"YOU know that's not really my name," she blurted. Now why the hell had she said that?
He turned his head and finally looked at her again.
"Of course not. Empousa is a title of respect, not a name."
"Well, it doesn't really seem like it's me yet," she said. "Like just about everything here it seems foreign . . . odd . . ." Mikki stifled a sigh, wondering how it could be that she was talking so easily with this man-creature.
"If not Empousa, then what shall I call you?" he asked.
"Mikki," she said.
His thick brow furrowed, and for a moment she thought she caught the glint of humor in his dark eyes.
"Mikki? That is a name?"
"It's not my given name, but it's what everyone calls me."
"What is your given name?"
"Mikado," she said.
"Ah." He nodded, and the candlelight glinted off a quick flash of too-sharp teeth as he smiled. "The Mikado Rose. It is appropriate."
Mikki took another drink of wine. With its spread of warmth through her body came a sudden, delicious sense of heady courage. She cleared her throat and spoke quickly before she changed her mind. "What is your name?"
"I am Guardian of the Roses."
Mikki frowned. "But what do I call you?"
"I have always been called Guardian."
"Guardian?" Mikki said doubtfully. "That sounds like Empousa - a title, not a name."
"It is what I am. Title or name, there is no difference for me."
His face changed again, and this time Mikki was sure she saw sadness there before his expression settled into an unreadable mask. He was such a mass of contradictions. One second he was scaring the breath from her, and the next he was making her feel pity for him. Her head was a little woozy. She was definitely more relaxed - not exactly grounded, but relaxed enough to allow the next question to spill from her mouth.
"Am I making you up? Is this all happening just in my mind?"
"No. We are real, you and I. As is the Realm of the Rose and the goddess we both serve."
"So I'm not asleep and dreaming this?"
"No, Mikado." He enunciated her name carefully. "Not this time."
His eyes caught hers, dark and expressive with the knowledge of what their dreams had become. "You are very much awake, as am I. Finally."
"Sometimes my dreams of you felt more real than the world around me."
Slowly, not taking his eyes from hers, he moved closer to her and lifted his hand so his fingertips brushed lightly over her cheek. "You broke the spell that entombed me. For that I will eternally owe you a debt of gratitude."
The heat of his brief caress made her shiver, and he quickly dropped his hand and stepped back.
"But why me?" Her voice was rough, as equal parts of fear and fascination struggled within her. "How could I have broken a spell I didn't know anything about?"
"You carry the blood of Hecate's priestess within you. None other could have broken the spell and awakened me."
"I awakened you . . ." Mikki repeated. "And I'm here because you needed a spell lifted from you."
"No, Empousa," the Guardian said firmly. His words were stone, and the power that he had been keeping in check roiled between them once more. "You are not here for me. You are here for the roses."
Inadvertently, she cringed away from the force of his voice, once again fearful of the monstrous creature who stood before her.
The Guardian sighed wearily. When he spoke, he had tamed his voice so it was no longer overpowering.
"I will leave you to finish your meal in peace. If you have need of anything, simply call and your handmaidens will attend you. I bid you good night." He bowed neatly to her, turned and blended back into the shadows from which he had emerged.
When she was sure he was gone, she unclenched her hands and wiped them across her face.
Breathe. Be calm. Breathe. Be calm. She let the words sink from her mind into her body. Instead of reaching for the wineglass, she began to methodically eat meat and cheese. She needed to be able to think clearly. Food made her feel more normal, so she ate and let the simple act of refueling her body rejuvenate her mind. She didn't take another drink or think more about the impossible conversation she had just had until the edge of her hunger was gone and the woozy feeling in her head had cleared.
Mikki slowed her eating and sipped the wine. The food worked exactly as he had told her it would. She was full, and she felt normal again - if she could use the word normal to refer to anything she was experiencing in this fantasy world.
The creature . . . how could anything so terrible and powerful walk and speak like a man? As a statue she had always thought of him as more man than beast, but seeing him alive - hearing him speak - had made her understand all too well that he was not, could not, be only a man.
You are not here for me. You are here for the roses. The words seemed to echo on the empty balcony, accusing and mocking her. She remembered the sadness that had shadowed his face. Did beasts feel sadness? Would a beast think to have a sumptuous table set for a woman and then float a rosebud in her wine? Could a beast enter a woman's dreams and fantasies? And why would a beast touch her face with such gentleness?
He was not, could not, be only a beast, either.
Mikki tried to wrap her mind around the things he had said. He wasn't a dream. He wasn't a hallucination. He was all too real.
You are here for the roses. He had told her that, and so had Hecate. But what did it mean?
"Tomorrow," she said aloud. "Tomorrow I'll find out."
She drank the last of the wine and then with a groan of protest at her stiff muscles, she dragged herself from the balcony and into her bedroom. While she had been busy circle casting and conversing with a living statue, someone had blown out the chandeliers and all but one candelabrum. The fire was banked, but the room was pleasantly warm after the coolness of the night. The thick bed linens were pulled back in preparation for her and a nightgown, a twin of the one she had been wearing earlier, lay across the foot of the bed.
Before she changed into it, Mikki nervously closed the doors to the balcony and drew the thick velvet drapes. Then she hastily peeled off her scanty ritual dress and gratefully slid on the soft nightgown. As she curled up in the middle of the opulent down comforters she thought about how much she'd like a warm soak in a bath. Man, her body was stiff. She sighed. She could tell she'd be sore as hell tomorrow. Her eyelids felt weighted. It was impossible to keep them open.
Her final thought before she slipped into sleep was to wonder if he would visit her dreams that night . . .
The Guardian paced back and forth across his lair's sleeping chamber. He should be pleased. He should be celebrating his release. At last, after all those silent, frozen years, he lived and breathed again. And she was here. It mattered little that she was inexperienced or that she was from the mundane world where he had been entombed for so many centuries. She had Hecate's blessing. Mikado was the new Empousa. The Realm of the Rose would, once more, be set aright.
He remembered the fear in her eyes when he had stepped from the shadows, but he had watched as that fear had changed, as it had become tempered with fascination, even while his power had intimidated her. He knew what she was feeling. It was fascination for her that had awakened him. He had known it before, when she had invaded his mind as his consciousness had been trapped within the marble body. He had not wanted to admit it, not even silently to himself. But now that he'd seen her . . . talked with her . . . smelled her living fragrance and touched the warmth of her skin . . . he could not delude himself any longer. His desire for her was like air - it filled him, sustained him, and he only felt truly alive when he breathed her in.
"Why?"
He growled while he paced. A test. That was the only answer for it. Hecate had given him this burden to bear, and by all the immortal Titans he would bear it!
Spring came early to the Realm of the Rose. Surely then the goddess would relieve his agony. Then he could return to the loneliness that had been a comfortable enemy. Until that time he would keep busy with his duties, which, he admonished himself, did not include watching the Empousa eat. It had all been a lie his mutinous desire had rationalized into temporary truth. He hadn't needed to stay and watch, nor had he needed to speak with her. The ritual had made her hungry and thirsty. Her body would have shown her naturally what it needed to be grounded, and even the empty-headed Elementals would have eventually gotten around to explaining such a basic concept to the inexperienced priestess.
He must not delude himself. Staying away from her was the wisest choice. And that would be easy. He didn't need to see her to know when she was near; he knew her scent. His hands curled and he quelled the urge to smash them into the smooth walls of the cave. Her scent would warn him if she was near, as would the sun glinting off the rich copper of her hair. He had touched that hair in his dreams. He had run his hands along the length of her smooth skin, reveling in its softness. And she had touched him in return, stroking his body as if they were lovers. He had seen the memory of that touch reflected clearly in her eyes. He had longed to respond to it, just as he had longed to respond to her body as it had shuddered beneath him in the last dream.
"No!" he roared.
He could not allow it to happen again. He had one chance to right his past wrong. He must not love her. He could not. And this time he would not delude himself into believing that there was any chance she could love him in return, though in reality her feelings mattered little. She was Hecate's Empousa; therefore, she must die.
The Guardian sank down on the thick pallet of furs on which he slept and buried his face in his hands. He wanted to weep, but he felt empty of everything except pain and despair. There were no comforting tears within him.
"Are you sorry that I allowed her to awaken you?"
The Guardian's head snapped up and he beheld his goddess in her full regalia - headdress of stars, cloaked in the veil of night, with her torch blazing in one hand and the other resting on the head of one of her massive hounds. He fell to his knees before her, supplicating himself with his head bowed so low that his horns touched the ground at her feet.
"Great Goddess! I rejoice that I am in your presence once again."
"Arise, Guardian," Hecate said.
"I cannot, Goddess. Not until I beg you to forgive my crime."
"You did not commit a crime. You simply succumbed to the humanity I placed within you. I was mistaken when I punished you so harshly for a weakness that I was ultimately responsible for gifting you."
His shoulders shook with the effort it took for him to maintain control of his turbulent emotions. "Then I beg that you forgive my weakness, Great Goddess."
Hecate bent and touched his bowed head. "I demonstrated that forgiveness when I allowed my new Empousa to awaken you. Now arise, Guardian."
Slowly he stood. "Thank you, Goddess. I will not disappoint you again."
"I know that. We will not speak again of a past which is dead. You have finally returned to me. The realm has felt your absence keenly, as have I."
"I am prepared to resume my full duties, Goddess, if you will grant it so."
"I do." Hecate scooped her hand through the air, gathering invisible power until her hand glowed. Then, with a quick throwing motion, she tossed the brilliant pile of light on him and said, "I hereby return to you dominion over the threads of reality."
The Guardian's head bowed again as the magickal power resettled into his body, filling him with its familiar warmth. When he was able, he met his goddess's gray eyes.
"Thank you, Hecate."
"There is no need to thank me. I return to you what is yours. In all the time you were gone, the handmaids never got the knack of it, not even the Elementals were as adept at turning reality into the threads that bind the garment of mortal dreams as you."
"I am eager to begin again, Goddess," he said.
"I expect no less of you. But tonight I command that you rest. Tomorrow is soon enough to begin."
"Yes, Great Goddess," he said. He bowed his head again, expecting that she would disappear as she normally did in a shower of stars. When she didn't, he glanced up, curious as to her hesitation.
"Goddess?"
"As you know, my Empousa has returned."
Silently, he nodded his head.
"She is . . ." Hecate paused, choosing her words carefully. "She is not like the other Empousa. She is, of course, from the mundane world. This realm is strange and new to her."
"And she is older than the other priestesses," he said. Hecate's quick, knowing gaze made him silently curse himself for speaking at all.
"That is true. It is also true that she is inexperienced in the duties of my High Priestess. Keep a watchful eye on her, Guardian. She has much to learn and very little time in which to learn it. Beltane is not far away."
He bowed his head. "I will do your will, Goddess."
When she glanced up at him, her gray eyes were piercing. "This time I have taken steps to insure that you will not be so easily tempted to err. With the return of your power over the threads of reality, I have given you a" - she paused and her lips tilted up in a humorless smile - "let us call it a special thread of reality of your own. I know your body burned for my Empousa and that she used that desire against you as you sought the impossible. So you will never be tempted to betray yourself for lust again, know that I have made it impossible for you to consummate your desire for a woman unless that woman loves and accepts you for the beast you are, as well as the man who lurks within the creature's skin. Henceforth, you will be safe from your own impossible dreams. Do you understand, Guardian?"
Awash in shame, he bowed his head again. "I do, Great Goddess."
Her voice softened. "I do not do this to be cruel. I do this as protection for you, as well as the realm. For what mortal woman could ever truly love a beast?"
Awaiting no response from him, Hecate raised her torch and disappeared in a whirlwind of light, leaving her Guardian as he was before, alone and filled with despair.