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“Daughter?”
“Yes… Helping me would enable my wife and I to reunite with her. It would bring us all tremendous joy and fulfilment.”
Why the male practically had stars in his eyes.
Until now, I’d never noticed just how dazzling they were. I wondered if, beneath all the frostbite, starvation, and self-loathing, there was a handsome male somewhere in there.
A tremulous smile split his face, eyes dazzling with unshed tears. After all his torment and suffering, seeing him like this for the first time was truly a breathtaking sight. So much so that my own eyes began to burn as I caught his contagious grin.
Grigori threw his arms around me, knocking me backwards into the snow, and I couldn’t help but laugh.
My arms embraced his seemingly fragile body, and when he finally drew away from me, hauling me up with a surprisingly strong grip, there were tears of joy melting the ice crusting his face.
“What is it exactly you’re looking for?”
“Two pythoi. My sister, Keres, has hidden them somewhere.”
“What’s inside of them?”
“A fraction of mine and my wife’s souls.”
If he’d still had eyebrows, they would have leapt towards his hairline.
“Well… Let me… I’ll see what I see, I suppose.”
I gave his arm a squeeze in gratitude, stomach-churning when it felt like little more than a humerus bone. He held out a large, callused and cracked upturned hand between us.
“It helps sometimes if I can connect with you and your memories, even if they’re not directly tied to the objects in question.”
I held his hand, squeezing slightly with my gratitude and excitement.
Grigori’s eyes slipped shut, and I couldn’t help the wandering of my eyes, taking in his bony frame and bare feet. The sight alone was painful.
“I only see one…”
My head jerked back up to find his eyes still closed, the skin of his forehead scrunched in concentration.
“What?”
Gods.
Maybe my sister was keeping Soteira’s pythos on her nightstand.
Probably.
He shook his head, shifting from one foot to another on the snow as if he’d stepped in something sticky. His voice became breathless. Another wavering smile.
“I’m standing in warm water…Akash almighty, I forgot what that feels like…I’m in a cave, though. It’s… small… Or perhaps part of a larger one, because the water isn’t stagnant. It’s lapping at my feet as if I were standing on a shore… But I see it. At the back. It’s on a stone pedestal…”
Grigori took small stationary steps in the snow, a fragment of what was occurring in his mind and… wherever else he was. He raised his free hand as if trying to block out a glare.
“It’s so bright I have to shield my eyes… It’s like trying to look directly into the sun.”
Wingbeats pounded the air from above, and I turned to find Lathrimos flying towards us.
“Your grace... Forgive me for the disturbance, but… There’s a female here. She insists on speaking with you. For seven rotations, she has not stopped pleading with every winged being she could find onSosiadarapto find you.”
Grigori dropped my hand, Lathrimos’ eyes dipping at the action, but said nothing.
