The Dark Labyrinth : A Winter Solstice Novella (The Immortals of Atlantis World Book 4) by Amy Kuivalainen

Author:Amy Kuivalainen [Kuivalainen, Amy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2024-12-19T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SEVEN

Penelope jolted awake, the computer screen bright in front of her eyes. The glare of the fluorescent lights above her made her head hurt. There were class timetables, project deadlines, and an awkward family photo on her cubicle's gray felt walls. The air smelled of stationary, stale Nescafe, and someone's lunch that they were reheating in the staff room microwave.

Penelope rubbed at her neck. What was she doing again? Had anyone noticed her micro-nap? No one seemed to have looked up from their own pods.

Outside, the rain was falling and turning Melbourne's streets dark. She had been having the strangest dream…something about Venice…

"You okay, Bryne? You look like someone just knocked you in the back of the head," Phil asked. He taught Ancient Roman history and spilled something on his shirt every day without fail.

"Yeah, just got a bit of a headache," she admitted.

"End of term will do that to you," he replied before wandering away.

"End of term," Penelope murmured.

Her screen had online class formatting pages open with a picture of a fresco found at the Akrotiri site on Thera. It was of Potnia, the Minoan goddess of fertility, holding the leash of a griffin with a blue monkey offering her a bowl.

Keep looking, the goddess whispered, and Penelope jolted back from the desk.

Penelope's eyes drifted to the background on her screen, and she closed the program. There was a picture of her standing in the waters of Crete, holding a lump of rock.

"The tablet." The dream came back to her in a rush. She had been in Venice with Atlanteans, including the love of her life. Cold fingers of dread crept over her. "How did I get here? I don't…" She didn't belong there. Not anymore.

How was she back? Penelope leaped out of her chair, hurrying through the cubicle maze. She made it to the bathroom before she wretched up coffee and biscuits.

"No, no, no. I can't be back here. I was never going back." She washed her hands and bare arms. She grabbed more soap and scrubbed at her forearms harder and harder. Faint lines of tattoos seemed to float like shadows under her skin. Penelope remembered pain, Aelia singing, and the marks that had remained. She remembered Poseidon kissing the back of her wrist and leaving the tattooed mark of the book and trident.

"Give them back. This is not my life!" she snarled, scrubbing harder. This was a nightmare. She froze, her pulse in her throat. "I'm in the labyrinth."

Penelope looked around her at the prints of flowers on the bathroom walls and the line of stalls. She stepped back out into the halls of the university.

The labyrinth will make you confront your shadows, a deep masculine voice whispered through her mind.

"Alexis," Penelope whispered, her hand resting over her thrumming heart. She saw a silvery string of light in her mind's eye and almost wept. It was still there. Alexis wasn't a figment of her imagination.

Penelope walked down the hall of the university department, the nausea clawing up her throat again.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.