A Spartan's Kiss (40 page)

She spoke the last words so softly that Tabithia barely heard her, but they echoed in her mind, each syllable crystal clear.

“I let you go, gave you freedom from that monster, but not from what he did to you.You haven’t let that go. You never have. I know, Tabithia, I know, because I feel it, each time, you see? I feel it, the drive, the need, the call to make the pain go away. Each time. I feel it, and it breaks off another piece of my sanity to know I can’t save you. I can’t.”

Tabithia gripped the cold marble of the counter top, so shocked at her aunt that she could barely comprehend what she was saying. Trouble knew. She knew.

“I couldn’t. But I thought maybe, just maybe, Aeros could pull you back, turn you from the ledge, and show you another way to walk instead of off that ledge, time and time again.”

Tears clogged Tabithia’s throat so badly she couldn’t swallow, couldn’t breathe past the pain. Not just her pain, but Trouble’s.

“I once loved a man. Once, long ago. Your mother, oh, goddess, your mother loved your father. And, oh, how they loved you. They loved you more than anything. We all did. Our shining one. Our little Tabithia, our shining star.” A sob gusted out of Trouble and choked her into slowing down, but she kept running and crying. Running as if she were running away from something. The truth? Even as she poured it out?

“It was me, you see. I am the reason you were taken. I was the one he wanted but couldn’t have. So he took you to punish us all. We tried, tried so hard to find you. We looked everywhere, but your song was gone from our ears. We couldn’t see or hear, or sense you on any plane. And times, times were so different then, you see. So very different. We looked and looked, but the more we looked the farther your spirit hid until—”

Tabithia clutched the counter when Trouble’s crying became too hard, and she jumped down from the treadmill and stumbled towards her. One hand tightened on her forearm and the other pushed the T-shirt up, revealing the still healing cuts.

“I… I… Trouble, I—”

Trouble shook her head violently, stilling Tabithia’s protest.

“I was to blame. It was me he was after. But he took you instead.” She spoke the same words as before, slowly, as if in a dream, or in shock. “You were all your parents ever wanted, and when you father didn’t come back”—she broke off and brushed her hand over the cuts and they blurred, healing before Trouble met her eyes again—“your mother simply couldn’t go on. She walked into the snow, away from us, away with her sorrow and vanished.”

Tabithia exhaled sharply, hurting and unsure of what to say. “Trouble, I… This isn’t your fault, what I do.”

Her aunt tightened her hand on Tabithia’s wrist painfully. She stood there, flushed, and as beautiful as ever, a frown marring the perfection of her face, while inside Tabithia felt like dying. Something flashed over Trouble’s face then, and she shook Tabithia’s arm angrily.

“It is. It is my fault, but you need to let it go. Release this pain. Put it in your past and now, now I will tell you what I should have shared with you all those years ago. Now, I will tell you. Then you will put what happened to you—every last horrible thing—in the past and bury it, Tabithia. Do you understand me?”

She shook Tabithia’s arm again, frowning fiercely. “You will bury it, turn your back on it and live your life with a man who loves you so much he stood up to me for a chance at you. Who gets in a fist fight with a god over you, do you hear me, Tabithia Rae? You will go to him and never, ever look back, and if you do, you will see your past as one more thing in your life you were strong enough to survive.”

Tabithia nodded mutely. Aeros had fought a god? When?

Trouble sniffed and stalked to the counter, then back to stand close enough to touch. Then she did touch her. She brushed Tabithia’s hair back with a soft, faraway look in her eyes.

“I fell in love once when I was too young to know better,” Trouble whispered. “It was with a warlord, a Roman, at that. He was very brave, so handsome that I thought him the best of men. He saved me from a wild boar just outside our coven’s circle of protection. His dark hair and dark eyes mesmerised me from that first moment, and I fell in love. Against your mother and Sorcha’s advice, when he came for me, I left with him, glad to leave our people, our small village behind for a castle with my prince. Such are fairy tales, no?”

Trouble’s lips twisted in a grimace, and such pain showed in her emerald eyes that Tabithia gripped her aunt’s freezing hands.

“Trouble—”

“Ah, but fairy tales are for fools. At least I was a fool, and my sisters were right, I shouldn’t have gone with him. When we reached his castle, he raped me, repeatedly, until I was with child. As soon as I showed the signs, he locked me in a small room until I gave birth. He took my son from my labour bed, and, after three moons of only bringing him to me for feedings, he stopped coming to my room. I never saw my son again. Alive.”

Her voice dropped to a whisper at the last and the faraway look in her eyes turned inward, full of such pain that Tabithia clenched her aunt’s hand hard. Instead of stopping her, the touch seemed to bring her back to the horror of her life.

“He gave me to his men after. I was raped continually until one of the men took pity on me and tried to free me.”

Tabithia flushed with heat and shivered with a chill. She had suffered months in the hands of a monster who had mocked and ridiculed her as he shoved her face into a hard floor. He’d beaten her and called her names, but he’d never raped her.

“When we were discovered trying to escape, I was sentenced to death. His new wife, for she was the one who wanted my son, designed my death. They dragged me to an island off the coast, tied me in a cave and left me there.”

After a long pause, Tabithia cleared her throat.

Trouble exhaled roughly and met her eyes. “The cavern was below the tide line. When the tide came in, I drowned. When the tide went out, my body lived again. Twice a day.”

Appalled, Tabithia sucked in a breath. How could this have happened to Trouble?

“For how long? Where was Sorcha? My mother? The goddesses?”

Trouble snorted and her brow furrowed. “Long enough, I suppose. I was rescued one day by a merman. He’d come in search of me, hearing of a beautiful witch who died and was reborn. He cut me loose and dragged me to shore.”

“Uh, a merman?”

Trouble nodded. “He took a lock of my hair, as payment. Sorcha and your mother found me soon after.” She whispered the last, the memories obviously painful for her.

“It was years later that I learned my son had died. But by then I had already sealed my fate. I sought revenge. It was my revenge that set into motion a chain of events I could never have foreseen.”

Trouble trailed off, her voice barely understandable it was so low. Tabithia almost wished she couldn’t hear her aunt, couldn’t be a part of this painful trip down such agony.

Trouble placed her palms on the counter top, forming a kind of circle by bending her fingers inward. Gazing down, she continued in a low voice.

“A circle, Tabithia, we live and die within a circle of our own making. Sometimes that circle reaches out and bites those closest to you, harming them and thereby harming you.”

Trouble stalked to the other side of the kitchen and turned to slash her hand through the air.

“You were taken by the same man who raped me. The same man who took my son. I didn’t kill him, you see. I made him impotent. Unable to do more than desire, crave, but not reach fulfilment ever again. I took his wife and made her want with a burning, vicious need any man who looked at her with lust.”

Trouble laughed, a broken, half-sobbing sound, before she went on to whisper, “He killed her within weeks.”

Eyes bright, her aunt hugged herself around the middle and hunched over and leant back against the stainless steel refrigerator. “Then he came for us. But we had moved, you see. We travelled much like gypsies, only for us moving wasn’t so much a way of life, as a way to save our lives. Your mother met your father on such a move. They bonded within days and nine months later, you brought your shining light into our world.”

She broke off again, staring into the darkness beyond her windows until Tabithia almost went to her, almost interrupted, but when Tabithia opened her mouth, Trouble continued.

“I’d forgotten all but my own pain, my own rage, and my own suffering. But when I looked upon you, oh, goddess, when I saw you, so small, so pure, something inside me broke and all the sorrow poured out, cleansing me in its own way.” She turned on the last and stared over at Tabithia. “You did that. You brought me closure. My own son was taken from me and died. Yet, your life cleared my vision so that I could grieve. With it, some of my pain receded.”

Tears poured down Tabithia’s face, blurring Trouble’s painful expression. Without conscious thought, Tabithia reached out and pulled Trouble close, hugging her tight enough to break her, but afraid to let her go, afraid to see the pain and sorrow any longer.

The things Trouble said, what she’d endured, how could her aunt carry on? How could she smile, joke, live? Circerran. She’d renamed herself. Tabithia remembered her aunt’s cocky grin when Sorcha called her Circerran that last time. Trouble had shrugged, running a hand through Tabithia’s hair and laughed.

“I think we’ll let Circerran go, sister. I like trouble, so Trouble it will be.”

Sorcha had sat speechless, Tabithia remembered, too indignant to respond. Trouble had laughed harder and sauntered out for another night of trouble. The image was so strong, so clear, Tabithia shook with sorrow. Circerran had made mistakes, had gone through so much pain, that she’d simply refused to dwell on her memories. She’d chosen the cocky name for that reason.

“I failed you, Tabbie-cat. I failed you then, when you were taken, and I failed you again when I couldn’t stop your mother from walking off into the storm. But I didn’t fail you when I killed that bastard. And I won’t fail you now.”

Trouble shoved Tabithia back so hard that Tabithia stumbled and her back hit the stove painfully. Trouble gripped her arms, shaking her fiercely.

“Do you hear me? You will love Aeros. You will stop cutting yourself. You will put the pain you endured behind you, and you will turn to your future.”

“How can I do that? How can you say that? What will Aeros think of me? What will he—?”

“He knows. He knows, Tabbie, I showed him.”

Ice filled every inch of Tabithia’s veins, pouring coldness into her body at a rate she was certain would kill her. “What? You did what?”

Trouble nodded, her eyes blazing bright green. “I showed him.”

It was Tabithia’s turn to shove Trouble. “How dare you! You showed him what that monster did to me—”

Trouble stumbled back, another stricken look crossing her face before she wiped it clean and replaced it with a determined expression that Tabithia rarely saw directed at herself.

“No, goddess, I don’t even know what that bastard did to you! You’ve never told me. You never said.”

Breathless, Tabithia tried to grapple with her anger. “Then you told him, what? That I cut myself?”

“No.” Trouble hissed the word and just when Tabithia would have sighed in relief Trouble said, “I showed him. I let him see you cutting yourself so that he would know what you did, who you are, and what he needed to get through to you. So far, he has done well. But tell me, Tabbie, why today? Why cut yourself today?”

“I can’t believe you! How dare you. When did you—? Damn it, Trouble, when did you—?”

“After you left Evie’s upset. I had a little chat with him.”

Holy shit. Before Aeros had slept with her. He’d still slept with her. He’d cuddled her, loved her with his body, walked with her, yes, and stumbled over his feet over her.

“I don’t understand. Why…? I mean, why—?”

“Tabithia, he loves you.”

She scoffed even as her heart soared.

“He loves you. You love him.”

She couldn’t deny she loved him, but did he love her?

“Listen, I have no idea what you are thinking, but listen to me. I love you. Sorcha loves you. Your mother died of grief over losing you—”

“Uh, excuse me.”

They both spun in place to see Dare standing in Trouble’s kitchen, her hands up in a gesture of protection.

“Who the—?”

“Dare. Trouble, this is Dare, the godhead,” Tabithia said. “How did you find me?”

Dare shrugged and glanced at Trouble, biting her lip and twirling her short chestnut hair on her finger. “I can always find you.”

“What are you doing here?”

“There’s trouble. Ares is pounding on the club doors to get in.”

Trouble murmured, “Oh, shit.”

‘Oh, shit’
didn’t cover it.

“Aeros went to tell him where you were. I guess that things didn’t go so well. Er, I mean, maybe I should—” Tabithia halted when Trouble gripped her arm.

“Call him, Tabithia. Call him. Now. End this and call him.”

“End what?” Dare asked, looking scared spitless by Trouble’s obvious temper.

Trouble dropped her arm and turned to Dare with a look Tab knew would not bode well for Dare’s little plan. “Not you. You are going to have to step up and play the game. If you want to punish your lover boy, well, get your ass back on that stage and shake it. Got it?”

Trouble didn’t wait on a response. She turned and walked away, calling over her shoulder, “I’m showering. Enough of this shit, ladies. Get hip or hit it.”

As soon as she was out of sight, Dare coughed in her fist. “Get hip or hit what?”

“The road. As in don’t come back.”

Tabithia took a deep breath and pulled out her phone. She did a check on her nerves and found them calm, a bit quivery from everything that had happened, but right now all she wanted was…

Aeros.

She wanted him so badly it hurt.

“I’m calling Aeros. Can you do this? Sing and all that? Still want your demands?”

Dare reached out and gripped her hand, squeezing it tightly, and smiled.

“Yes, you call Aeros. He loves you. He’s worried over you. Call him. I can…get hip. I know what to do. Thank you, Tabithia. Thank you.”