Shadows on the Aegean Read Online Free PDF Page A

tenderly, his lips
     finding the sensitive skin between her sandal straps.
    “You test me, whelp.”
    “I will bid a scribe attend you; age has probably affected your mind, as it has your body,” he said sadly. “How your beauty
     has faded, even more so than your intellect. Perhaps the scribe can assist you with the list. We can start with your own mother,
     my mother, Phoebus’ mother, Nestor’s mother—”
    Ileana snapped her fingers and they left, but Dion’s count remained in her head. How she had fought for her throne! From her
     earliest memory she’d known she would be Queen of Heaven. She wanted it, deserved it. In one bold action she had grabbed it.
     No one could prove anything, though suspicions were raised. Ever after, bodyguards, food tasters, and a rigorous physical
     regime worked to protect her. She’d spent a lifetime defending her position. If the reigning Queen of Heaven died while in
     office,
Hreesos
could choose anyone, any of the many whores he’d impregnated.
    He would have no choices: she would have no assassins.
    So she’d eliminated the many women who had presented her husband with sons.
    They had given him perfect children—Phoebus, Dion, Nestor … The babes from Ileana’s own exquisite, golden body were female.
     She would not be usurped by her own daughters, ugly though they were. Not by Atenis, her strangely silent, homely firstborn,
     nor by Irmentis, the child of the night. The goddess Kela had been in her Season of Blood, and Ileana’s youngest daughter
     bore the marks of her wrath.
    As the embodiment of Kela, Ileana was creator and destroyer. She had made certain neither girl would seek pleasure in Zelos’
     arms. She was Kela, with Kela’s authority, power, and position. What she wanted was divinely approved, for she wanted it.
     Ileana had removed the desire to rule and to wed from her daughters; she would not be a victim of matricide.
    Ileana was assisted from the chair and entered her rooms. Light glowed in alabaster basins, and Leia played softly on the
     lyre as Ileana’s young serf stood naked, anxious, and prepared to serve.
    He untied her waist cincher, released her skirt, and led her to the lustral bath. Too tired to resist, she shuddered as she
     stepped into the warm water. The memories never faded; indeed, they grew more potent. The serf offered her
kreenos
, and Ileana hesitated, then took some. The drug brought her no peace, however. The specters from her past rose up before
     her.
    Once again she was thirteen, slipping into her mother Rhea’s chambers. Zelos, Ileana’s older brother and Rhea’s son, had just
     left the apartment, and Rhea was sprawled on her couch, naked and defenseless.
    Ileana, tall and gawky for her age, had hidden an obsidian blade in the folds of her tunic. She was only a Shell Seeker and
     thus did not wear the layered skirt honoring the Great Goddess. She stepped quietly toward the sleeping woman, the sound of
     Rhea’s soft snoring beating in the girl’s head. Blond hair, so like Ileana’s, flowed over marble white shoulders. Kela-Rhea
     wasn’t aging: she would never lose the footrace, she would never step down as Queen of Heaven.
    She raised the blade in both hands, then Ileana plunged it into her mother’s back. Like the animals Ileana had practiced on,
     Rhea struggled, screamed, and tried to flee the knife. The cone shell poison worked quickly, however—in an eyeblink Rhea could
     no longer move. “My bath,” she gasped. “Ba—a—aa-ttt …” Her body jerked violently, the poison controlling her. Finally, she
     was still.
    Ileana ran to the balcony and pulled in a fellow Shell Seeker. The nymph’s first taste of wine had made her groggy, and the
     poppy Ileana had added made her malleable. They traded tunics, Ileana’s blood-splattered one now clothing the dazed girl.
     “Hold on to this,” Ileana whispered to her onetime friend, wrapping the nymph’s fingers around the knife’s haft.
    Ileana heard