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‘And a volcanic eruption, and various assassination attempts,’ he said. ‘I have seen. Believe me, if I sought to destroy you, I would be cynical about my chances of succeeding.’
Claudia faltered, her mind catching on a single word.
‘Seen? How?’ she asked.
‘Your goddess shows you things, and so does mine.’
Her breath hitched.
‘I have been watching you, just as you have been watching me.’
She swallowed, her palms clammy as she wondered what he might have witnessed.
‘I know you have watched me through your goddess shield,’ he said. ‘I know because Anahita showed me. But you are not the only one who has a connection with divinity.’
This certainly piqued her curiosity. ‘Tell me more.’
‘Long ago, when I was just a little boy, my father told me I would grow up to marry the princess of Rome and be a hero for my people,’ he said. ‘My father has quite a talent for storytelling, so he spun an enchanting legend for me to believe. He told me it was destined, as he had been shown in a prophecy from his god, Mithras. I grew up believing we were soulmates, though we had never met.’
Claudia nodded, to signal that she was listening.
‘But my father’s real motive was something much more corporeal. He saw me as a gift to be given away in exchange for political leverage. My father was bothered by all the so-called priests and oracles who told him to fear a Roman invasion, so he pretended to have a vision from Mithras that gave him the solution.’
‘Pretended?’
The prince smirked. ‘As far as I know, my father has never actually spoken to the gods directly, but when he said he did, people believed him. Including me. So, he sent his men to visit your father and swore he’d never go past the Parthian border for as long as he ruled, if you were promised to me. Your father was more than happy to accept. He was a lazy man, who preferred easy solutions.’
Claudia could not argue with that.
‘My father returned home and told his people that he had fulfilled the prophecy, preventing the foretold disaster. They stopped worrying about Roman invasion for a while. He thought he’d made the deal of the century: a Roman princess and a Persian prince, signifying that our empires are equal in kind. That was his vision.’
They stood before the ornamental pond, surrounded by marble statues of sirens and water nymphs. The god Neptune had been vividly rendered in gold, riding bareback on a horse made of sea foam.
‘My mother was the real priestess of the family, and the one who taught me how to truly commune with the gods by using the water like a mirror,’ said Darius. ‘She learned the old ways from women in her family, passed down through generations.’
Claudia held her breath, enraptured.
‘One day, the goddess Anahita came to me. She showed herself to me in the surface of the river, for the first time. She showed you to me, and she gave me this talisman, to watch over you.’
He indicated the necklace.
‘Your shield shows you only what is happening in the present, and there is much you have missed. But the waters are eternal and timeless. They show me what has happened in the past.’
As he spoke, the prince removed the lotus necklace he wore and gently placed it around Claudia’s neck.
‘There is a myth that all gods are the same gods, just different variations of them,’ he said. ‘They are born from the same source, with the same origins, but they grow, over time, to reflect the people and the places they are the guardians of. If this is true, then our gods are sisters and brothers, just like you and me. Not of blood, but of spirit.’
The prince said something in Persian that Claudia wasn’t fluent enough to understand – a prayer, a chant, an evocation.
‘Anahita, my goddess,’ he said. ‘I beg you to show her what I have seen. Show her those who plot against her. Give her the clarity and wisdom of the water.’
At his word, a sparkling glimmer appeared on the surface, as if an invisible light was reflecting on it from above. The glow grew outwards, rippling into bands of different colours that cleared to form a vision, like a painting on the water’s surface. Though Anahita was a Persian goddess, unfamiliar to Claudia and certainly not revered by her, she came to her now, woman to woman, to show her the truth.
The image rippled and shifted, revealing her own handmaid, Aurelia, standing outside Claudia’s room. She pressed close to the door, leaning in to overhear a conversation between Claudia and Gia.
‘You will be free to perform reconnaissance while the prince is out of the palace. It would be an ideal moment to enter his chambers and examine his belongings, just in case he has anything incriminating in his possession…’
The image rippled again.
