Lia wasn’t dead. She knew that for certain. After a few breaths, a few blinks, she saw she was back in August’s bedroom, on his bed, and August held her in his arms. He was rocking her slowly, speaking softly in Greek. He touched her chest, felt her heartbeat, kissed her face, her forehead, her hair, a thousand times.
“August?”
“Lia...” he breathed. “I thought I lost you. I couldn’t find you anywhere. I’ve never been that scared. I would rather lose me than you. I would rather lose the whole world.”
“I have to...” She took a ragged breath. Her entire body ached like she’d been slammed against a wall. “I have to sit up.”
Carefully he held her into a seated position. She swung her legs off the bed and rubbed her forehead.
“Are you all right?” August asked, and before she could answer he pressed a glass of water into her hands. It shook so hard she almost spilled it, but he steadied it and brought it to her lips. She drank deeply, and when she’d finished, she felt better. Not good. But better.
“What happened?” she asked.
“You tell me,” he said. “I came up here and you were out cold, and I had no idea where you had gone. I told you never to drink from the kylix alone. You could have died, Lia.”
“Died?”
“When the mind dies, the body dies,” August said. “If you hadn’t shouted my name, I would never have found you in time.”
He ran his hand through her hair, kissed her temple. She felt him shudder. Had he been more scared for her than she was for herself?
“But I didn’t...”
“What?”
“Nothing.” She didn’t remember shouting August’s name, but apparently she had.
“Where were you?” He took her face in his hands. “Why was Poseidon trying to drown you?”
Lia couldn’t bear to be touched anymore. She pushed his hands aside and staggered to one of the club chairs.
“Sit,” she said. “Please?”
She pointed at the chair opposite her. He sat on the floor at her feet.
Typical.
“Lia, talk to me,” he said.
“I had been talking to Mum this evening about the story of Aethra and Poseidon. It was on my mind, I suppose. I meant to go back to Pan’s Island. I ended up getting shagged in a temple by Poseidon. Oops.”
“I warned you the cup was dangerous.”
“Right,” she said. “Don’t play with a god’s toy without permission. Never again. Promise.”
“How was the sex, though?”
“Not half-bad.” Classic understatement.
“Good girl,” he said. “If you’re going to get swept up in one of your own erotic fantasies and nearly die doing it, you might as well enjoy some top-notch cock first.” August laughed. He laughed until she thought he might cry.
He picked up a book off the other chair and showed her a picture. “That’s what I had planned for us tonight.” He’d chosen the famous painting of Zeus visiting Danaë in the form of a shower of liquid gold.
“Good choice,” Lia said. “I always wondered what it would be like to have sex with a precious mineral in liquid form.”
“Liquid gold can hit all those hard to reach places.”
“Sounds fun. Too bad we can’t...”
Lia blinked, and a tear ran down her cheek. She hastily wiped it away.
“I should go home. I shouldn’t be here with you anymore. It’s not right. You’re engaged.”
“We’re allowed to talk,” he said.
“Allowed. We’re allowed to talk. That’s nice of them to let you talk to me,” she said, meeting his eyes. “How could you? You didn’t even ask me what I wanted.”
He looked sad but not guilty. “I didn’t think I could tell you no,” he said, hanging his head between his knees for a moment. “If you’d begged me not to do it, I would have given in just to please you. And your safety is more important than your happiness.”
He looked back up at her.
“Forget about me,” Lia begged. “You said you would rather die than bend your knee to your parents, than give up your freedom and your life here to marry a woman you don’t know, like or love. And now you’re doing it.”
“I was being selfish and stupid when I said that,” he said. “I cared only about me and my feelings and my freedom. Then I took you to the island and the way you looked at Pan and the way you looked at me... I saw you there in that sacred grove in that white dress with tears running down your face, and I thought my heart would burst from love. I would have married you in that grove, built you a palace of gold or a cottage of river stone, and we would have lived there and loved there until the end of days.”
“Marry me? Because I got weepy when you put me inside my favorite book?”
“Because I love you, Lia,” he said as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. “And I’m not afraid to tell you that here and now in the real world with you standing in front of me.”
“You love me?”
“Yes,” he said, then louder, “yes. I love you.”
She laughed. “Why? I’m surly.”
“Charmingly surly.”
“I’m bitter.”
“Tart.”
“I’m a kitten with a switchblade,” she said, weeping openly now.
“I like kittens. I’m not afraid of your switchblade.”
Lia slowly stood up. She picked up her bag and slung it over her shoulder. She was still shaky but steady enough to walk and see and drive home.
“I should go.”
August came to his feet, and when it seemed inevitable that he’d try to hold her one last time, she held up her hand to warn him away.
“You’re engaged,” she said. “For the sake of whoever she is, please don’t touch me. Enough girls have gotten their hearts broken this week. Let’s not throw another on the pile, all right?”
“I don’t even know who she is. She might not even be a girl. Could be a nymph. A satyr. A fawn.”
“A cloud?”
“Could be a cloud,” he said.
“Whoever it is, they’re still your fiancée. You should respect that.”
“Prissiest madam ever,” he said. “I’m sure my cloud and I will be very happy together.”
“You are?”
“No,” he said. She appreciated his honesty.
“I don’t think you’ll believe me but it’s true... I hope you’re very happy. You made me very happy, happier than I ever thought I could be again.”
“You do love me, don’t you, Lia?” he asked, his voice almost breaking on her name. “Even a little?”
She looked at him and shook her head, not to say no, but so he’d know what an idiot he was being asking her that.
“Of course,” she said. “Of course I love you, August. Of course I do.”
Lia started to leave again. She made it as far as the door where she turned around and looked back at him. One last look. One last smile.
“I’ll never see you again, will I?” she asked.
“No,” he said. “When I go back, it’ll be for good.”
She nodded. “You can have the Rose Kylix,” she said. “You can keep it, I mean. I’m giving it to you, no million pounds necessary. You should have it. It belongs to your people.”
“Too nice for your own good.” He tried to laugh but it didn’t come out quite right. “Lia,” he said. Just Lia, her name.
“I’ll, um...” she began, but stopped when her words caught in her throat. She took a deep breath. She would not fall apart. She would not. What she had to say was too important.
“I will remember our trip to Pan’s Island as long as I live,” she said. “I’ll remember that beautiful thing you did for me. When I’m so old I don’t even remember my own name, I’ll remember...” She heaved a sob.
“What, Lia?” August asked. Tears streamed down his face, his lovely beloved face.
“You,” she said. “I’ll remember you, August Bowman. If that is your real name.”
“It’s not,” he said.
“Too bad,” she said. “It’s a very nice name.”
She smiled one more time.
Then she left.