Selene entered the ordeal pit to find Theo standing naked before her. Water plastered his fair hair against his skull, the ends tipped black with char. The skin of his arms and legs flared bright pink, as if from extreme heat or cold. Just below his collarbone, a Mercury symbol, yellow and oozing, carved his flesh.
She watched his eyes travel across the clothes they’d forced upon her: a short white tunic pinned at one shoulder, sandals laced to her knees, and a crescent moon tiara in her black hair. For the first time in millennia, she dressed like a goddess, and yet she’d never felt her own mortality more acutely: They might have garbed her as Diana, but they hadn’t given her the Huntress’s bow. Before her stood a man she no longer felt she knew. How much of what he’d said to the Pater were his secret feelings, and how much just for show? She tried to read the truth in his eyes, but all she saw was fear.
He lifted his face to speak to someone who stood above her on the rim of the pit. The Pater, she assumed, although she dared not turn around to look. She felt safest with the wall of the pit at her back.
“Estne Spartaci somnium quoddam depravatum est?” he asked. Is this some perverted Spartacus fantasy? Selene hadn’t bothered with Latin in many lifetimes, but she had no problem understanding a tongue she’d spoken daily for centuries. As always, she was both impressed and alarmed that Theo mocked those who threatened him—and in a long dead language, no less. He went on, still in Latin. “Would you have us wrestle as gladiators?”
The Pater spoke above her head. “I do not doubt that Diana is still strong enough to make short work of you. No. We have a better idea. Tomorrow is the Procession of the Heliodromus, and there must be a willing sacrifice to the God of Three Aspects. Yet Diana is still convinced that she should live. Sure that, weak as she is, she is still a goddess. She must learn her place. And you, Makarites, have promised to teach her.”
Theo didn’t look at Selene. “You want me to do it … right now?”
“Just tell the truth.”
“About what?”
“About her.”
“I told you already. You can use the information however you want.”
“You told us what we wanted to hear. Now tell us the truth. We will know if you lie.”
“She is cold, unfeeling—”
“You lie.”
A river of icy water crashed down on Selene’s head. She crouched beneath the onslaught. Then it stopped as suddenly as it had begun. She stood up shakily, dashing wet hair out of her eyes, and turned to face the men standing on the rim behind her. She knew that the white tunic clung to her skin, revealing every curve and color of her body, but she willed herself not to care. You would see me naked again, is that it? Have you forgotten the legends of my wrath? Any mortal who dares look upon my bare flesh will be ripped to pieces.
She tried to meet the Pater’s eyes through the holes in his golden mask. “Recte dicis,” she said. You speak right. She continued in Latin: “I am not cold, nor unfeeling. I am filled with fury. And you will feel its lash.”
The Pater gave a rusty laugh and motioned to the man at his side, who wore a rayed crown and held a downward torch in his hand. Despite the silk mask that covered the top half of his face, Selene recognized the hawk-faced man by the sharp jut of his jaw. He drew a sleek remote control from his robes, incongruous in the flickering torchlight.
A sudden whirring of gears sounded from the floor beneath her. She looked down to see tall walls of glass shoot up to imprison her in a narrow transparent cylinder. Instinctively, she kicked against the glass, hoping it had been made to hold mortals, not gods. But the wall didn’t crack, and she only bruised her toe. She hadn’t realized how much she’d appreciated the invention of close-toed boots until she’d been thrust back into Roman sandals.
“Let us try again, Makarites,” the Pater intoned. “Tell us about Diana.”
“She pretends she can hurt you,” Theo said after a moment. “But she is weaker than you think. She brags, but inside she is weak and scared—”
“A half truth.”
This time, the sheet of water didn’t stop. It pounded down upon her with brutal force, bruising her scalp and her bare shoulders. She bent her head and breathed in shallow gasps, then dared open her eyes. What she saw sent a tremor of terror through her.
The water didn’t drain away.
She was trapped inside a quickly filling prison. Already the water had reached her thighs. She slammed her fist futilely against the glass. Theo wasn’t lying, she thought. I am weak and scared.
The water kept coming.
“Again, Makarites. You said you knew how to break her. She will drown if you don’t start telling us the full truth. Now.”
Selene managed to raise her head to look at Theo. His face remained stern as he watched her, but she could see the terror in his eyes. His fists clenched at his sides. Whether he truly cared for her or not, she could tell that he wanted to run to her. Good old Theo, always trying to play the hero. But what was the point? The initiates had him outnumbered, and no doubt if Theo moved toward her, another glass chamber would appear to stop him. To have any chance of escape, he would have to give them what they wanted.
“The truth.” He spoke the word softly, almost wistfully. The water climbed to her ribs. She kicked off from the floor and started to tread water, but her flailing limbs knocked against the glass, and the force of the deluge kept pushing her downward. She braced her feet and hands against the walls of the chamber instead and started to shimmy her way up. As she climbed swiftly toward the top, hope sparked within her. She saw an answering gleam in Theo’s eye. In a second, she’d be over the wall, leaping from the glass rim onto the stone ledge surrounding the pit and sinking her fist in the Pater’s face.
Then an iron grate slammed down from the ceiling, trapping her inside the cylinder while the water continued to rise.
Feet still braced on the glass, she reached upward to push off the iron bars. Her flesh sizzled on contact with an electric shock. She screamed and fell back into the churning water, the force of the redoubled onslaught pinning her to the floor of her prison. She pressed her face against the glass, peering out at Theo. She knew she should urge him to resist: Whatever the Pater wanted him to do couldn’t be good for her. And yet she couldn’t control the desperation in her gaze.
Theo’s face had gone ashen. Tears stood in his eyes as he shouted a single word: “Siste!”
Stop.
The water immediately diminished. A thick stream poured lazily into the cylinder and the water level continued to rise, but she could easily push off the bottom. With her head out of the water and her hands braced against the sides, she could hear the thrum of electricity emanating from the grate only a foot above her hair. Soon, the water lapped at the underside of her breasts, then licked her collarbone.
“Diana is only one name for her,” Theo said, his eyes never leaving hers. “She is Artemis. She is the Huntress. But to me she is Selene.” As he spoke, his voice grew louder, more confident. “There is rage in her. And strength beyond mortal understanding. And an uncompromising sense of justice. But above all, there is love. She does not know it. She resists it. Even resents it. But it is there in the way she looks at the people of her city. It is there in the way she would give her life for them. Or for her brother Apollo. In him are all her contradictions. She hated him once, but he is a part of her. Without him, she is nothing. She is not weak … but she is soft.” His voice fell to a whisper, one meant only for her ears, though it carried throughout the chamber, a public declaration, not to be misconstrued. “And it is a softness I would bury myself in for all the days of my life.”
The water slowed to a trickle. The walls retracted as swiftly as they’d arisen, sending water rushing out across the floor and Selene crashing to the ground. She fell on her hands and knees, bruising them badly, and stayed motionless, panting, wondering what new torture lay in store.
Then Theo was there.
He crouched beside her and took her shivering body in his arms. His bare flesh was as clammy and cold as her own, but she pressed her face against his neck, and the warm pulse of his blood warmed her as nothing else could.
“You’re supposed to be pretending to hate me,” she murmured in English.
“Seemed the gig was up,” he whispered back.
No one pulled them apart. No rivers of water or walls of glass rose up to separate them. Theo clutched her a little closer and soon their combined body heat warmed them both. She felt her own shivering subside as his did.
“Diana. Makarites.” The Pater stepped to the edge of the pit.
With Theo’s hand in hers, she stood.
“Initia facta sunt.” The initiation is over. Then the Pater continued in English. “There is no need for the sacred tongue when you profane our sacred space with your lies, Professor. Did you think we would ever believe that you would turn on the woman you so clearly love? We have watched you for many months. You have no secrets from us. But now you have given us what we want. The key to a willing sacrifice.”
Theo turned toward her, questioning, but she kept her gaze firmly on the eyeholes in the beaten gold mask. She no longer doubted Theo—or herself. All the memories of her horrific past, all the visions of her uncertain future, no longer mattered beside the feeling of his grip, warm and strong, on her hand.
“You said you won’t kill me if I’m not willing,” she said to the Pater. “You tried to break me—but you’ve failed. I do not consent to be sacrificed to your Mithras. And Theo never will either. So what now, Pater? You’re running out of options.”
“Oh, you’ll be willing.” She heard a smile in his voice. “Because we must have a sacrifice for the Procession of the Sun-Runner, and what better offering than the Sun himself?”
Across the ring, another panel slid open.
A man stumbled out of the darkness, his hands on his knees. A glass cylinder immediately rose to trap him in place. When he lifted his head, she saw Apollo’s divine countenance—and Paul’s terrified eyes.
Selene felt as if the pit’s floor rocked beneath her. She stumbled, and Theo held her tighter, but sweat slicked her palm and she slipped from his grasp.
“They were waiting for me.” Paul’s voice was hoarse, as if he’d been crying or screaming for hours. He wore a slim toga draped around his hips. A laurel wreath garlanded his brows, and his golden hair sprang in perfect coils to his shoulders. His bare torso gleamed in the firelight, covered in sweat. She could smell the fear on him from across the ring. His eyes darted from her, to Theo, to the Pater standing above. “I went to Sophie’s and she was lying in a pool of blood on her kitchen floor … They were already there …” His voice faded away. An instant later, his face contorted with terror as a vision overtook him, and he walked through a nightmare only he could see.
“No!” Selene took a step forward, scanning the crowd of initiates for the source of her twin’s agony. The hawk-faced man had removed his rayed crown. Now he wore Morpheus’s wreath in its place. The poppy buds stood upright, milky white fluid seeping through cracks in the waxy green spheres.
“Stop it! You’re killing him!” she screamed.
“Indeed,” the Pater continued calmly. “Apollo will choose to die rather than live as one haunted by his own past. He will be our willing sacrifice.”
Selene howled and raced across the pit, flinging herself at the side of Paul’s prison. She beat her fist against the glass until smears of blood blocked her twin’s face from view. Theo shouted at her to stop. Paul backed away as far as his cell would allow, murmuring, “It’s no use. It’s no use.” But she barely heard either of them.
She spun away from the unbreakable prison, sprinting to the wall of the pit, just below the hawk-faced man. I will leap free like a wolf, she thought, her feet ringing on the metal floor like the crash of cymbals. I will rip the crown of poppies from his head and throttle him with it.
She sprang into the air.
Her hands struck the wall three feet below the rim, and an electric shock sent her tumbling backward with a sharp cry of agony.
The Pater looked down impassively as Theo rushed to Selene. She lay prone, the world spinning and her vision blurred, her heart beating an irregular tattoo. Theo gathered her in his arms, his own heart racing against her cheek.
The Pater’s calm voice broke the sudden silence. “There is an alternative. If we can’t have the Sun, we would take the Moon.”
“Take me instead,” Theo shouted, pressing Selene’s forehead protectively against his chest.
“You? You think there is power enough in your death? You mean nothing to us. For centuries, we have held one goal foremost—to find and destroy those who claim divinity, who hang on to an existence they do not deserve, who block the return of our Lord.”
“And when Mithras returns, what will you do then? Move some more equinoxes? You’re all fucking delusional, you know that?” Theo spat. “You’re clinging to a dying religion that worships a dead god. You have no power, except what you stole.”
Around them, the syndexioi murmured angrily. A few even stepped toward the edge of the pit. But the Pater’s voice remained steady. “You do not understand Mithras. He is the God of Three Aspects. Your pantheon, with its petty jealousies and foibles, is nothing more than a dream, given life by man’s imagination. Mithras represents the one true God. He existed before the universe. He will exist after it. He is beyond this world. You are just a product of it.”
“If he’s so all-powerful, why does he need a string of murders to bring him back?” Theo went on, unbowed.
Again, murmurs from the crowd. This time, more confused than angry. Theo had touched a nerve.
Selene saw the Pater turn his masked face slightly, taking in the reaction of those around him. He raised his voice and spoke over the crowd. “The Host’s instructions are far older than I, but they are clear. We must destroy those who would sap power from the God. He alone rules the afterlife. He alone is the leader of soldiers. He alone guides the sun’s orbit and moves the heavens on their axes. To assign such feats to false idols is the most terrible blasphemy. Now we reenact His actions at the sites most propitious. The God of Wealth dies at the seat of greed. The God of Bloodlust dies at the seat of war mongering. And tomorrow, at midnight, there must be another sacrifice. Sun or Moon. I leave it to you, Selene DiSilva.”
She had no choice. Theo had spoken true. Apollo was a part of her. She pried Theo’s hands from her body and levered herself to standing. “Then let the Moon set and the Sun arise.”
The triumphant stomping of feet drowned out Theo’s horrified protests, but she could hear Paul’s keening cries above it all. Whether of grief or relief, she wasn’t sure. The walls of the pit slid open, admitting two men in legionaries’ armor and a third in a crow’s mask. The two soldiers grabbed Selene. She barely resisted. What use was there? The crow pinned Theo in place.
As her captors dragged her toward the opening in the wall, she heard Theo’s words, carrying above the crowd’s roar, “The Moon may disappear from the heavens, but she always waxes again!”
Beautiful Theo, my Singer of Stitched Words, she thought as the panel slid back into place and hid him from view. When they kill me, I will truly die. Yet the moon will rise and set as it always has. A blind, unfeeling rock that doesn’t know it once had a goddess’s soul.