Chapter Three
My mother and I traveled in silence. She was deep in thought about something and I didn’t want to disturb her.
About every four hours or so, we would find a place to rest and water the horses. Darkness began to fall and we came to a spot we had utilized on our way to Ilion. My mother said, “We should stop here for the night.”
I nodded and dismounted and she did the same.
We led the horses over to a crystal-clear pond that bubbled up from some underground spring.
After they’d finished drinking, we let them graze on the grass surrounding us.
They were battle horses who would respond immediately to our commands and didn’t get startled easily.
We didn’t have to worry about them running off.
We set up our camp, both of us at our tasks. We had done this so often that it took no time at all to get a fire started and our bedrolls set up.
I didn’t feel like hunting for fresh game, and apparently, neither did my mother. We ate dried meat and dried fruits for our supper.
“Being with Thrax and his family, did you feel like you were missing out on something?” My mother’s voice cut through the silence.
“No. Why would I?” It was almost like she had guessed that strange feeling I’d had when we were leaving, and it made me uneasy.
“I worry that fighting, war, is more important to you than anything else.”
“That’s . . .” It wasn’t something I could deny. I loved my family and my people, but fighting had always been very important to me. “What’s wrong with that?”
Her eyebrows shot up her forehead. “What’s wrong with it? You can’t fight your way out of every problem.”
“I haven’t found that to be true.”
“There is more to life than the next battle.”
I nodded. “Yes. There’s the next hunt, the next race, the next—”
“Basileia!” She interrupted me with that sharp tone she used when we ran fighting drills. “Being at peace and content is not a bad thing.”
“I am at peace and content.”
She shook her head. “You are like a duck on a pond. Smooth and calm on the surface but paddling furiously under the water. You are never at peace.”
My mother was right. I did have to analyze and overthink everything.
That had been part of my training. I had to anticipate, to be aware and ready at all times.
I couldn’t ever let my guard down. Even when I appeared to be at rest, I was paddling as hard as I could.
I wondered what it would be like if I could make that stop.
“There are things in life that bring joy,” my mother continued, “and they aren’t fighting. Things like family. Friends.”
“Stabbing people brings me joy.”
She closed her eyes and let out another one of those odd, weary sighs. “I can see how happy your brother is. I want that for you. I don’t want to condemn you to my life.”
What was wrong with her life? As a child, after I’d returned home from training with my grandmother, I became my mother’s shadow.
I had missed her, but more than anything, I wanted to be just like her.
I remembered tracing the tattoos on her skin, as Minha had done to me.
My mother had killed so many that her skin was almost entirely blue.
I had hero worshipped her. If someone had told me she was Invara herself, I would have believed it. I thought that there wasn’t anyone braver or stronger or more beautiful in the entire world.
Her life was exactly what I wanted.
And yet she spoke of Thrax’s happiness? Did she not remember how furious she had been when we found out that Thrax had gotten married?
Thracians didn’t marry. We mated. Sometimes the mating lasted a few days, sometimes years.
But nothing was ever permanent. Constantly being at war didn’t lend itself to long-lasting relationships.
We had to live for the day because tomorrow wasn’t promised.
Thrax had broken our traditions. First when he married Quynh and second when he decided to keep Minha from us. “Why aren’t you angry about them not sending Minha to train?”
“Your brother and his wife are free to make their own choices. Just as you are.”
None of this made any sense to me. “What are you getting at?”
“If life is a hill, I have begun descending down the other side.” She made herself sound like a corpse, but she was only forty-seven years old and routinely beat men half her age in battle.
“Fewer warriors come back from war. Fewer children are being born. We will wipe ourselves out with our constant fighting.”
That wasn’t our fault—it was the Epirians’. They were the ones who constantly broke the treaty and came into our lands to abduct and slaughter our people.
“I am tired of funerals. Tired of loss. I want to stop fighting the Epirians,” she said. “I want to be surrounded by my grandchildren and live in peace. For those grandchildren to only ever know peace and to never have to fight.”
It was like a shape-shifter sat in front of me instead of my mother. I couldn’t believe she was saying these things.
A heavy silence hung between us. I didn’t know how to react to what she was telling me. She was saying she wanted to undo our entire lives, millennia of traditions, and for us to be something we were not.
Thracians were fighters. It was what we had been created to do. We worshipped the goddess of war. It was in our blood to battle.
And she wanted all that to change? It was like she had thrust her sword deep into my stomach and twisted my innards.
Then she made everything worse.
“I am going to select Katisa as my heir.”
Katisa was my eldest sister—my mother had only been sixteen when she’d had her. But I wanted to become the leader. And I had told my mother repeatedly about my desire. She knew how badly I wanted to take over when she was gone. How I’d spent my whole life training for it.
The only thing I could think to say was, “Katisa doesn’t even want it!”
“That’s one of the reasons I’m choosing her. It will make her a better leader.”
How was that true? I wanted to argue and yell but I had been taught from the time I could walk to respect my commanders, and there wasn’t anyone in our clan who outranked my mother.
“Katisa has a long-term mate and three children. She sees things the way that I do. She wants these changes.”
“So because I’m not foolish enough to believe that romantic love is real, because I don’t have children, I’m not worthy to be your successor?” I tried to keep the bitterness out of my voice but failed.
“You just spent two weeks with people who are living proof that romantic love exists.”
“That’s just lust dressed up with friendship.”
“What do you think love is?” my mother asked with a laugh. “There is a physical connection but there is also an emotional and spiritual one. They all truly love one another. And I know you’re capable of it. I’ve seen how you love your family, Basileia. I know how hard you would love your mate.”
“I will never have one,” I swore to her.
But instead of looking upset, she half smiled at me. “Then perhaps you will have a husband.”
“Never.” I refused to let myself be tied down in that way.
Outsiders thought that Thracians hated marriage.
But the truth of it was that marriage was sacred to us.
So sacred that we shouldn’t be foolish enough to enter into it because of how serious it was.
We committed for life. It was why my mother had been upset about Thrax’s wedding—because it meant he would never come home and that Quynh would always be his priority.
“You’ve never had a romantic relationship,” she said softly.
“Neither have you,” I shot back. It was the closest I’d ever come to being disrespectful to my mother.
“That is the biggest regret of my life. I wish I had. There were men I could have loved. But I always sent them away, too afraid to get close. Too scared that they would try to usurp my position. My power.”
My mouth hung open slightly. My mother had never admitted to being afraid of anything in front of me before.
“And I used to feel as you did. Then I met Thrax’s father and it changed. I wanted him in my life. I wanted his child.”
That stung. She hadn’t felt that way about my father—he had been a brief replacement when Thrax’s father returned to Ilion to rule as king. Once, when I was ten, she’d been drunk and told me that she hadn’t intended to get pregnant by my father.
Which meant I was an accident.
That knowledge, that I hadn’t been wanted, was something I had carried my entire life.
“I understand that you wanted to be named leader. But Basileia, you will lead the people into a war, and Katisa will lead them away from one.”
I could feel anger building inside me, a molten heat that tried to force its way out to explode everywhere. I stood up and began walking into the forest. I wouldn’t be angry in front of my mother. I wouldn’t let her see just how furious I was. Because that would only strengthen her resolve.
The cool night air settled against my skin, calming me down. I looked up at the full moon, its light shining and swaying through the tops of the trees, as if it were dancing with them.
I didn’t have to accept this outcome. I only needed to find a way to convince my mother to name me as her successor instead.
Things would be well.
Because I would figure out how to make my mother change her mind.