Chapter Forty-One
“Whoa!” Io yelped. Suri quickly pulled her away from me.
I nearly dropped the sword out of shock but managed to hold on. The flames were intense, but they didn’t hurt. My hand wasn’t burning.
“Uh, I was going to ask you if I could hold it, but I have changed my mind,” Ahyana said as she backed up slowly.
“How did you access your magic?” Zalira asked me.
“This isn’t like my fury aspect. It’s more like my night-walking one. It doesn’t wear me out. I don’t have to turn it off,” I said.
“Could you, though?” Ahyana asked.
“Dea Nikos.” The flames stopped and the metal was once again cool to the touch. The sword was inscribed with the goddess’s name and the ancient word for victory.
The fact that the ship I’d come to Ilion on was called Nikos made it seem like an ironic joke that the goddess had had at my expense.
Zalira went to stand by her sister. “Did we know it catches on fire?”
“We don’t know anything about it,” Io said. “This is why you have to be flame-kissed, Lia. So you could wield the weapon and not be burned.”
The earth suddenly rumbled beneath our feet. We all held still, waiting, and it happened again. Louder this time. Coming from behind us.
Back near the entrance to the room, an entire piece of the cavern floor suddenly disappeared, crashing down.
“Time to go,” I said.
We all ran to the stairs, went up the steps, came to the landing, and turned . . . but there was no door for us to get out. I put the goddess’s sword into my pack so that I’d have my hands free.
“But we got the sword!” Ahyana said. “I don’t understand.”
I pushed against the rock ceiling, but it wasn’t budging.
Suri elbowed her way to the front. She closed her eyes and said, “Dea Chthonia.”
The rocks above us shook and made a grinding noise. I didn’t understand why her magic was working now and I didn’t care. I put my hand on Suri’s arm. The rest of the adelphia did the same so that we were all powering her.
“It’s enchanted,” she said. “I can’t get it open.”
“You can do it,” Io said. “I believe in you.”
Suri nodded, groaning in pain as she somehow managed to tear the rocks apart, reforming them so that there was a hole large enough for us to escape through. Suri fell forward as she turned off her aspect. That had taken so much out of her.
“Dea Erinys,” I said. “Io! Go!”
I practically threw her up through the hole to safety. Zalira was next, and she was able to help pull people up as I pushed them to her. Suri was so exhausted that we had a hard time getting her on the ledge above.
“Lia!” Zalira offered me her hand and I jumped. Ahyana grabbed my other arm and they both pulled.
I had just gotten clear when the stairs fell apart, going down so far that we couldn’t see the bottom.
We all lay on the ground, breathing hard. Suri had passed out completely.
“Fortification potion,” I said to Io. She handed it to me and I drank it so that I could keep my strength up.
The one good thing was that we weren’t lost. We were standing on a mountainside, and from our vantage point, we could see the men on the ledge. I picked Suri up and carried her over my shoulder. We all began to walk down, making our way along what I presumed was the top of the cave.
Rokh flew overhead and he spotted us, flying down to tell the others that we were coming.
When we got to the cave entrance, I started handing people down to Xander. He took them quickly and then reached for me.
I turned off my aspect and fell into his arms. He held me tightly, speaking into my neck. “We felt that earthquake and I thought . . .”
He had thought the worst.
“You were gone for hours,” he said.
We were? It had felt like half an hour, if that. “I’m back now.”
He held me like he wasn’t ever going to let me go again. And I adored the way that felt.
“Were you successful?” he asked as he released me.
I already missed his arms around me. “Yes. We got the sword. I want to show you but not out here. I’ll wait until we’re alone. Or until we get home.”
“Home?” He echoed the word, and there was a strain in his voice. I understood why.
It also surprised me that I had said it. But it was the truth. Being with him in the palace—that had become my home.
“Did you get your book?” I heard Stephanos ask Zalira. She glanced at me, and I felt a twinge of guilt that I’d asked Xander and my adelphia to lie about what we’d truly been after.
“We got everything we needed,” she told him.
I could see how much he wanted to embrace her, to assure himself that she was whole.
And how much she wanted that, too.
Rokh tried to speak to Ahyana, but she told him she wasn’t ready yet. She apologized for punching him and then said that she needed some time. He nodded but looked absolutely miserable.
“Has Luna come back yet?” I asked Xander.
“Your lizard has not made an appearance,” he told me.
Where was she? What was she doing? Why had she been gone for so long?
And what if she wasn’t coming back? What if she had discovered that she liked being out in the wild instead of inside the palace?
Or maybe her whole purpose had been to help us solve the scroll by giving us aether, and now that we had retrieved the greatest weapon . . . perhaps the goddess had decided I no longer needed Luna.
I hoped not. I would really miss her.
“We should cross back as soon as possible,” Rokh said to the group. It was nearly twilight—it would be dark soon. I wanted to get away from this chasm. We needed to set up camp somewhere that we wouldn’t have to worry about another freak windstorm.
“What about Suri?” Ahyana asked.
“I’ll get her to wake up,” Io said. “I’ve got some spirit of hartshorn with me. It smells terrible, so I think it’ll work.”
“Some of the ropes snapped during the winds earlier,” Xander told me. “We’ve been reinforcing the bridge while you were gone.”
The tension in his voice was obvious. He was worried about me crossing again.
“You do not go last this time,” he demanded. “You follow right after me. We have two ropes tied to the far tree as additional safety precautions.”
I looked across the chasm and saw that it was just as he’d said—there were now two ropes tied to a large tree on the opposite side. Xander walked over to the ropes and picked them up. “I’m going first, you go second. And Stephanos is going to tie your knots this time.”
It was much easier to deal with his imperious tone now that I understood it was coming from a place of fear and concern.
“I’m going to be all right,” I assured him.
“After what happened with Lia last time, let me go first,” Dolion said to Xander with a smile. “Ilion can afford to lose me. You’re more valuable than I am.”
Xander shook his head. “I’m the heaviest, so I should be the one to go first, to test it out and make sure that it holds.”
“You don’t always have to do everything yourself. You can let others help carry the burden,” Dolion said.
As much as I disliked Dolion, he was right. Xander did take too much on himself. It was something he and I had discussed before.
In large part because I had the tendency to do the same thing myself.
“Fine,” my husband responded. “You can go. But I don’t like it.”
“You never do,” Dolion said cheerfully as he clasped Xander on the shoulder. Dolion tied the ropes around his waist and I went over to check on Suri.
“The spirit of hartshorn didn’t work,” Io said, sounding concerned. “She’s still passed out.”
Suri had expended a great deal of magic to help us escape from the cave. “She’s strong. She’ll wake up soon. If we have to wait until she does, we will.”
Io nodded. “It feels unreal that she can speak. That she actually talked to us. Like it was some waking dream I had that’s over now.”
What had stood out most to me was that Suri had spoken her aspect out loud. Which made me think she had always done magic by talking, just like the rest of us.
And that we must have been far enough away when she did it in the past that we hadn’t overheard.
“Do you think she’ll keep talking to us?” Io asked me.
“I don’t know.”
It wouldn’t have surprised me if Suri elected to stay silent. She had only spoken because she’d absolutely had to, so that she could stop us from making a deadly mistake.
Dolion had crossed the bridge and Rokh flew over to retrieve both safety ropes and bring them back to Xander.
Xander quickly tied them around his waist and turned back to look at me. “You’re next.”
“I know.”
When he stepped out onto the bridge, I walked away from the others. I had to watch and make sure that he was safe.
He crossed so slowly that it was driving me a bit mad. He wanted to test every plank, every rope. He was ignoring his own fear to make sure that the bridge was safe. It felt unnecessary to me, but it seemed to be what he needed for his own peace of mind.
I tried to convince myself that the windstorm had been meant specifically for me as the trial of air and that it wouldn’t return. And that it certainly wouldn’t happen while my husband was crossing slower than a turtle.
It didn’t help his progress that he kept looking back over his shoulder at me, as if to make sure that I was still there.
Stephanos joined me. “It’s not like you to be so quiet.”
“Watching him is stressful. He’s scared of heights.”
“I know,” he said with a nod. “I thought that maybe you were trying to lure him back to your side with your beauty.”
“What?” I asked with a laugh. “What do you mean?”
“That you were standing here stoically and quietly because of that old Sasanian adage about how to catch a man’s attention. ‘Women are only beautiful when they’re silent.’”
My heart pounded so loudly that for a moment I couldn’t hear, couldn’t speak. “Where did you hear that?”
“It’s something Dolion’s always saying.”
What?
I had only ever heard that once before.
No, no, no . . .
“Xander!” I screamed.
He stopped and turned toward me.
“Come back!”
Dolion rushed over with his broadsword and cut the rope closest to him, and that side of the wooden bridge sagged.
Xander’s gaze never left mine, even though his brother was betraying him. Dolion ran over to the other rope and lifted his sword.
“Lia.”
Panic surged inside me as I looked at my husband’s calm face, and he smiled softly.
“I love you,” he said as the bridge collapsed.
And then he fell.