by Heloise Hull
“Good luck, Ava,” Mak said, spinning open the lid.
“Thanks.” The honey was oddly warm on my fingers. It grew hotter as I brought it to my nose and almost gagged.
“Yeah, it smells like sulfur,” Mak said. “Probably should’ve warned you.”
“There’s a hint of honey in there, too. I think.” I slathered it on nice and thick—and screamed.
The pain soared as the honey seared onto my skin. I would have kept screaming, but the honey fused my lips together. My eyes widened and Aurick watched helplessly as Mak scraped at the honey with glowing fingers and a tight-lipped expression.
Everyone was talking at once, asking me questions, but they boiled down to the same thing. “Are you okay?”
“I think so,” I said, groaning a little as I dabbed at my swollen lips with a wet washcloth. “Why didn’t it work?”
“I have no clue,” Mak admitted. He picked up the jar, sniffed it, and studied it. “I’ve used this hundreds of times over the years. It’s never failed me before.”
My face still burned, but the pain had dulled. Now, it was as if I’d eaten ghost peppers with chapped lips, and not attempted to kiss the sun. “Don’t worry. I can figure out some other way to defeat Thoth.”
“Do you want to try the crystal room at the Library of Alexandria?” Coronis asked.
“I already did. I pretty much donated a quart of my blood.”
“Did you learn anything?”
“That Thoth is the one who cursed me in the cave, but it shut me out after that. I had a strange feeling it was working against me.”
Coronis’s face sank. “Oh.”
Mak held the jar up to the light, and we watched as if golden stars streaked inside the glass. “I could go.”
“Where?” I asked, confused.
“To the moments just before the last battle. Thoth was attacking our east flank, a group of lion shifters, if I recall.”
“I can’t ask you to do that for me,” I said. “It was one thing to put myself under, but—”
“I’ll go, too,” Coronis added. “We were both there. Perhaps with two sets of eyes, we can learn the truth.”
“No, it’s too much. You just told me ten minutes ago that you never wanted to visit those memories again.”
“Sweetie, stop. The sooner we figure out how to get Thoth off this island, the better for everyone.” Coronis’s eyes made a small movement to where Thessaly watched stoically. So, that little demon had confided in her after all. That was good.
“Fine,” I said, “but promise me you’ll come out if you feel any danger. Any at all.”
“We promise.”
“Or if you feel uncomfortable. Or sense—“
Coronis corralled my crazy hands. “We will, Ava. I promise.”
We switched places, and Mak and Coronis settled down side-by-side on her bed. I unscrewed the lid and held it between them. With a reassuring smile, Mak dipped his fingers inside and smeared the thick honey first on her lips, then on his own.
“It should only take a—” Mak’s eyelids slammed shut an instant before Coronis’s, and I shivered, remembering the last time I saw Coronis in this bed with empty eyes.
“And they’re off,” I said softly.
“You okay?” Aurick asked. “All things considered, I mean.”
“I don’t know. How long do you think it will take?”
But, of course, nobody knew.
We waited tensely, our entire bodies feeling as if we’d sat on them the wrong way for too long. Thessaly barely blinked.
“Maybe I should make tea,” I said standing. “They’ll probably want something warm and soothing when they get back.”
Aurick joined me in the kitchen to boil water and search for tea bags. Coronis’s mugs were like the rest of her aesthetic. Modern minimalism. I pulled out two black mugs with sleek handles and let an herbal blend steep, but I couldn’t stop drumming my fingers on the counter and glancing to the bedroom where Thessaly stood guard over their prone bodies.
“Hey, they’re going to be fine. Mak wouldn’t let Coronis do it if there was anything to fear.”
“Then why did it almost sear my face off?”
“I don’t know, but you have to start trusting your friends to help you.”
“I do. Well, I am. I’m just afraid… I don’t know.”
Aurick’s eyebrow furrowed. “Of what?”
“So many things.” I pushed away, but Aurick wrapped me in pieces. “You are a brilliant star against the dark void. Don’t ever doubt that.”
It was a beautiful sentiment, but instead, I blurted out, “So I managed to pull together my space trash!”
Thessaly gave me a single thumb up in acknowledgment from across the room.
“I think that one went over my head, but sure.”
I let him give me a kiss on the nose and brought a mug to Thessaly. She wrapped her hands around its warmth, and we settled in to wait.
Two cups later, I started to legitimately worry. I resisted peeling back their eyelids and shaking them awake, but only barely.
My own eyes began to feel like lead and my chin kept drooping. Aurick scooped me up and let me lie on his chest. I nuzzled into the crook of his arm where my head fit just so and—no! If I slept, Thoth would find me. I could not stand the thought of him speaking to me again. Not right now.
I jerked up as Coronis and Mak gasped as one, their backs lifting a foot off the bed before their eyes opened.
We rushed to them. Thessaly gave Coronis her tea, and I handed a cup to Mak. I noticed his hands were shaking, and he wouldn’t make eye contact.
“Are you both okay?” I asked.
They nodded, gulping down the warm liquid.
“Good, good.”
Still silence. I was burning to know what they’d seen. Finally, I couldn’t take it. “Was I there? What was I doing?” I waited, unsure why neither would speak. “Please, just tell me what you saw.”
“Ava…” Coronis broke off, her voice strangled as if she were on the verge of tears.
“What? Don’t hold back. I can take it.”
She avoided my eyes. “It was you. You helped Thoth escape.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
“No. Absolutely not. I hate the gods.”
Coronis still wouldn’t meet my eyes. “You fought on the side of the gods. I saw it. I remember now.”
My fingers tightened automatically around Aurick’s. “That’s impossible.”
“You dragged Thoth here to Aradia. I watched you put his body under the basilica in the crypt. Aradia rumbled, but you laughed at the island. You laughed and then you… collapsed.”
Coronis was saying words, but they were so ridiculous, I couldn’t take her seriously. Me? I hated Thoth and all he had done to me. I wanted to kill him with my bare hands. That was the plan, at least. I couldn’t imagine ever harboring anything other than antipathy for him.
“It’s true,” Mak said quietly. “You dragged him off the battlefield as the pillars crumbled. You almost drowned me in a flood.”
I blinked rapidly. “There’s no way. I was human. He made me human. I have memories.” I scrambled for the time period, catching upon the women in the Dark Ages. “Almodis, Macedonia, Blanche of Castile. Even… Jeanne! That’s right, the pirate queen. Jeanne de Clisson. It’s impossible that I would have helped…” I trailed off. No. It wasn’t impossible. It was very freaking possible.
I remembered Jeanne taking someone’s hand. When she washed up upon the shore of England after the naval battle in the Channel, after pushing her son’s body over their rowboat. She’d taken someone’s hand. To Jeanne’s mind, he had looked otherworldly. Now, I knew. He was. It must have been Thoth. He’d convinced me to go to this final battle and jump-started my memories.
But why?
Mak and Coronis shared a glance. I hated that. Just like Rosemary in the bakery, they seemed… frightened of me.
“Excuse me,” I murmured. “I need to be alone f
or a moment.”
Aurick looked as if he wanted to stop me, but I shook my head and staggered outside into the starlit night. For the first time ever, Aradia didn’t comfort me. The smell of the sea didn’t soothe me. I felt wrecked.
I started to walk faster. Soon, my feet were pounding against the cobblestones as I ran to the crypt. Tears made my vision swim unsteadily, but my feet knew the way. Apparently better than anyone here.
The basilica’s gold dome glittered in the moonlight. I ran down the nave, my hands skimming the tops of the pews, until I yanked open the crypt. Nothing would keep me from understanding. Not even a god.
I burst into his tomb and shook with rage. I was hot magma, rising on the wings of heat clouds, ready to blow. “You’re going to speak to me, you bastard. Show yourself!”
I stared at his body on a slab and knew it for what it truly was. A monster.
“Show yourself,” I demanded again, the words falling like memories from my lips. I had asked him this before. Many times. He never failed to show.
Thoth’s physical body didn’t move, but suddenly, he was there, next to me. And when he spoke, his voice was as silky as ever.
“You never could stay away, little wolf. We are destined, you and me.”
“How are you doing this?” I asked. I knew he was gaining strength, but did that mean he’d grow powerful enough to wake?
“It’s nothing more than skillful legerdemain.” He paused in his circuit. “All thanks to you, of course.”
“What did I do?”
“You came back to Aradia. I could feel your presence the moment you answered the call.”
“It was my idiot assistant who answered the call, not me.”
“And you allowed your boys to come to Aradia.”
“Once again, no. Nonna brought them. She was trying to make me feel better.”
Thoth waited, a small smile playing at his cheeks.
“What did you do to me as Jeanne?” I snapped.
“Ah, so you remember.”
“Tell me,” I gritted, refusing to turn in circles for his pleasure. I was no dog. Not anymore, at least.
“I have nothing to hide,” the god said. “It is simple. I needed you. The war was dragging and we were losing to a bunch of supernatural beasts. So I found you, as I always do. As I always will.”
My eyes narrowed at his description of my friends.
“So you thought I would help you?”
“No. I knew you would help me, and I was right. But the task of secreting me here to Aradia proved too much for that incarnation. Mortal bodies are quite susceptible to many ailments, wouldn’t you say?”
“I would never help you willingly.”
“And yet, you did.”
“No,” I swore.
Thoth’s laugh was rumbling. “Why is it so hard to believe that, in some of those past lives, you loved me? That we fought together willingly? Look into your memories! Your little raven friend and honeyboy already saw the truth. You not only fought for me—you held me tenderly as I lay wounded on the grand field of battle. You enveloped me in your chaos and brought me to this home for safekeeping. Until a time when we would be together again.”
“You must have tricked me. You always do.”
“I gave you what you wanted. After Jeanne, did you not become queen of France? Were you not powerful? Were you not the very thing that Jeanne had wanted more than anything?”
Thoth laughed softly at my sharp intake of breath. “Yes, I’m speaking of Blanche, of Catherine de’ Medici, of Maria. Most of them powerful and cunning and completely devoted to me. If you dared to look, you would see the times you warmed my bed during their lives. You have loved me more than you have hated me.”
“This is not one of those lives, I assure you.”
Thoth moved close enough for me to see his face in its porcelain perfection, but I didn’t flinch. Not even at his words. “It’s hard coming to terms with one’s true self, is it not?” he murmured.
“I will still kill you.”
“I look forward to your attempts. They’ve always amused me.”
“So I’m a toy to you?”
“You are so much more.” Thoth caressed the side of my face and down my shoulder before curling his finger into my palm. “It’s all there, you know. Your true life. All of these other memories, these lives you think you’ve lived, none can compare to your true life. You are a palimpsest with layers over what is real. The traces remain, if you’re willing to look.”
Manaus, Brazil
July, 1876
Unknown Explorer
The jungle was alive.
It could never be silent, this living, breathing space. I laid on the ground, my jodhpurs streaked with thick, man-sucking mud and my pith helmet long gone, stolen by a curious monkey. All I wanted was to die.
Please. I want to die. I can try again in my next life.
The fever had set in a few days ago. If I had a mirror, I would surely see the yellow streaks on the whites of my eyes. Yellow fever would take a week to kill me. I didn’t want to wait.
I’d already lost my rifle to quicksand. Would I have the strength to use a vine dangling from a ceiba tree? I hardly needed to suffer just to suffer. Better to make it quick.
Mosquitos buzzed their incessant song in my ear, and I wearily waved them away until even that was too much. The sweet smell of my sweat drew them in hordes, and by the grace of God, the creatures knew in their bones my death was near. Which of them would creep forward first?
I had refused to marry. Refused to bear children. For some reason, Thoth, the god who made me, had kept his promise. I knew about magic for the last few reincarnations. Sometimes I didn’t understand it or rebelled against it, but I always knew the truth. I was cursed. Doomed. And so I traveled. I ran with the bulls in Pamplona. I explored the ruins of Ephesus and Didyma. I even trekked to the interior of Mongolia and watched golden eagles soar from the gloves of their handlers. Only to die alone in a forsaken jungle.
“I know you’re there,” I coughed into my fist. “Show yourself.”
The air rippled. He stood, not quite real, but there all the same. The turn of his mouth was more familiar to me than my own.
I coughed again, blood staining the goatskin gloves meant to keep the insects at bay. “Are you satisfied? Is it enough yet?”
“Whatever do you mean, little wolf?” His teeth were pointedly white, and I grimaced against their brightness under the darkening jungle canopy.
“You got all the pleasure you wanted from me. You watched me fail again and again. You watched me die a dozen different times in a dozen different ways. Enough.”
“After what you did, only I say when it is enough.”
“I helped you,” I snarled back. “We had an arrangement. From my position, it is you who reneged on me.”
“From my position,” he countered, “you don’t seem to be in any position to argue.” The toe of his sandaled foot pressed into my sore stomach, twisted by the disease that would kill this body.
It was enough. I let my face grimace in real pain before quietly sending magic seeping into the soles of his feet.
Thoth continued, unaware, uncorking a small flask. “You were ignorant of your abilities in previous reincarnations. It can hardly be my fault that three lifetimes as queen of France wasn’t good enough for you. And whatever it was you made of this one.” His lifted eyebrow of derision made me push harder.
Thoth felt it at the moment it was too late. The god’s eyes showed real fear for once. “Stop it.”
I wrapped my arms around him, pinning him to my touch. Perhaps I didn’t have to die yet. Perhaps I could do something still.
“I said, stop it. What are you doing?” Thoth snapped.
It was dangerous, making him fearful. He could retaliate in ways I couldn’t even begin to comprehend. But it was also dangerous for him to be so transparent. Because it gave me hope. “I thought that was obvious,” I gritted, using the last of my res
erves. “I am hurting you.”
Thoth screamed as he flung the contents of the flask over me, a gurgle in his throat as he was forced back into stasis on Aradia, while I died with the ghost of a smile on my lips, forgetfulness already coursing through my veins.
I still scared him. After all these years, I could still make him fear me.
My eyes blinked open in the crypt. I was alone on the ground, and Thoth was still lying on the slab. Whether he was asleep or in stasis, I had no idea, but his voice was in my mind.
“That wasn’t a very nice trick,” he said
“Because you didn’t want me to see that life? What? Did the little wolf scare the big, bad bird-god?”
Thoth didn’t answer my taunts.
“What was that in your hands?” I asked suddenly. “The bottle?”
Thoth’s voice boomed before I could finish my thought. “You can’t keep me in stasis forever. We are tied, you and me. With your magic, comes mine. The stronger you get, the stronger I get.”
I stood shakily and made my way to the door. “I think you’ll find my days of believing every word from your mouth are over.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
The morning streaked gold and pink veins across the early morning sky as I staggered out of the basilica. Thoth had stolen the knowledge of my true self, but it was coming back, whether he wanted it to or not.
Too many pieces clicked into place. In exchange for helping Thoth during the Archon Wars, he’d granted me knowledge of my magic. Blanche of Castile and Catherine de Medici used it. Maria Leszczyńska did not. The unnamed jungle explorer tried to run from it. Gladys Presley, Elvis’s mother, had no idea. The god took it away after my stunt in the Brazilian rainforest. And me? Of course I had no idea. Until now, when I knew too much.
So what would it be? I had knowledge. I had tried a million different ways of ignoring the curse, using the curse, and attempting to outwit the curse before falling back into the curse. None had worked.