Page 45 of Scion of Chaos

I pause a step below him and look back, perplexed.

He shakes his head and gestures at my body. “Tell me what is happening inside you right now, Nemea. What does yourawarenesstell you of what is occurring within your body? Can you pinpoint individual cells and their desires, their locations? Can you control them?”

My mouth drops open and I blink, taking his point. “I need a piss and a meal, and that’s pretty much all I’m immediately aware of.” I’m also horny again, thanks to the lingering wetness between my legs, but I’m not mentioning that to him. I wiped up as much as I could, but gravity has been at work on this walk. Those two filled me to the brim last night, and it’s got to go somewhere. So my thighs glide against each other with every step, and the memory of what Asterius said he’d do to me last night plays back on repeat in my head. God, I hope we’re not mentally linked the way I am with Erebus.

“Are you listening?”I project, half to Asterius and half to the dark creature I sucked off last night, hoping only one of them responds.

“Only when you ask,”comes Erebus’ deep, velvety voice. “My attention does have its limits, and most of it is occupied with the prison at the moment. Do you need me?”

I sigh. At least that’s one less thing to worry about. And it is weirdly comforting to know that he’s within easy reach.“No. I was just curious whether you were paying attention to my conversation with Asterius. I can trust him, right?”

It feels like a redundant question, because I believe I can trust all of them. But it still soothes me when he says,“Yes. You are precious to all of us, Nemea.”

22

Nemea

“Here we are,” Asterius says when we reach a lower landing after descending for several minutes. The stairs continue down from here, widening as they plunge into darkness somewhere below the tower.

“I thought you said your quarters were the lowest level?” I ask, peering farther into the depths.

“The lowest above-ground. The caverns below are where the baths are. We’ll head down there when you’re ready.”

He gestures to an open archway similar to the one that led into Vesh’s quarters high above. There is no door here, either, just a wall that curves inward, forming a corridor that extends several yards before opening into another. This one is straight, dividing the lowest level into two halves. On one side is the biggest kitchen I’ve ever seen, bustling with activity… except there’s no one here. Yet every surface is occupied with chopping knives, bowls with spoons steadily mixing, and several fires burning in huge fireplaces with enormous steaming cauldrons hanging above, slowly being stirred by paddles moved by no one.

I gawk at it for a moment before realizing that Asterius has moved ahead and stopped farther down in front of another open archway, watching me patiently.

“How does that work?”

“Autonomic function of the prison’s needs,” he says. When I only stare, he raises his eyebrows. “It means…”

“I know what it means. I guess I’m just surprised you’d use such a technical term for what looks like magic to me.”

“Clarke’s Third Law might apply, though it technicallyismagic, not technology.” He smiles at me, revealing a row of sharp teeth reminding me of one of the myths Rachel read to me the night we did our deep-dive. The legend featured a minotaur who supposedly ate human flesh. But despite the teeth and the sheer size of him, he’s less frightening to me than Erebus should be.

“How does that one go? Something about how any sufficiently advanced technology is…”

“Indistinguishable from magic,” he finishes with a smile and a nod. I walk toward him, marveling. “But it is more accurately simple physiology, just of a magical being.”

“And that being is Tartarus—Vesh?”

“Yes.”

“You aren’t what I expected,” I say. “None of you are, but you’re especially surprising.”

He gives a tiny shrug that on his frame resembles an enormous boulder shifting enough to cause an avalanche. “When you have an eternity, you must fill it somehow. I fill it with books.”

He turns and steps through the big doorway, and my stomach does a little somersault. I suppose it hadn’t registered until now because I’m not properly dressed, but Asterius is wearing even less than I am. The simplest swath of a loincloth bands his hips, fabric draping down between his thighs in front and in back, and that’s pretty much it. His massive, muscular wall of a back flexes as he walks, causing his myriad scars to catch the light. His dark skin might have made it easy to overlook his relative nakedness, but I see it all now, and it’saffectingme.

I swallow and shake off the overwhelming urge to eathimand not whatever he has stashed in that basket. Scampering to catch up, I stop short right inside the doorway.

“Whoa, you were being literal about the books, weren’t you?”

The room I just stepped into is a vast library with shelves lining every wall and free-standing in rows upon rows from floor to ceiling. Books and scrolls and stone tablets from every era are stacked in corners and leaning against the lower shelves.

Asterius leads me farther in where he turns down an aisle that runs perpendicular to the entry, cutting down the middle of the shelves. At the end is a large window, its panes divided by a grid of black void glass, overlooking the prison. A pair of French doors set in the center offers easy access to a wide balcony just beyond.

This end of the room is free of shelves, with ornate rugs covering the floor, a huge bed against the wall on one side, and another arched doorway in the wall opposite, with a large book-strewn table in between in front of the windows.

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