Page 11 of Sanctuary with Kings

"That long," I replied.

Lillian's breath hitched and I licked my lips, trying and failing not to recall the sounds of the house, my cage, being built above the cellar where I was kept. I struggled my way through memory back to the present. The wind was picking up, and we would need to return to the house soon or get caught in the storm.

"I had a lover who was an incubus for a short time," I said, although I'd been young at the time and considered the decades a lifetime together. "We suited each other's hungers, but not each other's hearts. I went back to whoring after that. And then left again when I fell in love with a demon, although that was an even briefer affair."

"How…how long—" Lillian started, her voice airy.

"Do you know the legend of King Arthur?" I asked. Behind me, Marius scoffed.

"Youknewhim?" Lillian squawked.

"I'm notthatold," I answered, teasing.

"He didn't exist," Marius parried. "Not the way the stories tell it. He was based off many men, kings and warriors alike."

We reached the water, a small pond, and I let Guinevere help herself to a drink.

"I am less than a millenia old but more than half," I said, shrugging. "I knew the poet who wrote Arthur's name in The Book of Aneirin, though he swore he heard the legend from a fae."

"How did Birsha find you?" Marius asked, his brow furrowed behind his glasses.

Guinevere puffed and skittered away from the water. On the rippling surface, clouds compacted into darker shapes.

"I was working in a brothel. I enjoyed my reputation too much, grew lazy and careless, stayed too long. I was very popular. Even King Charles called me to his bed after hearing rumors." I found my lips curling at the memory of the frazzled, straining man beneath me, wrung out from pleasure. "They called me Volupta, the name my mother took for the Romans, the name she brought here. I even posed for a statue of her. I am sure I was not the first whore Birsha thought might be one of my mother's daughters, but I didn't know to hide myself from a man like him. He hired me, offered me bait, and I gave myself away like a fool."

I'd woken in the bare, cold place Birsha designed to strip joy from me, and for many years—a shameful, piling number—I'd imagined I would either find my way into his favor or out of his grip. I hadn't. Not until dark roots tore through the stone walls that night months ago, until they'd ripped the gated door from its old hinges and I'd run screaming into the night.

Run,run,run.

"It's true then, that your mother is a…a goddess?" Lillian asked.

"I think so," I said. "She was an actress when she gave birth to me, traveling through London. She left me with whores, and they raised me by day, and by night I…dreamed of my mother."

Of golden fingers combing through my hair, and her voice telling me stories of gods who quibbled over romances and pride, of men who defied the laws of the world above and below, of monsters and the many myths that made them.

"Do you know if she still walks this world?" Marius asked.

"I've never met her while awake. And it's been centuries since she reached into my sleep." I squeezed my thighs around the belly of Guinevere—it was a silly name for a horse, a woman wrestled over by lovers and kings. She let out a soft cry of relief, and her hooves struck their ground with eager force, propelling us through the woods, over logs and on a sharper path than the designed one that wound decoratively over the grounds.

No golden fingers soothed through my hair while I lay on moldy blankets and ate bitter gruel. No gentle stories murmured in my ear as I recovered in silk-lined rooms and forced a smile to my face in the hopes it might grant me mercy.

My mother left me in that cage. No one came. No brave men defied Birsha's law. No gods struck lightning through the floor to liberate me.

Guinevere bolted through the woods, but it wasn't freedom we sought together. The sound of the thunder growling overhead mingled with her hoofbeats, my pounding heart. The glitter of Grace House, the lamps lit at the broad entry and at the foot of the large staircase that led to the door, were a beacon.

I wanted…shelter.

A carriage approached the door as I came stampeding closer, and I pulled Guinevere's reins hard, grass giving way to pebbles that skittered as we reared to a sudden stop.

The carriage horses jumped away from Guinevere, the coachman calling out to them. And from the body of the carriage, throwing open the door I faced, came the giant figure of Asterion in his human disguise. I jumped down from my saddle as he stopped in place, a frown creasing the handsome human expression that hid the truth of him.

"Is everything all right?"

Asterion leaned back as I marched toward him, as if he might be scared of me, as if I had the ability to overpower him.

I snatched at his gloves, ripping them from his fingers and dropping them to the ground. I stared up at him as the disguise unraveled, replacing the handsome man with the beautiful monster. He was an entire head taller than me, but when I reached up and clasped his broad jaw in my hands, he bowed, reined to my command.

No man, no god, no mother had come to my rescue.

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