Chapter Two
I gasped, ready to rush over and save her.
“I hate it when she does that,” Xander muttered.
His nonchalance shocked me so intensely that for a moment I couldn’t react. Why weren’t they running to help her?
“I know she’ll be fine but I do worry every time,” he added.
It took me a moment, but then I realized what I was seeing. The flames wrapped around her hand and arm, doing no damage. Kyra was flame-kissed, just like her mother. Fire couldn’t burn either one of them. It hadn’t occurred to me that she would have powers because she had her father’s black hair.
“She has magic?” I asked.
Lia nodded. “Do you see how green her eyes are? Just like mine when I call on the goddess.”
“You never mentioned that your powers were hereditary.”
“I didn’t know.”
“We have considered that Kyra might also be goddess-blessed, like me,” Xander said. “But that won’t manifest until she’s older.”
Thrax must have snuck up behind us because I almost jumped when he spoke. “I love the idea of that holy terror being fireproof and unbeatable in battle.”
Kyra took her flaming sword and fixed her gaze on the linens covering the food tables. She started running toward them.
Lia unsteadily got to her feet and said, “By the goddess, Kyra, give me that!” Kyra laughed and ran faster, but by using her savior aspect, Lia managed to intercept her daughter before she could torch the food.
Kyra loudly protested as her mother took the sword, smothering the flame.
Something large hit the ground hard not far from where we were—like a rock had been dropped from a crane.
I flinched but no one else seemed to register it.
I supposed they were all accustomed to the constant rebuilding that had been taking place in Troas since the Carians’ invasion three and a half years earlier.
I was gratified to see that the city seemed almost fully restored.
I glanced south at the labyrinth walls that surrounded the city. Remembered how Thrax and I had fought there and the terrible, terrible things that—
“Do you really have to leave in the morning?” Quynh asked me, pulling me from my thoughts. I was glad that she had.
“We have to get back.”
“I wish you could stay longer. We don’t see you nearly enough.”
“There’s been some issues at our northern border. The Epirians don’t understand what a boundary is and that they’re not allowed to cross it.”
My mother let out a weary sigh that caused me to stop speaking. I didn’t think I’d ever heard her make a sound like that before.
Lia had rejoined the group, smelling faintly of smoke. “Quynh’s right. You should stay a few months and let us teach you how to read.”
She’d been determined to teach me for years and I was still as uninterested now as I had been in the beginning. I wasn’t able to keep the disdain out of my voice. “No, thank you.”
“It’s not a punishment. It’s a good thing. You can learn battle techniques or read fantastic stories that take you to new places—”
I knew it wasn’t polite to interrupt her but I did. “I’m not interested in other people’s strategies for war when my own work very well. Nor do I need to escape my life. I’m very happy.”
Quynh and Lia exchanged a quick glance that made me think they didn’t believe me. They obviously shared some sort of opinion about my life, but they didn’t seem willing to loop me in.
Minha had managed to get clear of her grandmother and joined Kyra. Kyra found a stick and handed it to her cousin. “Let’s fight!” She brandished her charred sword.
Minha didn’t look afraid of Kyra or of fighting—if anything, she seemed uninterested. She was a very quiet little girl. Quynh had been teaching her their native language in addition to the common tongue, and when she spoke, it was often a mixture of both languages.
But my niece was half Thracian and she would soon love her sword, the fight, and being loud more than anything else.
“I can’t wait until you send Minha to us,” I said to Thrax.
He didn’t meet my eyes. “We’re not.”
There was an ancient tradition in Thrace where children were sent to their maternal family at the age of five to learn how to fight. Quynh’s birth family had died many years ago, and her adoptive family in Locris didn’t seem interested in war, so I expected that they would have us teach Minha.
“But we are supposed to train her.”
He turned toward me. “Minha will get to choose what she wants to do with her life. If she wants to be a warrior, she can be one here. We are not sending her away and making that decision for her.”
My mouth gaped open, and when I could speak again, I said, “Does Mother know?”
“I told her right after you arrived.”
And he was still standing? I would have thought she would cut him off at the knees for breaking this millennia-old tradition.
Did she not care?
She had been acting strangely ever since we got here, and now this?
I was about to plead my case. I wanted to train Minha. If she was battle-favored, I had to be the one to show her how to use it to her full advantage. But then Quynh moved next to her husband, slipping her hand in his as she faced me.
The gesture let me know she supported Thrax and that they were resolved in their decision.
There wouldn’t be anything I could say to convince them otherwise.
Kyra came running over, looking upset. “My braid!” One of her braids had come loose. Lia moved to fix it and Kyra said, “No. Daddy do it.”
Xander began to expertly braid his daughter’s hair while Lia just shook her head. “Kyra has him wrapped around her finger.”
I was still reeling from the revelation that Thrax and Quynh were breaking tradition. It wasn’t the first time that my brother had done so, but this felt worse. Wrong. Like something bad would happen because of it.
My mind was buzzing when Lia announced, “My adelphia! They’re here!”
I tried to smile but all I could think about was that Minha wouldn’t be taught by us. I had been really looking forward to it, and it was like my brother had just yanked the rug out from under my feet.
“Aunt Suri!” Kyra screeched the words and launched herself at Suri, who smiled and turned the little girl around in a circle while holding her tightly.
“I feel very cheated that Suri is her favorite,” Lia said lightheartedly. “After all the vomiting and the torture of childbirth, her not sleeping through the night until she was a year old . . .”
But it was obvious that it didn’t bother Lia in the least as she went over to greet her family.
Suri was quiet, like Minha. I had only ever heard her speak less than a handful of times.
I had gathered that something traumatic had happened in her past, but she seemed extremely happy with Xander’s younger sister, Io.
They had been running their goddess’s temple in Troas together and welcoming acolytes.
Io was telling Lia all about their incoming recruits, waving her hands around in excitement.
The last two members of Lia’s adelphia, Zalira and Ahyana, stood with their husbands, Stephanos and Rokh, waiting their turn to hug Lia.
Wonderful. Even more people who were in love.
But they were Lia’s sisters, and that made them mine as well.
I joined them, greeting everyone in turn. Zalira had cut her dark, curly hair short since I’d seen her last, while Ahyana’s braids had grown even longer.
Ahyana said, “We were going to wait until later, and I know this is your going-away celebration, but I hope you don’t mind us stealing your thunder, Basileia.”
“You may steal all the thunder I have,” I said.
Her eyes danced as she turned back to her adelphia. “I’m pregnant.”
“Ahyana!” Lia shrieked, pulling her in for a hug. Her stomach kept her from getting very close. “Does this mean you figured it out?”
The other woman nodded. “Rokh’s mother spent so long trying to teach me how to use the power her way, but once I realized that all I was doing was controlling, for lack of a better word, my own pollination, I used my aspect from the goddess to make sure both of them were girls.”
“Twins?” Thrax said, clasping Rokh on the shoulder. “Excellent work, brother.”
Rokh was the one who turned into a raven. I vaguely remembered something about the males in his family being forced to shape-shift even though it was painful, and how the mothers chose to have daughters to prevent that. It seemed Ahyana had figured out a way to do that herself.
“And she’s not the only one,” Zalira said shyly, putting a hand on her stomach.
“You too?” Lia’s voice went to a decibel that only dogs would be able to hear.
“You know Stephanos and I wanted to wait for a little while before we had children, to get back some of that time that we had lost,” she said, holding his hand.
I recalled something about his parents keeping them apart when they were younger.
“But when Ahyana told me that she was ready to get pregnant, I knew it was time. I want our girls to grow up together.”
“You’re having a girl, too?” Io was the one shrieking now.
Zalira nodded. “Just one, though.”
The group cheered and celebrated, kissing and hugging.
I’d never met women who knew the sex of their babies before they were born but Lia had mentioned once that she felt Kyra and her son as soon as they’d been conceived, and it seemed as if her adelphia sisters had that same gift.
“They could be an adelphia,” Lia said. “Kyra, Minha, your girls. They can go to the temple and Io and Suri can train them when they’re older!”
I walked away from them, finding a bench to sit on. The group suddenly felt like too much, and as if they were experiencing something private that I wasn’t part of.
Minha came and sat next to me quietly. She put her small hand on my arm and started tracing my woad tattoos. “Daddy has,” she said in a soft voice.
“Yes, he does. But I have more.”
“Why?”
How could I answer that question? I had a blue tattoo for every person I’d killed in combat. It didn’t seem appropriate to share that information with a toddler.
“I like how it looks.”
She nodded solemnly. “Pretty. Like kkot.” After a moment she translated the word for me. “Flowers.”
I wore death on my skin. It amazed me that she could see them as something beautiful.
Lia called out that the food was ready and Minha asked me, “Eat?”
I swallowed the lump that had inexplicably formed in my throat. “Not yet.” I needed a moment.
She nodded and put her hand in mine and we sat together in silence.
Minha was so sweet, so kind. My heart felt heavy that I wouldn’t be able to help raise her.
The next morning, my mother and I had just finished saying our farewells when Lia pulled me aside.
“This is a lot to ask, but I’m wondering if you could do me a favor.”
“Of course,” I immediately responded. “Anything. What do you need?”
“The town of Calydon reached out and asked that Xander and I come and meet with them. Their letter didn’t say why, but it was such an unusual request that I feel like someone should see what it is they want. I would go myself but . . .” She gestured down to her stomach.
Calydon was northeast of us, close to the border of Epirius. “I will go and find out what they want and send you a message.”
“We would send Rokh, but with Ahyana being pregnant, he doesn’t want to go very far. She said he’s been hovering over her constantly,” she said with a soft smile.
I nodded.
“Or I’d have Luna transport us there, but she’s been hunting for weeks and I’m not actually sure where she is.”
Part of me was very relieved that Lia’s aether dragon was somewhere far away from us. Luna had grown monstrously large, and although I’d never admit it to another living soul, I felt a bit uneasy around her.
Most likely because I knew I would definitely lose if Luna decided one day to eat me.
Lia hesitated for a moment, looking indecisive. It was very unlike her. There was something she was worried about telling me.
“Spit it out,” I said.
“Be open.”
“Open to what?”
“To . . . people. Experiences. Trying new things.” Another pause. “Seeing if your goddess has a message for you.”
Not this again. “I’m not a savior like you, Lia.”
“Maybe. But that doesn’t mean Invara won’t call on you.”
I was the last person she should call on. “Why are you saying this?”
“It’s just a feeling I have.”
I was familiar with Lia’s feelings. They were usually messages from her earth goddess. So I didn’t probe further or ask her to explain.
Whatever her goddess said to her had nothing to do with me.
She reached out and hugged me goodbye as best she could and then I mounted my horse. My mother got on her horse as well, and with one last wave, we set out.
As we moved farther from the city, something urged me to look back one last time.
Everyone stood where we’d left them, still waving.
I felt an unfamiliar twinge in my chest.
The only word that I could think of to describe how it felt was . . . homesickness. Like I was missing something important, longing for a home I’d never seen before.
Ridiculous.
I faced forward again. I would do that favor for Lia and then I would return to my actual home, to the life I already knew.