Chapter Three
My adelphia’s room had been destroyed. The furniture had been slashed, the bedding torn, books and papers shredded and thrown everywhere. Red dirt covered the floor.
Io was crying about her pets—their cages and enclosures were all smashed.
Suri darted into the room and ran over to Io’s bed. She reached beneath it and pulled out Io’s ferret, Chara. Io let out a sound of relief and rushed over to hug them both.
“What happened here?” Zalira asked.
None of us knew.
“Someone intended to kill you all,” Xander said, practically growling the words. “You are acolytes from the temple and they wanted you dead, too.”
When I had volunteered to accompany Xander and his men to Lycia, I had considered not bringing my sisters with me. Whoever ordered this attack hadn’t realized that they’d come.
What if I hadn’t asked them to go? They would have been here. They could have been . . .
I couldn’t allow myself to finish the thought. Suri found a tortoise near a trunk and handed it to Io. I was so profoundly grateful that I had brought my adelphia along and hadn’t lost them.
Then I wondered whether the person who had ordered the attack realized that I had gone to Lycia as well.
My heart started to pound loudly in my chest and I ran to my room, throwing the door open.
It was in as much disarray as Io’s bedroom. Red dirt and bloodstains on the floor. A fight had happened in here. How many guards had died?
“Luna!” I called and started looking for my lizard. I didn’t know what I would do if they had hurt her. I checked under the bed and it was completely clear. I ran behind my torn-up screen and started throwing open chests to search inside.
I didn’t see her anywhere.
Xander came into the room.
“I can’t find Luna,” I told him, my voice shaky.
He crouched down to peer under the bed. “I already looked there,” I told him. He didn’t immediately straighten up, as if needing to verify for himself that she truly wasn’t there.
My tunics and dresses were scattered everywhere and I kept picking them up and tossing them aside while calling for her. Xander went into the washroom to check.
When he came out empty-handed, my panic increased. What if the attackers had killed her?
Then I heard a chittering noise and went completely still.
“Under the bed,” Xander said, locating the sound before I could.
I dropped to my knees and saw Luna sitting there, in the middle of the space, blinking expectantly at me.
She sneezed and I almost laughed, so relieved that she was all right.
I reached for her, my hands shaking. I noticed that there were tiny silver flakes on my skin, as if she had sneezed part of herself off. Strange. I cradled her to my chest.
“Are you all right?” I asked, holding her up so that I could see her face.
She blinked slowly at me.
Yes.
“Where were you?” Both Xander and I had checked under the bed and she hadn’t been there. It was like she had just suddenly appeared.
“Are you . . . talking to your lizard?” He asked the question as if I had taken leave of my senses.
“I am.”
“Why?”
“Because I think she can talk back. And I understand how that sounds, but it’s the truth.
” It didn’t even occur to me to hide this from him, which meant that my instincts where he was concerned were definitely shifting.
A couple of weeks ago, I would have kept this information to myself.
“I can show you. One blink is yes, two blinks means no.”
He came and stood next to me as I asked, “Luna, did men attack our room?”
Yes.
“Maybe she’s just blinking,” Xander said.
“Then ask her a question that she would say no to.”
“Did centaurs also attack you?” He sounded as if he found this entire thing ridiculous.
Luna didn’t respond to him. Her eyes stayed open.
I repeated Xander’s centaur question and she immediately blinked twice.
No.
“See? She is communicating.”
“Or it was a coincidence.”
I felt frustration welling up inside me. I wasn’t sure why it was so important to me that he believed what I was telling him. I asked Luna, “Does Xander snore?”
Yes.
“I do not!” he protested.
“You do.”
“Does Lia snore?” He directed his question to Luna, and again she didn’t answer him.
Then I asked her if I snored.
No.
Why would she only answer the questions once I had asked them?
“I suppose this means she’ll only communicate with me.
” Or maybe I was the only person she could communicate with.
That we had some type of bond that I didn’t fully understand that allowed us to speak.
Xander’s phratry brother Rokh could sense her as well when he was in his raven form.
What did that mean? This was all so odd.
Nothing in my life seemed to be making much sense lately.
“I’ve never heard of a lizard that talks by blinking,” Xander said, sitting down hard on our bed. He looked exhausted, and I wondered what he had been doing while I was at the temple.
And why he had been surprised by our rooms being destroyed. If he’d come straight back here, he would have seen it. I sat down next to him, still holding Luna close. “Where have you been?”
“The thought of you and your sisters at the temple, doing everything by yourselves . . . I had to do something productive. I’ve been in the weapons quarter, helping them bury bodies and starting to rebuild what was destroyed.”
This was why he should be king. He cared about his people in a way that Erisa never would.
“I only returned to the palace because the council summoned me,” he added. Then he put his face in his hands. “So many dead.”
“It must have been difficult to have the council doubting and questioning what happened when you saw it all with your own eyes.”
He raised his head to look at me. “All of this has been difficult.”
That was an understatement. “How could this enemy do so much damage? Didn’t anyone hear them or try to stop them?”
“They attacked in the middle of the night. It took the people in the weapons quarter some time to get enough soldiers to help. I’m not sure if anyone even knows what happened in the temple.”
The middle of the night? Thrax had been with us. Which meant he hadn’t been watching over Quynh. “Where’s Quynh?” I asked, feeling completely panicked.
“She’s fine. After Thrax locked up your high priestess, he came straight back to the palace and moved your sister to a safe house.
He has one of his Thracian half sisters watching over her, and she is the most terrifying woman I have ever met and might actually be a better warrior than Thrax.
Anyone who crosses her will meet a swift end, and she is almost as protective of Quynh as Thrax is. ”
That was a relief. Maybe this would mean I could see my sister more often now that she was out of the palace. I wondered if I’d have to resort to subterfuge. Perhaps I could say I was going to the temple for some reason and then end up at her house.
Which reminded me . . . “Io wants you to post a guard at the temple,” I said, not wanting to forget. Even if the ground had been desecrated, I couldn’t bear the thought of anyone going in there and making it worse.
“I already gave the orders. Some of the men watching over you stayed behind. I didn’t think anyone should be entering the temple.”
“We need to get water from the fountain.” The words were out of my mouth before I could stop them. I hadn’t meant to tell him that because of the implications.
“Why?”
If we were going to work together, he needed to know. “Do you remember when you had me pinned to the floor and I was able to push back against you? It was because the water from the fountain makes us strong like men.”
“How?”
“Magic.”
He considered this information and I was relieved that he didn’t ask for further details. I couldn’t tell him about the eye of the goddess.
Stupid girl, do you really think he would try to steal it from you?
I no longer thought he would take it from me out of spite or vindictiveness, but if he thought it would save Ilion? He wouldn’t hesitate.
And I didn’t know what all the eye could do. It obviously had multiple uses, and maybe it could be wielded like a weapon. I needed it for Locris, even if that was selfish.
I couldn’t share the whole truth.
“What happens if a man drinks it?” he asked.
“I don’t know.”
We sat in silence for a few moments and Luna grew heavy in my arms. I peered down at her and saw that she had gone to sleep. I carried her over to the enclosure Xander had made for her, and she barely fit in it. She had somehow grown again.
I hesitated, not sure what to do now. I reminded myself that Io wanted me to stay away from him, but all I wanted was to go over and sit next to him on our bed, talking and planning for the dark future that was barreling toward us.
So that was what I did.
“We will have to be cautious,” he said. For a moment I wasn’t sure what he was speaking about—did he mean that he and I would have to be cautious?
“We need to be ready. Prepare. I’m going to have my phratry ride out to the surrounding villages and get them to move into the city. They’ll be safer behind Troas’s walls.”
I had always cursed the labyrinth walls but now I was grateful for them. Any sieging army would have an extremely difficult time against them.
Unless they were already inside. Hiding in plain sight, pretending to be Ilionian when they weren’t. Like Artemisia. “Do you think there are people still in the city that are working for the enemy?”
His expression somehow turned even grimmer. “I hope not, but we won’t have any way of knowing until it’s too late.”
That was ominous. “And your citizens will be unprepared if they attack again.”
He nodded. “People don’t want to believe that bad things are coming. They want to hang on to their normal lives and keep living them as they always have. It’s easier.”
“And more foolish,” I said.
“And more foolish,” he agreed. “But the people of Troas won’t be caught totally unaware again. I ordered the security to be increased and strengthened. I had let it be a bit lax intentionally.”
“Why?”
“Because I was hoping to catch Erisa in the act of attacking one of us. But trying to catch her is like trying to capture smoke.”
No wonder it had been so easy for me to sneak out of the palace. Xander had used us both as bait. Part of me thought I should be outraged, but I was too tired and too emotionally wrung out to do more than say, “Oh.”
“How . . .” His voice trailed off and he looked uncomfortable. It wasn’t something I was used to seeing from him. “What happened at the temple?”
We were interrupted by Io shrieking with joy next door, and I assumed another lost pet had been returned to her.
“You might need to keep an eye on your sister,” I said. “I’m worried that she’s become a little bloodthirsty.”
He nudged my knee with his and heat blossomed where his skin touched mine. “Because you’re a bad influence.” He said it jokingly, but his smile faltered when he saw my face. “What do you mean?”
“Io thinks we should kill whoever did this.”
“I don’t disagree with her. Why do you?”
Xander needed more of the story so that he could understand.
I told him about finding Lysimache and shared her true backstory—that she had used magic to stay alive for a thousand years, waiting to exact her revenge on both Ilion and Locris because of what my ancestor, Ajax, had done to her sister, Kysandra, after the Great War ended.
“Lysimache intended to fight her way out but I didn’t let her. I was so furious with her. I wanted to kill her,” I said.
He shrugged. “And?”
I liked that he didn’t judge me for things like this. That he understood.
“If your sister is right and I really am the savior . . . life is sacred to the goddess. I’m worried that in order to be worthy of her favor, I have to treat life as sacred, too.
I knew I couldn’t strike Lysimache down in anger and vengeance.
I think it might have offended the goddess if I had.
But it was a struggle. I stood there, wanting to, my sword raised, and then .
. . I heard your voice. Telling me I could choose to be different. It gave me the strength to stop.”
I heard him suck in a sharp breath, as if my words deeply affected him.
“We can both choose to be different,” I said.
I put my hand in his, and after a moment, his warm, strong fingers wrapped around mine.
I kept talking, telling him how we’d found Antiope and how she’d said “hammer of Arion,” a phrase he was unfamiliar with, and that Artemisia was involved with the people who spread the red dirt.
“I remembered that she had a reddish-brown hammer tattoo on her chest like the one we saw on the enemy soldier in Lycia. I only wish I had remembered sooner.”
“Why does that name sound familiar?”
“Artemisia?” I asked, and when he nodded, I said, “She was the one I fought the night of the new acolyte race.”
“The one who hurt you. I already want to kill her.”
That gave me an illicit thrill. I liked it far too much when he sounded deadly on my behalf. “There’s a statue of the goddess in the temple, and it was covered in a thick layer of gold. Artemisia stole the gold.”
His jaw clenched while he took in this information—I wondered if he was coming to the same conclusion that Zalira had about what Artemisia planned to do with that much wealth.
“Gold alone doesn’t explain why she would slaughter everyone at the temple. Or why they came here intending to kill you and your adelphia.”
My husband had always been far too clever for his own good. My chest felt impossibly tight as I worried about his reaction to what I was about to tell him. “I think she did it because . . . priestesses and acolytes can do magic.”