The suave elderly gentleman sauntered into the room, causing Jules to stumble away from him.
She backed up until she hit the wall. How had she not noticed the difference in power radiating through the door? Violetta was powerful, but nothing like this. And even though this man had pulled it back, her skin still prickled.
“Who is he?”
“I don’t know.”
“He feels …”
“Familiar.”
“Yes.”
She watched him warily as he crossed to shake Bastien’s hand. “You’re looking a bit grey, my friend.”
“You know each other?”
“We’re old friends. Aren’t we, Bas?” His accent lilted like the Italian ones lifting from the plaza below her window, but with a slight difference in cadence. She struggled to look away from him, especially when he caught her gaze with his twinkling black eyes. Her skin prickled with the danger evident in him. Someone with that much power would always be dangerous to her, no matter their intentions for good.
“Touch him.”
“Are you crazy? He’s too powerful.”
“He won’t hurt you.”
“Tomaso di Erosi, at your service,” he said, extending his hand.
“Don’t touch him,” Bastien snapped, moving between them.
“Aw, Bas, don’t be like that,” he said, pulling his hand back. “I won’t hurt her. That’s the last thing I want.”
“Then you should keep your power to yourself like you’ve been told.”
“True.” Tomaso laughed out loud, the sound ringing in the air, twining around Jules, making her want to laugh with him. There was something that felt … familiar about it. Like the laughter of a friend you hadn’t seen for a while.
“May I?” He gestured to the chair at the desk, but before she could even nod, he’d walked over to it. He unbuttoned his immaculate steel-blue suit blazer, exposing the snowy white and expensive-looking shirt underneath, its two top buttons undone to show off the strong column of his tanned neck and a few inches of chest, and sat down. He ran his large hands along his suit pants and looked up at her, black eyes twinkling as if he were overjoyed.
His salt-and-pepper hair was cut short in a way that showed off the strong waves. His eyebrows were thick, black and straight, yet didn’t overwhelm the strong patrician lines of his face. There was something oddly familiar about him – maybe because she had met him when a toddler, even though she couldn’t remember – something that made her want to draw closer, to touch him.
“Then touch him. Take his hand.”
She took a few steps towards him. “Nice to meet you finally. Grandmama has spoken about you a lot over the years.”
“As she has you.” His smile widened. “She has kept me up to date with your progress since I met you when you were but a babe.”
“Really?”
“But of course. Your little problem has been a particular fascination.” He rubbed his hands together. “Breaking such a powerful curse – what a feather in my cap that will be.”
She frowned at him. “This isn’t a game to me.”
His smile disappeared, his gaze intent. “I can assure you, it’s not a game to me either. I take this very seriously. But to be involved in such an endeavour after so many years of … boredom. You have to excuse my excitement.”
She nodded, even though it seemed a bit weird to be excited about all this. Terrified, worried, angry, frustrated – all good. Excited – not so much.
“So, shall we be friends?” He held his hand out.
“Tomaso!” Bastien snapped again. “Stop it.”
“It’s fine,” Jules said as she moved past Bastien to stand in front of the other man. “I can’t feel anything from him now.” It was strange, given how much power she’d felt only moments ago. And she really did want to touch him because there was something … unreal about him. Something she felt touching him might reveal.
Warily, she grasped Tomaso’s hand.
Her jaw slammed closed and her fingers spasmed around his, tightening. Oh Goddess. She’d made a mistake. She braced for the slashing pain as her body rejected his magic.
It didn’t come. Instead, the room swirled around her as images flickered to life in her head. She pitched forward, falling, falling ...
She opened her eyes with a start to look up into a face that was bewilderingly familiar.
It was her face, she realised with a start. Although there were slight differences in the nose and skin colour, the arch of the brow.
Wetness landed on her face. Was it raining? One of the drops rolled across her cheek and into her mouth – salty. Not rain, tears. The woman who looked like her, who held her, was crying.
The image flipped and suddenly she was no longer looking up at the woman but was the woman looking down at the baby in her arms. A baby still covered in the mess of a fresh birthing.
“My baby boy.”
She lifted a trembling hand, stroking down the side of the baby’s face, her vision starring. Pain, grief and an overwhelming love stole her breath as she stared at the new-born in her arms. “Please. Don’t blame him for my transgressions. He’s an innocent,” she whispered.
The baby gurgled and she bent to kiss his beautiful forehead, to breathe in the scent of him, but Clodia was already there, reaching to take him. Lianna tried to hold on, to keep him with her for a moment longer, but the High Priestess turned away, pushing the baby into little Esta’s arms. “We will need his power. Put him in place in the pentacle.” Esta hesitated. “Do it now, girl, or I will use all your power and I will not be gentle about it.”
“No!” Lianna cried, trying to move, to reach out to her new-born son. The golden bands on her arms tightened and weakness overwhelmed her so she could barely breathe.
Across the pentacle, another voice cried out. “Don’t do this, Clodia. My aunt can’t possibly want this.”
Sebastio. He was here? How had Clodia bound him? This wasn’t possible – was it? She scrabbled onto all fours, trying to peer through the night, but she couldn’t see him, could only hear him as he continued to yell at Clodia, voice ringing with panic and rage as he fought against whatever held him here.
Clodia did not have the power to bind a demi-god for a few minutes, let alone the three weeks it had taken her pregnancy to come to fruition, her demi-god-warlock son growing inside her even faster than any of them had thought possible. It must be that blood-red gem Clodia had been wearing since the night the High Priestess had captured them.
The bands on her arms tightened again, taking more power, more energy. She screamed.
“Lianna!” Sebastio called out. “Stop it, Clodia. You’re hurting her.”
“Do you think I care?” the High Priestess shrieked. “She broke the law. Committed treason. For this, she deserves to lose all her power and more.”
“Because of you. You gave her no choice.”
“She always had a choice, and she chose to lay with you over her vows, over her obligations to Vesta and to Roma.”
“You cannot do this. The Gods will not allow such hubris.”
“My hubris? What about yours? And if they were so concerned, surely your father would be here now to stop me.”
Sounds of struggling. “I will make you pay.”
“You and your army of cats.”
Lianna gasped. What did she mean? Sebastio was a cupid, a son of Eros or Cupid of the Greek and Roman Pantheons, not Bastet with her army of cats in the Egyptian Pantheon.
Clodia’s cackle filled the air as she lifted her arms and began to incant her spell. Lianna cried out as more power was pulled from her, twisted and warped to obey Clodia’s will and not her own. Across the pentacle, her servant, Bastieno, cried out in pain and disappeared from her sight. No. No.
Sebastio yelled, still trying to stop the mad High Priestess, but there was no point. She’d wanted this all along. She’d made certain Lianna was found guilty of treason. The priests of Roma and her fellow Vestal priestesses had helped Clodia further bind Lianna’s powers and kept her imprisoned until the birth of her baby. Of course, they thought she had months to go until that time, but Clodia had other plans. She needed this all to come to fruition before Lianna’s service in the Vestal Virgins was over – she’d admitted as much when she’d hidden Lianna away from everyone to hide the speed of the pregnancy. Now Lianna realised she’d sped things along not only so she could steal Lianna’s Goddess-given powers while she still had access to them through the arm manacles, but so she could use the birth energy to further her schemes.
“Please, don’t use my babe. Not like this.”
“I will use him however I wish. He is here, after all, because of my plans; my needs. And he is far more powerful than I ever dreamed. That power will make all the difference.”
Oh Gods. She thought the High Priestess was going to bind the baby’s magic to her like she had Lianna’s, but this was even worse. Clodia was going to use the baby’s power as well to help steal her powers and there was nothing she could do to stop her. She would be dead soon. Clodia didn’t even have to kill her. By Roma’s laws, for her treason of breaking her vows, she would be shoved into an underground cell, big enough to be considered ‘accommodation’, with enough food and water to last for a few days. The entrance to the cell would be sealed and filled with dirt. She would suffocate long before she would starve. And she had no magic and no way to help herself. Or her baby. Or her Bas. “My Goddess, help us.”
“She will not come to you. You have broken her laws.”
She didn’t care. She didn’t care. This wasn’t right. But it was no use. All she could do was cry out, “I love you, Sebastio. Remember I love you, always.”
“I love you too, Lianna. Always.”
“Save our son. Make sure he knows he is loved.”
“I will try.” There was something wrong with Sebastio’s voice, it was strained and higher. Was he going to disappear like Bastieno? “Don’t leave me, Sebastio! Don’t leave me!”
Clod’s laughter cackled out into the night. “You are both so pathetic and worried over the wrong things. He will not leave you. You will be the one to always leave him. But that is not enough to punish you for being chosen over me. I will make certain your love will be near but always far, never to know your love again through any of your lives,” Clodia said, her voice rising into a shrill shout. “As you will never know his. Your forever love, your soul bond, will become as ashes on your grave as your power will become mine forever more.”
The High Priestess raised her hands higher, wind whipping around her now, the cries of their baby and Sebastio drowned by the howls of the dark power that threatened to steal everything Lianna held dear.
Clodia’s gaze met Lianna across the pentacle. The jewel in the necklace she wore glowed darkly red, pulsing like a heart. Lines of dark-tinged red light shot across the five points, lighting up the lines of the pentacle the High Priestess had dug into the grass. Lianna screamed as it shot into her, but her scream was cut off as the power squeezed around her chest, lifting her into the air. Light from the glowing pentacle blinded her.
Clodia laughed, the sound a shriek in the wind that tore at Lianna’s stola and cut gashes in her skin as she hung above the magical inscription for elemental earth – earth that was soon to be her grave.
Clodia’s mouth twisted and she cried out:
“I bind your love into my curse
You will be as a blind man dying of thirst
Reaching for that which lays so close at hand
Love slips through your fingers like grains of sand
Forever hidden from you, forever lost
Until you agree to pay the ultimate cost
I bind you and your lover into this curse
Always to be near but powerless to reverse
Animal to human, hidden from sight
Two centuries between to mourn your plight
I bind you both three times three times three
All power to me, so mote it be.”
There was a roar and a flash of light as the curse hit Lianna square in the chest. It knocked her out of the reach of the pentacle and into the pit behind her. She landed with a thump, gasping for breath. Dirt started to rain down on her. She tried to stand, but couldn’t, so flipped over and crawled into the cell as dust filled the air around her, making it hard to breathe. Then she hit a wall. The cell was smaller than she’d thought it would be. She groped in the dark. There was supposed to be a pallet and food and water. She found the pallet but no bundle. There was no food or water. Clodia wasn’t even holding properly to their law. She wanted Lianna to die sooner rather than later, because then, and only then, could she fully take possession of Lianna’s power.
Lianna sat on the thin pallet, wrapped her arms around her legs and put her forehead on her knees, trying to slow her breathing and not cough as the only entrance disappeared in a tonne of dirt. She tried to pull at the golden armbands, free herself from their binding as she’d tried to do every day since they were captured, but they refused to budge even though they no longer burned into her flesh.
It was over. It was over. Her only hope was that Sebastio wouldn’t meet Bastieno’s fate, whatever that had been. Hoped that he would free himself soon so he could rescue their son and take him far away from this place of despair.
She coughed, hardly able to breathe in the dusty air. She wished she could believe she’d meet them someday when her soul was reborn and they’d find their love again, but if she had it right, the curse had bound her soul so she would never know her love until … until she’d paid the ultimate cost. Wasn’t this the ultimate cost?
She sat there, rocking and trying to figure it out, until the air ran out. Her eyes closed as fog and darkness followed her down, down, down …