Page 19 of Prometheus' Priestess

“Ralph, how did you get in? Why are you …”

“Shh,” he continued, stroking the back of his hand down the side of her cheek.

Amara found herself unable to do anything, her body wouldn’t move, her mind kept drawing a blank. Only her eyes raced back and forth over his, trying to figure out what his actions meant, what he was doing.

“You’re going to be just like her,” he said sadly, looking at her with forlorn eyes before curling his hands in her hair that had worked its way loose in the plait she’d put it in before bed.

“Ralph, what are you talkingabout?!”

“You’re going to leave me.”

“Ralph, you’re drunk. I—”

“I won’t let you leave me again, Ma-Mara-Mary. I won’t. I’ll give it to you like a real man. I’ll show ya ...”

Finally Amara’s brain kicked in and her legs lashed out. Too late. She realised he already had one leg between both of hers. He pinned her arms down, tugging off only as much of the duvet as he needed to, pushed her legs further apart, her wrists now both caught in a bruising grip as his mouth slammed over hers to muffle her scream, and his other hand began to touch her ... callously, cruelly. Then it wasn’t his hand.

It hurt.

CHAPTER VIII

Amara spent the following three months wandering around Edinburgh blindly. Luckily, the weather drove most inside, so the narrow pavements had unexpected ample space. But when she did encounter people, she found them interfering and problematic, stepping into her way where she walked, encroaching or justrightbehind her in a way that set her teeth on edge. She caught snippets of conversations between strangers as they passed her on the street, but she didn’t engage in conversations herself. She didn’t look up, she didn’t smile, she didn’t make eye contact.

When someone, a man with dark hair and spectacles, appeared at the opposite end of the alleyway Amara found herself in, her heart began to ricochet in her chest. She could have sworn it was loud enough for him to hear even from thirty feet away. She hunched her shoulders and turned back the way she came. Her footsteps quickened but so did his, the echoes snapping at her heels. Her hands were shaking and she stuffed them deep in her pockets so he couldn’t know how frightened she was as she almost broke into a light jog. Amara didn’t even realise she was holding her breath until she exited the alley onto an open street and dragged deep lungfuls of air into her. The man exited several seconds later, shot her a concerned look, and strode off in the opposite direction. She didn’t walk through the alleyways that seventeenth-century drunks would have been dragged behind and killed afterthat.

One day she found herself on a mosaic where a quick search on her phone told her she was standing on the exact spot they used to hang murderers, rapists, and witches. She turned in a full circle, staring at the mosaic, absorbing every element of it, expecting to feel something ... anything. Anger, rage, grief. Instead she felt nothing, her mind empty and her bones cold. Oh so achingly cold. Not even the brightly painted shops, the food delicacies she would have savoured, or the trinkets she would have treasured could warm her. She wrapped her red wool coat tighter to her body, crossing her arms and stuffing her gloved hands under her armpits as she continued walking, with no place to go.

At night, fear moved skittishly in the shadows that fell from the gothic buildings above her. Surrounding her. Overshadowing her. The butterflies in her stomach she’d had from the sense of adventure when she’d first arrived had turned acidic, each nervous wingbeat making her stomach revolt. The butterflies had revealed themselves to be moths with fangs that sunk their venom into her skin, turning the acid in her stomach putrid and violent until it gorged on itself, churning convulsively until it rose from her mouth and directly into the nearest receptacle.

So before night fell, Amara was holed up, alone, in her cheap hotel room off Princes Street. Always alone.

She had no idea what she was still doing here, why she didn’t just get on the first train back to Paris, back home. The thought of the train station always stopped her. What if he was there again? What if she bumped into him? She knew it was an irrational thought. It didn’t matter that there were over half a million people in the city. It didn’t matter that she was just as likely to bump into him on the street as she was there. They had been there together, and her mind wouldn’t let her forget it. She couldn’t stop thinking about it.

She would fall asleep and dream of the train station. And there he was, in the middle of it, just standing there, watching her. The colours around them would drain as the smile she had once thought of as harmless turned into a cruel sneer. And always she’d wake in sweat-soaked sheets tangled around her.

She couldn’t go back. She should never have left in the first place. She’d been rash and foolish and someone should have stopped her. Father Michel should have stopped her, if he ever really cared about her. Even her memory was starting to doubt her on that. What was it about her that made people not care? Why had Ralph not cared? Father Michel? Her mother who abandoned her? What was it abouther?

Night after night, on crisp but firm white sheets that reminded her thirty pounds a night only went so far, and savings that were supposed to last her six months rapidly disappearing, she went over in her head what she could have done differently that night. What sheshouldhave donedifferently.

Fear and doubt were the only ones that cared about her now, her mind whispered. All they demanded was payment. Attention. In turn, they told her all the things she had to fix and change about herself to make others care, to make sure she wasn’t abandoned, unwanted, disposed of ... again. So she listened to them and she paid her dues. Every time she got close to an answer, doubt would whisper in her ear that she couldn’t be trusted. And so the answer slipped away again.

CHAPTER IX

Aphrodite was fuming.

She had watched the priestess become overpowered by that pathetic excuse for a human man, had watched that disgusting act with rage boiling beneath her bones and felt her ichor run cold. That was no way to treat one of her priestesses. To do so was a stain on her honour, the act not only repugnant but an obvious mockery of all that Aphrodite held sacred.

She couldn’t believe Athena would have ordered it, civilized and protective as she was. Even Artemis, for all her wild ways surely wouldn’t have suggested ...that.They were both virgins. Surely they would not have willingly let that title be stripped from Amara. There were, after all, other ways to evoke fear in a woman. As the thought passed through her head, she wondered if her sisters’ chastity had blinded them to that fact. It hadn’t evenworked.Three months later and the priestess was still no closer to accessing heralchemy.

Aphrodite’s thoughts abruptly cut off at the sight of the man striding towards her. His wild curls had now been shaved closely to his head, but that didn’t stop him looking any less feral. Bronzed muscles that bulged, fighting to get out of his leathers, moved languidly towards her. Dark brown eyes tracked her, like prey, until they were standing toe to toe.

She reached a hand up to brush it against his hair, but he captured her delicate wrist, spun her around and had her pinned to the wall, her wrist above her head and a rock-solid, thick thigh pushed between the pair of hers between one breath and the next. She felt warmth invade her as he overwhelmed every inch of her personal space, the cologne of sweat and frankincense, a sweetness that reminded her of their many stolen nights together. It was all consuming and she forgot what had turned her heart cold only momentsago.

“Ares,” she said softly.

“My love,” he growled. She knew it wasn’t in anger. Always so angry, her Ares, but never with her. It was something deeper, richer, more passionate when it was just the two of them. His growl ignited a low heat that started in her belly and spread ... everywhere. Before she could ask him what he was doing here, he gripped her hair, his hands adorned with assorted metal rings, and pulled her in for a kiss of duelling tongues and teeth until she pushed at his wide chest and gasped for breath.

“I’ve missed you, lover,” he said darkly.

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