Chapter Twenty-Two
I spent most of the day training with my sisters, practicing the magic using Io’s fortification potions. We could last for longer, and now that we knew how to stop using our aspects, we didn’t have to worry about passing out.
Late afternoon I sat at the table in my room, reading one of the books Suri had chosen for me. I skimmed the pages, hoping something might stand out.
Luna basked on the table in a fading ray of sunlight. She was nearly the same size as Io’s cat and slept constantly. I had moved her over to the table, thinking she might enjoy the warmth. I had never realized that animals grew so quickly.
She woke suddenly and yawned as she stretched. Her eyes slowly blinked open, and when she saw me, it almost looked like she was smiling.
“Did you enjoy your nap?” I asked her.
Yes.
One moment I was looking at her and the next she was gone.
Vanished.
Startled, I stood up. My heart thudded hard in my chest. I touched the spot where she’d been resting. Not there.
So she hadn’t turned invisible.
Twenty seconds later she reappeared in the same spot.
“Where did you go?” I asked her, feeling bewildered. “What were you doing?”
She studied me for a moment before opening her two front paws. She was holding a mouse.
It squeaked and got free from her grasp, jumping off the table. Luna chased after it until she caught it and . . . ate it. It made me feel slightly nauseous.
“Don’t ever let Io see you do that,” I told her as she happily crunched on her prey. It looked as if it might be time to upgrade Luna’s food to bigger game.
After she’d finished with her meal, she shook her head and sneezed. Silver flakes flew out from her body. “You have to stop making a mess or Xander is going to toss you out the window,” I said.
No.
I wasn’t sure if she was saying no to not making a mess or to him tossing her. Maybe both. She crawled up into her enclosure. Xander had removed the interior ramps and shelves and it was now just a big wooden box with some bedding on the bottom, which seemed to make her very happy.
My maid, Parthenia, entered the room. “Were you just talking to yourself?” she asked.
For a moment I wondered which answer would make me seem less like I was descending into madness. I settled on the one that didn’t have me conversing with a lizard. “Yes. I was.”
“I have your dress,” she said, holding it out so that I could see it. It was a deep, dark purple. Purple dye was ridiculously expensive and they had used so much to make it this shade.
“It’s so beautiful!” I breathed. I reached out to touch it, and the silk was so light that it felt as delicate as a spiderweb. “Io has excellent taste.”
“She does,” Parthenia agreed with a smile. “Go and bathe and then I’ll help you get ready.”
The last thing I wanted to do was go to this party.
I had other more pressing concerns, such as figuring out how to sneak out of the palace without my extremely observant husband realizing it.
I hurried through everything, my mind racing as I tried to think of a way to go to the woods south of Troas.
I would also have to formulate a plan on how to actually catch and kill a terawolf.
Parthenia told me about a silly argument she’d had with her husband the previous night, and I only half listened as she helped me dress.
She got out the black pearl necklace that Xander had gifted me at our wedding.
She had acquired a new hair ornament for me, a silver comb with black pearls along the edges, which she used to draw my hair back from my face while leaving the rest of it hanging down my back.
I turned my head slightly to see the comb in my mirror. It almost looked like a tiara.
Then she handed me a ring that had three black pearls on it, and I put it on my right hand. I still wore my Chalcidian steel ring on my left. I glanced down at my wedding ring—it seemed to pale in comparison to the other jewelry I had on.
But it was the only one attached to the vein that ran to my heart.
Xander greeted us when he entered the room, carrying a length of purple cloth over his arm.
I guessed that Io had made us match again.
He headed into the washroom while Parthenia finished.
She asked if I needed her to return tonight to help me undress, but I had watched her carefully as she had twisted and turned the fabric so that it hung the way she wanted it to.
I could undo it myself. I told her to enjoy the city celebration with her husband.
“I hope he’s ready to apologize to you,” I said.
She smiled. “I’m sure he will be. He is fond of romantic gestures.” She put a hand on her swollen belly and wished me a good night and then left.
I found myself envying her again for what she had.
Up until the moment when my own husband walked out of the washroom. I shakily stood up. That shade of purple on him—it had the effect of making his hair somehow even darker while his eyes practically glowed golden.
Like a terawolf’s, a mischievous voice inside me whispered. He would happily devour you if you only asked.
I waved my hand toward him. “It’s . . . very purple.”
Very purple? Had I actually just told him that his tunic was very purple?
“Io did it on purpose. She wanted us to make a statement. Only royals wear this color. We’re supposed to remind everyone who should be the next king and queen of Ilion.”
My breathing hitched as regret darkened my soul. Even when he was named king, I would never be his queen.
He walked over to me, wearing that charming smile of his, and I nearly collapsed at the sight of it. So, so handsome.
“Do you know how many soldiers I could feed with that dress?” he asked playfully.
“We can sell it,” I immediately offered.
“No! I was only teasing. It’s beautiful. You’re . . . it’s beautiful.”
Feeling a bit uncomfortable, I started babbling about the dress. “The stitching is not as elaborate as some others I’ve had. Like . . .” I tried to think of one with more stitching, but my mind had gone blank because he’d moved closer.
“My wedding dress!” I practically shouted the words because the blood rushing in my ears made it hard to hear myself. “That one was very, very intricate.”
That dress had also made me initially disbelieve his story that he hadn’t known who I was from the beginning. It had been blue and gold—my family’s colors. There was no way he could have had a dress created with that much embroidery unless he had known for weeks that—
“Did you like the dress you wore when we were wed?”
I loved it. It had been the one good thing that had happened to me that day. “It’s still one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever worn.”
“I’m glad. The dress was my mother’s.”
It was as if he had stepped back and let an arrow fly directly to my heart. I couldn’t catch my breath—I was shocked and then delighted and confused and wanted to swoon and . . .
He had let me wear his mother’s dress.
Xander had hated me, been so furious with me, but he’d let me wear his mother’s dress.
I knew what she had meant to him, so I understood what kind of gesture that had been. “But it was in Locris’s colors.”
“My mother’s nation has the same colors. That was one of the reasons why I thought you might like . . .” He trailed off, leaving so much unspoken.
By the goddess I was going to kiss this man until we both forgot how to breathe.
As if he could read my desire for him, he foolishly came closer and reached for my hand. I sighed when his warm fingers enveloped mine. “I misspoke earlier. About your dress.”
“So you don’t think it’s beautiful?”
“This may not be the wisest choice, but what I meant to say, what I should have said, is that you’re beautiful.”
It probably would have been better for our situation for him to have kept that information to himself, but I was so glad he’d said it.
Especially because the only other time he had called me beautiful had been when he was drugged. “You haven’t been drinking any honeyed wine, have you?”
Merriment made his eyes glow even more. “No, I stay away from all wine now. I’m giving you my true thoughts.”
Oh.
“But the morning after . . .” I didn’t have to clarify which one I meant—I could see from his expression that he knew. “You said you didn’t mean anything you said to me on your birthday. That it had all been due to the wine.”
He looked down at our joined hands and then rubbed his thumb along the delicate skin of my wrist. My pulse leapt up to meet him there, keeping an unsustainable rhythm.
“I have a lot of regrets, Lia. And the lies that I told you that morning outside the council chambers, in an attempt to protect myself, are among them.”
Part of me exulted in the fact that I had been right—I’d known he was lying—while the rest of me panicked at the desires I was having. How they urged me to go lock our door and let him slowly take this beautiful dress off me.
“When you said that, it made me feel like . . . you didn’t want me.” I knew I was playing with fire. Pleading to be burned. No, not just burned. Incinerated. Completely consumed.
His eyes dropped to my lips and they tingled in response. “I’ve already told you—then, now, I always want you.”
The confidence, the honesty, the raw desire in his deep voice threatened to overwhelm me. My vision blurred, my limbs quivered, and molten fire erupted in my gut.
Io called to us from her room, saying that we should head down to the party.
Her voice startled me and I realized that I’d been swaying toward him, ready for his kiss.
I shakily pulled my hand away from him. She would have been upset if she had just seen how we were looking at each other, heard the things we were saying.
What I had considered begging him to do to me.
“We should go,” I said, averting my gaze.
I walked out into the hallway and greeted my adelphia, ignoring my racing heartbeat.
We all gushed over each other’s dresses, but in my mind, I was still back in my bedroom with Xander, where he was leading me over to our mirror to have a redo of his birthday.
Only this time both of us would be clearheaded.
He came into the hallway and told everyone good evening, but his gaze was on me the entire time.
We all started to walk toward the dining hall.
“I can’t believe how quickly this came together,” Ahyana said. She was almost skipping her way down the stairs and it made me think that Rokh must have returned from his secret mission.
“Erisa does move quickly,” Xander said. “She has made sure she’s getting all the credit for this celebration while spending my money on it.”
“She wants everyone in Troas to think she’s a good mother and cares for the princes of Ilion,” Io muttered. “While in reality, if she could unhinge her jaw, she would probably swallow her offspring whole.”
Xander walked alongside me. The backs of his fingers kept brushing against mine. There was no pattern—I never knew if his skin would touch mine from one moment to the next and waited in breathless anticipation for each time it did. Every single brush sent shivers up my arm.
When we arrived at the dining hall, the party was in full swing. It seemed very much like the party we’d had to celebrate Xander’s birthday a few days ago.
“We should all separate and find an archon to speak to,” Io said. “We still need to get Xander named king.”
She put her hand on my arm, as if she intended to take me with her.
Xander stepped in between us. I shivered at the heated promise in his eyes. “Not yet. Right now, I am going to dance with my wife.”