The Wings of Ashtaroth

Prologue: Children: Section II: Moniqa

Moniqa – Qemassen: The Palace

20 Years Ago

Everything Moniqa owned belonged to her husband, from the too-soft bed foisted upon her as one of his grand gestures, to her father's treasured collection of ruby-eyed sandstone statues. It all belonged to him, no matter what she did, because she herself belonged to him, and because she belonged to him, so too did the flesh of her flesh—those newborn twins in the adjoining room, wailing as the slaves tended them.

No. That wasn't true. Not everything belonged to Eshmunen. Some things, like the twins, like their sisters Himalit and Qwella, belonged to Samelqo. All Moniqa's children were Eshmunen's by blood, but everything that was Eshmunen's was Samelqo's.

Moniqa rolled onto her side in the darkness of her chamber, soft body sinking into softer bedding. An army of gold-tasseled pillows fortified the threshold of her frame, not because she needed the comfort, but because there wasn't room for them elsewhere. The new bed wasn't large enough, but that didn't matter to Eshmunen, or the slaves that had carted the old one away. Lying there was like sinking beneath the water, surrounded by stones too slippery to grasp.

She stretched her hand out slowly, ebony skin catching a sliver of light from the windows she'd all but blacked out with thick curtains. She crooked her finger beneath the fragile gold of the sun. The light was like a bird or an insect come to balance on her hand. Inside its focused beam, the dust motes danced in slow circles. Massenqa dust—sand sneaking inside to colonize her lungs like little winged soldiers.

At home, in Indas, the air was hot and humid at this time of year. In the capital, Ipsis, slaves and boatmen would be threshing the reeds to keep the rivers clear for tradesmen and royal barges. When she'd been a child, she'd begged her older sister Lena to swim in the palace's innermost canals. Moniqa had stopped asking only when Lena had told her the bottoms were full of human bones and giant fishes.

Moniqa closed her eyes, drunk on the lotus tea her Anan physician plied her with. Her fingers, still bathed in sunlight, dreamed of slipping beneath the surface of Ipsis's waterways, of giant fishes nipping gently at her nails, her palms, her eyelids, the jellied eyes beneath.

Lena had disappeared long ago. Moniqa had never been sure why, but she'd always imagined that Lena had drowned—that her body lay sunken at the base of one of those verdant waterways—a feast for the eels. Maybe if they'd been close, Moniqa would have cried, but they hadn't been close. Lena had worshipped the old gods, like the Massenqa did, not sweet Adonen. In that way she'd been their mother's daughter, and Moniqa her father's. Besides, mourning a vanished sister when their whole country had long been lost seemed almost fanciful.

But oh, how she wished she were in Indas now, that it had not been lost, that she'd never married the Massenqa king, that if she tipped her hand just so her skin would slip under cool water as the slaves ferried her downstream. She wished that everything she had was hers, including her children. Herself.

Moniqa opened her eyes and watched her hand resting in the light like it was someone else's. Unrecognizable.

Aurelius was hers, because she'd named him. Some days, it was her only comfort.

She swallowed, then retracted her hand from the sunlight to push herself into a sitting position. As she heaved, she jostled a pillow out of place and it tumbled to the floor.

It looked so absurd there—a square puff upside-down, balanced perfectly on its peak.

Moniqa laughed, which was the lotus tea, but she didn't care. Let her laugh.