Chapter Two
When we entered the palace, I saw my pregnant maid, Parthenia. She had obviously been waiting for my return. She said, “They want you to go to the council chambers.”
I hadn’t bathed in days and was hungry and tired but knew I couldn’t refuse the request.
When I arrived at the council chambers, the entire room was in an uproar. People were yelling over each other and it looked as if a fight might break out at any moment.
Xander stood in the middle of the room, and the veins in his neck strained as he tried to make himself heard over the din.
“Enough!” Pelias, the self-appointed head of the council of elders, hit the wooden table with the butt of his sword, making all the glassware on it rattle.
He was the father of Lykaon, the abusive monster currently betrothed to my sister Kallisto.
Xander had told me he suspected that Pelias and Erisa, the former queen and Xander’s stepmother, were having an affair.
It made Pelias completely untrustworthy.
He was also the father of Chryseis, a woman I had seen Xander kissing, but I shoved that thought aside. I needed to pay attention to what was going on.
“Only one person should be speaking at a time,” Pelias said, putting his sword back into its sheath. “Prince Alexandros?”
I was a bit surprised he allowed Xander to speak first.
“We have been attacked,” he said. “We have an enemy who wiped out the entire city of Lycia and left traps there to kill us as well. They killed people in the weapons quarter, stealing everything they could. They slaughtered every priestess and acolyte at the temple. We need to prepare. Ask our allies for help. Send out spies to find out who is trying to destroy us.”
Erisa rolled her eyes. “We are not under attack! That is ridiculous and an overexaggeration of what’s occurred. What proof do we have that what you say is even true?”
Xander’s mouth dropped open, and I couldn’t blame him for the shocked reaction.
Despite what I had just promised Io, I found myself crossing over to stand next to my husband, sliding my hand into his, trying to offer what support I could.
He squeezed my hand and I ignored the tingles that raced up my arm.
“The dead bodies,” I said to Erisa. “Like the ones that my sisters and I buried at the temple. That’s proof.”
“It seems rather convenient that you supposedly buried them without any witnesses who can verify that what you’re saying is true,” Erisa retorted.
“And how would a group of five girls dig a hole big enough to bury that many women so quickly? For all we know, the priestesses are traveling to care for plants or whatever it is that they do.”
I exchanged a heavy glance with Xander. I thought about asking him where he’d put Lysimache so that I could bring her here to verify what I was saying, but I saw in his eyes that he and I both arrived at the same conclusion at the same time—she would lie.
The high priestess would say whatever she had to in order to keep sowing seeds of discord and doubt.
And I would never allow anyone to dig up the grave at the temple. The thought horrified me. Those women deserved peace and to be reunited with the earth.
Pelias agreed with Erisa, to no one’s surprise. “I acknowledge that there was some kind of incident, but that is what happens when we let so many strangers immigrate to our city. They are upset that they aren’t full citizens and they attacked the weapons quarter as a protest.”
Xander had told me about the people who came in from the country after the harvest season ended and would sometimes cause chaos—stealing, fighting, vandalizing.
It actually sounded like a believable theory, which was not good.
“We have no enemies,” Pelias added.
“Locris,” I immediately responded.
Pelias narrowed his eyes at me. “We have no enemies who could do us actual harm.”
I bristled at his response but he wasn’t wrong. Locris wasn’t in any position to launch an offensive against Ilion.
“We only have the prince’s men saying that the city was attacked,” Erisa pointed out.
“You also have the word of the residents of the weapons quarter,” Xander snapped back. I put my free hand on his forearm and felt his body relax a bit.
“People are easily bribed to say whatever you’d like them to,” she said.
I tried not to scoff. Erisa knew that from personal experience. She had stolen a fortune from Locris to finance her campaign to get her creepy son, Kyros, chosen as king and had been bribing some of the other archons.
A fortune she no longer had, since my husband and I had taken it from her.
“Why would I make this up?” Xander’s voice had gone deadly soft in the way that it did when he was beyond furious.
“To use fearmongering to force the council to choose you as king. If we were at war with these imaginary enemies, then you’d argue that we would need your strength and skill to keep us safe.
There is no war, and Prince Alexandros would convince you otherwise solely for his own selfish political reasons. ”
Erisa had obviously practiced her answers—they came to her so quickly and easily and almost sounded believable.
Themis and Heliodora, two of the archons, looked as if they didn’t know what to think. Zethus was more interested in his goblet of wine than in the council’s proceedings.
Stolos seemed lost in his own thoughts until he said, “I think we should read and consider the reports before we make further decisions. We don’t want to needlessly worry everyone in the city before we have all the facts.”
“That sounds like an excellent idea,” Erisa immediately agreed.
“The council shouldn’t make any decisions about troops or allocations of funds until we know for sure what is happening.
And we certainly can’t risk panicking the populace.
Perhaps we should do something to distract them.
Like a party to honor the prince’s birthday. ”
“My birthday has come and gone,” Xander said. “We don’t need another party.”
“You would deny the people a chance to celebrate you? If we really are in danger of going to war as you insist, this might be their last chance to enjoy themselves. Would you take that from them?” Erisa looked far too pleased with herself.
And I understood why as I looked around the room, which was filled with servants, soldiers, and other nobles. Erisa had just neatly trapped Xander. If he refused her, word would get back to the people that he had denied them the opportunity to have a citywide celebration.
“I will make all the arrangements,” his stepmother added. “You’ll only have to show up.”
Pelias said, “I second Erisa’s suggestion. We will utilize this distraction to give us time to find out the truth.” He called for a vote and all the other archons agreed with this plan, although Themis and Heliodora seemed hesitant.
Xander didn’t say anything. He gripped my hand tightly as he turned around and left the council chambers. I hurried to keep up with him as he always walked too quickly when he was upset.
“There are unburied bodies in the weapons quarter and she wants to throw a party,” he said with a growl. “That woman and her ambition are going to get us all killed.”
“Do you think she’s part of this?” I asked in a low tone, looking around to make certain that we weren’t overheard. I hoped not, because a citywide celebration would be the perfect time to attack.
“Not even Erisa can be that foolish. Whoever is coming for us is willing to massacre everyone in their path.”
He was taking the stairs two at a time, and it wasn’t easy to keep pace. “Perhaps she’s the kind of person who would rather rule over nothing than not rule at all.”
“Goddess help us if that’s true.”
We had reached the hallway that led to our room when I said, “We will stop her.”
“We?” Xander asked, and I didn’t know how to respond. He and I were supposed to be a “we” in this fight and I couldn’t think of the right way to tell him that.
He abruptly stopped and I almost smacked into him. “You saved my life,” he said.
“What?” His nearness disoriented me and I had to force myself to focus on what he was saying. “When?”
“In Lycia. You ran into a burning house and saved me. My phratry brothers told me.”
Oh. We hadn’t been alone to speak about it since it had happened. “Io did, too. Her salves and medicines are why you’re standing here now.”
He studied me with that intense gaze of his that made my knees feel like they were made out of water. “Why did you save me? Were you worried that you would share my fate? Or was there another reason?” His voice was gentle and I thought I heard just the faintest note of vulnerability.
Or maybe that was just my hopeful imagination.
Part of me wanted to joke that I owed him, given how often he’d saved my life. But it was time to be honest. I had to learn how to stop hiding this part of myself from him.
“I was afraid,” I confessed.
“Of what?”
I had to lower my gaze. “That you would die. I didn’t want that. And not because I thought I would die, too.” I was too much of a coward to tell him that his death would have destroyed me.
Too scared to tell him that I cared about him.
Because I knew where it would lead.
One of his fingers went under my chin and lifted my face so that I had to meet his eyes again. My breath caught at his expression, and my heart felt as if it might explode.
“You didn’t want me to die? I suppose that’s progress,” he said in that teasing tone of his that I was far too fond of. “You truly want us to work together?”
“Yes.”
Something flashed in his eyes and then he said, “It’s what I’ve wanted from the beginning.”
A flash of regret made my skin feel hot. I had been so difficult where he was concerned, holding on to my anger so tightly that I couldn’t see past it.
“We have the same end goal,” I said weakly, as if that were enough of an explanation.
He nodded. “We will have to do this without the council. They aren’t going to be of any help, especially with Erisa and Pelias feeding them misinformation. Which means I’m going to have to pay for everything myself—the armor, weapons, ammunition.”
“It’s a good thing you can afford it,” I said.
He gave me a half smile. “Have you broken into my treasury again?”
“Not lately.”
It felt surreal to be standing here with him, having this nice moment. The world was falling down around us, but we could still be us.
The us we used to be.
The us I suspected we could be in the future if things were different.
There was movement on the stairs behind us and I turned to see my adelphia joining us, all bearing different expressions at seeing Xander and me together.
I jerked my hand away and stepped back.
“There you are,” Io said in a false cheery tone. “We are going to get cleaned up. We may commandeer your washroom.”
Xander nodded and I felt his gaze while Io raised her eyebrows to me, as if to ask why I had been standing so close to her brother and holding his hand when I had just promised her that I would try and keep my distance from him.
He greeted my sisters as they passed by, and I was too embarrassed to do anything but just stand there.
I’d never been very good at staying away from Xander.
How could I keep this promise to Io?
“Lia,” he said, moving closer to me, and the blood in my veins seemed to sing with delight from his nearness. He was looking at my lips and they tingled in response. I wanted his kiss more than anything.
I wasn’t strong enough to resist him.
Io was going to be so upset with me.
As if my thoughts alone had caused it, the air was rent with Io’s wailing the word “No!” and we both sprinted down the hall toward her.
“Gone,” she choked out. “They’re all gone.”