Chapter Five
The rules stated no magic.
As we made our way through the darkness of the mountains, over the steep paths and through the twisted vines that covered them, I found myself annoyed with my father’s spur-of-the-moment rules. Right before we left, he had unexpectedly burst from the palace with a list of rules.
1. No magic could be used. We couldn’t use any of our magical gifts or abilities.
2. Ortrera couldn’t take all of her warriors. She had to choose only one.
3. If either side killed the dragon for any reason instead of capturing it, the other side became the de facto winner.
4. Since we couldn’t use magic, we couldn’t travel god-style, by imaging where we wanted to go and simply being there instantly. We had to walk. Ortrera couldn’t ride her Pegasus.
5. If Cadmus laid a hand on me, Ares would kill him and Ortrera would win the challenge.
It was an exhausting list, particularly the part that stated that we had to walk. My legs already felt like rubber and the evening dew had made the grass slippery. I had slipped and almost fallen three times already.
“I don’t know why you men enjoy this kind of thing,” I mentioned to Cadmus. He was slightly ahead of me, pushing through the overgrown trails. He turned and grinned, his dark hair falling slightly over one eye.
“What? This isn’t fun for you?” he asked. I rolled my eyes, but had to smile. He was the kind of person who made you feel good just being around him. Or that was the affect he had on me, anyway.
“Not particularly,” I admitted. He smiled.
“If you didn’t want to do this, then that begs that question of why in the world are you? You’re a goddess. You don’t have to do anything that you don’t wish to.”
“That’s where you’re wrong,” I told him as we continued walking. I stayed directly on his heels where I discovered that his scent was incredibly appealing, like cedar, musk and the outdoors. “There are strange rules and laws in Olympus and Zeus has his own ideas about things. It’s incredibly political and the gods back-bite and bicker.”
“But you don’t. Because you thrive in peaceful settings,” Cadmus observed. I nodded.
“I’m the goddess of peace. I definitely enjoy life the best when there is no conflict.”
“You make me feel peaceful just standing near you, you know,” Cadmus remarked. “I like that. You are a very soothing presence.”
I smiled. “Just doing my job.” He laughed again.
“You’re witty. I like that, too.”
I shook my head. You could tell that Cadmus came from royalty. He was strong and self-assured, confident and knew what he liked. But I could see humility in his eyes, too, a warmth that you didn’t normally see in a member of a royal family. Perhaps it came from being Ares’ servant for the past seven years. Or perhaps it was just a natural trait. Either way, it was an intriguing mixture of confidence and humility that made him incredibly appealing.
“We should probably stop for the night,” Cadmus said, his voice betraying his weariness. We had walked a very long way already and the sky was so dark that it was difficult to see since the moon was new. The Spiritlands sky swirled in its typical way, a blue, black and gray aurora borealis. During the day, it offered lighter hues, but at night it was inky black.
“Alright,” I agreed. “Where?”
Cadmus stopped and looked around. Since we were in the mountains, there were many places that we could tuck into and sleep for the night. He examined the horizon and then pointed toward a rock formation a few hundred yards away.
“There.”
I nodded and we continued for the few remaining yards, not speaking until we arrived. Once there, I pivoted and examined our little shelter. A semi-circle of stones formed an embankment on one side. The other faced a jagged cliff.
“Do you walk in your sleep?” I asked, eyeing the edge of the cliff nervously. Cadmus smiled.
“Nope. You?”
“No.”
“Then, we’re fine. This is the perfect place to stop. The stones provide shelter and no one can approach us from the cliffside.”
He made valid points. But still. Sleeping directly next to a cliff made me nervous. Cadmus could see it on my face and nudged me.
“Don’t worry. I’ll sleep between you and the edge. If anyone goes over, it will be me.”
“How gentlemanly,” I smiled. But secretly, the thought of him plunging over the side of a cliff was enough to give me heart palpations.
We opened our knapsacks and began to make camp. Cadmus built a fire while I spread out our bedding to form pallets.
“Are you hungry?” he asked.
“A little.”
He pulled a small bundle out of his bag and opened it, handing me a piece of dried beef. I thanked him and took it, finding a place next to the fire to sit. I breathed a deep breath, inhaling the scent of the pine trees that surrounded us here in the mountains. It smelled fresh and clean here. I liked it, although the cool night breeze caused me to shiver.
“Are you cold?” Cadmus asked, pulling a soft wrap from his bag. He bundled it around my shoulders and then sat next to me. I shivered again and Cadmus smiled.
“Come here,” he said quietly. Wrapping his arm around my shoulders, he pulled me close. I was instantly enveloped by his warmth, by his scent, by him. I took a shaky breath.
“Are you alright?” he asked in concern, gazing down at me.
“Of course,” I answered quickly. “I’m just nervous.”
“Nervous?” He raised a dark eyebrow. “Why?”
I was embarrassed and self-conscious, but I felt like I needed to get my feelings out there. If I didn’t risk telling him, I wouldn’t gain anything.
“You.” My one word sounded small in the night and I felt Cadmus tense at the sound.
“Me?”
“You. I was going about my life, doing my normal things and feeling perfectly normal. Then you came along and nothing is normal anymore. You are all I think about and then when I see you, my heart feels like it’s going to explode.”
He looked at me for a moment.
“Like this?” He picked up my hand and pressed it against his heart. It was pounding like crazy against his sternum.
“Yes, like that,” I whispered.
“Why does it make you nervous?” he asked curiously. “It’s amazing. I was beginning to think I’d never meet someone who makes me feel like you do. It’s nothing to be afraid of, Harmonia.”
He pulled me back a little bit, looking into my eyes. His were dark and bottomless.
“You never need to be nervous around me, not for any reason. We’ve been given a gift, an extraordinary gift. There is no reason to fear it.”
“No?” I asked in surprise. “Right now, we can’t even be together. My father would throw a tantrum like Olympus has never seen before.”
Cadmus smiled. “Right now, yes. Your father would be angry. But Harmonia, I don’t even have a full year of servitude left to serve for him. Very soon, I won’t be his servant any longer.”
“But you’ll still be a mortal,” I answered weakly.
“Is that so bad?” he asked in surprise. “I don’t find it to be a horrible affliction. Am I distasteful to you because of it?”
I looked at him quickly. “Of course not. But Zeus is the only one who can bestow immortality. I’d have to somehow get him to grant it to you. I can’t fall in love with you only to have you grow old and die.”
There was a pregnant pause full of charged silence before Cadmus finally turned to me and picked up both of my hands.
“Are you planning to fall in love with me?” He sounded surprised, hesitant, nervous…and pleased. Color exploded in my cheeks and I nodded.
“Yes.”
“Good,” he answered before he pulled me to him. “I don’t want to be the only one falling.”
Before I knew it, he was kissing me and all of my nervousness faded away. I couldn’t remember what I had
been anxious about in the first place. Being with Cadmus felt so right, like it was exactly where I was meant to be.
It was a simple, sweet kiss filled with promise. After a minute or so, he pulled away. I tried to kiss him again, but he shook his head.
“We can’t, Harmonia. I told your father that I wouldn’t touch you and I’m a man of my word. But this trip won’t last forever and when we return, we can decide what to do. I’m a soldier, Harmonia, and soldiers have sharp instincts. And I have a feeling now, a very strong feeling, that I was meant to find you. You were meant for me. I know it.”
Warmth flooded me and I suddenly felt more comfortable than I had ever felt in my life. He was right. There was nothing to be afraid of. We might be on the precipice of something life-changing and wonderful.
But even as I thought it, something else came to mind, a very dark thought. Hades’ warning. Even though he wasn’t here, his words stayed with me.
You’ve been warned.
I shook my head, as though to rid it of troubling thoughts, and snuggled into Cadmus. He tightened his arm around my shoulders and all dark thoughts faded away. Whatever bad things that Hades wanted to warn me about… it was worth it to face them, all for the potential of a life with this man.
I closed my eyes and slept.
Chapter Six
We had been walking for hours again.
This time, the sun was high overhead and the sky swirled in pinks, whites, yellows and blues. It cast a colorful glow onto our skin, a cheerful, happy light.
“Where do you think the dragon is hiding?” I asked Cadmus. He looked around and shook his head.
“I don’t know. We’ll smell it before we see it, though.”
“That sounds pleasant,” I mumbled.
The scenery here was beautiful. I had never ventured this far into the mountains before. Jagged rocks, pine trees, multi-colored layers of shale and resplendent greenery covered the hillsides. It was a nature lover’s paradise.
“I haven’t seen Ortrera yet, either,” I mentioned off-hand. “I wonder if that means that we are off course?”
“I don’t think so,” Cadmus said confidently. “Look.”
I followed his pointing finger to find giant claw-tipped footprints embedded deep into the ground. Each print was longer than I was tall.
“Sweet heavens,” I breathed. “It must be enormous.”
“Yes,” Cadmus agreed as he reached around his back and withdrew a thick arrow from his quiver and loaded it into a bow.
“No,” I cried out. He looked at me in alarm. “We can’t kill it. We have to capture it. We have to deliver it to my father.”
Cadmus nodded. “And we will. If we can. But if we can’t, I’m not going to let it eat us for dinner, either.”
A sudden feeling of panic overtook me. It had never occurred to me that we might not succeed. In my head, we captured the dragon, led it to Ares and lived happily ever after. Killing the dragon instead didn’t enter the equation.
But I realized now that we might face an impossible feat. A dragon this large would not be taken quietly. We only had the weapons that we could carry. We had no horses. No magic. We didn’t have anything that we needed to be successful and I felt my shoulders droop.
“Don’t get discouraged,” Cadmus said, noticing my sudden quiet. “I never give up, Harmonia. That’s something you should learn.”
I gestured toward the giant tracks. “But this… this is crazy. I don’t know what I was thinking. We’ll have to think of another way for you to get into my father’s good graces. This was not my best idea.”
Cadmus studied me for a moment, his dark eyes thoughtful.
“Harmonia, do you think that I can’t get into your father’s good graces on my own? Do you believe that I have no redeeming qualities already?”
I startled and shook my head quickly.
“No! Not at all. I just wanted to help. I know my father and—“
Cadmus smiled patiently. “I know that you know him better than I do, Harmonia, but I’ve been with him for seven years now. I’ve gotten to know him and I’ll admit, I like him. He’s rough around the edges, but he is true to those important to him. I have no doubt that when the time comes, he’ll see the situation for what it is. He’ll recognize that I can make you happy and that you want to be with me.”
I watched him, mesmerized.
“I do?”
He nodded. “You certainly do. And I will make you happy.”
“Will you love me?” My voice was small. He smiled slightly.
“I will. Eventually.”
I squeaked at his answer and he smiled, but before he could say anything else, a shriek resounded from somewhere very near. Cadmus’ head snapped up and we whirled about, trying to locate the source of the scream.
Shoving me behind him, Cadmus once again drew his bow and held it tautly as we searched for whoever had screamed. We felt certain that when we found it, we would also find the dragon.
We weren’t wrong.
After ten minutes of downhill hiking, a horrible, acrid odor assaulted my nose and I clamped my hands over it.
“By the gods,” I muttered. “It smells like…it smells like…” I wracked my brain but couldn’t think of a word bad enough to describe the foul smell.
“I know,” Cadmus agreed. “It does. We’re close.”
We rounded the edge of thick greenery and spilled out into an open meadow. And when we did, we found Ortrera and her one warrior circling the most enormous beast I had ever seen. It was bigger than any chimera I’d ever seen, even bigger than the underwater hydras. It was a massive, massive beast. Red scales larger than my head covered its body and it had enormous black claws that scratched the dirt in agitation.
I was speechless as I stared up at it. It sensed our movement and turned its large head, its orange eye rolling to look at us. It exhaled quickly in a puff of steam and Cadmus shoved me to the ground behind him as he held his knapsack in front of his face. Fire scorched the earth around us and caught fire to his bag. He dropped it and grabbed me by the arm, yanking me to my feet.
“Run!” he told me, pointing to a large boulder on the other side of the beast.
I did as I was told, thinking that Cadmus would be right behind me. But when I got there and turned around, I found that he was still with the dragon.
“Cadmus!” I screamed.
The beast twisted around and stared at me with a glittering glare. I screamed again and dove behind a large stone.
I trembled for a moment before I realized that I couldn’t hide. I was here for a purpose and hiding behind a boulder wasn’t going to accomplish it. As I scrambled to my feet, I heard Cadmus and Ortrera calling my name, but not before I realized why.
As I peered over the boulder, the dragon’s face was staring directly into mine. It had come to seek me out and was waiting quietly for me to move.
I froze, unsure of what to do. With one fiery breath, he could burn me alive. I stared into its orange glassy eye and saw a reflection of my terrified face. The quick glimpse was all it took to bolster my courage. I didn’t want to see myself like that…like a frightened child. I wanted to be brave. And people weren’t born brave. They made themselves brave by acting boldly in the face of their fear.
I took a deep breath.
In response, the dragon took a deep breath. My heart speeded up. All it would take would be for the dragon to sigh one small sigh of fire and I would be toast. Literally.
I could hear Ortrera and Cadmus in the background, yelling to me, but I tuned them out. I focused on the dragon’s face, on his fetid breath, on trying to decide what to do. And before I could think of a good plan, I acted.
Like lightning, and with almost a will of its own, my hand shot out and my fingers jabbed the dragon in its giant eye. The beast roared and reared back on its hind legs and I ran for cover as fire rained down around me. Cadmus and Ortrera motioned for me to join them so I ran with everything I had to reach them. They were hu
ddled behind a large wall of rock and I rounded the corner and flew into them.
Panting, I leaned into my sister to catch my breath. As I glanced up, I realized that only Cadmus and Ortrera were here. One person was missing.
“Where’s your warrior?”
Grimly, Ortrera pointed to a charred pile of remains not far from us