Page 57 of A Girl and HER Prince
His father had warned Venice to take these threats more seriously, to leave his wild ways and face his future, but he’d just wanted to be normal—be a husband, a father, work on a career and buy a house. He’d wanted a family someday, perchance a dog.
He studied Livvy. She could’ve been a part of that plan.
And there was no time for regrets or what might’ve been—he was having a hard enough time surviving as it was, and part of that was making sure Livvy stayed alive too.
The storm was coming, and they had to beat it to shelter on the other side of this island.
Her arm went back around him and she helped him stumble through the winding dirt pathways that led through the trees. The branches swayed in the swift breeze. The bright day violently turned dark under the storm.
Here and there, the ancient Greek ruins they’d spied from the coast below began to appear through the trees, until Venice and Livvy finally broke through an opening. White pillars bathed in blue shadows lined a broken pathway to a coliseum built into the hill. The ruins were so intact that it only seemed like they were walking through a town where some great catastrophe had caused something to happen to the people.
What will we leave behind for those who come after us?
Droplets of rain began to fall, and he desperately searched for some kind of temple, shrine, or chapel where they could find shelter. Livvy let out a cry when she pointed to a heap of stones lying next to pillars. A statue of a woman with hands stretched out made him wonder which goddess had been worshipped here.
Maybe Athena? She’d been the goddess to warn a princess that Odysseus was coming to this island. According to legend, he’d been shipwrecked on the shores, so that when Princess Nausicaa and her maidens came to fetch water, he’d been forced to cover himself with a fig leaf.
He could only imagine how Odysseus felt when he’d first laid eyes on the princess after being so long away from civilization. Glancing over at Livvy as she helped him over the rubble, he saw her in that princess. Her cheeks were bright with the exertion. A dark strand of hair swept over the purity of her eyes.
And he must be out of it for his mind to be wandering like this. Lightning cracked above them. Livvy cringed, an instant before the rain broke through the threatening clouds, soaking them in a matter of seconds.
So the weather wasn’t going to be bad, was it? He rolled his eyes at Achilles’s assurances that this storm would be a mere nothing, at the same time praying that his friends would quickly boat away from this madness. This could very well be the beginnings of a dreaded “medicane”—what was known as a hurricane in the Mediterranean.
He drew Livvy’s sopping wet body closer to him. She didn’t fight him at all, which meant she was in dire need of his warmth. “We need to find shelter,” he shouted through the rain.Easier said than done.So far, the only rooftops were ones that had collapsed long ago.
They hurried through the ruins, rushing under an archway of stone dogs as the water poured down. Their feet splashed through the squishy, cold mud. Thunder followed the lightning in an almost instantaneous and deafening crack of violent power as the wind screamed around them. This would get dangerous soon. If they got desperate, they could try to huddle next to these walls.Not ideal.
Livvy pointed to stairs leading down into what looked like a forgotten manmade cave. “There!”
He let out the breath that he didn’t know he was holding. Panic still gripped him as they stumbled down the slick, crumbling stairs into a tunnel with a sloped triangular roof. It was safe and dryandblessedly quiet down here.
The storm raged at them for their rudeness at escaping with its moaning, vicious winds; the noises turning muffled and mournful from where they hunkered inside the opening of the strange cavern.
Where were they?
The opening was narrow and barely fit the two of them, and it continued in a downward slope. Was this some type of cistern?
Livvy’s fingers dug into his like they were back in the fishbowl facing down the assassin. He rubbed his thumb over her knuckles to calm her down. “Hey, hey, it’s okay, Livvy.” He tried to sound relaxed for her, though his voice came out forced. “How about we see where this goes. C’mon.” He led her farther down into the echoing tunnel, away from the storm.
At first the stones were gargantuan, similar to what he’d seen at the Mycenae Fortifications where the pieces of granite were so big, people from later times wondered if Cyclopes had built their city. It was how those fortifications earned the name Cyclopean Walls.
Were these ruins from that time period? He should’ve done his homework on the place—Livvy surely would’ve, but he hadn’t imagined they’d ever be forced to trespass these private lands.
Ahead, a waterfall caught in a bright beam of light poured down from the ceiling. A grate was letting in the storm. Flashes of lightning flickered through the tunnels as they edged around the torrent of water to continue down the dry corridor.
Now he knew what this was—an aqueduct tunnel. The ancient people had possessed complicated geological skills to build what seemed an elaborate water system underground. The storm echoed eerily through the corridors.
“This is pretty spooky,” Livvy said.
“It’s an aqueduct,” he said. “Some say the Romans built those first, but you should see the one in Samos.” The Greeks there had constructed something similar, chiseling a mile-long tunnel through Mount Kastro in the sixth century BC. Homer had talked of structures such as these, some of them carrying water from miles away.
Her grip tightened on him again. “It’s the storm—all the water will come rushing through here and drown us.”
“No, the tunnel has to be stopped up somewhere along the line, because this is bone dry.”
At least it was the farther they moved from the grate, though it made it harder to see. He hauled out his flashlight, illuminating the limestone walls that opened up into roomier chambers. No doubt, these held pools of water thousands of years ago. He noticed that the stones had changed, so that the tunnel became one solid wall. They must be heading through the heart of the mountain then. This would be the safest place when the hurricane hit.
Livvy was staring at the walls too. “What are these chisel marks?”
