Chapter Forty-Eight
We put distance between ourselves and the inn. I could imagine that Autolycus would happily sell information about us to Carian search parties, and I wanted to be far enough away that it wouldn’t matter if he did.
Xander rode next to me, carrying on a conversation with Haemon the entire time. As they exchanged their life stories, I was glad they got along so well and liked each other so much.
That they would have their friendship after I was gone.
My chest ached as I watched Xander laugh at something my brother said.
I love you.
For a moment I was terrified that I had spoken the words aloud, that I had done something I could never undo.
Because I had to be selfless where he was concerned.
It wouldn’t be fair to him to admit that I shared his feelings and then leave him to a lifetime without me.
I didn’t know how the love bond worked. Maybe if it was one-sided, not fully connected, he would be able to move on. Find someone new and love again.
And I found that I wanted that for him. Even though the fanged, jealous monster inside me roared to life, I shushed it. I wanted him to be happy.
To have a whole lifetime of happiness.
Something I wouldn’t ever be able to give him.
After what had happened over the last couple of days, I also had a fear that even if I could move past everything else and admit my true feelings, something bad would happen if I did. That it would somehow cause his death.
I knew it wasn’t rational, but I couldn’t ever be rational where he was concerned.
Stupid girl, are you protecting him or are you protecting yourself?
I didn’t have an answer. I wanted it to be the first one but worried that it was the second.
A few hours later Xander called for us to stop and rest. Haemon dismounted by himself and was able to walk a few steps and sit. I got down and went over to check on Luna.
Still sleeping.
Everyone set out to accomplish various tasks. I found myself drifting away from the group. I wanted to be alone for a moment, to take a chance to process everything that had happened.
Everything that was fated to happen in the near future.
I sat down on a fallen log and let out a big breath.
“May I join you?” Xander asked.
“That was so polite,” I said admiringly. “All you needed to add was a ‘please.’ And yes.”
If he had been anyone else, I might have asked him to leave.
But he was different.
He sat down next to me. “I’m so tired of being poisoned.”
“I’m tired of saving you from being poisoned.”
That earned me a grin. “I understand. It has been exhausting continually saving you from harm.”
He rubbed his left arm where he had the scar—the one we had shared after I’d been attacked in our washroom and he had rescued me. Mine was gone but his remained.
“Why didn’t you let the healers remove your scar?” I asked. I wanted to reach out and stroke the length of it but decided against it. I found that I needed to talk to him because there were still things I wanted to know before the end. If I touched him I knew what we’d spend our entire break doing.
He glanced down at his arm. “I wanted to keep it as a reminder of when I failed to be there for the woman I love. So that I would never let her down again.”
I nearly choked on my own breath. When he’d said he loved me, I had assumed it was a more recent development. But he was saying that he had felt that way for a long time.
“It’s also why I keep this one.” He rubbed his finger along the scar I’d given him on his throat. “Proof of how much I love you and how desperate I was to be close to you.”
He loved me then? I hadn’t even known who he really was.
Then I recalled what he’d told me in one of our dreams.
I pledge you my sword, my body, my blood. I will protect you and keep you safe.
Then I’d asked him if he would lay down his life for me and he’d said, “Without hesitation.”
Once I’d discovered his true identity, I had assumed he’d said those things to manipulate me, because they’d had a very real effect on me. Convinced myself that he was attempting to trick me into saying that I loved him first so that I’d be bound to him and have to marry him.
Even after the fact, when I knew he hadn’t been trying to trick me, I’d realized that despite the amazing things he’d said, he had never said the actual words of love to me.
And as I sat there, I realized that if he hadn’t known my real identity, maybe the reason he hadn’t said it was because he knew he had to marry someone else. And it would have been wrong for him to give me those words instead of his future wife.
A woman who also happened to be me.
“Why did you come to Locris?” I asked. I knew he hadn’t come to find me and scheme his way into my heart, but I’d never asked him why he’d made the trip.
“I came to see you. I wanted to know who I was going to marry.”
That was why when he had seen Kallisto, he had asked me if I knew where the other princess was. He had been looking for me. “Did someone point me out?”
“No, your people are horrifically loyal. And I could only ask so many times before it would start to sound suspicious.”
“When did you know who I was?”
“When Io told me the night of the harvest festival. Which is why I sent Thrax to retrieve you the next day. But with you being you, I should have known that I would have to come and get you myself.”
“And extort me into marriage.”
“A little bit.”
I was glad the memories I had of him as Jason were pure and true, not calculated.
“There’s something I need to tell you,” I said. My pulse picked up. I wasn’t sure how he would feel about it.
“You can tell me anything.” From the encouraging tone in his voice, I wondered if he thought I was going to admit that I loved him.
But that was something I couldn’t say. “Dolion kissed me.”
He hadn’t been expecting that. “What?”
“I immediately pushed him away and threatened him to not ever touch me again. He told me he had feelings for me, wanted me to run away with him. When he betrayed you, I thought that he had said those things because he was trying to drive a wedge between us. But after he let me go at the Carian camp . . .” It made me think his feelings had been real.
That he hadn’t been trying to ruin my and Xander’s relationship as part of a plot to ruin Ilion, but had done it solely for himself.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” His calm but deadly voice was not a good sign.
“Because I didn’t want to harm your relationship. I know how much you care about your phratry brothers, and I didn’t want to be the reason that got ruined. If I’d told you—”
“If you’d told me, I would have killed him,” he finished.
“Yes. And there’s more.” I shared with him all the lies Dolion had told me—about why Xander had gone to Locris, that he had always known who I was, that he had set out to manipulate me.
“Now I know why you were so insistent that I had been tricking you.”
“He also told me that you had feelings for Chryseis and had been having an affair with her.”
“Then I went and kissed her deliberately in front of you.” He shook his head.
“That didn’t help things. But I know it was a mistake not to tell you about him. I’m sorry. I should have. If I had . . . maybe all this would have been avoided. But I thought he was my friend.”
“So did I.”
We sat in silence for a few moments. He seemed to be digesting what I had just told him.
“I’m sorry I kissed her,” he said. “I’m not sure I ever said that to you.”
While I understood why he had done it, it wasn’t an image that I wanted to keep popping up in my head. “Could we not ever talk about it again?”
“Done. What other questions do you have?”
He knew me far too well. “What things are you keeping from me?”
His eyebrows rose. “I have been open with you.”
“You don’t remember? The other night I asked you if you were keeping things from me and you said you were. Things I didn’t need to know.”
“Oh. It was that I was in love with you.”
I wanted to protest that I had needed to know that. That it had changed everything. But I also understood why he hadn’t.
He took my left hand and brought it up to his mouth to press one soft kiss against it. He twirled my wedding ring around my finger. “Do you know why I picked Chalcidian steel for your ring?”
I had assumed that it had been some kind of slight, that I wasn’t worth a precious metal like gold or silver. I shook my head.
“Because it reminded me of you. Made from the same material as your favorite weapon. Strong, resilient, permanent. You don’t shatter under pressure. You endure. What other kind of ring could I choose for my favorite warrior?”
I ordered myself not to cry, but I still felt the lump in my throat that indicated I soon would.
“And it’s engraved with the key pattern because the love I have for you is eternal.”
I felt so small for dismissing the ring. For not understanding its true worth.
For not realizing that he had loved me for so long.
“Nothing to say, wife?” he asked.
“Why do you call me that when I told you it bothered me?” That was something safe. We could discuss that and I wouldn’t dissolve into a pool of tears.
“Because I couldn’t give you the words, every time I called you ‘wife,’ it was my secret way of telling you how much I love you.”
My vision went blurry from the unshed tears that had arrived. “But you called me ‘wife’ when you were mad at me.”
He kissed my hand again. “Even when I was furious with you, even when I was determined to tie you to our bed so that you couldn’t do something completely foolish, I never stopped loving you.
No matter how angry I am with you, and I am certain I repeatedly will be in the future, then, now, I always love you. ”
There was only one thing to say to that, and I couldn’t. So instead I let the tears burn hot paths down my cheeks.
He reached up to wipe them away. “When I wasn’t thinking of how to escape, I did nothing else but think of you and how I crave you.
I crave your laughter. Your smiles—something you give to me so rarely that it is more precious to me than gold.
I crave your thoughts. Your advice. Your opinions.
I crave your touch. Your soft mouth on my skin, your sighs when I touch you.
The desperate noises you make in the back of your throat when I kiss you and you want more. ”
Now my tears were mixed with pangs of desire and it was a strange but heady combination.
“Lia, I have seen your bitterness and anger, your desire for vengeance. And I have seen your delight and kindness and how you care for those you love. There is no part of you that I do not know, that I am not intimately acquainted with. And I love all of it—every piece. The dark and the light.”
He laid his palm on the side of my face and I leaned into it. He ran his thumb over my lower lip and I shuddered in response.
His eyes were golden flames and I couldn’t look away.
“You are as vital to me as the air I breathe, the water I drink, the food I eat. I cannot exist without you. I would sacrifice my heart, give up all that I have, for the smallest hope that you might return my feelings someday. And if not, then I promise that I love you enough for the both of us.”
He wasn’t asking me to say the words, but I knew that it was what he wanted. To know that he wasn’t alone in this, that he had as much power over me as I had over him.
Part of me wanted to forget the resolutions I had just made. I wanted to make that sacrifice for him, so that he would be able to move on. I should stay quiet.
But it felt like remaining silent . . . it was like I was about to lose something important.
“Xander, I—”
“Lia!”
Ahyana came running up, out of breath.
“Dragons,” she said, panting. “Artemisia has earth dragons.”