Chapter Eighteen
It felt like I had ripped my own skin off and left it behind. My nerves were raw and exposed, and for the rest of my life, I would never forget the look on his face when I told him we couldn’t. The betrayal, the disappointment.
The hurt.
My body ached so badly for him that I nearly went back. I wanted him more than almost anything else. He was the one who had just told me that it was fine to feel desire for things we couldn’t have so long as we didn’t act on it.
But we had acted on it.
Had my words somehow caused this? I was the one who had told Lysimache that I would go home and have sex with my husband. As if I had spoken it into existence.
That woman was haunting me. I thought of how she had stopped caring about other people because it had brought her too much suffering and grief. She had closed herself off to everyone.
Would I do the same?
Didn’t I have to? How was I supposed to keep my vows when Xander kissed me like that? Wasn’t turning off my emotions the only solution?
Tears blinded me and I ran into someone.
“Lia? Are you all right?” It was Dolion.
I shook my head, not trusting myself to speak. He led me into a small sitting room. I had come down to the main floor and not even realized it.
“What happened?” he asked as he closed the door. “Did someone hurt you?”
Again, I shook my head. No one had hurt me.
Except me.
I went over to the table and chairs and sat down, running my hand along the edge of the table to give myself extra leverage because I wasn’t sure that I could control all my limbs properly.
“Ow!” I said when a small piece of wood went into my finger. I held it up. Did Xander feel this?
This was what he had done. He had embedded himself deep in my skin, a painful, constant reminder that no matter what else I was doing or thinking of, he was there.
“Let me help you with that,” Dolion said. He took out a small knife and used the tip of it to dig the splinter out of my finger. It hurt but not as bad as what had just occurred in my bedroom. A few seconds later it was over, the piece of wood gone, but my finger still throbbed.
“I’m sorry about what happened today with Lysimache,” he said. The polite thing to do would be to acknowledge what he was saying and forgive him. But I was still too upset about today’s events. I didn’t have it in me to be benevolent.
He moved his chair close to mine so that we were nearly touching, which surprised me. “Lia, it is so hard for me to see you this way. There have been so many times when I have witnessed how unhappy you are and it tears me apart.”
What? My pulse spiked. This didn’t sound like ordinary concern. It almost sounded . . . romantic. This was not the way he should speak to me. “You’re saying this because you are my friend.” I needed to make certain that line was there.
Then Dolion reached for my hands. I was so shocked that I didn’t immediately pull away as I should have. “I would be more than a friend to you if you would let me.”
I yanked my hands from his. “I am married. To your phratry brother.”
“It’s not a real marriage.” I remembered the day after our wedding, when Xander had told me that his brothers all knew the truth of our relationship. “He doesn’t make you happy. I could make you happy.”
“You don’t know what you’re saying,” I protested. I didn’t feel that way about Dolion. At all.
“I heard your conversation with the high priestess. I know that you have to remain celibate. I would honor that. I would respect your vows. My intentions toward you are pure.” Was he implying that Xander’s weren’t? What had Xander told his brothers?
He leaned toward me and I jumped out of my chair. He stood slowly, his gaze never leaving my face. “I would take care of you. Erase your sadness, wipe away all your tears. Treat you the way you should be treated.”
“Dolion, no.” I didn’t know what else to say.
Something that looked like anger briefly flashed in his eyes. “You would let him use you to get what he wants. You’re a means to an end for him.”
“At one point I believed that, but now—”
“Now what?” he interrupted me. “He’s seduced you into trusting him?”
The Lia from a few weeks ago would have believed everything that he was saying. But too much had changed.
His shoulders dropped. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what I’m doing.
It was just . . . when I heard your conversation and you told Lysimache that you were going to go home and have sex with Xander, I thought that I had run out of time to tell you how I felt.
To let you know that you don’t have to stay with him. We could run away from all of this.”
If he thought that I would leave Quynh, my adelphia, Ilion, with everything that was going on, he couldn’t possibly love me.
Because he didn’t know me at all.
My grandmother had taught me how to let down a suitor kindly, and I tried to remember her words. “Dolion, while I appreciate that you—”
Before I could react, his mouth was on mine, kissing me. Revulsion filled the back of my throat. This was so wrong. I quickly put my hands on his chest and shoved him away. I wiped my lips with the back of my hand, as if I could erase it. “Do not ever do that again.”
“Don’t lie to yourself out of some kind of misplaced loyalty. You enjoyed that.”
Nothing could have been further from the truth.
Dolion was not the man I had thought he was.
This made me look at everything that had happened between us through a different lens. Like when he had brought me flowers. I had thought it was a nice, friendly gesture, but it had been because he had feelings for me.
I remembered how jealous Xander had been that night when he found Dolion and me together. And nothing had even happened. What would he do if I told him about this?
He might actually attack Dolion. And I didn’t want their relationship to be destroyed. They were still phratry brothers.
“I am not going to tell Xander,” I said. It was not for Dolion’s benefit, but because I didn’t want it to hurt my husband. “Whatever friendship you and I had is over. I don’t want you to speak to me or come anywhere near me.”
He stared at me and said bitterly, “I shouldn’t be surprised. This is what you do. Destroy the hearts of the people around you, oblivious to the pain you cause.”
He wrenched the door open and left while I stood there, unsure of what to do next. Would he tell Xander? I couldn’t imagine that he would, but if he did . . . would Xander believe that I had nothing to do with it? That Dolion had kissed me and I had immediately put a stop to it?
I couldn’t stay in this room. I exited and went right, toward the main library. That felt like a safe place to go. No one except me ever went in there.
Maybe if I could hide here the rest of the day, nothing else bad would happen.
I tried reading but I couldn’t concentrate. So instead I sat there with a book open in front of me and stared out the window. I thought about my life and how wrong everything was and how I didn’t know what to do to fix it.
Hours and hours passed while I sat and stared and pondered.
“There you are!” It had started to grow dark when Io and Suri came into the library.
“How did you find me?”
Suri smiled to let me know that she had been responsible.
“And why are you awake?” I asked Io. “You took a potion. I thought you were going to sleep for a long time.”
“I’ve slept long enough. The dose I took this morning was a small one so that I could get back to work. After Zalira told us what happened with Lysimache, Suri and I went to my mother’s library to search for answers.”
Io didn’t know this, but I supposed that it was now technically my library, since Xander had gifted it to me.
Back when she was trying to convince me to love her brother, she would have seen his gesture as romantic, which was why I hadn’t told her.
Now I worried that it might hurt her that he’d given it to me instead of her.
And that she would be upset about the potential implications.
“We tried to look up information about people who worship Arion but couldn’t find anything.
And Suri couldn’t sense any books about his hammer.
I do remember Maia mentioning something about god-weapons, weapons forged and used by the gods in their battles with one another, but that information doesn’t seem to be in the library, either. ”
“Perhaps Lysimache was able to destroy those books.”
“We did find one book that spoke about Arion and his hatred for his mother,” Io said.
“He is close to his father, the sun god, and despises his mother for rejecting his father. It also said that he always thought his sister, with her celestial powers, was their mother’s favorite, while he was bound to the earth and metal.
He blamed and resented his mother for restricting his gifts.
It’s why he sold his sister into marriage, to punish both the mother and daughter. ”
“That . . . sounds incredibly petty. You would think gods would be above such things,” I said.
“Lysimache said Arion wanted to destroy the goddess. Do you remember that line I read to you from the book Suri found for me? It said the gods bickered over mortals because they draw their strength from their believers.”
“So if Arion wanted to destroy his mother, he would have to kill everyone who believes in her to weaken her.”
I nodded. “I can’t imagine that it would be easy to destroy an immortal goddess. If he could eliminate where she draws her strength from . . .”
We sat there quietly for a few moments, absorbing this information. “Again, I understand why the goddess doesn’t want us to have children,” Io said with a shudder. “Can you imagine what it must feel like to have your own son hate you so much?”
With what I’d felt from the goddess in my dreams, I didn’t understand. She was so loving and kind. Why would Arion want to end her?
“When is the last time you ate?” Io asked me, and my stomach grumbled in response. She laughed and said, “Come to my room and we’ll feed you.”
I felt a bit anxious about leaving the library, not knowing if we might run into Dolion. Fortunately, neither Io nor Suri seemed to pick up on my discomfort as I trailed behind them.
Io was discussing the potion she’d been working on to break the physical link between Xander and me. “I feel like I have the right ingredients. It’s just the ratios that aren’t correct.”
“Maybe you’d be able to figure it out if you slept,” I said. Suri nodded, agreeing with my point. “We’ve already seen that lack of sleep makes you stabbier.”
Io ignored my last comment. “When I take the fortification potion, if I’m not using magic, it lasts for so long. Sleeping takes up a ridiculous amount of time. I’m getting so much done without distractions. Like I’ve already ordered all our dresses for Erisa’s party.”
I did not care about that party. I wondered if we could skip it. I didn’t want to feed into Erisa’s delusions.
There were more important things to worry about.
We got back to Io’s room and Suri cocked her head toward the door.
“You’re going to find Zalira and Ahyana?” Io asked, and Suri nodded. Once she had gone, I decided this was as good a time as any to ask Io for help. I only hoped that she would say yes.
Taking in a deep breath, I said, “Io? I need to ask you for a favor.”