Hades’ Daughter. Book One of the Troy Game by Sara Douglass

‘Melanthus!” I sobbed, holding on to his name as a charm. “Melanthus!”

Finally, thankfully, I had hurt him.

He cursed, and pulled himself free of my body, bruising me even in that action.

‘I am going to bathe,” he said, and he rolled away, and rose from my bed.

I lay there, weeping softly, my mind scattering in a thousand different directions. Everything had gone so wrong, everything that had kept me safe was destroyed, every dream and hope of mine lay ruined.

Was this what Hera had tried to warn me against? What was that name she had called my enemy?

The Horned One?

‘Asterion?” I whispered. Was this the creature that had raped me?

RUTUS SAT IN THE NOW-COOLED WATER OF THE tub, washing away the battle and sex sweat from his body. He regretted what he had done—not so much the bedding of Cornelia, it happened to every girl sooner or later, but the marrying of her in the first place. Artemis, what had come over him?

He’d taken everything he’d needed from Pandrasus, he most certainly could have had his bedding of his daughter without marrying her… so… why had he done it ?

It was as if someone else had spoken those words for him, or had forced them out of his mouth.

They’d been a deep compulsion, shot through his mouth before he’d been able to swallow them.

Well, no matter. He was well past the age when most men married, and a Dorian princess was not the worst contract he could have made. If she bred him sons—and if he could manage to teach her to keep her mouth shut—she would do well enough.

Brutus moved slightly, suddenly uncomfortable as he remembered how Artemis had all but promised herself to him as a reward should he win through the test within Mesopotama. How would she react to this girl? He fretted over it for a few minutes, then relaxed, smiling at himself. How could Artemis be jealous of Cornelia?

Brutus raised his head and looked to the bed. Cornelia lay curled up tight, her back to him, the slight shaking of her shoulders betraying her weeping. She was not a beautiful girl, but she was comely enough, and had pleasantly rounded limbs that were they ever to wrap themselves about a man in pleasure, would be as sweet as honey.

He could have done worse in a wife.

Refreshed, even though the bathwater had been cool, Brutus rose, dried himself, and walked slowly back to the bed. His body was very dark in the night, his hair, still unbound, drifted cloudlike about his shoulders and back.

Only the gold banding his arms and legs glistened bright as he moved.

He reached the bed, stood a moment, then sat down and laid a hand on Cornelia’s shoulder.

‘You will get used to me,” he said. “I will not be a bad husband to you.”

She stiffened, and Brutus sighed, and his hand tightened on her shoulder, then slid about to her breast.

Surprisingly, she rolled over and looked him in the face.

‘Are you Asterion?” she said. “Are you he?”

Brutus was momentarily stunned—he could not think of anything further from what she might have said—then laughed, half in genuine amusement, half to cover his surprise.

‘Asterion? I? You flatter me, child, if you think me that malevolent.”

Then his smile died. “Did I hurt you so badly,” he asked, “that you would name me Asterion?” His eyes moved down to the red, angry wounds beneath her breasts, and his fingers traced gently over them, then he lifted his hand to her face and wiped the tears from her cheeks.

Then, very slowly, very carefully, he began to make love to her again, and this time she did not fight him, but only turned her head and closed her eyes so she did not have to see him.

LLANGARLIAENVISSA STILL HADN’T COMPLETELY CALMED down after Mag had managed to escape her, so that when she gleaned the knowledge that Brutus had taken a wife—of all things!—in the full flush of triumphant victory Genvissa descended into a truly black humor.

She was grateful that her ill temper had caused Aerne to seek a bed elsewhere this night; at least her grumblings and mutterings would not disturb him—or cause him to ask questions. So Genvissa lay there, sensing the pain and force of Brutus’ nuptial conquest, and finally managed to calm herself down. She was surely too old and mature to allow herself to be waylaid by a little petty jealousy.

A wife was, in the end, not too much of a trouble. It certainly wouldn’t keep Brutus from her side, nor from his duties to the Game. And what a petty, pudgy-faced, plump-thighed, self-obsessed child his runaway mouth had caught for him!

Genvissa lay very still, trying to glean what she could about the girl. She was a child, and silly, and unlikely to hold any man’s attention for longer than it took to bed her… but the more Genvissa tried to scry the child’s true nature out, the more she came to realize that there was something else about her.

Something shadowy. Something unknowable.

Genvissa did not like that, She did not like it that this child-bride of Brutus’ hid something about her that Genvissa could not discern.

For hours Genvissa lay there, growing more frustrated and ill-tempered until, in the end, as dawn was finally pushing back the darkness, Genvissa managed to put aside her concerns. There was nothing about Cornelia apart from her actual existence. If Genvissa thought there was something shadowyabout the girl, then that was only because she had been shocked by Brutus’ sudden action in taking the girl to wife. That was all.

Cornelia was no threat, and surely the girl’s childish silliness would surely drive Brutus into her own arms with more speed than possibly might be seemly.

As the house grew lighter, Genvissa smiled even more and stretched lazily under the bed-furs, enjoying their soft caress against her naked flesh.

Cornelia might even come in useful.

Genvissa wondered if Brutus had truly allowed himself to believe that “Artemis’ ” test was merely to free the Trojan slaves. If so, then he was in for a massive shock… Mesopotama held a much more dangerous and critical test… and Genvissa, thinking, came to realize that Cornelia might be just the one to propel him into it.

With luck, Brutus might be angry enough to take the foolish child’s head off after the event.

After all, what plump shrieking virgin could hold a man such as Brutus for long?

So delighted at her visions of plump shrieking virgin deaths that all thought of Cornelia’s strange hidden shadows vanished, Genvissa rose from her bed and walked over to where her three daughters slept cuddled together in the one bed. She gazed at them lovingly for several moments, then leaned forward and patted each one lightly on the cheek, raising them to wakefulness and the new day.

PART Two LONDON, MARCH m ajor Jack Skelton walked slowly out of Monument Underground station, a newspaper tucked under his arm, relieved to have escaped the hearty joviality of the Bentley household but apprehensive about what waited for him on London’s streets.

The night was bitterly cold, frosting his breath around his face. There were few other people about: a couple, laughing softly, walking hand in hand towards a brightly lit tea house; a soldier who glanced curiously at Skelton before moving briskly down a side street; an old man, sitting hunched and broken in a doorway.

None of them were who Skelton had come to see. None of them were part of Asterion’s Gathering, although all would be affected by it, one way or another. Eventually.

He turned east down Fish Street, drawn despite himself to the site where Asterion had engineered his last honor.

There it was, the great fluted Doric column that Sir Christopher Wren had built to commemorate the Great Fire of 1666.

Skelton stopped, shivering, thrusting his hands deep into the pockets of his coat. He hated it that Wren had chosen to raise a monument to Asterion’s overwhelming evil— but then, what was it to Wren but a fire?

Oh God, the fire! He could feel it rage about him again, taking everything from him, destroying his life yet one more time .

He could hear Asterion’s laughter above even the maddened cackle of the flames.

Skelton shivered once more, cold from memory rather than the night-time frost, and left Fish Street for King William Street. He crossed over it quickly; not looking at London Bridge to his left, and strode briskly down Upper Thames Street towards Blackfriars Bridge and Victoria Embankment. He stopped once or twice, peering into darkened laneways, adjusting the newspaper under his arm.

Asterion was here, somewhere, smiling, not revealing himself, lurking within the darkness of the night. Pulling them all together, one more time.

For one last time. Twice before Asterion had gathered them, each time garnering more and more control, both over them and over the Game. Skelton had no doubts that this Gathering would be the final one; this time Asterion meant to wrest from Skelton what little control of the Game he still commanded .