Wicked (Eternal Guardians #9) - Elisabeth Naughton Page 0,38
wearing some kind of leather armor.
They spoke in low voices, and she strained to hear their words, but she could only make out bits and pieces of their conversation.
“…satyrs…”
“…western border.”
“…armed and ready…”
Talisa tensed, suddenly interested.
“Nysa,” Zagreus said, “come here.”
The nymph set the brush on the bed beside Talisa and moved toward the door.
The group spoke in hushed words, then the nymph nodded and moved back into the room. Zagreus left with the males without so much as a glance Talisa’s way, the door snapping shut in his wake with a deafening clank.
The nymph returned to Talisa’s side, picked up the brush, and started combing her hair again.
Talisa bit her tongue so she wouldn’t lash out and tell the female she could handle her own grooming. If she did, she knew she wouldn’t get the answers she wanted. And right now, those answers were more important than any pride.
She pushed the scorching dream and the irritating male at the center of that dream out of her head and focused on what she should have been focusing on all night—mainly, how she was going to break free of this stupid tower.
A satyr attack might just be the perfect distraction.
Play it cool. Don’t go right for the jugular or the nymph will balk.
“I don’t remember meeting you yesterday.”
“You didn’t.” The nymph brushed the hair back from Talisa’s temple. “I wasn’t in the grand hall when you arrived.”
“You’re a healer?”
“Among other things. Everyone in Ehrendia has multiple duties.”
That didn’t tell her a whole lot. “I’ve heard of Ehrendia. I didn’t think it was real.”
“Why not?”
“Because no one’s ever found it. And because legend says Ehrendia is the home of the maenads.”
“And?”
“And they’re the followers of the god Dionysus.”
“And?” the nymph said again, this time in an amused tone.
“And nowhere in the legends did it ever say the maenads turned away from Dionysus to follow the Prince of Darkness.”
Nysa smirked and kept brushing. “You don’t think too highly of our prince.”
Zagreus? “He’s Hades’s son.”
“Hm.”
The nymph moved to brush a new section, and as silence lapped between them, Talisa realized she wasn’t getting anywhere.
She decided to try a different angle. “I also don’t remember any male maenads in the legends, either. I thought maenads were all female.”
“We are.”
Talisa glanced up at the nymph and waited.
“Zagreus didn’t explain it to you?” she asked with a lift of her brows.
Zagreus hadn’t explained shit to her. But Talisa refrained from saying so.
“The males are silens,” Nysa finally said.
“Silens,” Talisa muttered. “Really?” She’d thought them a myth, too. “They’re related to the satyrs, aren’t they?”
The nymph nodded. “A subrace of satyrs, you could say. Peaceful creatures instead of aggressive, like traditional satyrs. Their affinity is for harmony, peace, and pleasure.”
“But they don’t look like satyrs.” They looked like Argoleans. Like humans.
The nymph smirked again. “Usually. In the throes of a frenzy, however, their animalistic natures become quite evident.”
Talisa had no idea what that meant, but as the nymph continued to brush her hair, she remembered everything she’d ever learned about the god Dionysus.
Dionysus was Zeus’s son. The god of wine, fertility, ritual madness, and ecstasy. Initially, Zeus had planned to make Dionysus his heir; to turn over rule of the heavens to him when Zeus was ready to step aside. But Dionysus had turned out to be a bit of a wild card. His appetites grew greater than those of the other gods. So great, he soon began to represent everything chaotic, dangerous, and unexpected in the immortal world.
Dionysus had been forced to the fringes of society, blacklisted by Hera and the other Olympians. There, Zeus built Ehrendia for Dionysus. And there, Dionysus taught his followers, the maenads, how to let go of societal norms and release their inhibitions. According to the stories, every time they did, every time they worshipped him in a state of ecstatic frenzy brought on by dancing, intoxication, and even orgies, his powers grew. Grew so great, some said he would become stronger than Zeus on his own without any help from the King of the Gods.
Until he crossed Hera again, and Zeus’s vengeful wife banished him to the edge of the cosmos, blocking him from ever returning to the human realm and Olympus.
Talisa’s pulse picked up speed. Her skin grew hot. Images of that dream—had it been a dream?—of Zagreus and the things she’d watched him do filled her mind all over again.
Zagreus was Hades’s son. The Prince of Darkness. A minor god who enjoyed torture and pain, not pleasure and ecstasy.