Chapter Twelve #2
She shrank under their stares, the weight of their attention. Tell me, every nerve in her body commanded them. Tell me he’s dead. Tell me he won’t come here.
It was Kai who took pity on her and answered, both a surprise and not.
“Castor Almenara survived,” he said airily, although there was a slight nod to her, a hint of sympathy Lina didn’t know what to do with.
“But Nalu wounded him, and the Leviathosi left enough bodies in their wake to give Almenara pause before he scrounges up a counterattack.”
You don’t know him, Lina thought, dismal, as Saros and Ione’s parents took their leave. You don’t know him at all.
When Kai did not move, Ione’s grey eyes slid to him. “Goodbye, Warden.”
Kai bowed. “Very good, Lady. I’ll call on you again once it’s all sunk in.” He shoved his hands into his pockets and turned, muttering darkly over his shoulder, “You know I’d only be too happy to handle this all for you.”
Lina grabbed his arm before he slipped past her. “What the hell were you thinking?” she whispered through gritted teeth. “Castor and Rigel will guess who that information came from, and it won’t take them long to figure out where it came from.”
“And you’ll survive it. You’re welcome, by the way.” He smiled, sharklike, none of his usual levity behind it. “Of course making Etan and Nalu today’s heroes certainly wasn’t my fucking intention, but the cogs are turning now and I’ll see to it they stop somewhere I like.”
He whipped his arm back before she could respond and hurried after the Archpriest into the altarhouse.
Ione crumbled, just a little, once she and Lina were alone in the midmorning light; her hands shook with each long breath, but she held herself steady, face lifted, eyes squeezed shut.
Quivering, not with the fear Lina felt, but with fury.
The directionless, helpless fury of a bird trapped in a cage.
Lina closed the distance between them and threw her arms around her, both for Ione’s sake and her own. Ione needed to be brought back down to earth, and Lina needed something, anything, to hold onto.
Castor was alive.
Oh, gods, he was alive.
“He will regret this,” Ione whispered into Lina’s shoulder. “All of it. Every decision, every word he’s spoken against me.”
Lina didn’t know what to say, so she held her tighter, smoothed her hair, wished she could at all help her.
“I have worked,” Ione went on. “I have begged. I have pleaded. And I have failed, and my people continue to pay the price for it.”
A hot tear dripped onto Lina’s shoulder. She pulled away, wiping another tear from Ione’s cheek with the pad of her thumb. Stay strong, stay strong. “Gods above, Ione.” She swept her thumb across Ione’s wet eyelashes, white-gold triangles. “What on earth were you expected to do?”
“My duty.” Ione smiled sadly and cupped her hands over Lina’s. “My purpose. Protect you, my family, my people, my home.”
A fresh tear slid down Ione’s cheek and she whispered the words that made Lina’s heart break. Failure. I am a failure.
“I’m sorry.” Ione kissed Lina’s palm, held it against her cheek. “My mother was right. I am a child.”
A child. A failure. An embarrassment. All the things Castor, Rigel, her own parents had said about Lina, too.
And all the while Ione smiled, her shame palpable, and before Lina knew it she was leaning in, pressing her lips against Ione’s forehead.
A hollow attempt at comfort. You are good, she willed into her, bowing her forehead against Ione’s, letting the tips of their noses touch.
You are kind. You are anything but a failure.
She heard a little breath, wasn’t sure if it was Ione or herself.
Ione blinked up at her, owlish, her face flushed and tear-streaked.
Lina kissed her cheeks, her eyelids, brushed the tears away with her lips.
She thought of the way Cynthia smiled at Ione, the way River’s cool superiority melted around her.
The way her own heart raced whenever Ione’s dove-grey eyes met hers.
You are loved, every heartbeat chanted within her.
Ione’s fingers tightened around Lina’s, making her pause; she registered Ione tilting her head, saw her lips part. Lina closed her eyes.
Lina had kissed exactly three people before.
Had sex with two. Fleeting encounters with fellow pyromancers, a sun priestess, never satisfying enough to be worth the fallout with Castor.
Is this why you haven’t been focusing recently?
, Castor, gripping the priestess’s wrist until it bruised.
You’re a fucking humiliation. Trysts were a distraction, the exciting threat of discovery ending either with pain or disappointment. Usually both.
But kissing Ione knocked the air from her lungs.
Lina folded Ione into her arms, fingertips trailing down the indent of her spine as Ione’s hands tangled in her hair. Home, Lina thought, parting her lips and dying a little at the tiny noise Ione made in response. Ione felt like home, like safety and softness, a sunspot warming the earth.
She realised a beat late that Ione had retreated, her fingertips loosening from Lina’s hair and coming to rest on either side of her face. Lina’s blood thrummed; she swallowed, the wardstrings taut against her skin.
“I’m sorry,” Lina managed, her voice hoarse. “I mean, I – I shouldn’t have kissed you when you were upset.”
“No,” Ione said quickly, breathless. Smiling. “It helped. It reminded me. I only wish it…” She grazed her fingertips over her heart, her smile falling, turning melancholy.
Lina combed her hair back with her fingers, traced the soft line of her jaw, ran a fingertip over the flickering pulse in her neck. Soft, warm, alive. Now that she had kissed her, touched her, she didn’t want to stop.
“Lina.” Ione lifted her face. There was a gravity in her expression, a holy martyrdom that sent a strange new wave of apprehension across Lina’s skin.
“I never told you, and I’m sorry,” Ione went on, her voice low. Solemn. “But you’ll find out soon enough now that we’ve kicked a hornet’s nest, and Lina, I’d… I’d rather you hear it from me.”
The world quieted. A breeze passed over them, thick with the cruel ice of the Mahina clan’s lingering presence.
Ione released a shuddering breath. “You deserve to know who I am.”
Menon.
The words clanged through her. Hushed, hurried, like Ione was making up for lost time.
I’m Menon.
“She hasn’t manifested yet, not fully.” Ione pressed Lina’s palm over her thundering heart. “But She’s here. Do you feel Her? You have to. You’ve no idea how invaluable you’ve been. How much She… I…”
Lina nodded. Smiled, helpless. Listened to Ione describe her childhood, years of training, preparation, of knowing what she would become, what it would do to her. Saw the pride in Ione’s eyes, and behind it, the terror.
What a horrible, heavy burden to place onto a child.
You are not to harm, or bring about harm to anyone on this island. Kai’s warning jolted her awake. Reminded her where she was, who she was, what her desperation had wrought.
She held Ione tight, kissed her cheeks, her nose, her lips. But her stomach churned with the understanding of what she must do.
She envisioned Castor coming here – an inevitability now – vengeful and iron-hot with righteous violence. How quickly he would find his sister, the traitor, the coward.
And beside her, Menon Incarnate.
She could already see the way he’d smile, the mean brightness in his eyes, a cat cornering a pair of wretched mice.
She had deluded herself into thinking she and Ione would survive an attack on Oseidos, that they would somehow escape, that Castor might overlook them. Or at least Ione. But if Ione was Menon, then Castor wouldn’t rest until she was dead.
If Ione was Menon, then waiting here, sitting ducks, a tantalising lure, would only endanger them both.
“Are you afraid?” Ione asked, cupping her face. “Don’t be. I’ve known about this since I was very little.” She kissed her. “Menon will come. She has to.”
Lina smiled, kissed her back until her heart cracked through her ribs.
The thing was, she wasn’t afraid. Not anymore.
It was like wading through a snowdrift. Lina peered down at her feet, but the tide was still out, revealing a narrow sand bridge leading from Oseidos to the mainland. Seafoam licked at her boots and the ward groaned with protest as she clawed her way through.
It did not stop her from leaving.
The city of Lodestone glittered in the night, torchlight and lamplit windows shining like beacons. Miniature suns, welcoming her back.
Wardstrings bit at her neck, but at least off Oseidos and far away from Ione, she could do no further damage.
Lina gritted her teeth through the last heavy lengths of the ward – and through the pain of imagining Ione tomorrow morning, the confusion and hurt she would feel when she realised Lina had disappeared.
Castor was injured and Lina would be there for him. Distract him, fend him off. Keep him away from the people who had been so kind to her. So warm.
Fight, flight; freeze, fawn. Lina had been good at fawning once.