by Heloise Hull
I couldn’t let that happen.
Once again, the rage began to boil, and I didn’t try to stop it. It was the only thing I had. Perhaps Tiberius was right. Nibiru was nothing more than an illusion, and if so, my chaos magic could destroy the veil and show me the way out.
I kindled my anger like a fire, stoking and feeding it until it would help me burn it all to the ground. I thought about my rashness, my overconfidence, my mistakes. All the things that led me here. I used them as fuel. The rage built in my chest, the magic curling in vapors around my hands. Then I unleashed it on the world around me.
I expected destruction and mayhem. Instead, the sky opened up and a sheet of rain poured down on my head. It drenched my hair and gushed from the end of my nose like a rain spout. I sputtered and coughed as the world around me bloomed to life in the cool waters, almost mocking my intention to destroy it. Of course, my chaos would abandon me when I needed it most.
I was a mess. Too much history and too many magics. A palimpsest, Thoth had called me. And I had no way to control it. Not alone, not without any help.
I slumped to the ground, truly defeated. What chance did I have of escaping? Thoth had spent centuries here without finding a way out. I didn’t have that luxury. My friends and family probably didn’t have a week.
Thoth had been reborn. Tiberius was gone. I was alone. Dry sobs wracked my body, again.
And that’s when I saw it. A familiar face with blue hair and Tyrrhenian purple eyes peering over a blackened and drenched hedge.
“Thessaly?” I called, my voice hoarse from smoke and flame.
Her mouth was set in a firm line, and she seemed like she was breathing hard. But she had come.
“Need some help, godling?”
The Epic Conclusion Coming This Summer!
Thank you for continuing your journey! I hope you enjoyed your third ticket to Aradia. If so, please consider leaving a review on Amazon. You’re inundated with pleas for this all of the time, but it’s for a good reason, I promise! Your thoughts and words help other readers find new favorites and help me continue to write. They’re extremely important.
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Coming Fall 2021!
The Bare King
The Hades and Persephone Duet: Book 1
After fifteen-hundred years of silence, my wife sends me a single message, “Help me, Hades.” I learned long ago not to trust Persephone, though. If we were mortals, we would have divorced a thousand times over.
Once, her large, liquid eyes mirrored pools of purity. Now I know that they always were tainted at the root. Every word from her pomegranate-stained lips is a lie, and I can’t afford to listen to her deceit. I am engaged in a battle for my realm and for every demon’s existence. My people come first.
Yet, I never could resist her, and as she rots in my dungeon, the old temptations arise. Persephone claims she can help. She probably could, but she’ll want something in return. Something I’ll be unlikely to want to give.
That’s why she cannot stay. Eventually, Persephone always gets what she wants.
Indulge in this new twist on the Hades and Persephone myth where the attraction and the grudges are as ancient as the gods. An intense romance that will conclude with The Dread Queen. Perfect for fans who want C.N. Crawford to have a baby with K.F. Breene.
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Read ahead for a sneak peak at the prologue of Book 4: Making Midlife Marvels…
Making Midlife Marvels
Prologue
Egypt before Man
The flames of flickering reed torches barely touched the blackness of the temple. My bejeweled sandals echoed loudly on the mosaic floors of cerulean lapis and blood red marble. Deep, lacquered and fragrant wood from the cedar forests of the east lined the coffered ceilings, and Thoth’s own wedge of sacred Ibis stood at attention down the hypostyle hall. Their long, sharp beaks terminated in a wicked curve that made my stomach curl unpleasantly, but they only watched, carbon copies of his own aloofness.
Thoth himself strode in front of me. As the official advisor to our lord, Ra, nothing happened in the land—or any other land for that matter—without Thoth knowing. The same, however, could not be said for me. I honestly had no idea what was about to happen. It was true that I had begun to shun my husband Shu, but what consequence was that to Ra? Shu had failed him. We were outcasts in the court’s eyes. And I would not forgive Shu his crimes, either.
“Are you nervous, Tefnut?” Thoth murmured softly. He was hard to read. At times, he seemed enamored by me, shyly asking if he could accompany me on a walk through rainy fields of newly-sprouted green barley. During those times, he seemed like a child, a boy I needed to hold and assure. It was the other times, the times when I saw the calculations speeding through his mind faster than an abacus, that I wondered if the shyness was also an act.
“Yes, I freely admit I am. What is going on? Is Ra displeased?”
Thoth grimaced. “He is unhappy about the Demon Days business, but what’s done is done.”
“Thank you for that,” I murmured. “I know you had no small part in helping my daughter give birth.”
“It was nothing.”
“It was a gamble with Khonsu,” I said darkly, picturing the bloodthirsty god with moonlight for armor. “Nothing is assured where he is concerned.”
Thoth expertly maneuvered around the praise. “How is Nut?”
I trilled happily for a moment, thinking of my daughter. She was the sky, and my son Geb, her husband, was the earth. It was because of this that they had to stay apart. When they embraced, there was nowhere for anyone else to be. The sky met the earth in divine love and shoved out the rest of us. That was before Ra’s maker of prophecies revealed their children would overthrow him. So it was decreed that Shu would keep them apart forever. And he did, his loyalty to Ra absolute over his loyalty to me and our children.
Until Thoth gambled for those five extra days and Nut gave birth to five more gods. I stayed with her, dotting her head with cool dew drops and breathing soothing, rainstorm air on her heat-slicked body. Five beautiful little gods, one born on every extra day.
But Ra could hardly count that as betrayal. If anyone should be punished, it should be Thoth. I wondered how he had escaped divine justice, and I wondered why I never wondered that until now.
Carefully, I answered, “Nut wishes she could be with her children and frets over them. She misses Geb, but I am allowed to visit, for which I am eternally grateful.”
Thoth nodded once, taking my small thanks in stride. We were nearing the inner sanctuary. Suddenly, he paused. When I glanced at him, his eyes were alight with fire.
“Thoth?”
“What do you wish to be?” he asked.
I shifted uncomfortably. “Be? Whatever do you mean?”
“A mother, surely.”
“Yes,” I allowed. “I enjoy my children.”
“For whom?” he asked more urgently.
“These are not questions I’m comfortable answering to you, Thoth.”
His face was hurt. “Why?”
“Leave it be.”
Thoth met my gaze for a moment longer. I thought I heard a deep sigh as he pushed through the ivory and bone doors, and we marched into Ra’s inner sanctum. Cavernous braziers roared at the edges of the known world. The sun god was difficult to look at, even for me, his daughter. His lambent skin, his bronzed hair, the light came from within and beamed to all corners of the earth.
Ra sat on a dais of obsidian, surrounded by none. Thoth took his customary place at the foot. How could he bear the forge-like temperatures?
Ra rapped his scepter of myrrh wood and stood. He had already set for the day and was nearing his nightly death. His face drooped, its shine less bright. I found I could blink away the blind spots fairly easily.
But that didn’t explain what I was doing here.
Gently, with Thoth’s help, Ra dismounte
d the smooth dais and took three steps to me. We had no audience. Only the crackling flames kept time.
Ra didn’t utter a word. When I opened my mouth to explain something, anything, I could not speak. Fearfully, I tossed my head, begging Thoth to tell me what to do. He always knew what to do.
When Ra placed his wizened hands on my shoulders, I flinched. With the wiry strength of the sun, he squeezed and turned me around. Moving quickly, he shifted down to press his palms on my shoulder blades. Where he touched, hot pain seared against my skin. I gritted my teeth, refusing to cry out in agony.
Oh, but I was burning.
Once, I’d watched the Greek Titans punish their father, Ouranos, for imprisoning them. After they castrated him with a sickle, they whipped him, and I remembered watching the expert way the whip struck his arms, his back, his legs. His golden blood poured from wounds that healed an instant later, the whip singing through the air just in time to strike the pink flesh. Not once did Ouranos cry out.
The Titans invited gods from afar to watch their spectacle. Ra said they were trying to send a message and cement political ties for their fragile, new-found power. He sniffed his disapproval, and we left the merrymaking halls of Mount Othrys before the feast. Now, I almost wished for an audience. See how my own father tries to degenerate me? See how he fails?
I felt Ra’s thumb press against my back and the heat tapered off. There was no coolness to balm my wounds, and I dared not summon any rain in the temple of Ra, but at least I wasn’t on fire anymore. He stepped away and brought me a polished mirror. I didn’t want to look, but his face brooked no disagreement. There. Black tattoos winged around my shoulder blades, the rivulets still smoking from where Ra had bestowed them on me.
His Left Eye. His Right Eye.
Chaos and Order.
Everything inside of me demanded to scream. To rip my hair and clothes and cry that it couldn’t be. So this was my punishment? It was not my fault! My heirs were destined to overthrow Ra. That was the prophecy. As much as Thoth whispered to Ra, no one escapes destiny. All Ra had left was his fury at losing, and he passed that fury to me.
Ra’s voice was wispy and faint as if the ritual had taken more than his energy. As if it had taken parts of his very soul. “We welcome a new Eye,” he announced. “Rage across the arid lands, my daughter.”
My body burned, bristling with unrestrained chaos as I looked to Thoth. Even from this distance across the hall, I could see his grim smile of approval. Everyone else saw the smart, quiet advisor, the problem-solver, the lord of wisdom. I saw deeper. I saw the cunning crocodile teeth hidden beneath the surface of the water.
Of course I saw them. I was the water, after all.
The question remained. Why did Thoth want me to become the Eye of Ra? What did he gain? For Thoth never did a thing without a gain in return.
I took one look at the hall, the acanthus columns, the braziers sparking with cassia incense, and I let the chaos consume me.
What I mean to say is, I ran. And I didn’t look back.
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Afterword
I would never leave you hanging without a quick note on the history woven between Ava’s story!
If you follow me on Facebook (you do, don’t you?), I posted about Blanche of Castile when I was doing my research for her chapter. According to her dude biographer, she supposedly had an affair some decades after her husband’s death while she sought the throne for her son, Louis. But the date is “obviously wrong” because she would have been forty-eight and that’s simply too old to be beautiful. Insert massive eye roll. And for you history buffs out there… I am so sorry I added two centuries to Blanche’s real lifetime in 1228. It’s not a typo. It’s just how the story needed to be told, so that Ava understood her powers after the Archon Wars fighting as Jeanne.
But, the whole thing about only prostitutes wear red lipstick in Macedonia’s chapter is totally historical. Prostitutes in ancient Greece could be fined for going without it as they were thought to be trying to hoodwink men by pretending to be “real” ladies.
If you’re curious about Theodora or the Nika Riots, she’s a cool one who also suffered from dude biographers. Macedonia was also real, however, it is unknown if she had children. I took a little artistic liberty there as well. The Blue and Green factions are even crazier than I wrote in this small space. Think modern football leagues that wield political power. Seriously.
Indeed, Ra had many Eyes. From Bastet, the cat goddess, to Sekhmet, to Tefnut, his daughters were chaos. Women were chaos. These myths clearly show the fear unrestrained women presented, even as far back as ancient Egypt. The whole concept about women behaving like cats dates back to this time as well. There’s an instruction book from Graeco-Roman times that tells men that women will be calm cats if treated well, but raging lionesses if they don’t get what they want. Insert a second massive eye roll and check out the link here on pg. 135: Handbook of Egyptian Mythology
If you’d like more information on the Festival of Drunkenness, check out this article: Sex and booze figured in Egyptian rites
Here’s information on the Wandering Goddess: On the Heels of the Wandering Goddess: The Myth and the Festival at the Temples of the Wadi el-Hallel and Dendera
And less scholarly, but still fun on how Tefnut ended up getting both the Left and Right Eye of Ra: Egyptian Gods: Tefnut Seriously, people. I barely made any of this stuff up!
Caterina Sforza was just as badass as her character in The Borgias, so watching Netflix was totally research. She did indeed dabble in alchemy near the end of her life, as well, and there is a book of her experiments: Caterina Sforza Alchemy
Thoth’s little speech about the wolves and swans? Virgil Eclogues.
Okay, a little deep dive for those that remember the bakery scene with Rosemary where Ava worries about the ways her sons might die and imagines Typhoid Fever peach ice cream. In my other life as a nonfiction textbook writer, I’ve written a few pages on (Typhoid) Mary Mallon. (She hated that nickname, so I hate to use it.) She was a cook who was never taught about proper hand washing or invisible germs and her speciality dessert was peach ice cream. Scientists think it was how she accidentally spread the disease to the handful of people she sickened. Yes. Handful. The boogeyman she was not. Rest in peace, Mary Mallon.
About the Author
Unlike her namesake of medieval infamy, Heloise doesn’t intend to have her midlife crisis in a nunnery. She’d much rather drink espresso martinis and chant in fairy rings while wearing socially questionable clothing.
In her other pen names, Heloise writes romance, nonfiction, and epic fantasy with tinges of the ancient world all thanks to dual degrees in archaeology and Classics. She splits her time between St. Louis and Chicago with her husband, two kids, and two cats, but is plotting how to bring in a puppy.