He could not allow it to happen again. He had one chance to right his past wrong. He must not love her. He could not. And this time he would not delude himself into believing that there was any chance she could love him in return, though in reality her feelings mattered little. She was Hecate's Empousa; therefore, she must die.
The Guardian sank down on the thick pallet of furs on which he slept and buried his face in his hands. He wanted to weep, but he felt empty of everything except pain and despair. There were no comforting tears within him.
“Are you sorry that I allowed her to awaken you?”
The Guardian's head snapped up and he beheld his goddess in her full regaliaâheaddress of stars, cloaked in the veil of night, with her torch blazing in one hand and the other resting on the head of one of her massive hounds. He fell to his knees before her, supplicating himself with his head bowed so low that his horns touched the ground at her feet.
“Great Goddess! I rejoice that I am in your presence once again.”
“Arise, Guardian,” Hecate said.
“I cannot, Goddess. Not until I beg you to forgive my crime.”
“You did not commit a crime. You simply succumbed to the humanity I placed within you. I was mistaken when I punished you so harshly for a weakness that I was ultimately responsible for gifting you.”
His shoulders shook with the effort it took for him to maintain control of his turbulent emotions. “Then I beg that you forgive my weakness, Great Goddess.”
Hecate bent and touched his bowed head. “I demonstrated that forgiveness when I allowed my new Empousa to awaken you. Now arise, Guardian.”
Slowly he stood. “Thank you, Goddess. I will not disappoint you again.”
“I know that. We will not speak again of a past which is dead. You have finally returned to me. The realm has felt your absence keenly, as have I.”
“I am prepared to resume my full duties, Goddess, if you will grant it so.”
“I do.” Hecate scooped her hand through the air, gathering invisible power until her hand glowed. Then, with a quick throwing motion, she tossed the brilliant pile of light on him and said, “I hereby return to you dominion over the threads of reality.”
The Guardian's head bowed again as the magickal power resettled into his body, filling him with its familiar warmth. When he was able, he met his goddess's gray eyes.
“Thank you, Hecate.”
“There is no need to thank me. I return to you what is yours. In all the time you were gone, the handmaids never got the knack of it, not even the Elementals were as adept at turning reality into the threads that bind the garment of mortal dreams as you.”
“I am eager to begin again, Goddess,” he said.
“I expect no less of you. But tonight I command that you rest. Tomorrow is soon enough to begin.”
“Yes, Great Goddess,” he said. He bowed his head again, expecting that she would disappear as she normally did in a shower of stars. When she didn't, he glanced up, curious as to her hesitation.
“Goddess?”
“As you know, my Empousa has returned.”
Silently, he nodded his head.
“She is . . .” Hecate paused, choosing her words carefully. “She is not like the other Empousa. She is, of course, from the mundane world. This realm is strange and new to her.”
“And she is older than the other priestesses,” he said. Hecate's quick, knowing gaze made him silently curse himself for speaking at all.
“That is true. It is also true that she is inexperienced in the duties of my High Priestess. Keep a watchful eye on her, Guardian. She has much to learn and very little time in which to learn it. Beltane is not far away.”
He bowed his head. “I will do your will, Goddess.”
When she glanced up at him, her gray eyes were piercing. “This time I have taken steps to insure that you will not be so easily tempted to err. With the return of your power over the threads of reality, I have given you a”âshe paused and her lips tilted up in a humorless smileâ“let us call it a special thread of reality of your own. I know your body burned for my Empousa and that she used that desire against you as you sought the impossible. So you will never be tempted to betray yourself for lust again, know that I have made it impossible for you to consummate your desire for a woman unless that woman loves and accepts you for the beast you are, as well as the man who lurks within the creature's skin. Henceforth, you will be safe from your own impossible dreams. Do you understand, Guardian?”
Awash in shame, he bowed his head again. “I do, Great Goddess.”
Her voice softened. “I do not do this to be cruel. I do this as protection for you, as well as the realm. For what mortal woman could ever truly love a beast?”
Awaiting no response from him, Hecate raised her torch and disappeared in a whirlwind of light, leaving her Guardian as he was before, alone and filled with despair.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
U
NLIKE the first time, there was no confusion or lingering sense of displacement when she woke up. Mikki knew exactly where she was. She opened her eyes to the perky light of full morning shining in a golden wave through the wall of windows. Someone had drawn back the curtains, and she could see that the table she'd eaten dinner at the night before had been reset for breakfast.
Had
he
directed that breakfast be prepared for her? Was he out there again, watching? Mikki's stomach gave a sickening lurch as she wondered what it would be like to see him in the full light of day. Last night he had belonged to the darkness, like the boogey monster or a nightmare creature.
Or
. . . her imagination murmured . . .
a forbidden lover.
“Get a grip on yourself.” Mikki sat up, shaking her head as if the physical movement would clear the ridiculous thoughts from it, and she was struck again by the beauty of the room that was now hers. Pushing the Guardian from her mind, she intended to leap out of bed and glide gracefully to her balcony, as should any woman lucky enough to live in a room this incredible, but the leap turned into a stagger, and the glide became a stiff limp accompanied by a groan when she made her body straighten fully.
Oh baby, she was sore! She hobbled to the door. When the handmaidens had first met her, they had seemed to think she was unusually old for an Empousa. Maybe that was because it took a damn teenager to withstand the hidden torture of casting a circle and dancing around with a gaggle of women. Who knew? Even her hair hurt. She sniffed at herself. And she needed a bath. A long, hot one.
She opened the door and was met by a cool, rose-scented breeze. It pulled her attention from the waiting breakfast, her sore muscles and the mysterious Guardian, and drew her across the wide balcony so she could look out over the vast gardens.
Mikki was awestruck.
The land that stretched before her was filled with bed after bed of roses. They blazed clouds of color in the green sky of their branches. White marble paths circled labyrinthine around the beds, connecting them to trees and shrubs and an occasional water feature. She could see the creamy marble of the domed roof of Hecate's Temple and the dancing reflection of the sun off the great central fountain that stood near it.
It was so beautiful that it weakened the disbelief and cynicism she had learned from a very young age to carry as her shield. She could be happy here . . . she could belong.
“It is your charge, Empousa.”
This morning Hecate's presence did not startle her. The goddess materializing beside her felt comfortingâa reinforcement of the miracle that lay before her.
“This is where I belong,” Mikki said without looking away from the gardens.
“Yes, it is your destiny.” The goddess sounded pleased by her acknowledgment.
Mikki turned to face Hecate and flushed with surprise. Last night the goddess had appeared an indeterminate age, anywhere from thirty-something to fiftysomething. This morning Hecate wore the same night-colored robes and star-studded headdress. The gigantic dogs lounged by her feet, as they had the night before. But the goddess had shed decades. She had the fresh face and tight figure of a teenager. Her smooth cheeks were kissed with a blush of youthful peach.
Hecate frowned and raised gracefully arched brows. “You do not recognize your goddess, Empousa?”
Mikki swallowed hard. She might look like a teenager, but Hecate had certainly not lost any of her powerful aura.
“It's not that I don't recognize you; it's just that you're so young!”
“Of my triple forms I simply chose the Maiden today. But do not be fooled by the facade of youth. You should already know that the exterior of a woman does not define her interior.”
“It may not define her, but it certainly affects her. I'm old enough to know that,” Mikki said automatically. Then, appalled at the brusque tone she had inadvertently used, she added, “I didn't mean any disrespect.”
Intelligent gray eyes looked unnaturally mature and out of place in the goddess's smooth young face. “I rarely find it disrespectful when an Empousa speaks honestly to me, Mikado. And you are correct. Too often our exterior is what we are judged by, especially in your old world, one that has largely forgotten the lessons of the goddesses.” Hecate shrugged her smooth shoulders. “Even in my realm where a woman's appearance should not be the basis on which she is judged, my daughters too often forget the lessons of the three-faced goddess.” Hecate's wise gray eyes sparkled. “For instance, some would say that an Empousa of your advanced years is too old to assume the role of my High Priestess. They would not say it in my presence, but they would say it. And how would you answer their impertinence, Mikado?”
Mikki ignored the stiffness in her back and her sore muscles and met the goddess's steady gaze. “I'd say that I may be older, but that also means I've lived through more experiences, so I suggest they watch their silly young selves. Age and treachery usually triumph over youth and exuberance.”
Hecate laughed, and as she did so, her appearance shifted so she was, once again, the beautiful, middle-age woman Mikki had met the night before. “I will tell you a secret, my Empousa. Of the three, this is the form I prefer. Youth is often overrated.”
“Especially by the young,” Mikki agreed.
The two smiled at one another, and for a moment, they were not goddess and mortal. They were just two women in perfect agreement.
After a short, compatible silence, the goddess said, “I imagine this”âshe gestured with one hand to take in the gardens and the palaceâ“all seems quite unusual to you.”
Encouraged by the goddess's approachability, Mikki smiled crookedly. “It is strange and unusual, as well as more than a little overwhelming, but I do feel drawn to everything here.” She hurried on, not wanting Hecate to know included in that “everything” was her cloven-hoofed late-night visitor. “When I cast the circle and performed the initiation ritual I felt more beautiful and powerful and
right
than I've ever felt in my life.”
Hecate nodded. “The Empousa blood runs thick in your veins, Mikado. You could not have felt true belonging in the mundane world. Part of you longed to take your proper place in my realm. I suspect even your mother and her mothers before her knew the unease of not quite fitting in.”
Mikki thought about her mother, remembering how she had always seemed to prefer to be aloneâor to spend time working in her garden with her rosesâthan to socialize. How she hadn't ever seemed to miss her father's presence and when Mikki asked about him she only said that he had been an indulgence of her youth, but that she would always be grateful to him for giving her the most important gift in her lifeâher daughter.
Her grandmother, too, had not been a woman who had many friends outside her daughter and her granddaughter. She rarely spoke of the man who was her grandfather, except to smile surreptitiously and say that they had had two different viewpoints on marriageâhe had enjoyed it; she hadn't. Men had not been important in either her mother's or her grandmother's life. Not that either of them hadn't been wonderful, loving women. They had been, and Mikki missed them both desperately. Her grandmother had died of an unexpected heart attack five years ago, and breast cancer had stolen her mother four years after that. Mikki thought of both women as beautiful and ageless, like they'd stepped out of one of the fairy tales her mother used to read to Mikki when she was a young girl. They had been otherworldly . . .
“They are at peace now, Mikado. Even from the mundane world across the far edges of my crossroads, their souls were able to find the paradise of the Elysian Fields, and, finally, true belonging. You need not weep for them.”
Mikki reached up, surprised to feel the tears wetting her cheeks. She looked at Hecate. “They belong here, too. That's why they didn't really fit in back there.”
“Part of them belonged here, but the magick in their blood was not as strong as the magick within you. If it had been, they would have awakened the Guardian and returned.”
Mikki wiped her cheeks dry. “The Guardian . . . I met him last night.”
The goddess cocked her head, studying her priestess. “And what was your reaction to him?”
“He scared me,” she said quickly. And then more slowly she added, “And he made me sad.”
“Sad?” Hecate's brows lifted into her dark hair.
Mikki moved her shoulders restlessly. “I don't know . . . there's something about him that feels so alone.”
“There is no other creature like him in existence, so by his very nature he is alone. Ages ago, when I took dominion over this realm, I knew I needed a guardian to stand watch over it. This is the realm from whence all the dreams and magick originate; it must be protected. So I called upon the great beasts of oldeâthe immortal offspring of the Titans. Though I am Goddess of the Beasts, I do not hold dominion over them. Even I could not force one of their kind into my service. The creature you met last night bound himself willingly to me. He took up this eternal burden when it was not his own. I have gifted him with some powers that are unique to this realm, but the Guardian has an ancient magick of his ownâhe ties the threads of reality to that of this realm.”