Chapter Sixty-Six
Again, time slowed. Without thinking, acting purely on instinct, I brought my sword down on her arm, cutting it above the elbow. She looked on in shock as her arm hit the dirt, still gripping the dagger.
Artemisia sank to her knees and began to laugh as blood poured out from her severed arm onto the ground below.
“Look, Lia. The soil is still red.”
The smile froze on her face and she tipped over onto the dirt.
Artemisia was dead.
It was over. I had defeated her.
I had protected Ilion from her, had done what the goddess had created me to do.
And I had kept my husband safe as well.
There was a small sense of relief, and then I was glad that she wouldn’t be able to hurt anyone else ever again. I waited a heartbeat to make certain that she was dead before I ran over to Xander. I lit my sword back up and half the soldiers fled.
The ones foolish enough to stay would meet their ends. I stood back-to-back with my husband, and together we fought as one, hacking and slicing and stabbing everyone who dared to oppose us.
We didn’t have to speak, didn’t have to warn one another. We moved in tandem, knowing what we needed to do. Keeping each other safe.
When it was over and the last Carian had fallen, Xander was breathing heavily and covered in blood. “Are you all right?” I demanded, trying to check him for injuries.
“It’s not mine,” he said. And I let him pull me into a sticky hug because I was so relieved that we had both survived.
The guards on the wall above us cheered, and the cheer carried through the city. The tide had turned. Artemisia had briefly rallied her troops, but with her gone, they were fleeing as quickly as they could.
“Do we chase after them?” I asked.
“We’ll settle this diplomatically,” Xander said. “There doesn’t need to be any more bloodshed.”
His gaze shifted over to Artemisia’s body. “I thought you didn’t want to strike her down in anger.”
“I didn’t. She was going to kill you. I struck her down out of love.” The oracle in the Carian camp had told me that love could be a tool or a weapon. And I had used it here as a weapon to protect the man I loved more than my own life. I would never feel bad about or regret that choice.
I would make the same one again a thousand times over.
“That’s two hands cut off,” he pointed out. “You’re never going to live that down now.”
“Technically, it was almost her whole arm, so Thrax can be quiet.”
He grinned at me.
There was a rumbling noise behind us, and we turned to see the hammer of Arion sinking into the earth.
As if Arion were reclaiming it.
“No!” I ran toward it, desperate to grab hold. The eye was still embedded in it!
But I wasn’t fast enough.
It was gone, swallowed whole.
I started to dig, not knowing what else to do. Xander knelt next to me, helping me to scoop out piles of dirt.
“I can’t save Locris without it,” I said, trying not to cry. I had done all this with that goal in mind. Restoring my nation.
This couldn’t be it.
This couldn’t be how this ended. I whispered a prayer, asking for help.
A few seconds later Luna appeared next to me.
With the eye of the goddess in her paws.
This belongs to you.
“You are the best dragon in the entire world!” I told her as I took it. I kissed her little head and she looked annoyed.
The eye was larger than I had imagined, and I could feel the power swirling around inside it.
That is true. I am the best dragon in the world. And you should have me take the other dragons back to their homes. They grow weary.
Luna had transported them all here. I wondered how vast her powers had grown and what else she was capable of.
“Take the dragons back,” I said.
With a nod she disappeared, and I said, “Dea Drakones,” just to make certain that I had turned the aspect off. Followed by “Dea Soteira.”
My husband said, “It is very disconcerting to only hear one side of your conversations with your lizard.”
“She’s transporting the dragons back because they’re tired.” I showed the eye to him. “She got it for me.”
“May I?”
I gave the eye to him and realized what a huge moment it was. There was a time when I never could have imagined myself doing this. “Do you feel anything when you hold it?”
“No. Do you?”
“I do. There is a great deal of magic in it.”
He handed it back to me.
“Now what?” I asked.
“Now we go and tell the Carians who haven’t already fled to surrender. And then we set about fixing Troas and all the damage that’s been done.”
There was a long road ahead of us, one that I wanted to traverse with him. So long as we were together, we were on the right path.
Even though I still wasn’t sure how we were going to accomplish it.
And I wanted him to have all the information as we worked to find a solution.
“Xander? There’s something I want to tell you.”
He blinked at me several times. “I can’t even imagine what you might have to tell me in this moment.”
“I think I’m pregnant.”
There was immediate joy on his face, and he hugged me again. I was going to have to take a very long bath tonight and throw away this tunic. He swung me around in a circle.
“I’m going to be a father?”
“I think so. I feel this little light inside me. I suppose we’ll have to wait a few weeks to see if I miss my monthly courses to be certain, but—”
“Your word is good enough for me,” he said with a grin as he put me back on my feet and his hand went over my womb. “I can’t believe it. We’re going to be expanding our family.”
His words swelled inside my heart until I almost felt like I wouldn’t be able to breathe. I loved him so much.
“As soon as we figure out how to reopen the temple in Locris without me,” I reminded him.
But he waved his hand, as if that were inconsequential.
“I can just imagine a tiny goddess-blessed boy with your dark hair and honey-colored eyes,” I told him, “running around with Quynh and Thrax’s baby and getting into trouble.”
“Well, I see a smart, beautiful warrior princess who is the spitting image of her mother and is clever enough to wrap her father around her finger.” Then his mouth turned down. “Wait. You mean to tell me you went into battle today knowing you were pregnant?”
“I wasn’t sure, and I was perfectly fine.”
“Wife, I don’t ever want you to put yourself in danger, and now it’s worse because—”
He was cut off by someone calling out to us. “King Alexandros! Queen Thalia! This way!”
The guards at the northern gate had opened it slightly for us to enter.
My overprotective husband gave me his hand and we walked back into Troas, ready to face what came next.
As my husband had predicted, most of the Carians either surrendered or fled. Those who surrendered were sent back to Caria as a show of good faith from Ilion. That we wanted our fight to be over and to find a way to work together in the future.
There wouldn’t be a good deal of trust on either side in the beginning, but I was living proof that enemies could be turned into something else.
The first thing we had to do was gather the wounded Ilionians and bring them to the healers to be cared for. Then it was on to the dead bodies. Suri created a mass grave, and both the Ilionians and Carians were buried in there together.
Someone had suggested burning the Carians, but if we hoped to make peace with them, we couldn’t treat their dead so disrespectfully. It would have been blasphemous to them—they worshipped an earth god and needed to be reunited with the earth when they died.
But we made an exception for Artemisia. My adelphia and I burned her together. I used the flame from the goddess’s sword to accomplish it, and we all bore witness.
Both the Thracians and the Daemonians decided to depart immediately. With the fighting over, they didn’t see a reason to stay.
Basileia told me she was going back with the Thracians, as she missed her home.
“Thank you for protecting Quynh,” I told her. “You are welcome here anytime.”
“It has grown quite boring here with no one trying to kill anyone else. Thrace at least knows how to maintain their enemies,” she said with a wink, and we hugged.
Reuniting Haemon and Quynh was my favorite thing that had happened since the battle ended. They were beyond thrilled to see one another and couldn’t stop talking. My family was coming back together.
And I was going to create a new one to add to that love.
The cleanup for the city would take months, if not years.
We would have to reinforce and, in some instances, rebuild walls.
The docks had been almost completely destroyed, and the harbor was littered with ship wreckage.
Cleaning the sea was the priority because we needed the traders and merchants to return.
The citizens left the cavern and returned to their homes. Xander used the soldiers to set up a system to distribute the supplies from the cavern to make certain that everyone had enough food to tide them over.
Once the markets reopened and the traders returned, things would start to go back to normal.
We tried to carve out our own bit of normal by attending Quynh and Thrax’s wedding. They married quietly in a simple ceremony, with only Xander, me, Rokh, Io, and Haemon as witnesses.
When I hugged her after, I said, “I have a present for you.”
“You do?” she asked. I understood her surprise. Things were still so chaotic in the city that many traditions and niceties were being ignored.
I leaned in and said, “I think I’m pregnant, too.”
“Lia!” She sounded so delighted and hugged me again. “That is the most incredible gift! Our babies will grow up together and be the best of friends!”
I wouldn’t let the smile fall off my face. I was still trying to find a way to make that possible.
Several weeks later, we celebrated Zalira and Ahyana’s double wedding to Stephanos and Rokh. As a gift, Xander gave them homes close to the palace, just as he had for Quynh and Thrax.
We watched them at the hearth of the palace, each woman accepting an apple from her new husband to finalize the ceremony.
“I got you a present today,” Xander said.
“It’s not my wedding,” I said in amusement.
“Pelias and his family were asked to leave Troas.”
It didn’t make much of a difference to me either way, to be honest. I had kept Lykaon from Kallisto, and Chryseis was no threat to me or my happiness at all. “You exiled them?”
“I asked them politely,” he said defensively.
I supposed it was better for Xander to have Pelias gone. He had been working with Erisa and was supremely untrustworthy. The council needed a better archon than him. “When you asked politely, did you say ‘please’?”
He leaned in and nipped at my neck. “You’re the only person I say ‘please’ to.”
My breathing hitched, which he noticed. “Later,” he promised.
We danced and celebrated until I felt a bit dizzy. I went out onto the patio to get some fresh air and came across Demaratus.
Who was drinking from a wineskin. “Is that Daemonian, or did you have to settle for the vastly superior Ilion wine?” I teased.
“I don’t need to be clearheaded for this,” he said, nodding toward the party. He hated this sort of thing.
“Why did you come?”
He jerked his head toward the hall and I saw Antiope there, talking to Zalira and Ahyana.
“Oh,” I said knowingly.
“I asked her to come to Locris with me and she accepted.” He was trying to hide it, but I could hear how pleased that made him.
“You did?”
He nodded. “I offered to stay here with her in Ilion, but she said there were too many shades, too many bad memories. She wants to start over.”
“Are you going to marry her?”
“I get the feeling that I’m going to have to wait a long time before that happens, but I’m willing to do so. I’ve never met a woman like her before. She doesn’t even care that I’ve been dishonored.”
Because to any rational person, Demaratus had been brave and heroic in protecting his best friend in battle, and Daemonians had strange rules about honor.
Xander found us. “There you are. Come and dance with me, wife.”
And despite the fact that dancing had just made me feel dizzy, I rushed back into his arms. As we danced he pulled me in close and said, “We should go upstairs.”
“We are celebrating our dear friends and family,” I reminded him with a laugh.
“Yes, but we need a redo of our wedding night.”
“It’s not our wedding night.”
“But it is a wedding night,” he pointed out.
“Excellent point,” I said. He took me by the hand and we hurried out of the dining hall.
We were both laughing and kissing and stumbling around as we went up the stairs, so focused on one another.
Until Xander accidentally ran into someone on the landing and I turned to see Io and Suri.
Kissing.