“Come on, ligos Vesuvius,” he muttered. “Where in Hades did you go?”
He moved across the meadow. Halfway to the other side, an eagle swooped down in his path. His feet drew to a stop. He watched the eagle soar through the sky, then dip low and land on the branch of a great oak off to his left.
The eagle was the emblem of Zeus. And Zeus had imprisoned Natasa’s father. His heart beat faster.
He turned, some unseen hand drawing him toward the oak instead of the woods on the other side of the meadow he’d plan to search. When he was five feet away, the eagle screeched, its great wings flapped, and it took off into the sky.
Titus wasn’t sure what to do. He was losing it, thinking he was seeing signs in a bird. Just when he was about to turn around and head back the way he’d come, he caught sight of what looked like a bare foot, lying still against the ground through the tall grass.
Foreboding slid down his spine. He parted the grass with his hands, then sucked in a shocked and horrified breath.
“Tasa…?” Oh, shit.
She lay motionless on the ground, her curly red hair fanned out beneath her, her skin pale and dry. He reached for her arm resting on her stomach and placed the back of his hand against her forehead. Her skin was cool, not hot, and the pulse in her wrist was abnormally slow.
“Tasa? Baby, open your eyes and look at me.” She didn’t respond. He pried her eyelids open. Her pupils were dilated.
This wasn’t the element burning her. This was something else. He looked around, trying to figure out what had happened to her. A clump of long-stalked, yellow-and-white flowers rested in her hand.
Shaking, he reached for the flowers. The roots were missing, the stalks broken and ripped. He looked from the flowers to her face and the trail of drool down the side of her mouth.
No. No, no, no...
He dropped the flowers against the ground and reached for her shoulders. “Tasa, dammit!”
Her leg twitched. Her eyes fluttered open.
“Tasa…baby…” He cradled her face, then pushed the hair back from her eyes. “Skata, what did you do?” His voice hitched. “Tell me what you did.”
“For you,” she rasped. “So he can’t…have the element.”
“He who?”
Her eyes fell closed again. Her head sagged to the side. Panic, fear and helplessness coalesced inside Titus. He dragged her into his lap. “I don’t care about the damn element. Don’t you know that? I care about you. Open your eyes, Tasa. Come on, baby…”
Her body fell limp against him.
“Tasa?” He shook her again, but she didn’t respond. Tears blurred his vision. Never before had he thought he’d miss her fever, but this cold chill was worse than anything he could imagine. Pain ripped through his chest, his heart, his very soul. The one thing in the world he’d never wanted was now the only thing he couldn’t live without.
A scream echoed from the sky. Through watery vision he looked up and saw the eagle again. It dove straight for them, swooping low—so close he could have reached out and touched it. The great bird glided through the meadow and landed in a tree on the far side. Then stared at him, as if to say, Follow me.
I believe in signs…
She’d said that to him last night, in the water. When she’d been rambling about the elements and dreaming about him and not waiting. His mind flashed back to the day he’d chased her in Argolea, when he’d climbed the trellis on that castle wall. An eagle had swooped low then too. An eagle he hadn’t remembered until just now.
He wasn’t sure he believed in signs, but if he hadn’t followed that eagle moments ago, he never would have found her. If she hadn’t seen it dive-bomb him on that wall walk, it was possible she might not have come back and saved him.
He didn’t have time to second-guess. Moving on autopilot, he pushed to his feet, lifted her in his arms, and turned toward the eagle. It lurched off the branch, flapping its wings, then screeched again. But it didn’t fly off. It hovered over the ground, as if waiting for him to catch up.
Calypso was somewhere on this island. She was a nymph, immortal, and she had use of magic and spells. If anyone could save Natasa, it would be her. He just hoped like hell this eagle knew where the nymph was hiding and was taking them to her, instead of leading them both to their deaths.
Chapter Nineteen
“Hang on, Tasa.”
Titus shifted Natasa in his arms. His muscles ached, and sweat slicked his skin. She was cool against him, but he knew he hadn’t lost her yet. Her occasional twitch and the soft moan when he shook her encouraged him and kept him going.
He reached the peak of the ridge they’d been climbing. The eagle screamed, fluttered its wings, then dove down into the small valley. There, nestled between two mountains and built beside a lake, sat a small, well-tended cottage.
The soft notes of a gentle song drifted to his ears. Calypso. It had to be. His aching muscles pushed forward all on their own.
Natasa groaned in his arms with every jostling step down the hillside. “Not long now, baby. I’m gonna get you help.”
Rock and dust gave way to packed, even ground. His boots sloshed through the small stream flowing out of the lake as he crossed to the house. Just as he rounded the far corner, a female carrying a bucket stepped in front of him, drew up short, and gasped.
Calypso didn’t look like an immortal deity. She wasn’t tall like Persephone, nor dressed in rich gowns. She wore a common cotton dress. Her curly dark hair was pinned up on the top of her head, and her cheeks were pink and sun-kissed. The only hint he had it was her was the music she’d been singing before he’d startled her. Music that had drawn him toward her like a sailor to a siren.
Her eyes widened, then narrowed. And she uttered one word. “Odysseus.”
“No,” he said quickly. “Titus. She’s hurt.” He nodded down at Natasa passed out in his arms. “She needs help.”
He didn’t wait for the nymph to answer. He stepped into the open door of the cottage, looked around, and finally decided the best place for the nymph to work her magic was on the table.
He laid Natasa on the old scarred surface and moved the few cups sitting close to the sideboard at his back. Calypso stepped into the cottage after him, eyed Natasa warily, then set her bucket on the counter in the adjoining kitchen. “You are not…Odysseus? I sense him in you.”
“I’m his descendant. And we’ve been looking for you.”
Her expression was full of speculation, but slowly, it relaxed. “What happened to her?”
“I’m not sure.” The nymph was blocking him from reading her mind. That or he was too frazzled to make his gift work. He raked a hand through his hair. She had to help him. She had to…
He took a deep breath to calm the raging panic. “I think she ate something she shouldn’t have. She was holding a clump of flowers in her hand when I found her passed out on the ground.”
Calypso leaned over Natasa, pried her eyelids apart and looked at her pupils. She ran her fingers over Natasa’s throat and felt for a pulse. Easing back, she looked down Natasa’s body and back up to her face. “What did the flowers look like?”
“Um…” Titus tried to remember. “Long stalks, yellow-and-white umbrella-shaped flowers.”
“The roots. Were they tuberous?”
“There were no roots. They were broken off. Ripped.”
Calypso was quiet as she held her hands out, hovering them over Natasa’s belly. “She burns hot inside, yet her skin is cold and clammy.”
Titus didn’t answer. Didn’t know what to say. She had to help. She had to do something…