“My mirror. Get my mirror.”
“You must rest.”
“I am your god. Do as I command.”
When he scurried away, she fell back, limp, each breath a torture. He came back, clawed feet clicking on stone, held the mirror up.
Her hair, her beautiful hair, now gray as fetid smoke. Her face yellowed and scored with lines and grooves, her dark eyes clouded with age. All her beauty gone, her youth destroyed.
She would get it back, all of it. And the six who’d caused this would pay beyond measure.
As rage fed her, she grabbed the chalice, drank deep. “Get me more. Get me more, then you will do what I tell you.”
“I will make you well.”
“Yes.” She stared at his eyes, mad into mad. “You will make me well.”
CHAPTER FOUR
As Doyle read, translating smoothly, Riley took notes. It helped her form a picture of the island—a sketch really, but something more tangible. And one of the three goddesses. Dressed in white robes, belts of silver or gold or jewels. And Arianrhod—Bo definitely had a crush going there—stood out in the description. The slender beauty with hair like a flaming sunset, eyes bright as a summer sky. Yadda, yadda, Riley thought as she wrote blue eyes, redhead. He praised her alabaster skin, her voice—like harp song.
Wants to bang her.
“What?”
“Huh?” She glanced up from her notes, met Doyle’s eyes. “Didn’t realize I said it out loud. I said—wrote down—he wants to bang her. Bo’s hot for Arianrhod.”
“And that’s relevant how?”
“It’s called an observation, Lord Oblivious. I also observe we’re talking about a forested island, one with tall hills—and a castle, palace, fortress built on one of the tallest. That’s strategy. You want high ground.
We know there was a civil war, and the rebels lost, ended up being banished, stuck in the Bay of Sighs. Where we found the Water Star. Something else we pull out of this journal may be a step toward the Ice Star.”
After considering it, Doyle summed it up. “I don’t think Bo getting a woody over Arianrhod tells us anything more than he’s got a dick and she’s hot.”
“Maybe not, but odds are the other two also rate hotness, and he’s all about the one. Plus, he writes Arianrhod invited him. Maybe they’ve got something going. We come from them, that’s the story. You gotta bang to beget. It might not make any difference which of us come from which of them, but it’s relevant if Bran’s ancestor and the goddess—the one with a Celtic name—did the tango, and Bran’s a direct descendant.”
After a moment, Doyle gave her an eyebrow jerk she took as acknowledgment of her point. And went back to reading.
He had a good voice, she thought. Not what you’d call harp song, but a good, strong voice. He read well, and not everybody read well out loud.
She wondered how many books he’d read. Thousands maybe—imagine that. Here was a man who’d gone from tallow candles to laser technology, from horse and cart to space travel.
She could spend a decade picking his brain on what he’d seen, how he’d lived, what he’d felt.
For the moment she continued to take notes, following Bohannon’s observations and descriptions as he continued on horseback from the beach, through groves of orange and lemon trees—the blossoms perfuming the sweet night air.
“We can surmise spring—orange blossoms.”
“That’s considering the island runs on the same rules of seasons as this world,” Doyle pointed out. “And on this side of the equator.”
“Point.” And a damn good one, she had to admit. “But we stick with the physical location, at Bo’s time and place, and we get spring. Surmising. A well-kept island, too. He talks of the groves, the wide, dry road—lit with torches. A full moon, which also helps estimating a time. The silver palace—you have to wonder if that’s literal or just prose.”
She filled in details as he read. Expansive gardens, women in flowing gowns, music piping through open doors and windows, out onto wide terraces. The new queen’s standard—a white dove soaring over a blue sea—flew atop every tower.
Doyle got as far as the entrance hall—brilliant tapestries, gilded trees flowering in silver urns—when he put the book down.
“If I have to read interior design, I’m going to need more than a beer.”