Chapter Thirty-Five
“Getting that letter from my uncle reminded me of how much pain my father caused my mother. She loved another and he didn’t care.
And because of you, for the first time in my life, I finally understood him.
I thought you had another man in your heart but it didn’t stop me from wanting you,” he confessed.
I knew what his father had done to his mother, and not once had this thought entered my mind—that Xander was afraid he was behaving like his father.
He looked down at our joined hands. “I tried to be respectful of you and your feelings. There were times when I didn’t care but then I would have to remember myself.
I refuse to live his life. To hurt someone that way, as my mother had been.
I couldn’t allow myself to care about someone who couldn’t care about me. ”
So many things were starting to make sense—why he’d held back, why he had put up walls between us, why he had done things that he knew would upset me.
It wasn’t just to protect himself. It was because he cared enough about me that he wouldn’t let me have his mother’s life, forced to be married to him when he thought I loved someone else.
There was also the pain of having a mother who wouldn’t love him because he was his father’s son. What had it done to Xander to give her all his love and not ever have it returned?
He was afraid. I was sure he’d never admit that out loud, but that scared boy was still inside him, the one who had been rejected over and over again by the woman who was supposed to have loved him most.
I was sure that wasn’t the only thing that concerned him. He had told me more than once that he was no one’s second choice. He had been worried that he would spend his life pining after a woman who would never return his feelings. Who settled for him because she had no other option.
Because he was there and the other man wasn’t.
How had I not realized this earlier?
“I have seen what relationships do to the men in my family. My father. My ancestor destroyed all of Ilion in a war because of his obsession with a woman he couldn’t let go of,” he said.
And Xander had refused to be those men, even if part of him had wanted to.
“I knew that you were looking for something. You were always reading and studying. I thought to give you my mother’s library to help you and as some misguided attempt to win you over.
Then I realized what I was doing. I was literally giving you the same books my father had given to my mother in an effort to gain her love, and I realized how terrible and pathetic my gesture was. ”
“No!” I wouldn’t let him taint that. “It wasn’t terrible or pathetic. I can’t tell you what it meant to me.”
He raised his gaze to mine and I saw what looked like hope in his eyes. “When you lay with me on the floor all night, even though you hated it—that being with me mattered more than your own comfort . . . I thought that maybe I had pushed him out of your heart.”
“There was never anyone else there,” I told him. “Only—”
The tent flap flew open and Io and Suri walked in. I tried to pull my hands away from Xander but he held on to me tightly.
He wanted his sister to see.
She put on a happy face, but I noted the concern in her eyes. “It’s so late. We need to go to bed.” Her words were pointed at him, wanting him to leave.
For a moment I thought he might ask me to go with him so that we could continue talking, but instead he nodded. He leaned over to kiss me on my cheek, his warm lips making my skin light up.
“Sleep well,” he said.
Zalira and Ahyana entered the tent then, and I was grateful for the reprieve. It would mean I wouldn’t be alone with Io and Suri. I didn’t want to talk about what had just happened. It was private and for just Xander and me. I already knew Io’s concerns. I didn’t need to hear them again.
He stood up and scooted past Ahyana and Zalira. When he got to the tent opening, he turned toward me and said, “Don’t have nightmares.”
“I won’t,” I said.
Xander nodded and left. Zalira asked Io a question and everyone got into their bedrolls, preparing to fall asleep while they chatted.
I didn’t think I’d have a nightmare. Instead I was worried that I would spend the night dreaming about what might have been between me and him if not for the world falling apart around us.
Thankfully, I had a dreamless sleep. When I got up I saw that I was the only one awake in our tent. I headed out to relieve myself. Dolion was on watch and so I went in the opposite direction.
You should tell Xander what happened with Dolion, a voice whispered inside me, but I immediately shook that feeling off. It would only create more chaos. Especially now that I knew my husband cared about me.
He was a jealous man and things would not end well.
I found a giant tree that hid me from view.
After I finished I stood back up, rearranging my tunic.
I saw that there was a red string tied to the lowest branch of the tree.
Rokh had mentioned that people often hunted in the mountains to catch the biggest game.
Perhaps they had left themselves some kind of marker.
When I got back to the camp, Suri came up to me and pulled me over to a giant stone. She cupped her hands together and put them against the rock.
“The cave?” I guessed.
Yes.
Then she pressed her hand to her chest and closed her eyes.
“You feel where it is?”
Yes.
“Then I’ll tell Xander to let you lead,” I said, and she nodded.
Rokh was busy passing out clothing and shoes. They were in the Sasanian style—what he called “shirts” and “pants.” They were long, to our ankles and wrists, and would go under our tunics. And we each had a pair of boots to put on.
“The higher we climb, the colder it will get,” he told me by way of explanation. “We have a heavy cloak for everyone as well. If we need them.”
The terrain would be too hard for the horses, so we tied them to a tree, where Stephanos left them plenty of food and water. We would get them once we headed back to Troas.
When everyone was ready, the camp put away, and we had on our bags, I went over to Xander. I strangely felt a bit shy around him, which was ridiculous. “Suri says she can feel where the cave is.”
“Then we should let her guide us,” he said.
Luna suddenly appeared next to my feet. “You should stay here with the horses,” I said to her.
No.
“It’s supposed to be cold up there. Do aether dragons get cold?”
She gave me an imperious look.
No.
I pressed my lips together so that I wouldn’t laugh. I had apparently insulted her honor in some way. We set out and Luna made certain to trot alongside me. Like she was my own special guard dog. I wondered who she thought she could fight besides field mice.
There was a sort of trail leading up, but it was difficult.
I was grateful for the training that we had all done because I couldn’t imagine how much harder it would have been without that.
We were on a steep incline, and there were several times that we walked along ledges in the mountainside with a sheer drop on one side.
“Are you doing all right?” I asked Xander. I knew heights were his biggest fear.
“Fine,” he said, keeping his eyes on the ground.
“It’s high.”
“I’m very aware.”
His paying attention to his surroundings curbed any attempt to have a conversation. Not that we could have, with everyone around us. The things that he and I still needed to say—I thought those should be said in private.
The problem was that the silence gave me far too much time to think about my husband and what might happen now that we had cleared up so many misunderstandings. I felt like a fool for not having tried to talk things out with him earlier but knew that if he’d tried, I wouldn’t have believed him.
I had been so angry that I would have assumed he was trying to trick or manipulate me for some nefarious reason.
We had both needed to change and grow to be in the place we were now, and I was grateful that we had.
We stopped several times to eat, drink, and rest. As the sun began its descent from the apex of the sky, I asked Suri, “Do you know how much farther we have to go?”
She held up four fingers and then put three of them back down.
“Three-quarters of the way there?” I asked.
Yes.
I had a strange mixture of fear and anticipation.
I didn’t know what the tests would be or if we would even be able to pass them.
What if something happened to us in that cave?
No one would be able to come in after us.
There wouldn’t be any kind of rescue. Everything would be solely on our shoulders.
I also thought about what we would do if the weapon wasn’t there. What if this entire thing was nothing more than a fool’s errand?
We resumed heading up the mountain, and Rokh had been right. It was definitely colder up here. When I asked what kinds of trees were surrounding us, Io told me they were called pine. I liked the way they smelled—the air seemed fresh and clean and it energized me.
Luna disappeared and I stopped. I turned around and called her name.
She had been sticking so closely to me that it made me think something had happened to her.
I supposed it was possible she just wanted to go off and hunt, but I walked away from the group, still looking for her and calling her name.
Something didn’t feel right.
I put my hand over my stomach, which had started to flip nervously. I stepped over a large pool of water and noticed that the trees around me seemed to be tilting to the right. Odd.
Then I noticed some strange cracks on the ground near my feet.
Xander was up in the front of the group, near Suri. He cupped one of his hands to his mouth and yelled back, “What are you doing?”
“I’m trying to find—”
The earth opened up beneath me and I fell straight down.