Chapter Three
The black bull was without mark, both beautiful and terrible, and it opened its jaws and spoke in the language of men: “You have overthrown my island, but I will have my price.”
When the king awoke he marveled on the oddity of his dream, but thought no more of it…
—From The Minotaur
“Indio!”
Lily paused and glanced around the blackened garden an hour later. She hated to keep Indio locked inside the old theater, but she was going to have to if he insisted on disappearing like this. The sun would soon be setting. The garden held all manner of dangers for a little boy—and that was without the interest the duke had shown her son yesterday afternoon. Lily hadn’t liked that comment Montgomery had made about Indio’s eyes.
Not at all.
A sense of urgency made her cup her hands around her mouth to shout again. “Indio!”
Oh, let Indio be safe. Let him return to her, happy and laughing and covered in mud.
Lily trudged onward toward the pond. Funny how she’d learned to pray again when she’d become a mother so suddenly. For years she’d never thought of Providence. And then she’d found herself whispering beneath her breath at different, frightening points in Indio’s short life:
Let the fever break.
Don’t let the fall be fatal.
Thank you, thank you, for making the horse swerve aside.
Not the pox. Anything but the pox.
Oh, dear God, don’t let him be lost.
Not lost. Not my brave little man. My Indio.
Lily’s steps quickened until she found herself almost running through the charred brambles, the clutching branches. She’d never let him out again when she found him. She’d fall to her knees and hug him when she found him. She’d spank him and send him to bed without his supper when she found him.
She was panting as the path widened and she came to the clearing by the pond. She opened her mouth to call yet again.
But she was struck dumb instead.
He was there—Indio’s monster. He was in the pond, his back to her.
And he was quite nude.
Lily blinked, frozen in place. The garden was all of a sudden eerily still as the day made its last farewell. His massive shoulders were bunched, his head lowered as if he saw something in the water. Perhaps he was struck by his own reflection. Did he know himself when he saw that man beneath the water—or was he frightened at the sight? She felt a flash of pity. He could not help his own huge size—or the deformity of his brain. She ought to speak, ought to make her presence known, ought to…
All thought left her head as the giant plunged beneath the water.
Lily’s mouth half opened.
The setting sun broke through the cloud cover and bathed the pond in golden light, reflecting off the ripples left by his movement. He burst from the water. He was facing her now. The muscles bunched on his arms as he slicked his wet, shoulder-length hair back from his face. The mist swirled amber over the surface of the water, adorning his gleaming skin as if he were the tributary god of this ruined garden. Her pity evaporated, burned away by the sudden realization that she had it all wrong.
He was…
She swallowed.
Good Lord. He was magnificent.
The water trickled down his chest, trailing through a diamond of wet, dark hair between his beaded nipples, down over a shallow, perfectly formed navel, and into a dark line of wet hair that disappeared—rather disappointingly—into the concealing misted water.
She blinked and glanced up—only to find that the giant, the beast, the monster was looking directly back at her.