by Heloise Hull
“What happens if some gets in her mouth?” I whispered.
“I have no idea. Why?”
“Too late,” I said as some dribbled past her lips. For a moment, we both waited to see if anything would happen. Then—
It was black. Night. The air smelled of horses and hay. I was lying on a mound of it. The hay was sickly sweet and scratched at my bare arms. I struggled to my feet, sliding on the slippery straw. “Coronis? Rosemary?” I called softly. From the low whickers and snorting, I guessed I was in a barn. When no one answered, I started to worry.
What had Mak given me? He’d said something about giving insight. What did straw and horses have to do with insight?
Voices erupted to my right. I dove into the nearest stall and peeked over the edge. A spear of light illuminated the barn as a man entered wearing a short, white chiton. He was brilliant, coated in a golden glow, with laurel leaves in a circlet around his forehead. He had a bow slung across his back and some type of musical instrument tucked in the rope around his waist. A white crow sat on his shoulder. They seemed to be communicating.
Was this… could it really be… Apollo?
He certainly looked divine. His long, aristocratic nose and high cheekbones seemed impossible, but they fit his sculpted face well. Thick, golden hair hung in curls, but there was something terrifying about his gaze, something inhumane.
I shrunk back in my stall, begging the palomino not to give me away. I mentally promised her an apple or carrot if she kept quiet.
Suddenly, Apollo bathed the entire barn in the same golden light that emanated from his body. The horses whinnied and reared, kicking their hooves at their stall doors. I panicked, knowing he was about to find me, but Apollo was focused on one thing. A mortal couple curled in each other’s arms. The girl was young. She dressed like Thessaly in a pale pink chiton that matched the rose-colored blush of her cheeks. Her lover hurriedly tucked himself back into his own, shorter chiton of deep blue. When he saw the god, he blanched. By the looks of it, the girl was very, very pregnant, and I knew instantly who she was. Coronis. The original. The princess.
Apollo’s face twisted in rage. He pulled his bow and strung an arrow as the princess ran to him, tugging on his arm. “Please, Light of the Sun, have mercy! I never see you. I thought you had abandoned me. I thought I was all alone to raise our child. I cried to Ischys one day, and he comforted me.” The princess began to sob. “I thought I’d never see you again! That you had grown weary of me. Please, my lord! Have mercy, please!”
Apollo shoved her off, and she fell to the ground. His mouth was a thin line as he took aim at Ischys. The arrow went straight through his mortal heart. The princess screamed and fainted, which was probably for the best.
I squeezed my eyes shut and turned my head into the warm palomino mare, flinching when I heard two more thuds of arrows finding their marks.
Then, the god of light and healing, of music and divination, of plagues and death, screamed. My eyes shot open. It was a never-ending scream of despair and rage, and it lit up the barn again with its passion. His gaze was so intense, it scorched everything in its path.
He turned that gaze on the crow, now cowering in the rafters. “You who told me. Get down here.”
The white raven dropped to the ground, and as it descended, Apollo scorched it black with his gaze. “Your kind will forever wear the mark of my displeasure. You will be branded for eternity by the darkness of your feathers.”
The black raven cawed and writhed in agony on straw before the god.
Apollo turned to the bodies. The princess’s blonde hair was arranged like a halo around her head. If it wasn’t for the blood dribbling down her chin and the two arrows in her heart, she would’ve appeared peaceful. Even from my distance, I could see her distended stomach where the baby was kicking in her womb.
Apollo scooped up the princess, her head lolling against his shoulder, and carried her outside. Carefully, he began to build a funeral pyre, pouring myrrh over the princess’s body. With a sudden moan, he pulled a knife from his tunic and sliced her belly, plunging his hands inside to search for the babe. He hauled it out, cutting the cord and clutching his son to his chest, his once-white tunic now smeared with royal blood.
I had just witnessed the birth of Asclepius. And it was all I could do not to vomit.
Apollo set fire to the pyre with a single command and flew to the heavens, his son’s newborn mewls disappearing in the wind.
I staggered to the pyre, the heat already blistering my skin. The myrrh was no match for the smell of searing flesh. I needed fresh air. I needed to get home. But how would this help my Coronis? How would this heal her? Where was the raven? Could it give me answers?
“Raven!” I flung the barn doors open. “Raven!”
I searched all over the barn, keeping a wide distance from the stiffening body of Ischys. At least it had been quick. At least he hadn’t suffered. I had a feeling Apollo didn’t always let his enemies die so easily.
I soared past the last stall—and did a double take. A naked woman was curled on her side, hay sticking to her ice white hair. Ice white hair that I knew very well. Things weren’t computing. At least, not fast enough.
I tried searching my memory of that first conversation in the basilica. I had asked if her parents had named her after the princess. What had Coronis said?
Something like that.
Oh, my poor friend. She had taken the princess’s name to what? Eternally punish herself? No wonder she hadn’t wanted to spill her heart and soul to a virtual stranger. Just as the realization hit, the scene faded. I ran to comfort her, but the magic dissolved and I was back in the present, my back on the ground.
Rosemary squeaked. “Ava, please tell me you’re okay?”
I nodded, bringing myself to sit with my head pounding in my hands. “I saw Coronis. Coronis was there. But… Do you know her story?”
“Bits and pieces. Why does that matter? Do you know how to wake her?” Rosemary’s eyes were as wide and scared as the palomino in the stall.
We heard a gasp, and Coronis’s back lifted off the bed and her eyes shot open. She coughed into her fist, a wisp of gray smoke emerging from her mouth and flying through the open window.
We rushed to her side, patting her back as she cleared her lungs of whatever was inhabiting her. “Coronis, do you know what happened?” I asked.
Coronis took a glass of water from Rosemary and gulped it down. “Mages. They attacked the boys, but I managed to set off the fire alarms and send you a message before they spelled me.”
A splash of cold fear doused me completely at her words. It felt like a vise had gripped my heart.
“I killed one, but the other two got away,” Coronis continued. “It will be a while before they try again. They weren’t expecting someone like me.”
“Still, we’ll need more reinforcements,” Rosemary concluded.
“No, I have to go get the boys.” I stood abruptly. “They need me. I need to bring them here.”
“Darling, I know what you’re thinking, but they’re safer where they are. We found something else about Thoth while you were gone.”
“What?”
“The boys can’t come to Aradia. Not now, not ever.”
I jerked back, as if the funeral pyre flames were still burning me. “What do you mean?”
The women exchanged sorrowful glances. Coronis coughed a few more times while Rosemary explained. “They’ll trigger his rebirth. The dying god will finally wake.”
“My boys? How can that be? It doesn’t make any sense.”
Rosemary took my hand between hers, and I had to force myself not to jerk away. To leap up and shout that they knew nothing. I was still reeling from witnessing Coronis’s origin story without her permission—and now this?
Rosemary pulled an ancient manuscript from the shelf. “I found this in the basilica the other day. We’ve been taking turns between the boys and Thoth. On my visits, I check out old manuscripts and s
crolls. It’s been a long time since anyone has been inside and I thought… well it doesn’t matter. Look what I did find.” She gestured to a spot on an illuminated page. The illustration was of two little babies nursing from a wolf. My body tensed as I scanned it.
Whoever had written this centuries ago had left instructions on how to wake Thoth. There were a few different options, but I only had eyes for one. The She-Wolf’s fate, my fate, was to breed powerful entities, powerful enough to wake a god.
I was on a hamster wheel, spinning the same days over and over, no matter the century. And one of those days, one of my lives, I would wake Thoth. I couldn’t let this be the one. Or any of my next lives, although that was a little more complicated to think about.
Rosemary’s voice was quiet. “If your sons come here to Aradia, they will raise a new empire. They will help the gods return. And they will ruin ours in return.”
Chapter Fourteen
How could my boys trigger the god? I was reeling. How could they not? I already knew it was true in my heart. All of those past lives, all of those twins. Fated to die, fated to raise empires soaked in blood. War would follow them here. It seemed supremely unfair.
Rosemary helped Coronis to her feet and gave her a fierce hug. “I’m so glad you’re back. I’ll understand if you need some rest, but I’d love to see you at dinner tonight.”
Coronis smoothed her icy white hair. It was like staring at the crow before and the crow after. It made too much sense.
“That sounds nice. I’d like to get back to some normalcy. And it seems we have to thank Mak, as well.”
“Yes, we do,” Rosemary said, showing herself to the door. “Ava, are you coming?”
I blinked a few times and swallowed roughly. “Yes, I’ll be there in a moment, but I wanted to ask Coronis a question first.”
“Okay, darling. If you’re sure.”
“I’ll meet you at Nonna’s,” I promised. I wished Mak would have told me what to expect. That seemed like a side effect that needed a warning label. Or three labels and a signed waiver.
As the door shut behind Rosemary, I squared myself to Coronis and sank to my knees. “You saved my boys’ lives. Thank you. Thank you.”
Coronis fluttered her eyes in embarrassment. “Oh, come now. I would again. You’re like family to me.”
I smiled, but it was small. That vision with the honey… it had felt so personal. I doubted that she’d ever told anyone before, not even Rosemary. And I’d intruded on it. “Before we go on, I need to tell you something.”
Coronis cocked her head at me. “This sounds serious.”
“It might be. Mak gave me this jar of honey.” I handed it to her, and by the look on her face, she knew exactly what had happened. Without meaning to, I had completely betrayed her trust.
“You saw it.”
I nodded. “Apollo, Princess Coronis, her lover. The baby.” I swallowed. “You.”
Coronis was silent for a moment. “You know, I always thought it would feel different when someone finally uncovered my secret.”
“Coronis, I’m so sorry. We came in and found you unconscious. I had no clue it would show me your past. I still don’t understand how it woke you.”
“It was a memory trigger. Strong herb magic that resonates across blood barriers. It’s my most painful memory, so it triggered me to wake.”
“You looked dead. For a horrible second, I thought you were.”
“I was closer than most people would prefer.” Coronis’s blue eyes were bright with unshed tears. “Do you want to know the rest?”
“No, it’s fine. You don’t need to explain a thing,” I began, but she hushed me.
“I want to. You see, no one else in the history of the world knows. Not anymore. It makes me feel a little invisible, but you make me feel seen.”
My heart swelled. “Of course, I want to know. I just didn’t want to make you uncomfortable.”
“After Apollo scorched me, I flew away to live in seclusion in a cave, and I changed my name to Coronis to honor the princess. Centuries later, I sat at the feet of the babe, Asclepius, and learned herb lore and healing from him. It was Asclepius who gifted me healing powers during the Archon Wars, but still I refused to side with the gods. I will never forgive Apollo for what he did to the princess. The minute he slayed her, he realized she was gone forever. Mortal and dead. Of course, he regretted his actions, but that’s the gods. Too powerful for their own good.”
We were both quiet for a few minutes. Then, “Funny. I never actually saw Asclepius born. I was transforming in the barn for the first time. Some remnant of Apollo’s scorching anger must have done it. It hurt so much and I… I laid there for a long time. Ischys’s father found me. I remember running, half-falling as he pursued me. I didn’t yet know how to walk very well and he caught me. It took me weeks to figure out how to shift back into a crow and escape through a window.”
She broke off, and I didn’t push her. Besides Apollo, I was officially the only person to have witnessed the birth of the god of healing. What a weird feeling.
“Let’s change the subject. I don’t need to know what I can already see on your face. Whatever happened was brutal.”
“Men haven’t changed much in two thousand years, eh?”
A thought struck me. “Is that why you haven’t married?”
“Let’s just say the whole experience made me wary of relationships.”
“That’s a long time to go without getting any.”
Coronis finally laughed at that. “I never said I was celibate. Only that I avoid long-term commitments.”
“Wow. You’re a total commitment-phobe,” I teased. I suddenly wondered if she’d been in love with the princess, but that was not my place. She’d tell me if she wanted to. “Last question: How certain are you about my boys?”
“Ava, I’m very certain. Bringing them here will end the world as we know it.”
I could hear the bitterness seeping into my voice, flavored like anise and cherry-hued Campari, but I couldn’t stop it. “So I have to choose between keeping them safe by my side where I can protect them or possibly triggering a second godly war?”
“That’s not the only two choices. We have ways to keep them safe. I just did,” she reminded me gently.
“And went into a coma where I had to mine your most agonizing memories to wake you! That doesn’t exactly scream making it work.”
“We’ll figure out something better. Now that we know what sort of attacks are going to happen, we can put more safeguards in place. Ava, please don’t do anything rash.”
“Rash? Since when am I rash?”
Coronis blinked at me owlishly.
“If you’re referring to the time I ran into a necromancer’s apartment alone because I saw a ghost—”
“Or un-cursed a demon siren or went on a date with a mummy before you knew what he was or—”
“Okay, I get the picture,” I grumbled. She didn’t know the half of it. Like how I’d incanted the Emerald Tablets and saw the Wandering Goddess or when I touched Thoth to receive my powers. Or spoken to that creature under the Arch. “I solemnly swear not to do anything rash. But I’m not going to leave my boys as sitting ducks. What if someone else knows about this prophecy and about Thoth?”
“No one knows about Thoth. We didn’t even know and we live here. I wouldn’t worry about that. At most, the mages wanted the boys to rise their own empire.”
“Not helping!”
Coronis walked over to a drawer in her nightstand. Everything was immaculately ordered, including a pen, a notebook, and a small book of poems: Metamorphoses by the Roman poet Ovid. She pulled out a glowing lantern. It had stars and crescent moons punched into its side to let the light pass. Coronis took it by the bronze ring and offered it to me.
I held out my hands and let her open the metal door. Upon closer inspection, it pulsed with an eerie, inner energy, like a living piece of opal. Clouds swirled, clearing as if after a thunderstorm. I saw a
dark room. It was small with a set of bunk beds. The boys’ dorm.
“Is this how you watch them?”
Coronis nodded. “Only if it pulses red.”
“Does it pulse often?”
“No. That was the first time.”
I probably should have felt guilt. Guilt that others had to watch my sons for me, guilt that I couldn’t do it as well, and even guilt that I was taking something from the boys. They went to college thinking they were going to have freedom and privacy for the first time in their lives, that they were on the way to growing up. Mostly, though, I just felt relieved. They couldn't be mad if they were dead.
“They are safe as long as I am alive.” Coronis put a fist over heart. “I swear it.”
“I can’t ask you to put your life on the line continually for kids you’ve never even met.”
“It’s true that I’ve never met them and that I’ve never had children of my own, so you might argue that I couldn’t possibly understand. Not truly. But seeing that curse in the basilica, knowing you are somehow the key to all of this fuels my desire to stop whatever powerful factions want to undermine our peace and authority. In fact, I think we should take a trip. An information-gathering one. We’ll figure out a way to break this curse. All of it.”
“Where do we go?” I asked, my interest piqued and my heart happy from her sincerity.
“The ancient Library of Alexandria, of course.”
Chapter Fifteen
I made Coronis a cup of tea, and we sat staring at each other across the steam. “I can’t stay long. I promised Nonna I’d have lunch with her. We came to invite you, but I can tell her you’re not up for it.”
“Please do.”
“And we were supposed to go to Marco’s for apertivo hour and dinner tonight, but that all feels wrong after everything that’s happened. Also, I—”
Coronis reached across the table and took my hands in hers. “Ava, you’re rambling. Life is but a contradiction. Supernaturals learned to embrace that long ago. Why deny yourself the simple pleasures of being alive merely because something bad may happen later? Enjoy your lunch, enjoy being back, and I will meet you tonight for apertivo hour.”