It has been a long time, and I am really quite embarrassed about it. My humble apologies, but I am now up to Part Fourteen and I will be posting the next part two to three weeks from today. (By October 10th - my word on it.) Many, many thanks to you lovely people who reviewed last time round - thank you: yukatalamia (that bizarre message was because I edited out a chapter that I neither liked nor needed), Perceive, indygodusk, Bex Drake, Ahnkitomi, Cianna Greenwood and last but very much not least, terriestal-angell!
I would adore hearing your thoughts, opinions, criticisms - please let me know what you thought!
Lyrics come from Delta Goodrum's Innocent Eyes. Hope you enjoy reading!
Ripples Part Eleven
Seems I'm lost in my reflection
Find a star for my direction
For the little girl inside who won't just hide
Don't let me see mistakes and lies
Let me keep my faith and innocent eyes...
Phi could only stare at Iry, unaware quite how dazzled her face was, as if the horror he'd shown her had some sickly, blinding light of its own. "How could they?"
Not the pod. She had grown up among them, part of an extended family. Fine, she might not like Don and his friends, she might have forged her friendships outside the pod, but that kind of violence-
Murder, she corrected herself. Don't dress it up in words. It was murder.
"You ain't the first to ask that," Iry answered. "Odds are good you won't be the last."
Questions piled up behind her eyes, clogging her thoughts. "Tell me. Please."
They had been her grandparents. Surely she should be screaming or crying or...or doing anything but sitting there, feeling like she was caught in someone else's nightmare.
"Everythin' I know's hearsay," he cautioned her. "It might not be completely-"
"I need to know, Iry. I just don't understand how it could happen."
He cleared his throat. "Ain't much to tell. You already know the first bit – Marie runnin' off in the middle of a snowstorm because she couldn't marry Laurie Ivan, your dad goin' after her...the whole pod findin' out. As you can imagine, there was chaos the next day. Lots of anger."
"Alwyn?"
"'Course. He was livid – all his plans upset, his precious seer refusin' to look into the future-"
"Mom?" she said in disbelief. "We're still talking about my mother?"
His eyes were very gentle. "She's changed a lot, Marie. Was a time when she was too busy with the present to give a damn about the future."
Phi couldn't imagine it.
"Marie had Alwyn over a barrel, an' both of 'em knew it. The Pack was causin' trouble an' had been since Aurora died, so he needed to know what was comin' more than ever. He had to agree. But mark me, he wasn't happy."
"He was behind it all, then."
"Yeah, Alwyn was the drivin' force. But he wasn't alone, an' he was clever about it. Ain't no one can prove he had anythin' to do with it – but we all know."
My own great-grandfather. Oh god.
All she had known was collapsing. The foundations of her life had melted away at the slightest touch, as if forged from lies and cobwebs.
"How...how did it happen?"
There was pity in his eyes when he looked at her, and it stung. "He was clever, Alwyn – him an' those who helped him. They didn't act at once, nah, they waited. It seemed like everythin' was settlin' down. And then the pod went down to the lake one mornin', an' found your grandparents there. All four of 'em, floatin' in the water. Drowned. Someone had held 'em down 'til even a dolphin didn't have any choice but to breathe water. An' surprise, surprise, Alwyn had a cast-iron alibi."
From his mind, she caught an image: the lake in winter, a sheet of grey, and people crowded round its edge. Someone wailed, and she saw a woman turn away from the crowd, her face unmistakable even with the decades wiped from it – her mother on her knees in the gravel, a cloud of brown hair pulled ragged between her hands, screaming at the sky.
No more, please, no more...
The scene vanished.
"I didn't mean you to see that," he said gruffly. "Sorry. It's just...they were my friends too. An' I sometimes wonder if I could'a done anythin', if I missed somethin' that might'a saved 'em..."
"I've never seen her cry," she mumbled. The image of her mother was etched into her eyelids. "She's always so calm...I didn't know. Why didn't they tell me?"
She didn't expect an answer, but still it came. "Because they were scared. Lots of people blamed 'em. Weren't their fault – Alwyn was waitin' for an excuse, waitin' to shed some blood, 'course he was. He hated disobedience, an' he needed to control everyone. But he wasn't willin' to dirty his hands, so he found someone else to do that."
Phi stared at him, her eyes hard as flint. "Who do you think it was? You must have some idea."
He hesitated.
"Please. I need to know. I need names. They were my family, and someone in the pod betrayed them."
"These are guesses, Delphine. Nothin' more. I'm an outsider-"
"So what?"
Surely he could see this was nothing to do with genetics – she couldn't let it lie, live not knowing, looking at the faces of the pod and wondering just who it had been. And if they would kill her as easily because she wanted more than this.
"You know more than I do right now. Please tell me."
His head turned fractionally; to the painting over his mantelpiece and the girl who was a livid ghost of herself.
"They're all gone now, " he said shortly. "All of 'em except one. Laurie Ivan. He was crazy about your mother – always said he didn't need her to tell him his future 'cause it had her in it. Stupid really: if he'd asked, if she'd looked, it might'a avoided a lot of heartache later. There ain't nothin' as bitter as love turned to hate, an' with that much love...that's gotta be a lot of hate."
"Why didn't anyone do anything about him?"
"No proof. An' they didn't want to think it was him." Iry shrugged. "He was your dad's best friend. Dan was the dreamer an' Laurie was the doer. An' your mother felt somethin' for him, even if it wasn't the kind of all-or-nothin' love he felt for her. After, they pitied him 'cause he'd lost her. They didn't want to believe he did it."
"Then why do you?"
His lips skinned back, baring a savage grimace, and Phi flinched, unnerved by the rage that shook his voice and gleamed in his eyes.
"I was cheated of the girl I loved too, an' if I met him who took her now, I'd rip out his damn throat without stoppin' to think about it. Love denied is violent, an' it devours you. It will murder, an' it will torment, an' it can't forgive...it never ends. It has no mercy."
She didn't dare look away from those bestial eyes. It was a predator shining out from his face, something dreadful and denied, and she was afraid that if such hate were as indiscriminate as he thought, the slightest trace of submission might provoke him.
And then he bowed his head, only a man again, full of regret.
"Remember that," he said quietly. "Watch out for it."
Dumb, she nodded, and tottered from the chair to the door as fast as she could.
X - X - X - X - X
When the sunlight hit her, she felt like Orpheus stepping from hell, bereft, shaken. The sheer normality of it all – Jo and Riose chatting by the gate, heat bristling on her skin, birdsong somewhere distant – seemed out of place.
"Phi?" Jo, concern grazing her words. "You okay?"
How could she be?
But somehow, she dredged up a waxen smile. "Later, please. I just want to get home."
Is this what the pod did too? she wondered as they left the big bad wolf far behind. Played happy families and waited for it to end, enduring, turning a blind eye whatever the horror? Alwyn built the cage, but they walked in. They might have been afraid, but they did nothing.
And while they waited, while they feared, Aurora died. My grandparents died. My mother will die for them, because they cannot face what the future might bring. They can't even face the past.
They've spent their whole lives just getting by, telling themselves it would all be over soon.
She couldn't turn a blind eye. She wouldn't.
And she knew where that thought led her. Her parents had no power to break the contract that they had made on her behalf, and there was no way in hell she could break it. Not knowing that she would sacrifice them. Yet nor would she be made Don Ivan's pawn.
That left one option.
"Riose?"
He glanced over, giving her a small, quizzical smile.
"I need to talk to you later."
X - X - X - X - X
Avy was angry: Zeke could see it from the moment he stumbled into the throne room, feel it crackling along the sorcerous bond that held him.
A glance at Don Ivan's smirk told him why.
The magical fetters hauled him down until he was prostrate, forehead pressed to the cold stone floor. The humiliation was nothing new, but he still resented it bitterly.
So you return. Perhaps you can explain to me why you spent your night fighting Poseidon's allies? Why you freed a valuable prisoner?
"I was following your orders," he mumbled against the stone, his back starting to ache from the pressure she kept on him. "You wanted me to get close to Delphine Thetis – to win her trust. What better way? No one was harmed-"
"Tell that to the wolf with the broken leg," Don cut in.
A few casualties are to be expected. Her voice was thoughtful. Well, Zeke, I had not suspected you had a mind for such intrigues.
The weight on his spine eased, and he knelt up gingerly. He knew better than to get to his feet when Avy was in a mood like this; she was mollified, but not yet convinced.
"You can't live in the court of the Soulless King without picking up a few tricks."
And he had not spent a lifetime with Avarice ap Sangager, watching her manipulate people with deft and heartless guile without learning that the best way to disguise his intentions was with a veil of truth.
How true. Kindness will fool the naïve just as cruelty will alienate them.
If it was a shot at Don Ivan, he didn't notice. "None of which alters the fact that I had Phi in my grasp – I could have made her agree to anything, anything you wanted, and instead this idiot let her run back to tell tales about me and the wolves!"
"Your carelessness is not my problem," Zeke dared to say. He could show no weakness here, not with Avy's judgement looming over him like a guillotine. "But you're mistaken if you think she would have fallen at your feet. Those wolves had to give her a beating before they dumped her in that cesspit. She was a mess when I got there. It was my understanding that she was supposed to be biddable, not broken."
You are correct. Avy's blind eyes turned to Don. I have little patience for such ham-handed incompetence, Poseidon. Each time you mistreat Delphine, you give her another reason to hate you – and ultimately, we need her cooperation, just as we need the influence she brings.
Don's face was a masterpiece of barely suppressed anger.
She turned her attention back to him; Zeke waited for her reprimand, sure some punishment would come.
But when she spoke, her voice was mellow and wry. You have done well. You have gone a long way towards winning her trust.
Zeke only stared, dumbstruck. The cycle of duty and pain had been so constant he'd forgotten there had ever been another life; when she had been a glorious seductress, full of charm and laughter and secrets, glowing like a star in the Soulless Court - and he had been the only one she trusted.
Then the years crashed back into her words and she was old again, the ancient on her pitted throne.
But do not think that one success means I will forget your insolence, or what happened last time I gave you a taste of freedom. I can no longer trust you, Zeke...and I don't think you would play me false, but I would be a fool to give you the chance. Come here.
The command was accompanied by power, hooking around his neck and forcing him forward. He had to crawl to her feet. Her nails, yellowing, brittle, dug into his chin as she yanked his face up. This wasn't going to be pleasant.
He felt the flow of magic, wrapping around him like chains. The air was clammy and saturated with power, her free hand rolling a clutch of horns in her fingers.
By the bond between us, by the magic that binds us, you will reveal nothing of our plans to Delphine Thetis or anyone else, Avy commanded, and the spell sank into him, a trap waiting to be sprung. Not by word or thought or deed. And should you break this agreement, may your heart tear in its cage and your skin rip from your bones and your blood become thorns in your veins.
Two of the horns dissolved into dust as she ended the spell. She was serious, no doubt about it: she had to be to expend so much of her precious store of magic.
Her mouth gaped in a mirthless smile, baring her greying gums. Not by word or thought or deed.
He had seen this vow used before, long ago, and seen too the consequences of it, twitching in agonised heaps upon the ground. It had been a sport for a time, binding people with impossible promises, and watching as they failed: don't breathe. Stare at the sun without blinking. Bring me a handful of moonbeams by nightfall.
And his own promise seemed just as impossible.
X - X - X - X - X
Irked by his encounter with the old hag and her loathsome slave, Don Ivan trudged home.
A heavy, still hush shrouded the house. So it was one of the bad nights. No surprise there – he'd been expecting it after the relative calm of the last fortnight.
He passed by the living room, a glance enough to confirm his father was slumped in his chair, a half-empty bottle of whisky on the table beside him. Laurence Ivan grunted a greeting, one that he didn't bother to answer.
His mother was just where he'd known she would be: sat at the vanity table in that peach silk dressing gown that she always wore. Her loose chignon and straight back were the picture of elegance. The bruise she was powdering over was not.
"Again?" he said. "What set him off this time?"
"Me, I'm afraid." Her voice was cool and controlled.
"You shouldn't provoke him."
"No? Should I just let him drink himself into a stupor, then?"
"Why not?" he countered. "At least he'll be the one waking up with a headache."
It was an old argument, one they'd played out ever since he was old enough to understand that other fathers didn't hit their wives. The vocabulary was a little more sophisticated, to be sure, and so was his understanding of it all, but they still trod this battleground in tired tandem.
She patted down a strand of hair, the same bright blond as his own. "It's not the headache I object to. It's the heartache." Her laugh was silvery, and yet so bitter. "Twenty years, sweetheart, and even though I'm the one who got the ring, she got the man. I thought he'd get over her, but it isn't me he's trying to drown in the bottom of that bloody glass."
"No," he pointed out levelly. "But it's you who gets in the way of his fists."
"At least he sees me then. I have to live with being outshone by her in public. Precious Marie, the prophetess who loves us all so much she'll die for us." Her voice was tart and mocking. "But you will have to forgive me if I refuse to be outshone in private – not even by her, but by the memory of the girl she was twenty years ago! God only knows why I put up with it!"
She snapped the compact shut and it felt like his heart jumping hard, afraid suddenly.
"You still love him, don't you?" he asked, unsure.
She must have seen something in his face that made her turn, softening. "Of course I do. Don't look so worried, sweetheart. It's a little tiff, that's all. Just because your father can drive me up the wall doesn't mean he could ever drive me out of the house."
Yet she hesitated, her eyes dark and vulnerable.
"It's just hard to know he'll never love me like that," she said, and he saw her swallow. "Don't make my mistake. Don't love too much. It only hurts."
Moved, he went forward to brush a kiss on the bruised cheek she offered. So many of the pod knew her as distant, but she was his mother and he still remembered the stories she used to tell him as a child, the cookies she had baked, the way she'd wipe mud from his face with a cloth and a little amused sigh.
"You're twice the woman she is," he swore. "And she could never outshine you – she's just a rattling bag of bones who can't even get out of bed. You're Mrs Ivan, and you'll be the mother of the next pod leader. What's she got? An ugly death and a family she's torn to shreds because she didn't love Daniel Thetis enough to live for him."
"There is that," she acknowledged. "Now let me finish my make up, sweetheart. I've got dinner with the girls in fifteen minutes and I want to look my best."
X - X - X - X - X
They left her at the door, but Phi knew both had picked up on her mood. Jo gave her a rough hug, and murmured something about lunch tomorrow; even that much kindness almost overwhelmed her. As long as everyone pretended things were normal, she could cope.
Her father was waiting for her, unusually pale. At the sight of him, everything Iry had told her seemed to solidify and become real, and she wanted to flee so she wouldn't have to have this conversation.
How long he had held hs peace. How strong he'd had to be for them all.
"I..." He cleared his throat. "I'm so sorry, baby."
"Dad..." she said helplessly. "Why didn't you tell me?"
He spread trembling hands. "I didn't want it hanging over you. We couldn't forget, but if you didn't know...baby..."
Something in his tone frightened her. It was so lost, so despairing. She'd never heard him sound like that, not even when they first realised her mother wouldn't get better.
"Dad-" she began, but he spoke again, his voice rough.
"I still miss them, you know. You don't ever get over it." And then he put his head in his hands, and to her dismay, she saw his shoulders shaking.
Her father was sitting at their kitchen table crying, and she didn't know what to do.
For a moment she wanted to weep too, an urge so violent that her hands shook with it. Her father had spent so many years being strong for their family, trying to mend all the rifts of the past, trying to make something better – all for her and her mother. All for them.
But he needed her to be strong.
"It's not your fault," Phi said, the half-lie tripping off her tongue uneasily.
A muffled, gravelly laugh. He lifted his head, wiping at his eyes. Strange how the grief peeled away the years from his face, so she had a glimpse of that boy her father once was. "I'm afraid it is. And I just keep making the same mistake. I swore I'd never let our pod be divided again...and here I am. Doing to my own daughter what Alwyn did to me. I've been an idiot, Phi."
"Dad..." she implored, frightened by the bleak words.
"I thought it was for the best. I thought you and Don were on the way to love, I thought I could mend the rift with Laurie, I thought...oh, a hundred things. And the one thing I never thought was to ask you what you wanted. I'm sorry, baby. I got it wrong."
"Isn't there any way to break the contract?"
He closed his eyes; without animation, he looked old and weary, a man waiting for the end days. "No. That's why Laurie insisted. He knew we couldn't risk it happening again. No one wanted that."
Except maybe him, she thought, Iry's voice echoing in her head with an oracle's cool accuracy.
Love denied is violent, and it has no mercy.
Nor do the Furies.
And all her hopes of salvation were distilled down to them, and a desperate throw of the dice.
"I'm sorry," he said, tears rough in his voice.
She nodded, feeling like she had aged decades within her skin. "Me too."
X - X - X - X - X
Don went back to the lounge in a thoughtful mood. He sat down in the chair opposite his father, noting that the glass was already almost empty, that Laurence Ivan's eyes were glazed. Neither of them said a word about the bruises, a conspiracy of silence that had lasted years already and could endure many more.
When his father reached to pour another glass, Don almost missed his words, soft and slurred. "How did it go?"
"Well enough, I suppose," he answered. "You were right – she punished him, though I thought he was going to sweet-talk her out of it at first."
His father's voice was dead, detached. It always was when he spoke of Avarice, as if he had amputated the memories of his own boyhood meetings with her. "Never. She has no compassion left in her." He paused, then came the familiar question. "She didn't ask anything of you? Offered you nothing?"
"Nothing," he said swiftly. He hadn't mentioned the new powers she'd given him, knowing his father would be furious, but the reminder of them gave him a twinge of unease.
"Good. All her gifts are poisoned."
Don had never dared ask, but now, emboldened by the knowledge of just how close he was to succeeding where his father had failed, he spoke up. "What did she do to you?"
The words hung there, spinning like spiders dangling from their webs, and his father's hand clenched around the glass.
He took a long draught; and another, and another, and then the glass was empty, and perhaps he'd burned away his fear because the face he raised to Don was terrible, contorted in rage and pain.
"I always knew you'd ask," he said in a thick, funny voice. "And I thought, when he does, I'll have to tell him. 'Cause he's bold, my son, and he's reckless, and if he's anything like his father, he'll think he's smart enough to outwit that old witch on her stone throne. He needs to know that he isn't, and he needs to know that she'll give you whatever you want, but she'll ask her price, and you'll pay until the day you die. You'll pay in your dreams and you'll pay in your memories and you'll never forget her. That's her price, you see. She wants to be beautiful again, but if she can't be beautiful, she'll take being feared. As long as she's remembered."
His expression was awful, but Don was riveted.
"I went to her, like you did, and she promised me the same things. She'd give me Marie and the pod if I'd give her Ryar's bones and horns and all their healing power. Seemed fair to me, so we struck our deal. I thought it'd be easy. I didn't want anyone hurt – Dan was like my brother. But he was too soft to lead us, and we needed a strong leader. I wasn't a Thetis, so I wasn't suitable and I didn't know how to persuade people. But she did, Avarice.
"She'd been sat in that pit for years with her powers, listening to everything that happened in the valley. She knew all their secrets and all their desires, who to talk to and what to say. I listened to her and did as she said. Bit by bit, they came round. Some of the elders started to question Alwyn's choice of Dan as the heir. Then more people. I could see that Alwyn was starting to look at me differently. That's why he betrothed me to Marie, why he started to ask me about the important issues. It was going perfectly."
His father paused, and his mouth twisted in a bitter grin. His face seemed skeletal, his eyes too bright.
"But all the while, Marie was falling for my best friend. And then that night came. She left me for him – she left me! I went to Avarice, stumbling through the snow, half-frozen. I thought she'd know how to help me. But she just told me that now I was guaranteed the pod if I just played this right. She didn't seem to understand that Marie was everything."
"What happened?"
His lips drew back in a sneer. "She told me to let them break the blood-oath. Let them be the traitors, not me – that I'd win every heart in the pod with one act of mercy." A strange, rippling moan slipped from his mouth. "But not the heart I wanted. Not hers!"
No need to ask whose heart he meant. Don despised Marie Thetis for making his father this, almost as much as he loved his father for fighting on despite it all.
"Avarice didn't understand – she couldn't, but I didn't see that it would make much difference to our plans. I asked her for power – to scare off some of the Pack, I told her, but in truth, I needed it to overcome Dan's father. He was a formidable man. She granted me it, but on the condition that I would use it only for protection. It was protection, what I did. It was!"
Don agreed. But he suspected Avarice wouldn't.
"I didn't realise then how many of the pod Dan had infected with his pacifism. Alwyn gave me permission to punish them, and I made sure that the Laveaus and the Thetises learned not to break blood-oath."
Vicious satisfaction rung in his voice, burned in his zealous eyes. At moments like this, his father seemed most alive, flushed with justified anger and a pride that Don respected. His father, the strong one, willing to do what others would not dare for the good of his people.
"But the pod were weak. They didn't see it as justice – they forgave them. I was the one who'd been abandoned, but they treated Dan and Marie as if they hadn't brought the entire mess on themselves. Alwyn saw how it was going, and he made Dan his heir to keep the rest of them happy. I think he even admired him a bit, you know, for having the balls to defy him." He snorted. "He'd spin in his grave if he knew how pathetic we've become."
"Avarice," prompted Don.
"I went back to her after it was done. She was...furious." All the emotion was pared from his voice, leaving it flat, but his face was gaunt and eerie, full of shadows. "I had lied to her, she said. I'd been beguiled by a pretty face. I had to understand that all women were the same in the dark, and she would teach me the lesson so I would never be fooled again."
His body spasmed, as if in memory of some old horror. His voice fell to a hoarse whisper. "The things that happened in that cave...that she made me do...there in the darkness, what she made me do while she wore Marie's face..."
Aghast, Don could only stare at his father, shuddering with the intensity of it. He looked sick, a man dispossessed of hope or comfort.
Shaking, Laurence Ivan reached for the bottle, and as he drank and drank and drank, Don felt the sinister shape of what his father tried so hard to sear from his mind. But the feeling that rose in him in response was a surprise: not pity, not compassion – but contempt that his father, who he had always held in such esteem, could have ruined his chance of glory so completely and so foolishly.
And as he thought of his own poisoned gift, he was more determined that he would succeed. The price of failure was all too clear.
X - X - X - X - X
Riose met her outside the school, which seemed a hollow shell without students bustling about the campus. She was perched on the low wall by the doors, hands tangling nervously. It was no surprise that he was late, but it didn't do anything for her nerves. He came slouching up the road as if he had all the time in the world to play with. In a way, he did.
He stopped just short of her, hands in his pockets, saying nothing, giving away nothing.
"You know what this is about," she said, gazing up at him. It felt oddly official: this was not her friend, but an agent of the Furies, and a deadly creature in his own right.
"I can guess. You should know this is dangerous, Phi. They can break blood-oath, but their methods may drive you to madness or suicide."
Madness didn't seem much of a threat compared the last few days, which wouldn't have been out-of-place in a lunatic's hallucinations. And she had known from the moment Riose mentioned it that it would be dangerous. Of course it would be.
It didn't take away the fear, but nothing would.
She decided, and somehow the finality of it all strengthened her. There would be no more uncertainty: just her and them.
She met his eyes dead on. "It's the lesser of two evils."
He grimaced. "I doubt it somehow. But if this is really what you want-"
"It is."
He continued, regret soaking his voice. "-then you need to persuade the heads of the Furies. All three of them."
The Grieving Fury, the Viper Fury, and the Demon Fury. If they refused her...would she even return?
But the alternative was worse. It made her half-smile: not even the Nightworld's foremost mercenaries could match the thought of decades bending to Don Ivan's will, his concubine, his toy doll, his catspaw.
"I'm positive." She took a deep breath. "I want to meet them."
He searched her face, his eyes questing and intense. Whatever he found didn't satisfy him. "Will you tell me what you found out about the pod that made you choose the Furies?"
"Eventually, I guess." When she had learned to cope with it, When she could bear to unravel their thorough, careful web of lies. "But not now. Just...understand that it was enough."
Riose gave her a curt nod, slipping back into formality. "I'll see it's done."
"Thank you," she said.
"Don't thank me. I've done you no favour."
It had begun. Now there was no backing down: no way but forward.
Forward to escape, she thought grimly. She would not be another of the pod's fatalities, she would not be a victim beneath their blind eyes, brought down by apathy. She wanted her freedom - and she had a fight on her hands.
One she had to win.
I miss those days and I miss those ways
When I got lost in fantasies
In a cartoon land of mysteries
In a place you won't grow old
In a place you won't feel cold...
X - X - X - X - X
