by Heloise Hull
“Ava!”
“Ava, where are you?”
We broke apart, looking as guilty as my teens with their bedroom door closed and a girl inside. I went to the window and threw it open to see both Rosemary and Coronis calling my name in the street, their hands cupped around their mouths.
“What’s going on?” I waved.
They both looked up. If they were surprised by my presence inside Luca’s apartment, they didn’t let it show. “There you are!” Rosemary cried, relief suffusing her voice. “I’m sorry to interrupt you, but Thessaly needs us.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
I made my apologies to Luca, saying a friend needed me. Not exactly a lie, but definitely a stretch. Then I promised to reschedule—Another date? Yes, please!—and sprinted out of his apartment. The moment we turned the corner, I let Rosemary carry me to the ocean as a harpy.
“You are a strong, independent woman,” I kept muttering to myself, over and over. “One amazing kiss will not undo you. Two might, though, so watch it.”
“What are you saying?” Rosemary called over the wind.
“Nothing!”
They’d already given me a sideways look when I came outside, my hair mussed and my lips swollen.
Rosemary gently lowered me onto Thessaly’s rock, but I still slipped and had to catch myself.
Coronis shifted back into a human and joined us, her black feathers morphing into her ice white bob. “Sorry, darling. I hope we didn’t disturb you and Luca?”
“It’s fine,” I said, feeling my cheeks grow warm. “He let me use his phone.”
“Of course, he did.”
“No, really. I finally got through to my boys, too.”
“Darling, that’s wonderful! I hope they’re both well?”
I nodded, the warmth now spreading through my body at the thought of them. I was so glad they had each other. At least they wouldn’t have to go through life alone. “Okay, who’s going to tell me what’s going on?”
“Once you came out of the basilica, we realized we could get inside,” Coronis explained. “It’s possible you broke the curse Aradia was keeping over it.”
Rosemary looked thoughtful. “Or maybe it didn’t matter anymore. Once Ava got in and received her powers, what use did Aradia have keeping it locked? The island could have stopped on its own.”
“Who knows?” I said. “Either way, you got in. Then what?”
“We were able to see the old manuscripts. I mean, the really old ones. In languages we’d never seen before because they belonged to the gods.”
“So how did you read them?” I asked.
“Nonna,” they said together.
“Tiberius was able to translate enough to learn that the curse that holds Thessaly could be undone by the woman who was a wolf.”
“Do you mean like a wolf-shifter? Is there someone like that on the island?”
The women exchanged glances. I didn’t think I liked where this was going. My hand went automatically to the huge mane of hair that wouldn’t stop growing. I would have killed for this in my twenties after the boys. It had started falling out in clumps the minute I stopped nursing them and never quite recovered its luster. But now? It curled down my shoulders like I was taking super illegal Russian collagen pills.
Before I could question them further, a figure rose from the waves, and ripples expanded out around Thessaly as she broke the surface, moonlight tinting her blue hair silver.
“Have you found something?” she asked. She was trying to act unaffected, but I could feel an undercurrent of excitement. Fish swirled in the eddies around her and breached the water in their jumps.
“We have,” Coronis said tentatively.
“What are you waiting for then? Free me!”
“What are our assurances that you won’t try to kill us the moment we do?” Coronis asked reasonably.
“Because I could kill you now, yet I don’t.”
“Only because you want something.”
The siren smiled. The blue of her lips peeled back to reveal her small, sharpened teeth. “Despite what the gods wanted me to be, I am not a murderer. I have resisted for hundreds of years. All I want now is to walk on the earth, to feel the dirt between my toes, to pick a grape from the vine, and let the heat of the sun warm my skin.” She held out her forearm. “Feel me.”
I caught the other women’s eyes. She certainly sounded persuasive, and I remembered how cold she’d felt when she’d held me the last time.
Lightly, I touched her arm and instantly jerked back my hand, curling my fingers into my chest. “Your touch is ice.”
“Because my blood is sluggish. I want to feel heat again. I want to run, to dance, to sweat. Is that so wrong?”
I couldn’t imagine being trapped in the orbit of a little island in the Mediterranean, unable to get warm. It was a spectacularly unjust punishment. But it was still a punishment.
“What did you do to call the wrath of the gods?” I asked.
“What does any woman do to call the wrath of the gods?” she responded. “I fell in love.”
“With a man?” I asked.
“A mortal, yes,” Thessaly allowed. “He died centuries ago and still I pay the price.”
We all let that sit with us for a moment. If she wasn’t lying, it didn’t seem fair that Thessaly would have to pay this price for eternity since the gods were banished.
“You have to swear on the gods that you will not betray us,” Rosemary demanded.
“I swear it on the old gods and the new.”
I shrugged. “Good enough for me. What do we do next?”
“Darling, it’s what do you do next.”
Thessaly’s eyes roved up and down my body at Rosemary’s words. “Ah. Something has changed. You’ve done the impossible.”
I put a hand to my chest and I could feel my heart beat speeding up. “Me? Can you sense what it is?”
“You still do not know?” she asked. “It’s not insignificant. Use it. Use it on me.”
“I would if I knew what exactly IT is. At Luca’s, I brought his dying plant back to life. What does that make me?”
“A nurturer. But not by nature. You were never meant to be what you are. You were cursed.”
“What does that have to do with a wolf?”
“Not any wolf. You’re the She-Wolf of legend.”
“She-Wolf?” I quipped. “Any relation to She-Ra?”
Everyone stared at me confused, apparently having missed the coolest 80s show ever. “No,” Thessaly said. “She was the mythical mother of the twins Romulus and Remus. Boys fated to fight. Feral children.”
Little images floated into my mind.
Two perfect little human boys, curled around my shaggy belly, full of warm milk to keep away the chill of a Roman night in the wild-strewn seven hills. Their wriggling little bodies suckled until they slept sated. The chafing of raw nipples.
I remembered my own belly, heavy with my twins. They were constantly twisting and squirming in my womb, jockeying for position, which meant I was constantly fixated on whether they were doomed to hate each other after being so combative. Jim said I was overthinking it. That I couldn’t decide their entire future based on how often they moved in my belly. He was proud they were feisty. Maybe he was right, but he still managed to diminish my feelings on a constant basis when I needed to be supported and heard, to have my emotions validated, so I wouldn’t feel so very alone. I used to cradle my stomach and croon lullabies, promising I would love them forever.
“So, let me get this straight. You think, because I have twin boys, that I’m the mythical She-Wolf of Rome? The mother of the twins Romulus and Remus.”
“Yes,” Thessaly said, a little too matter-of-factly for my taste. Demon or not, I expected a piece of information like that to be delivered with a little more delicacy.
“First off,” I began, “my boys were wild, but hardly feral. I always made sure they washed behind their ears and put their dishes away. We had
the sex talk multiple times, not just once. They are respectful, upstanding, young men.” Sure, they got into their share of trouble. Perhaps more than their share, but that was because there were two of them. “They’re not feral,” I repeated.
“Your sons are not Romulus and Remus,” Thessaly said. “Do not worry about that. Focus on finding that nurturing energy of the mother wolf, and free me.”
Good Lord, this siren had a one-track mind. Could I not stop for a few minutes to catch my breath? How could I have been a freaking wolf thousands of years ago? I didn’t think I had any particular affinity for the moon or red meat. I guess I did enjoy steak and wild boar Bolognese more than most, but cooked. Always cooked. Okay, except for beef tartare. I got that once on my birthday at a steak house. Jim hated the texture, but I thought it was magnificent.
Oh no. I was a wolf.
“Wait.” I held up a hand. “You said something about a curse?”
“Do not bother asking me more. I have no answers. Willingly or not.”
“Let’s get this going,” Coronis snapped. “I’m freezing. And frankly, I still don’t trust you. The sooner you’re gone, the better.”
“Haughty words from a crow shifter.”
“Okay,” I stepped between them, referee-like. “What do I do?”
“It’s something to do with the moon,” Rosemary said. “You have an affinity with it due to your wolf nature—and so does the siren.”
I felt so normal, so insignificant, it was hard to imagine I was somehow harboring magic strong enough to break a god’s curse. “How did you know it was me?” I asked faintly.
Rosemary trailed a finger down my shoulder blade, and my head turned to follow. “Holy… What is that?” I asked, twisting back and forth, trying to get a better view of the huge tattoo unfurled across my upper back in intricate, gossamer lines.
“We saw that in a manuscript.”
My breath hitched. “No.”
They nodded. “And we’d noticed it the other night at apertivo hour.”
“I’ve never seen this in my life,” I promised, trying to feel the lines with my fingers. It seemed to glow in the dark. A kohl-lined eye on the left, a kohl-lined eye on the right. A cobra wrapped around a solar disc in the middle. But it didn’t make any sense. “If I’m a wolf with a moon affinity, can anyone tell me why this is a sun?”
Only the sound of the waves responded to my question.
“Great,” I muttered.
“Others will come for you,” Thessaly warned. “They may propose marriage or simply try to take what they want from you. Heirs to build the next empire.”
A deep, biting, cold fear scrabbled at my throat. “I already have twin boys. Does that mean they’re in danger?”
Coronis took a step back, the thought actually staggering her. “Yes, possibly. If anyone were to find out you already had twins, they might want to use them or kill them to breed their own children with you.”
I felt like I’d somersaulted and landed wrong on my neck. Nausea swept through me. “I need to go to them. I need to protect them.”
Rosemary and Coronis came and squeezed both of my hands. “Darling, perhaps they are safest without you nearby? Nobody knows you exist yet.”
Coronis added, “And one of us can do a spell of protection on them. To shield them from other supernatural beings ever finding them. Would that help?”
The tight feeling around my heart refused to let go. I doubted anything other than standing guard over their beds while they slept would help. But what choice did I have? I nodded my assent. “Can you do it right now?”
“As soon as we’re done here,” Coronis promised.
I rubbed my hands together, my heart beat pulsing through my body at the thought of my boys in danger.
Thessaly, however, was focused on one thing. “What are you waiting for?” she demanded.
“I don’t know. Directions, perhaps. Should I touch you or something?”
Thessaly frowned. “That doesn’t feel auspicious.”
“None of this does, sister. Here, let me touch your forehead or something.” I reached out and placed my palm on her cheek. For a second, nothing happened, then the clouds shifted and a sliver of moonlight pierced my skin, covering me in quicksilver.
I let out a scream and Thessaly’s body fused to mine. It was like touching a glacier. The solar disc blazed white hot across my back, and raw magic steamed into the night air. I thought I saw Rosemary flash into a harpy to catch me as I fell, my eyelids fluttering closed.
And then I felt nothing.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Something smelled warm.
I sniffed the air, my snout rising. I could sense the pulsing of blood beneath skin. Heat. A rabbit? Moving at a gentle lope, my distended belly swayed from my recent litter. Everything ached. My udders dripped milk, but it wasn’t enough. My pups had died one by one. If I was human, I might have thought it was divine interference. Instead, I had howled. My mournful cries echoed in the hills, but my mate never answered.
When the flood waters receded, they left behind rotted plant debris and silted muck on the banks of the hill. A fig tree rose at the edge of the water. I went closer. Caught in its roots was a wicker basket. The warmth was inside. I nosed it, shaking the contents. Screeches poured out, and while I was a predator first, I was oddly tired. So, I poked my nose inside the squirming mess. A fist grabbed me and clenched with a fierceness I wasn’t expecting.
Humans. Little brutes. So helpless and hungry. Only the maternal instinct made my body pause. The human babes could suckle and give me relief. I took the wicker handles between my teeth and trotted back to my cave.
They were voracious and as greedy as my pups should have been. I licked them for hours, pleased with this bounty, not knowing it was the gods who orchestrated it.
I didn’t understand when a shining man in robes stood before me, as feral as my mate. My hackles rose and I shrunk back, whimpering while the boys slept behind me. They were toddlers now, nourished on nuts and berries along with my milk.
The man spoke. “Maternal compassion. Ferocious violence. The She-Wolf is a slippery creature. You have always been impossible to cage. So you will embody a lupa, and I will always know where you are.”
He spat on the ground and left.
The boys woke during my transformation. They sobbed giant tears, startling a human couple walking nearby. The humans grabbed my babes to their breast and ran as I writhed on the ground. I never suckled them again. Later, after I became accustomed to walking on two feet and slipping in the shadows in my new form, I hunted them until I found their scent and the men they’d become. I watched them from afar.
Now, they bared their teeth, their feral nature forever simmering at the surface. My milk had made them ferocious opponents on and off the battlefield. I spied on them as they stormed an agora and overthrew a murderous king, proudly watching the way their swords shone in the sun, battling in rhythm with each other. And, I’d finally learned who they were. Romulus and Remus, descendants of a man named Aeneas. Two boys sent to die in that flooded wicker basket.
Still, I only watched.
Now, my boys were at war again—but with each other.
“You only saw six vultures on your hill. Twelve of the birds circled my hill,” Romulus said. His jaw ticked as he clenched it tighter around his lie. “This is where we should build our city.”
Remus smiled. “Yes, brother. I only saw six, but I saw them before you did. That means the gods wish us to build on my hill.”
Romulus struck his spade in the dirt where it splintered from his brute force. “You are wrong.”
“I’m the eldest,” Remus said, a smile still on his face. The babe who always snuggled the closest on cold nights. The one who had seen six vultures first, where Romulus had seen none.
Romulus’s face twisted in rage. “That does not mean the gods favor you.”
“It does. We build on the Aventine Hill.”
Romulus too
k his broken spade and knelt to dig. “No. I will build my walls on the Palatine.”
I watched, too afraid to interfere. My speech was stilted when I attempted to use it at all, and my clothes, stolen from shepherds and farmers, were patched together. I never found a pack, and I was not fit to be around humans. The boys I’d suckled would recoil in horror at my gnarled hair and sharp nails with dirt crusted under them. They wouldn’t understand. I barely understood it myself. Human. I was human.
So I watched as Romulus dug his trenches and built his walls. They were pathetic walls. Remus climbed the Palatine to taunt him. He should have known his brother better.
“You are going to build a shining white city with this?” Remus laughed. He stepped over the haphazard stones, back and forth. “Enemies will have no trouble.”
I saw the spade hurtling toward his head, but I was powerless, not nearly as fast in human form. Remus crumpled, blood trickling from his brow. I howled like I hadn’t howled in decades. Years of my torment loosened upon the hills.
I ran without waiting, but it was only a few hours before an acrid smell blanketed the seven hills. Remus’s funeral pyre spiraled biting smoke as an offering to the gods above while his blood soaked Rome’s very foundation. Of course, Romulus had named it after himself.
I wanted to live the rest of my days in my cave. I wanted to die there, so I did.
It took seven hundred years to finally learn that lupa meant both a beastly wolf and a human whore in the language of the Romans, and that it was my curse.
Chapter Twenty-Four
I woke up with a chipmunk curled around my neck, Tiberius’s tail tickling the little hairs in my nose. I sneezed fur, and black feathers went flying as a large crow surged upwards and shifted into Coronis.
“She’s awake!” she cawed to the rest of the house.
I barely had time to take in my surroundings before Nonna crashed into my room. “Mamma!” she cried, hobbling over to give me a hug.