Chapter Fifty-Five Xander
Chapter Fifty-Five
Xander
I had forced myself to stand on top of palace walls, despite my fear of heights. I had found my mother after she killed herself. I had been in battles where I was certain I would die. Where I was outnumbered, and it seemed that I had no chance of success.
But none of it had ever terrified me the way that watching the woman I love dive down into that hole did.
I’d never been so desperate, so frantic, so petrified as I was when she went under.
She’d told me she loved me. I knew she did. It wasn’t something she had to say.
But she had given me the words.
For the same reason I had given them to her.
Because she thought she was going to die.
She had just told me how she felt . . . I wouldn’t let things be over now. I was going to spend the rest of our lives showing her how much I loved her.
An insidious voice inside me whispered, What if she’s already dead?
Erisa was responsible for this. She had pulled the lever to flood the lower levels. If she couldn’t rule Ilion, she had decided no one could.
I had thought Erisa had already taken everything from me that she possibly could, but now she had taken my wife.
My Lia.
Thrax brought me a metal rod and I used it to pry the lock apart. It was stubborn but old enough and rusty enough that it finally broke when I twisted and applied all my strength to it.
I pushed the gate up far enough that I could jump into the water. It was freezing but I barely noticed. The only thing that mattered was getting to her.
She should have let me do this.
No. I wouldn’t let myself think that way. I would find my wife and save her and all would be well, just as she had promised.
There was a silvery light ahead of me and I swam toward it.
Her lizard was shining, and the first thing I saw was Lia’s red hair floating in that light.
She’d made it halfway. I swam toward them as fast as I could, begging the goddess to let her be alive.
As soon as I reached Lia, I grabbed her and pulled her close.
I put an arm around her and began to swim up quickly.
When I surfaced, Thrax and Stephanos were there to help me get her out of the water. They laid her on the ground.
“She’s not breathing,” Thrax told me.
I climbed out of the hole and went over to her. I refused to accept that as a possibility. I put my ear against her lips, my hand on her chest.
My brother was right. She wasn’t breathing.
There was no heartbeat.
Panic filled my chest. How could that be? How could I feel her burning in my own heart when hers no longer worked?
I would breathe life into her. I had seen an old sailor do it once. I would push the air she needed into her lungs. I sealed my mouth over hers, exhaling into her. Once, twice, three times.
Still she didn’t stir.
“Xander.” Stephanos put his hand on my shoulder but I shoved it away.
No. Lia would live.
“I forbid you to die,” I told her. “And you have to obey me.”
Some part of me hoped those words would anger her enough that she would come back just to argue with me.
“What if she has water in her lungs?” one of her sisters asked behind me. I turned Lia on her side and hit her back, the way I would if she had been choking.
No water came out of her mouth.
Frantic, I picked her up and held her in my arms. She was so cold. So, so cold.
“Come back to me. Please.” Lia had taunted me about not using that word, but I would say “please” every day for the rest of my life if it would bring her back.
I rubbed her arms, her legs, her torso, trying to warm her up.
Thrax tried to reach for her. “Xander, it’s been too long. She’s gone.”
A howl of anguish ripped out of my lungs, and I shouted at him, “No! Leave me!”
I heard Io crying, and I felt the tears in my own eyes as I hugged my beautiful wife to my chest, trying to give her my warmth.
“Lia, don’t you know how much I love you?
How I would do anything for you? That I have waited for you my whole life?
We are going to have the most incredible future together.
You will be my queen and we will rule Ilion side by side.
We will have children. As many as you want.
Io and Quynh will come and visit us. We will go to Locris and see your parents.
We will laugh and we will dance and we will know nothing but happiness. ”
I was only vaguely aware that the crying behind me got louder.
Kissing her cold lips, her cold cheek, I kept trying to coax her back to me. “I will feed you pasteli every day and hold you in my arms every night. I will keep you safe.”
My voice broke on the last word. I had promised her. Promised that I wouldn’t let anything happen to her. That I would give up my life for hers.
And it was all gone.
My dreams of our future.
Our love.
Her light.
Gone.
The pain was unbearable. There was no way to survive this.
“Take me instead,” I said to no one. “Let her live and I will take her place.”
I had grown up knowing that the goddess existed. But she had been a more nebulous concept. Something I hadn’t concerned myself with because, as far as I could tell, she didn’t affect my everyday life.
But if she was there, she was the only being who could give Lia back to me.
“Dea,” I said. “Please. You can’t give me something so precious, so wonderful, so amazing, and then take her from me. I need her. I am not whole without her.”
I sucked in a shuddering breath because my throat had gone tight, my chest constricted. “Our love bond surpasses death. I took your vows in our marriage ceremony and claimed Lia as my own. I promised to care for her and protect her. Please let me do that. Let me have another chance.”
There was only silence, only my dead wife in my arms.
“Dea, I will offer you anything you want if you restore her to me. My kingdom, my crown, my life. All of it forfeit if you ask for it. I cannot do this without her. She is my light, my heart. Nothing else matters to me but Lia. Please.”
I couldn’t stop myself from muttering the word “please” over and over again, pleading, begging, as I rocked my wife back and forth in my arms.
Waiting for a miracle.