The Divine Comedy || bloodlines

Princess Andromeda

ARIANA

August, fourteen years old

GODS, ARIANA HATED KNEELING. Of course, she knew it was protocol for praetors, and she bowed her head to senators and Mona, but that didn't make her like it. In the back of her mind, she knew that she didn't have to kneel. If she did not, what could they do to her? She was stronger than anyone in that valley, greater and more grand, and kneeling was a formality. Never in her darkest nightmares had she imagined kneeling out of fear.

The monster by the doors had ordered her to, his hand on the back of Jason's neck; Ariana started to laugh, mirth swimming in her eyes at the sight of her friend, but humor had died on her tongue. Emerging from the balcony, the ocean air sweeping across his golden hair, was the boy from Charleston. A twisted instinct she could not control left her on a knee, her eyes staring down at the yacht deck and refusing to look up at the truth.

"Ariana?" Alex's voice, Lucius' footsteps. Instead of her, it was the monster laughing in raucous amusement. The gravelly sound, choking like a beast's howl, left Ariana repressing the urge to cover her ears. "What's wrong? Who is that?"

"You should follow the centurion's example, boys," came the monster's rough rumble. "She knows what's good for you."

Though they said nothing, Ariana could register the lengthy pause between the moment the beast spoke and when the boys followed his orders. She could feel the movement in the deck, resting her fingertips against it, and she tried to steel herself to not look behind or above.

"You came." The man's voice was weak, ragged with exhaustion, but Ariana could understand him through the ocean wind. She would always have understood him in this moment; a part of her had spent the last decade waiting for it.

"You called." Ariana kept her eyes down on the yacht's deck, trying to keep her voice indistinguishable from apathy. Jason was here, Jason was just feet away, Jason was safe. "Give me back my friend."

Who are you talking to, little one? Do you want him, or do you want your savior?

"And you?" His voice was small in a way she had never heard—never thought of as a possibility. "Are you prepared to hold your end of the deal?"

The deck pressed into her knee, the weight of an arm pushing down on another leg.

Warmth seized her fingertips, hands, wrists, and up her arms. Sorrow seemed to burn white hot throughout her blood, replacing healing cells with desire for anything but reparation. She had never felt such despair, such fury, except on the day she had woken up and her friend was gone. Ariana just hadn't expected him to be the culprit—he who had raised and named her, he who had first handed her a blade to cut against a world of wrong.

Kill him, kill him, kill him. The voices, their oppressive screams, played a tune of death in her head. Kill him now, and you will save the boy you came for.

Slowly, deliberately and with fire, Ariana lifted her head. She saw the body of the upper deck—a set of stairs curving up either side, a thin rail to prevent a dangerous fall, and a boy. He looked just like any college student in New Rome, dressed in no other word but average shorts and a t-shirt. There was only a remarkable scar down his cheek and a sword like none she had ever seen in his hand.

Ariana met his eyes, waited for him to open his accursed mouth, and smiled. "Are there covenants between wolves and sheep? I will kill you, Luke Castellan, and wear your skin."