Chapter Forty-Two
I felt a blinding, searing pain, as if an unseen blade were digging Xander’s name directly onto my heart, putting him there permanently. I could feel him inside me, that thread connecting us that I knew could never be broken.
I screamed his name as he fell and heard when he smacked into the cliff face. Stephanos threw a spear at Dolion, but it went wide.
Rokh shifted, but two dozen people came out from behind trees and rocks. They all had their bows trained on us.
And then their leader walked out.
Artemisia.
I dropped to my knees. I had never felt so helpless in my entire life. There was nothing I could do to stop this. I could only watch.
Xander immediately started to climb the ropes attached to his waist. What if they cut those, too? If they didn’t, he would go up there and kill every single person.
Was I about to watch my husband plummet to his death?
Dolion went over to the edge with a blowpipe and began shooting darts at Xander. I saw each time they hit, peppering his flesh, but it didn’t slow him. He fought off whatever was in those darts and continued to climb, his muscles straining as he put one hand over the other, hauling himself up.
He had just gotten himself onto the top of the cliff and pulled out his broadsword. He took one step forward and then collapsed onto the ground.
I screamed his name again.
“Your precious husband’s not dead. Just sleeping. I need him for my negotiations. Ilion will happily surrender and open their gates to get their king returned to them,” Artemisia said.
I had thought I hated her before, but it was nothing compared to the raging inferno of loathing I felt for her now.
“But as for the rest of you . . .” Her voice trailed off as she raised her hand. “Fire.”
We had no protection, no shields. No way to fight them off.
Every one of her soldiers loosed an arrow at us, but a gust of wind shot up from the chasm and blew all their projectiles away.
Artemisia frowned and told her men to fire again.
They did, with the same result.
Like we were being protected.
“That’s a neat trick,” Artemisia said. “I heard about your magic. Is this all it does? You can call up gusts of wind?”
I stood, ignoring the way my limbs shook. Dolion must have told her about our aspects. That snake. “I can show you exactly what I can do.”
“Oh, I would advise against that. Because if you or any of your sisters try to use magic against us, I will kill your husband. We are going to leave, and you are going to let us.”
“We can take her,” Ahyana whispered to me. I wondered if they could hear her on the other side. “We can destroy all of them.”
“No,” I whispered back frantically. “We can’t. She will kill him.” Of that I had no doubt.
“Good decision,” Artemisia said as she signaled to her men. Two of them went over and picked Xander up, putting him onto a litter. They lifted it and placed it on their shoulders and walked away.
It was like they had stolen my heart from my chest and there wasn’t anything I could do to stop them.
“This isn’t over,” I told Artemisia.
“I’m sure we’ll meet again,” she said with a vicious smirk.
She was right. We would.
When I took my husband back.
She turned to leave, her soldiers following.
“Dolion!” Stephanos yelled out, and I heard the hurt, confusion, and anger in his voice.
“Don’t come after us, Stephanos. I don’t want to have to hurt you. And Rokh, if you fly after us, I will shoot you out of the sky.” Dolion brought up the rear of the group as they left.
Then the Carians were all out of sight.
I remembered how that voice had urged me to tell Xander about Dolion and how he had kissed me. If I had listened, if I had done what it directed me to do, my husband would be safe right now.
Now I would have to live with that knowledge.
I could feel him, feel as he was pulled farther and farther away from me. It was like Zalira had said—I could track him. I would be able to find him with this connection. That thought briefly lifted my spirits.
Hope wasn’t lost.
Ahyana came over and put her arms around me.
“I shouldn’t have let him come,” I told her, fighting off tears. “I should have insisted he stay in Troas.”
“We aren’t valuable hostages,” Ahyana said. “She would have just killed us outright. The only reason we’re alive right now is because they only wanted him.”
“She’s going to kill him,” I said.
Rokh said, “No, she won’t. If she planned on killing Xander, she would have done it immediately. Like she said, she needs him alive. She’s going to use him as a bargaining chip.”
Stephanos had his head in his hands. “I am such a fool. Dolion told me to give him all the arrows to carry. He said it would be easier if they were in one spot.”
Zalira went over to him. “You were tricked. We all were.”
Artemisia was the only other person that I’d ever heard use that phrase about women being silent. I had once asked Xander about it, assuming it was Ilionian, but he said it wasn’t.
Because it was a Carian phrase. I thought of how Dolion had made himself seem like a hapless fool, pretending that he was behaving impulsively from one moment to the next when everything he had done had been deliberate and calculating.
It hadn’t been an accident that Dolion had come into the room when I was questioning Lysimache.
He hadn’t wanted to protect me. He had intended to stop her from giving me too much information.
He had come in with his weapon deliberately, knowing what she would do.
Whenever I had watched Xander and his phratry train, the other men were all bare-chested, but Dolion never was.
It must have been because he had that hammer tattoo on his chest.
He had gotten a Sasanian tattoo on his wrist as a misdirection, to hide his true background. It was why Stephanos had assumed the phrase was Sasanian.
That red string I had seen on the tree this morning—Dolion had been leaving them for the Carians so that they could track us.
“We have to go after them,” I said. “We have to get that bridge tied up so we can cross.”
Rokh put his hand on my shoulder. “We can’t. There will be traps. Ambushes. They’ll be expecting us to follow.”
“Then we fight!” I said, wiping away angry tears. “We have to rescue him!”
“We will,” Zalira said. “But you know better than to walk into a trap. There will be another way to get to him.”
I did know better. The problem was I didn’t care. I would turn on my aspect and slaughter every Carian I came across to get him back.
“Let’s stop discussing it,” Ahyana wisely pointed out. “They might be just out of sight listening.”
Stephanos agreed with her. “She’s right. But if we’re not going to cross the chasm, how do we get out of here?”
“I know how.” Suri had woken up but looked groggy. “Fortification potions. Two.”
Io reached into her pouch and pulled out two vials and handed them to Suri. She drank them quickly and walked over to the edge of the chasm. “I need help,” she said.
We all went over and put our hands on her.
“Dea Chthonia,” she said.
The rocks roared and groaned and I watched as a step formed in front of us. Then another, to the right and down farther. And another, and another.
She was creating stairs out of stone in the side of the mountain. She stayed in her magic, creating the steps, until it got to a point where she had to stop.
Suri turned her aspect off. “This kind of rock is much easier to manipulate. I’ll make more when we reach the bottom step.”
We ate and drank to get our strength back up. I had to keep myself from crying when I bit into the pasteli that Rokh passed out. Io also gave everyone fortification potions.
It restored my energy but I didn’t feel like myself. I wasn’t sure I would ever feel whole again without Xander.
Stephanos and Rokh got a rope and tied us all together. Rokh was in the front, with Suri, Io, Zalira, and Ahyana behind him. I was following Ahyana with Stephanos last.
“I have to stay close to you,” he told me. “If you fall and die, Xander will kill me.”
Another time it would have been a lighthearted joke. Now he just said it seriously. This was definitely a precarious situation. There wasn’t a railing or any way to stop ourselves if we slipped or misjudged our steps.
“If one person falls, the others can dig in and help pull them back up,” Rokh said, holding on to the rope.
“What if the wind starts blowing again?” Io asked.
“We’ll have to pray that the goddess is with us,” Zalira told her. “And that we can make it down safely.”
I was glad Zalira had it in her to be comforting. Because if the wind did blow again, we were all dead.
But if we tried to follow after the Carians, Rokh was right. There would be traps. Artemisia was probably waiting and salivating at the idea of me coming after her. And if I had been alone, I probably would have done it. But I wasn’t willing to risk the lives of my adelphia and Xander’s brothers.
I would go after Artemisia, but it would be on my terms. Not hers.
Rokh and Stephanos made torches for everyone to carry. It wasn’t dark yet, but it would be soon. And it probably wasn’t the best idea for us to climb down these steps in the dark, but I didn’t want the Carians to have too much of a lead.
And Stephanos was the one who pointed out that if we stayed put, the Carians might come back and launch an attack under the cover of night.
We needed to move and do as Zalira had suggested. We would have to pray that the goddess would be with us.
Rokh got on the first step and it held. He went to the next and we all started following.
I had to focus all my attention on what I was doing.
I couldn’t let myself fixate on Xander and where he was and what they might be doing to him.
Couldn’t think about how terrified he must have been when he fell.
That way led to despair and madness. I would get him back.
Darkness fell thick around us and we lit our torches. We were far enough down the mountain now that, even if the Carians did spot us, they wouldn’t be able to reach us.
Except Dolion. He could have easily picked all of us off the mountainside. I hoped he wouldn’t see us.
Everything became one step, then another, and another, keeping one hand on the craggy cliffside. It took all my concentration.
When we reached the last step, Suri had to make more on her own, with no one to lend her power. She would create ten more steps, call off her aspect, and then do it all over again.
It took hours but we eventually reached the bottom. I had never been so grateful to stand on solid ground as I was then.
As soon as Stephanos got to the ground, Suri turned her aspect on and destroyed about thirty of the stairs going up. I was about to ask her why she had done it, but then realized she was making it so the Carians couldn’t follow us that way.
“Stay here,” Rokh said after Suri had finished and turned off her aspect. “I’m going to look for where we left the horses.”
“Be careful,” Ahyana said, and to his clear surprise, she kissed him gently.
He couldn’t stop himself from smiling before he shape-shifted and flew off.
Stephanos was winding the rope up, and I noticed how despondent he looked.
“Are you all right?” I asked him. It was probably a silly question, given that none of us were.
“Dolion was my best friend,” he said. “I shared so much with him. He was the one I talked to about Zalira. How could I have not known?”
“Because he made sure you didn’t.”
Everyone had been tricked, including Xander. And now he was paying the price for trusting someone who didn’t deserve it.
“He told me how he felt about you,” Stephanos confessed, and I could tell that it wasn’t easy for him to say. That even after what Dolion had done, he still felt like he was betraying a friend. “I should have told Xander. But I thought I was keeping my best friend’s confidences.”
“Dolion kissed me,” I said, not wanting him to feel so alone. “And I didn’t tell Xander, either. I didn’t want to cause a problem in their relationship. Because I thought that if he felt about you all the way I feel about my adelphia, I didn’t want to take that from him.”
“I suppose Dolion took care of that all on his own.”
It made me wonder whether any of what Dolion had said to me was real. Or if it had simply been part of his plan. Was he trying to drive a wedge between Xander and me?
And if he was, why? What was his end goal? It didn’t make any sense.
Ahyana called on her aspect, and I went over to see what she was doing.
“I’m going to find Artemisia,” she said, before I even asked. “They know to look for ravens, but I found a peregrine falcon. She flies so fast and sees so well.”
She fell silent. I supposed she was watching through the falcon’s eyes as she had with the bats.
Rokh flew into camp and shifted. “I found the horses. They’re not far from here.”
“We’ll go as soon as Ahyana’s done,” Zalira said.
I saw the concern on Rokh’s face and he went and sat next to her. She reached out and took his hand so that he could help power her.
Io approached and asked me, “Can I speak with you?”
I didn’t feel ready to talk, especially not about her brother. I could feel him moving farther and farther away from me, a tiny light that grew dimmer with each passing moment.
“I’m sorry, but I would prefer not to hear a lecture right now.” It was probably unkind, but I felt like a bowstring pulled too tight—I might snap if she applied more pressure.
“No, Lia. I want to apologize to you. I shouldn’t have asked you to stay away from Xander. Or had you promise that you wouldn’t hurt him. That was wrong of me.”
I was so surprised that at first I couldn’t formulate a response. But I did feel bad that I hadn’t been able to do what she’d asked me. “I’m sorry that I couldn’t stay away from him.”
“Don’t apologize. It was like trying to stop a waterfall from flowing,” she said as she took my hand.
“There was no way to prevent you and Xander from loving each other. I know better than anyone that we can’t protect against pain.
The price of humanity, of loving, is grief and hurt.
We don’t get to have one without the other. ”
I had to clear the lump in my throat before I could speak. “I know you did it because you were worried. You love your brother.”
“So do you,” she said.
And I didn’t correct her.
“I found the Carians!” Ahyana called out. She turned off her aspect and stood, her limbs shaking. “But they aren’t coming from the south. They’re going around the mountain range. They’re going to attack from the north!”
All of Ilion’s defenses were being put up south of Troas.
Which meant that the city wouldn’t be ready.