Chapter One
Her scent beckoned, consuming him. Ariston lay still, welcoming the reprieve from the pain, even if it was fleeting. His heart felt whole, throbbing to life. His blood warmed, full of need. The silken threads of her hair slid across his forehead, his lashes, before her breath tickled his lips.
“Husband,” she whispered, pressing her lips to his.
His hands gripped her upper arms. She was real, her skin, her bones beneath, solid and precious. She was here…in his arms.
He drew in a deep, wavering breath, and dared to open his eyes.
Medusa was here… He swallowed, cupping her soft cheek with his trembling hand. Her beauty clutched at his heart. “My lady,” his voice rasped, hitching.
She nodded, smiling down at him. “I am.”
They lay, entwined, on a barren stretch of beach. The water crashed in soft echoing waves over blindingly-white sands. The sky too bright, no clouds or shadows to ease it. There were no rocks, nor cliffs—no shelter.
There never was. He knew the truth of it.
Thea circled overhead, her cry pricking unease along his skin. She was warning him. He held the panic at bay.
Did he dare waste this time with words? With questions? It was the same, each time.
“Shall we swim?” she asked, her gaze traveling over his face slowly. Perhaps she found as much comfort in his presence as he sought in hers…
“No,” he shook his head and pulled her to him.
“No,” she murmured, relaxing atop him.
Her curves fitted against him, familiar and sweet. His hands slid over her, etching the feel of her curves into his mind. Her sigh was soft, her breath on his collarbone making him smile.
“You sigh?” he asked.
“From happiness, Ariston.” She pressed a kiss against his throat. “Such happiness. We are blessed by the Gods, indeed.”
Darkness gripped his heart, no matter how he fought it.
Thunder stuck, so loud it seemed to shake the very ground they lay upon. Lightening ripped apart sky, a jagged tearing of light bleeding into black.
Medusa shivered, sitting up… putting distance between them. Her blue-green eyes stared out, into the dark rolling toward them. “Ariston?”
There was fear in her voice, fear that found him as well. He stood, pulling her up beside him, wrapping his arms around her. “’Tis a storm, nothing more. Look at me.”
She did, her cerulean eyes shadowed—haunted. “I’m afraid.”
“Look at me, lady.” Heat pricked his eyes, thickening his tongue. “I am here.” His hands gripped at her. “Hold on to me. Hold on.”
The wind picked up, whipping her hair about them. Her smile was gone, replaced by sheer terror. “Ariston?” she whispered, the wind lifting her in his hold.
He gripped her tighter, “No.” But she was slipping from him. Her fingers tangled in his tunic, gripping fiercely… then gone.
“No,” he pleaded, loudly. “Medusa, stay with me, I beg you.”
He heard her cry…the strange hollow echo. And before his eyes, she was lifted—as if gripped by some evil force—and pulled back. The flash of her golden hair was the last he saw, swallowed in the black sky… gone from him.
He ran, uncaring that his feet grew leaden, the air in his lungs unmoving. He ran, mindless of Thea’s talons gripping his hair, pulling him back. He could not give her up, again. Instead he pushed on, toward the place she’d gone. Into the black water, sucked beneath the now-crashing icy depths that covered him without thought.
And still his mind cried ‘No.”
He closed his eyes, willing it to be over… But something pulled him back. Something refused to let the darkness take him.
It was the cry of a child… A young boy.
***
Spiridion remembered the hoot of an owl. Not an unusual sound in the black of night. But there was something more to it, some earnest desperation, which had pulled Spiridion from his sun-filled dreams. He sat, rubbing the sleep from his eyes, and peered around the shadowy interior of the small cabin.
The Gorgons slept. Eurythene’s snores all but shook the cabin, regular and even. She lay by his sleeping sister, her bony hand extended to rest along the mat’s crude edges. Kore had no idea she was to fear the woman at her side. In fact, Kore loved the monstrous woman as she had loved their mother—before the Persians came.