Chapter Twenty-One
His breath quickly evened out and stirred the hair along my forehead. I felt his heartbeat beneath my hand and tried to remind myself that I had promised Io not to do this.
Her request should have meant more to me. She was my adelphia sister and I loved her, and I had given her my word to try not to hurt her brother. I thought of Quynh saying what Io had done was unfair, that it should be up to me and Xander to choose what we wanted.
The problem was that I didn’t usually think of Io when I was with him. Keeping my oaths was important to me. I did want to keep my word to her, but I couldn’t hang on to it. The only thing driving me where he was concerned was the vow.
If it were not for that . . .
I sighed. I shouldn’t let myself get caught up in what might have been, because those things never would be.
Since I couldn’t keep away from Xander, at the very least I could test out Io’s theory that I had two aspects.
“Dea Nyctipolus,” I said. “Let me see what I need to see.”
“Have a seat, stupid girl.” Demaratus sat on a crumbling stone fence. We were staring at an open field covered in broken weapons and dead bodies. Carts and trees had burned, leaving a haze of smoke behind. The air reeked of blood and decay.
“What happened here?” I asked.
“War.” He lifted his wineskin to his mouth and took a long drink. He offered it to me but I remembered all too well that Daemonian wine tasted like vinegar and shook my head.
“When you talked about battles, this isn’t what I pictured. You made it sound glorious and exciting. This is just death. Destruction. Loss.”
“That’s all war is. Two great flames racing toward one another, consuming everything in their path until all that’s left is a curse of ashes.”
“Then why do it?”
“Do you know the secret of happiness?” he asked. He must have been drunk. It was the only reason he would speak this much.
“Terrible wine?”
He shook his head. “The secret of happiness is freedom. And the secret of freedom is courage. We fight to stop those who would take our freedom and our lives from us.”
“War is coming for me,” I said. I explained to him what was happening, what I was up against, the prophecy. He took it all in and didn’t ask any questions or interject. “Erisa, the former queen, is telling everyone that nothing is happening. The council won’t prepare for a possible invasion.”
“Truth is usually the first casualty of war,” he observed.
“I’m not sure I can do any of this. Be the savior. Why me? I’m not a hero.”
“You can be. Heroes aren’t braver than anyone else. They’re just braver for a few minutes longer.”
“The odds against me are overwhelming. I don’t think I’m going to survive this,” I confessed.
“It’s from the greatest dangers that the greatest glories are won.”
“You are waxing very poetic,” I said.
He held up his wineskin as an explanation.
I smiled. “You know, I don’t hear you as often in my head as I used to.”
Demaratus frowned. “Why were you hearing me in your head in the first place?”
“I don’t know. You’re the person always questioning me and helping me figure things out. Like when we trained together.”
“Stupid girl, I’m not in your head.”
“You are now. This is my dream.”
“Maybe you’re in my head,” he countered.
“I don’t think you’d enjoy that very much.”
“I would not,” he agreed.
That made me laugh, and then I sighed. “I miss seeing you. I’m very grateful for everything you’ve taught me. It’s why I’m still here.”
“I am an excellent teacher.”
“Yes, you are. I wish you were here in Ilion to help with this fight. I was going to send you a letter about it, but you never respond. No one in my family responds.”
“I’ve never received a letter from you.”
The battlefield in front of us cleared—everything disappearing instantly. I heard growls and watched as terawolves suddenly appeared at the far end of the field, coming out from the tree line.
“Finally, a worthy opponent,” Demaratus said. He put his wineskin down and pulled out his sword.
“You’re going to fight them?” I asked. He didn’t know what he was signing up for.
He pointed at the largest wolf in front. “There’s something the ancients used to do. They would decide their wars with one-on-one combat between two great warriors. But since we don’t do that anymore, concentrate on taking out their leader. If that one falls, the others will scatter.”
They were a pack; I doubted that was true. “I hate terawolves.”
He gave me a half smile. “Battles are won because you love who is behind you more than you hate who waits in front of you. It’s why you’ll win your war.”
Then he let out a roar as he ran into the empty field. The terawolves barreled toward him. I reached for my xiphos, ready to help.
I woke up to my face pressed against the cold floor. Xander had gone and I was freezing. I climbed up into our bed and covered myself with blankets so that I could warm up again.
Then I realized that my husband hadn’t left—I could hear him in the washroom. I liked having him nearby. I tucked the blankets in around me while I thought about my dream.
Why was that what I needed to see? While I had been glad to spend time with Demaratus again, it didn’t answer my questions.
Stupid girl, are you sure?
Shock slammed into me. I sat straight up and threw off the covers. I ran next door and woke everyone up, which I felt bad about because of how much Io needed her rest.
“Terawolves!” I exclaimed.
“Where?” Ahyana grumbled at me.
“No, terawolves are part aether dragon. If we could capture one . . .”
Io’s eyes went wide. “Then we’d have the last element!”
“Your husband is never going to let you go out and hunt terawolves,” Zalira pointed out. He was annoyingly overprotective. And he’d become more so ever since we’d discovered our physical link.
“We have magic. It will be different this time.” If I had to sneak out, then I would. This was too important.
“How did you think of this?” Io asked.
“I invoked the night-walking aspect and spoke to my former battle master, and terawolves appeared. Before I fell asleep I asked to see what I needed to, and the terawolves are the answer to our problem! And I think that this means that I can control the dreams; I’ll have to work on it.
But the dream magic doesn’t feel anything like when I call on fury.
What the rest of you feel when you do magic.
This . . . just happened. It didn’t cost me anything.
I wasn’t in pain, I didn’t have to turn it off. ”
Again we were in a position where even though we had more answers, the questions continued to pile up.
We all heard Xander moving around next door.
“I thought he was going out with his phratry brothers today,” Ahyana said. She would be the one who best knew their schedule. I wondered if Rokh had returned yet.
Thinking of the phratry brought Dolion back into my mind, and I tried not to shudder. I considered telling my sisters about him and what he had done, but I wanted to pretend the entire thing away. If I didn’t speak of it, I wouldn’t have to relive it.
I also didn’t want to get mired down in what I should have done differently. I knew it wasn’t my fault, but that wouldn’t stop me from questioning whether I had played some role in it.
And I wouldn’t allow his poor decisions to make me doubt myself.
“I’m going to go get dressed,” I said to my sisters.
“Do you want us to help you get ready later?” Io asked as she got out of her bed.
“For what?”
“The party my stepmother insists on throwing.”
Already? That had come together quickly. I supposed it made sense—it needed to be near Xander’s birthday. “I can call for Parthenia.”
Io nodded and I promised to see them all later. I went back to my own room. Xander sat at his desk, writing. It reminded me of what Demaratus had said in the dream about not receiving a letter from me.
I didn’t want to interrupt him, but I had to ask. “Why haven’t I heard from my family?”
He stopped moving his lead across the papyrus, frozen in place.
“I have sent them a lot of letters, but I haven’t heard back from them.” There had been so many other things going on that I hadn’t realized it earlier.
Xander exhaled and then got up. He walked over to one of his trunks, opened it, and began emptying out the contents. I followed and saw him push a lever to reveal a false bottom.
He handed me a stack of my letters.
All unsent.
I could only stare down at them in shock. My parents hadn’t heard from me at all.
My first instinct was to let the anger currently simmering in my veins explode into life. I had been suppressing so many different emotions lately that they were more than eager to funnel themselves into rage and unleash on him.
And I could fight him now. I could so easily call up my fury aspect and then . . .
But I refused to get locked into that spiral again. I did my best to stay calm. He could have had a good reason. I should let him explain. “Why did you do this?”
He seemed surprised. Had he been expecting my rage?
“Despite the fact that you tried to hide it, your misery was evident in your letters. I was afraid of two things—the first, that if Erisa saw them, she would use it against us, and the second, that your parents would get on the first ship and come here.”
Xander had told me previously that there were all sorts of spies in the palace who went through the letters sent out. He was right that Erisa would have seen them and I understood why he couldn’t risk that, given how hard we had been pretending to be in love and happy for the court.
“Why couldn’t my parents have come?” A sharp pang of homesickness pierced my heart. I would have loved to see them.
“I wouldn’t have been able to hide who they were and their relationship to you, as I did for Quynh. Erisa would have found a way to hurt them or take their lives. Being in Locris is the only thing keeping them safe.”
He had told me that he’d written to them and advised them that both Quynh and I were alive, so they at least knew that.
I might have even seen their reaction to finding out.
I had always dismissed that as just another dream, but with my night-walking skill .
. . what if it had been real and I’d witnessed it? Had I actually seen my parents?
Would I be able to do it again?
I shook my head. That wasn’t the point right now. I chose to believe him, to not be upset about what he had done. I understood why he had made that choice. “You did this for me.”
His eyebrows lifted even higher. “I did.”
“Thank you. For protecting them and for protecting me.”
He stood there, as if he didn’t know what to do next. He seemed to be at a total loss. A few beats later, he finally said, “This is not how I thought this conversation would go. I thought there would be more stabbing attempts involved.”
That made me smile. “I can always grab my xiphos if you’d like me to try.”
“I wouldn’t mind seeing it.”
Now it was my turn to be stunned. He’d never indicated that he was interested in my weapon before. I went over to our bed, to where I’d left it under my pillow. I brought it back to where he stood.
“May I?” he asked. It was the first time in a long time he’d asked for something instead of demanding it.
I spun my sword around so that he could take the handle. “I’m surprised you offered me the non-pointed end first,” he said wryly.
He held my xiphos aloft, looking at it in the sunlight as he turned it one way and then the other. He lowered it and ran his fingers along the edges, careful not to cut himself while testing their sharpness.
“It is a finely crafted weapon,” he said, handing it back to me the same way I’d given it to him. “Wielded by a great warrior.”
Tears sprang into the corners of my eyes. Why did that mean more to me than every other compliment he’d ever given me?
I had to clear my throat before I could speak. “A great enough warrior that you wouldn’t mind if I went hunting for a terawolf?”
“You’re not hunting for a terawolf.”
“Why not?”
I had rendered him momentarily speechless so many times in this conversation and did so again.
He finally collected himself enough to say, “Are you serious? Why don’t I want you to go looking for supernatural creatures that are, based on what you’ve told me, still hunting you?
That have venom in their fangs and can turn invisible at will? ”
“When you put it that way, you make it sound . . .” Entirely unreasonable. I couldn’t tell him about the scroll. Not until I knew what it contained. “But what if I really, really needed to?”
“There is no reason for you to—” He sounded as if he might have been on the edge of getting angry and he pulled himself back, much as I had done myself earlier. His tone was much calmer when he said, “Wife, I would tie you to that bed before I’d let you do something so dangerous.”
The night of his birthday, he had told me what delicious things he would do to me if I were tied up, and I had to draw in a shaky breath. I put my hand over my heart, as if that would stop it from galloping.
And he noticed.
I saw his eyes darken, saw the knot in his throat bob, his jaw clench. A heavy and weighted silence stretched between us. He leaned forward as if he wanted to be closer, and then right when I thought he would reach for me, he took several steps back.
“No terawolves,” he said as he sat back down at his desk.
Even though I’d promised myself that I was going to try and be more honest with him, I was going to have to allow one small lie of omission.
Because I would absolutely be headed out to catch a terawolf as soon as possible.