Goddess of the Rose (43 page)

Mikki checked her watch. It was only seven thirty. She didn't have to be at work until eight. She did have time for another cup of cappuccino before heading off to work. As she stood for a refill, she caught her reflection in the glass of the picture windows of Expresso Milano. Thin . . . she looked thin. And she could have done something with her wild hair besides pulling it back in a haphazard ponytail.

The problem was she just couldn't work up the energy to care.

Well, at least there were still plenty of her favorite, the giant orange sugar cookies that the coffee shop bought freshly made every morning from the popular Pani Del Goddess bakery just a few doors down the street. Mikki ordered two to go with her cappuccino and then changed her mind and ordered a third. She needed to put on weight, and the sugar rush added with the caffeine high might be enough to get her ready to face another meaningless, endless day at work. She grabbed a copy of the
Tulsa World
and made herself comfortable at one of the plush, silk-covered chairs while she waited for the multiply pierced coffee girl to bring her coffee and cookies on the café's elegant little silver trays. When she heard approaching heels on the tile floor, she didn't look up from her paper.

“Just go ahead and put it on the coffee table. Oh, and keep an eye on me. I have a feeling this is going to be a three-espresso morning.”

“Is everything not well, Mikado?”

Mikki almost dropped the paper in surprise. “Sevillana! I'm sorry—I thought you were the coffee girl.”

The old woman's amazing aquamarine eyes sparkled. “I have not been mistaken for a girl in a very long time.”

Mikki smiled, and for a moment it felt genuine. “Would you join me?”

“Yes, I would like that.” The old woman settled herself gracefully into an adjoining chair and rearranged her beautiful pale blue pashmina shawl around her shoulders.

“I didn't think you lived here.” As on the first time they'd met, Mikki felt a little intimidated by the woman's presence. She was just so grand—in the old European fashion. There was an air of grace and culture about everything she said or did. And then, with a jolt, Mikki remembered, and in the remembering she wondered how she could have ever forgotten. “The perfume! Where did you get the perfume you gave me that night?”

Sevillana smiled, but the waitress's delivery of their coffee and sweets kept her from saying anything. Then, even when they were alone again, Sevillana took her time emptying the coarse sugar into her cappuccino and stirring carefully with the tiny silver spoon before she spoke.

“There is only one place you can find such perfume, and it is in a realm that is far from here.”

Mikki felt a dizzying rush of an emotion she'd been missing for three months—hope. “You're talking about the Realm of the Rose.”

The old woman nodded her head slightly.

“Oh, God,” Mikki gasped.

“I believe, Mikado, that it would be more appropriate for you to exclaim ‘Oh, Goddess.' ”

“How? How do you know about it? How did you get there, and how do I get back? What are you doing here? Why did you—”

Sevillana's raised hand cut off Mikki's torrent of words.

“Everything has its order and its time. Drowning me in questions will not change that.”

“I'm sorry.” Mikki pressed her hand against her chest, afraid that her heart would pound out of her body. “I just—I need to know . . .” She ran a trembling hand over her face and began again. “I have to get back.”

“I know, child,” Sevillana said softly. “I know.” Then the old woman's gaze went past Mikki, and when she spoke again her voice reminded Mikki of a sad little girl. “Did no one speak my name while you were there? Did they not remember me at all?”

“Your name? No. Why would they—” Mikki's eyes widened with realization. “It's you. You are the last Empousa.”

“No, I
was
Empousa. I am no longer Hecate's High Priestess. I discarded that position when I was young and foolish. But I have paid for my betrayal. For two hundred years I have been separated from my realm and my goddess and have walked the mundane earth, restless and unsatisfied—a true outlander.”

“Two hundred years!” Mikki could only stare at her. “But how?”

“I have never fully understood it myself. Obviously, I age, but I do so slowly. I used to believe it was Hecate's way of punishing me—extending my life long enough that I was well and truly sorry for my selfish actions. Then, in my travels decades ago I visited Tulsa and happened to attend the unveiling of its new rose gardens . . .” She paused, her expression pained. “I recognized the Guardian statue, and I knew it had been placed here for a reason, so I always circled back to Tulsa, waiting and watching . . . And then I met you, and I began to hope that perhaps Hecate had allowed me to live for so long for another reason.” Sevillana's blue eyes returned to Mikki. “I hoped the Great Goddess had meant for me to give you the anointing oil so you could awaken the Guardian and return to the realm—and fulfill the destiny I left undone.” Sadness filled the old woman's beautiful eyes. “Why did you make the same mistake I made? I did not mean for you to run away.”

“But I didn't!” Mikki cried. Then she lowered her voice when several heads turned in their direction. “You know about the blood, don't you? Somehow you understand.”

“Yes, your blood nurtures the roses. How could I not know it? We carry the same blood in our veins, Mikado.” Sevillana touched her hand lightly in a caress that reminded Mikki so much of her mother that it made her breath catch. “At the hospital that day I told you my name was Sevillana Kalyca, and it is. But that is only part of my name. I rarely use my family name—it is too difficult for me to hear it and to know that I forsook it, even though the deed was committed long ago. My true name is Sevillana Kalyca Empousai. I was the first Empousa to flee from the Realm of the Rose. I had hoped when I met you and felt the strength of the blood within you that I was also the last.”

“I didn't run away,” Mikki said numbly, staring at the woman who was her ancestress. “I died.”

“Time runs differently there, but still it could not yet have been Beltane in the realm.”

“It was just starting to be winter.” Confused, Mikki frowned. “But the weather didn't have anything to do with it. Dream Stealers got into the realm.”

Sevillana's hand flew to her heart in a gesture that oddly mimicked Mikki's earlier one. “Oh, Goddess, no!”

“It was me. They fooled me. I let them in. Asterius killed them—or, I supposed they can't actually be killed, so that's not the right word, but he got rid of them, sent them back into the forest.”

“Asterius?”

Mikki studied Sevillana, her mind beginning to catch up with her racing emotions. This woman was the one they'd all been forbidden to talk about. She was part of why Hecate had bespelled the realm and Asterius. Well, Mikki was no longer in the Realm of the Rose, and she damn sure wanted to know, once and for all, what had happened.

“Asterius is the name given to the Guardian by his mother.” Watching carefully, Mikki saw the flash of surprise and unease that passed through Sevillana's eyes. “I want to know what happened between the two of you. All of it.”

Sevillana stared out the window as she spoke, and her voice took on a faraway sing-song cadence, as if she was retelling a story that had been passed down from generation to generation. “I was young and worse than foolish. I was selfish. I loved the power of Empousa, so much so that I was not willing to relinquish it. As the days drew closer and closer to Beltane, I convinced myself that it was only right that I escape the destiny planned for me. That I was different. But I knew I could not cross through the forest without protection. I convinced the Guardian to betray his duty and escort me through the forest to the entrance to the mundane world.”

“You seduced him?” Mikki felt very cold.

“Only with words. I would not bed a beast, but I made him believe I would. It was not a difficult thing to do. He had little experience with women. It was odd, though, that he allowed me to escape even after I rejected him.” Sevillana shook her head. “I have long wondered about that. He should have turned on me and, at the very least, forced me back to face Hecate's wrath. Instead, he said one small thing and then stepped aside and let me go free.”

“He thought he loved you,” Mikki said woodenly.

Sevillana finally met her eyes, and Mikki could see the surprise there. “That is the one thing he said—that he loved me. But it made no sense. How could a beast love a woman?”

“He is not a beast!” Mikki hissed under her breath, anger making her face pale. “And you're not good enough for his love if you couldn't see the man within him.”

“You love him!”

“I do.”

Sevillana stared at Mikki for a long time without speaking and then she bowed her head slightly to the younger woman. “Forgive me for speaking so cavalierly. I was a young girl then. I have come to understand since that I was wrong about many things, this, then, is simply one last lesson for me. You have my admiration, Mikado, as well as my respect. I have never known such courage as yours.”

Mikki took several deep, calming breaths. There was absolutely no point in getting so pissed off at the old woman. What she'd done had happened two centuries ago. It was over. Finished. And she didn't want to alienate her. Sevillana Kalyca Empousai was her ticket back to Asterius.

“I forgive you. I think Asterius does, too. And what I did wasn't that courageous. I didn't have any choice. Asterius had gotten rid of the Dream Stealers, but it was too late. They'd already poisoned the roses—all of them except the ones I'd bled on. I tried to stop the blight another way, but nothing worked. I knew it wouldn't. The only way to save the roses was by my blood.”

“And you do not think it courageous that you went to your lover and allowed him to sacrifice you? It was not even Beltane, yet you met your destiny early and saved the realm.”

Mikki frowned. “Asterius didn't sacrifice me. He didn't even know what I'd planned. I knew he'd try to stop me, so I snuck out. And what's this you keep saying about Beltane? That's in the spring, right? What does that have to do with anything?”

“You truly do not know?”

“No!” she said, exasperated and thoroughly sick of mysteries.

“They must have been afraid to tell you. Afraid that you, too, would leave them. Mikado, the Empousa serves one true purpose. She is there for the roses.”

“Yes, yes, yes! I know that.”

“You also know that Hecate's Empousa is bound to the roses through her blood. What you do not know is that every Beltane night the Empousa is sacrificed by the Guardian, because her blood insures that the realm thrives for another year.”

Mikki felt everything within her go very still. “They were going to kill me?”

“Not they. He was. It is the Guardian's duty to protect the roses.”

It all made horrible sense. Asterius's behavior when they first met and were attracted to each other . . . how he had said they could not be together . . . how he had struggled against loving her. It had been more than disbelief that she could ever see him as a man—more than the rejection of Sevillana. He'd known he would have to kill her.

The thought made her physically ill.

Sevillana's warm hand on her cold, numb one was a physical shock.

“He had no choice.”

“And Hecate, she meant all along for me to die,” Mikki said.

“Life and death is different for the gods. Hecate is stern and powerful, but she is also a loving goddess. She would see your sacrifice as just another link in the great circle of life. The goddess would not forsake you, Mikado, even in death. Had you met your destiny at Beltane, Hecate would have made sure you spent eternity in the endless beauty of the Elysian Fields. The goddess cares for those who belong to her; she only turns away from those who betray her.”

“It's a hard concept for my mind to grasp. Everyone I cared about, everyone I loved, they all knew I was going to die.” She paused as the enormity of it hit her. “So even if you could help me figure out a way to get back, I'd just be returning to die again.”

“Yes. Do you still wish to return?”

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

D
ID she still want to return? It was already the end of February. Wasn't Beltane the same day as May first? So she'd have a couple months and then Asterius would kill her.

The thought was impossible to believe. Yet even in the middle of her disbelief, intuition told her Sevillana was speaking the truth. It all fit, and she suddenly felt like the piece outside the jigsaw puzzle. She knew where she belonged, and it wasn't in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

“I want to go back, but I don't know if I'm brave enough.”

“Listen to your instincts, Mikado. Trust what they tell you.”

“They tell me that I don't belong here.”

“Then perhaps you should return home,” Sevillana said.

“Do you know how to get me there?”

“I can give you the anointing oil, but the rest you already hold within you. You sacrificed yourself for the Realm of the Rose, and you were selfless enough to love its Guardian. You were, my dear, the exact opposite of the realm's last Empousa. I believe Hecate will hear your call, and honor it.”

“But how—” Mikki stopped herself. She knew what she must do. She had to listen to her intuition and follow her instincts. She glanced at Sevillana, who nodded approval at her introspection.
Calm down and think. I'm Hecate's Empousa. There has to be a way for me to return.
Suddenly Mikki smiled. “That's it! I'm still Empousa. Hecate said I carry her power—that can't have completely gone away, not even here. I mean, look at you! You've lived two hundred years, and you walked away from the goddess.”