s eyes, too wide for our faces, as if we were meant to stare into darkness instead of light.
My throat tightens as I take in his familiar features for the first time since our mother’s death. As I see that bit of the god in him that I’ve only just started to recognize in myself.
“I forgive you,” I whisper, pressing my forehead against his own.
He’s all I have left of family in this mortal realm—perhaps even in all realms. Potina’s halls were empty, lifeless as the hollow caves that legends say once birthed many of the gods and goddesses themselves. If my mother and sister were there, they could not hear me.
“… of course I’m angry at you.”
Britomartis’ agitated voice has both of us sharing a look of surprised confusion. But she’s speaking to Astarte, not to us, her cheeks flushed and eyes flashing with anger.
“You… you’re like a sister to me, you fool. And you died . Died, without knowing that you could come back. Do you think I wouldn’t care about that? That the loss of the woman I love made me numb to losing you too?”
The woman she loves?
I straighten, a rush of fearful possessiveness curling my fingers. Until her gaze finds mine, those dark eyes bare of any kohl and wet with tears.
Me , I realize with a gasp. She’s talking about me.
“You would make me ash at your feet, Astarte. Again and again and again. And you ask that I call you a friend?”
To my surprise, that goddess only dips her head, a flush rising to those strangely pale cheeks as she presses one hand against her chest.
“I do,” she rasps, and there is only the soft sigh of longing. No crackle of lightning, no screech of impending doom. “I am selfish, Brita. I’ve always been selfish. And you always put up with it.”
She looks up, a tentatively playful smile curving her lips. “Even when I was a mere mortal, throwing my arrows in the grass, cursing you and kicking you out of your own bed, you have put up with me. Why should I expect any different now?”
“You were never a mortal,” Britomartis retorts with a scowl, but there’s no heat in it. Not when her lips are trembling, her features tightening as she attempts to shove back emotions that she’s no longer able to mask. “You came to us as a goddess disguised as a helpless mortal—the most uselessly helpless mortal I’ve ever encountered, by the way. You… you tricked us all.”
Astarte grins, a choked laugh escaping her. She presses one hand to her lips, eyes dancing but lashes wet as her shoulders shake. “I was terrible, wasn’t I? I don’t know how you stood it.”
“Stood it?” Britomartis shakes her head. “There was nothing else to do but stand it. You were like the lost kitten one finds on the streets, with sharp claws and piercing teeth. What else could I do but take you home and feed you and love you? And you knew!”
“I didn’t.”
Astarte’s voice is soft, the smile gone.
“I didn’t know. I had a mortal heart beating in my chest and fear casting its dark shadow over all my understanding, all my memories. I didn’t know. Not truly, not until…” Her eyes drop to her chest, to the raw scar running the length of her sternum. “I know now though.” She lifts her chin, looking at once proud and vulnerable, the goddess and the mortal all in one. “I know what it is to be struck by my gift. What it is to love and yearn and crumble like glass into sand. It was…” She looks back, finding my brother, a small, sad smile curving her lips. “Worse than any death,” she admits on a whisper, then turning back to Britomartis with a look of fierce challenge. “But worth it.”
Britomartis looks as if she has been struck, as if Astarte’s words really are a lightning bolt and not just a whispered admission in my dingy bedroom. An explosion in this space that is barely large enough to hold the five of us and certainly too small to hold the vibrance of a goddess.
There is a breath, a moment of silence, and then Britomartis folds herself into Astarte’s embrace, the two of them wrapping each other up with sobs and the rustling of fabric and disbelieving laughter.
I dare a glance at Lykos who has been watching this whole exchange with an awed confusion that mirrors my own.
Worse than death, but worth it , she had said.
That, at least, I do understand, even if I don’t understand what sort of friendship would make a goddess beg a priestess for mercy, and a priestess dare to withhold it.
I offer Lykos a small smile, that unsaid word dancing like blue lily wine on my tongue, making me feel lightheaded and giddy all over again. I love him. I love them both. Lykos grins back, a broad, daring thing that cuts through the lackluster light of my old bedroom like sunlight.
My brother clears his throat, one hand settling heavy on my shoulder. “We came to hurry you all, actually.”
He gives me a look that’s striving and failing to be apologetic, with only the faintest quirk of his lips. As if to say he knows what I had been planning with my lovers, or at least knows I was planning something, and isn’t completely sorry to have disrupted it.
“The lawagetas will be waiting for you. Well…” he scrubs at his face, somehow looking at once amused and contrite. “Not for you, exactly. Since they think you’re…”
“That I’m dead?”
A laugh bursts out of me, surprising even me with the joyful music of it. Britomartis and Astarte turn, staring at me with shining eyes and stunned faces.
Gods, it shouldn’t be funny. Not when I nearly lost everything—when I did lose everything. Not when our entire world was balancing on the edge of my sword. When even now Velchanos could be wiping out everything I love, like a painter swiping his brush over an unwanted fresco.
But he isn’t. I didn’t. And I’m alive. Alive, alive, alive.
Lykos’ smile widens, his bare chest shaking in silent laughter. He rubs both cheeks with the palms of his hands, as if that could possibly be enough to wipe the joy from his face. Britomartis gapes at the pair of us, as if we have both gone mad. I grin back at her.
“Yes. Exactly...” Asterion’s brow dips as he looks between me and Lykos with a milder sort of concern. “And Britomartis told them she would meet them at midday. To… um… discuss what will become of Knossos.”
This time, I manage to stifle the laughter threatening to bubble up in me, even if I can’t hide the smile. To think of them all, traitors alongside allies, waiting in that bloodied hall for the answer to a question none of them will dare to ask: Who will rule?
And the answer is me. Knossos is mine. Not just from birth, not just from the tangled threads of fate, woven with the will of the gods.
No, it is mine because I will take it.
“Then let us meet them.” I straighten my shoulders, lift my chin, just as I did when I was dressed in all my borrowed finery, with fear coating my skin like sweat sheen and Xenodice’s terrible smile laid on me.
Except this time, it is not an act. This time, I am not afraid.
I have bled for these people, my enemies and allies both. I have faced death and deities. I have cut my way free of Potina’s own realm and felt the power of a god in my veins and known the awful, beautiful pull of Astarte’s own gift twisting like an arrow in my heart.
I am alive. I love Britomartis. I love Lykos. They are mine, just like the shining city glinting outside these dust coated walls. And even the gods themselves could not keep me from claiming them.