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

Brutus drew in a sharp, audible breath, but she did not acknowledge his presence, and Brutus was aware that even though they stood close, she had no idea he was present.

Cornelia looked different, and it took Brutus a long moment to work out why. She was older, perhaps by ten or fifteen years, far more mature, far, far lovelier.

Brutus realized he was holding his breath and let it out slowly, studying her. Her body was leaner and stronger than it was now, her hips and breasts more rounded, her flanks and legs smoother and more graceful. Her face had thinned, revealing a fine bone structure, and there were lines of care and laughter about her eyes and mouth that accentuated her loveliness rather than detracted from it.

‘Cornelia,” Brutus said, and stretched out his hand.

She paid him no attention, wandering back and forth, first this way, then that, her eyes anxious, and Brutus understood that she was waiting for someone.

Who?

Then, suddenly, she stopped and stared straight at him.

‘I thought you would not come!” she said, and Brutus almost groaned at the love in her eyes and voice.

‘Cornelia!” Brutus said again, taking a step forward, his heart gladder than he could have thought possible.

And then he staggered as a man brushed past him and walked toward Cornelia.

This was the man that Cornelia had smiled at and spoken to, and he was as unaware of Brutus’

presence as Cornelia was.

A deep, vile anger consumed Brutus. Who was this that she met? The man was as naked as Cornelia, and Brutus saw that he was fully roused. Who was he? Corineus? Yes… no. Brutus had an unobstructed view of the man’s face, yet could not make it out. First he was sure that he wore Corineus’ fair features, then they darkened, and became those of a man unknown.

Cornelia said the man’s name, her voice rich with love, and it, too, was undiscernible to Brutus’ ears.

‘Do you know the ways of Llangarlian love?” said the man.

‘Of course,” said Cornelia, and she walked directly into the man’s arms, her arms slipping softly about his body, and offered her mouth to his.

They kissed, passionately, the kiss of a man and a woman well used to each other, and Brutus found his hands were clenched at his side. Then Cornelia and her lover slid to the floor, and with a sigh of complete contentment, the man mounted her.

‘No!” Brutus shouted, and would have stepped forward and grabbed at the man now moving over Cornelia with long, powerful strokes save that he found himself unable to move.

He could witness, but he could not interfere.

The lovers’ tempo and passion intensified, and Cornelia moaned and twisted, encouraging her lover in every way she could, and they kissed again, their bodies now so completely entwined, so completely merged, that they seemed but one.

Then the man’s form changed, blurring slightly. He was grunting now, almost animalistic, and for the first time Brutus saw that Cornelia had her hands on the man’s shoulders as if to push him off.

She cried out, and it was the sound of pain, not passion.

Brutus still could not move, and he watched in horror as the man’s form blurred again, and became something horrible and violent.

A man, yes, with a thick, muscled body, but impossibly with the head of a bull.

The creature tipped back its head and roared, and both Cornelia and Brutus screamed at the same moment.

The creature’s movements became violent, murderous, and Brutus saw that he was using his body as a weapon.

There was blood now, smearing across Cornelia’s belly and flanks, and her head was tipped back, her face screwed up in agony, and her fists beat a useless tattoo across the creature’s back and shoulders.

‘Cornelia! Cornelia!” Brutus screamed, and for once both Cornelia and the creature heard him, and both turned their faces to him, and the creature roared once more, and Brutus knew who it was.

Asterion. Cornelia had invited evil incarnate to ride her.

He woke, violently, jerking into a sitting position in their bed, his chest heaving, his eyes wide and staring.

Beside him Cornelia had sat up as well, and was asking him what was the matter.

‘Nothing,” he whispered. “Nothing. Go back to sleep.”

Eventually she did, but Brutus sat there the night through, awake. All he could see, all he could hear, was the sound of Cornelia’s voice as she welcomed her lover.

ONE EVENING, CORNELIA ACCOSTED HIM ON THE VE randah of Corineus’ house. Brutus was exhausted—he’d spent the greater part of the day helping a team of men wrest a new mast into position on one of the ships, and the very last thing he felt like was a confrontation with his wife.

‘Brutus?”

‘Hmm?” he said, hoping the disinterest in his voice and his closed eyes as he leaned back in his chair would send her away.

‘Blangan says I am within a few weeks of birth. Brutus… I do not want to give birth on ship. Can we not delay our departure until I’ve had our child?”

It was the first time he’d ever heard her refer to the child within her as “our child.” It was enough to make him open his eyes and study her.

She certainly looked as if she would drop the child soon. Her belly was huge, her ankles swollen, and her face drawn with its weight.

‘Blangan says,” Cornelia continued, “that the baby has not moved in the womb as it should.” She laid a hand on her belly, just under her ribs. “His head is here, tucked beneath my heart, and it should be—”

‘I do not want to hear a midwifely discourse,” he said. “It is not my concern.” Despite her current condition, all Brutus could see was her face as she welcomed her dark lover, and her body as it writhed ecstatically under his.

‘Is there no pity in you that you cannot grant me this small concession?” she said softly. “Blangan says it will be a difficult birth.”

And so now she called on his “pity.” Had she considered his “pity” when she arranged her assignation with her lover? Brutus’ small reservoir of patience ran entirely empty.

‘Any other man,” he said, his voice dangerously quiet, “would have had you executed after your treachery in Mesopotama. Any other man would have thrown you overboard with your sulks and petulances. Any other man”—he straightened in his chair—”would have cast you aside for your constant whining about that pathetic boy you think somehow better than I, or your even more pathetic chasings after Corineus. Who next, Cornelia? Who next will you lust after?”

‘I do not dream of Melanthus! Nor ‘chase’ after Corineus!”

He leaned forward and seized her wrist. “Then of whom do you dream at night, my lovely? Not of me, for you stiffen in revulsion if I so much as breathe near you.”

She blushed, and he had all the answer he needed.

‘I dream of Llangarlia,” she said softly.

He stared at her. “Of a stone hall in Llangarlia?”

She did not speak, but there was a faint, guilty flush in her cheeks, and Brutus had all the answer that he needed.

‘Bah!” Disgusted, he let go her wrist. “Listen to me, I can no more delay the departure of this fleet than I could delay the rising of the sun. Locrinia is ready to slide into the bay, and the autumn storms already gather on the northern horizon. We must reach our destination before they whip the seas into something infinitely more dangerous than what we endured within the Pillars of Hercules. Frankly, my dear, I don’t care where you give birth, whether it is in a rowboat or in the greatest silken bed in the known world, so long as you deliver that son to me alive and healthy.”

Her face had now drained of all its color, and Brutus again felt a moment of guilt, and then a surge of renewed anger at the fact that she so constantly called that guilt into being.

‘I don’t care where you give birth,” he said again. “I care for that as little as I care for you. Just give me my son, for I care nothing for you!”

As Cornelia made her way back into the house, her hand held to her face in what Brutus thought was a truly pathetic attempt to foster his sympathy, he thought again of Membricus’ vision: Cornelia would die in childbirth.

‘Gods,” Brutus muttered, “I hope Membricus saw aright!”

He would prefer Cornelia dead than alive and betraying him.

For a long time Brutus sat there in the dark, thinking both of the visions of death that surrounded Cornelia.

And Asterion. Asterion ! Brutus remembered that first night he had taken Cornelia, how she had asked him, “Are you Asterion?”

Had she been expecting him, even then?