Chapter Fourteen
Goddess, yes. “No.”
He smiled like he didn’t believe me. He shouldn’t have, because I was currently envisioning him kneeling on the floor in front of me as he lifted my tunic and—
“Basileia?”
“What? Yes. No. What?” I had to get a hold of myself. “I’m only worried about the thieving part.”
Because I believed him about the sex part.
“I do like you flustered,” he said in a voice that validated my belief. “You know the drill. Pick something for me to steal and I’ll do it without getting caught.”
I had noticed a young woman married to a much older man when we’d walked in. Mostly because she had a sapphire the size of a chicken’s egg around her neck and every few seconds she would touch it, as if to make sure that it was still there. It matched her sapphire wedding band.
“The sapphire necklace,” I said. I didn’t need to point out which one.
“And here I thought you were going to make it difficult.”
The woman’s husband was at a nearby table, talking to the people there. I watched as Zain made his way over to her table. Whatever he said to her initially made her entire face light up and she laughed.
He elegantly slid into the seat her husband had vacated, putting his arm around the back of her chair. The woman was completely focused on him, hanging on his every word.
It annoyed me that I could relate.
She leaned in closer, resting her hand on his upper thigh, and I nearly pulled my dagger out. She whispered something in his ear and a moment later a glass fell from the table, shattering on the floor.
A server hurried over to help clean up the mess and Zain stood up, making his way back over to our table.
He held out his hand and flashed me the sapphire necklace. I looked at the woman’s neck in disbelief.
How had he managed to steal it? I had been watching the entire time.
“Sleight of hand,” he said, answering my question before I had even asked it. “I get everyone to look one way while I’m doing something else.”
The knocked-over glass. It had drawn my attention as well.
“How did she not feel you touching her when you took off the necklace? If you were touching me, I would know it.” Every cell in my body would know it.
“Yes, you would,” he agreed in that low tone that did inexplicable things to the backs of my knees.
A server I hadn’t seen before was walking by our table, and Zain gestured for him to come over. “I found this necklace on the floor. I’m not sure who it belongs to.”
“I will check with the guests until I find the owner,” he said, taking the necklace.
When he left I asked, “Aren’t you worried that the server will steal the necklace?”
“Like many wealthy nations, Sagaris has very strict rules about thievery, and all the punishments are death.”
I blinked at him, shocked. “You stole that necklace knowing you would die if you got caught?”
“You wanted me to and I can’t deny you anything that you want, illora.”
My heart thudded low and hard against my rib cage.
“Also, I don’t get caught.”
I swallowed the feelings rising in my throat. “Weren’t you the one telling me that the gods hate hubris?”
“It’s not pride or arrogance. Just a fact.”
Why was that arousing? We needed to talk about something else besides his excellence. “The servers and the women in the laundry . . . I thought everyone in Sagaris was rich.”
“No. Sagaris has opened their citizenry to anyone who wants to move here.”
I couldn’t think of a single other nation that did that.
He said, “They have an influx of new ideas and new people willing to work to claim their own fortunes. It has helped them to grow and become even wealthier.”
Oh. That was an answer that finished off my question. I racked my brain for another appropriate topic for conversation, but it wasn’t working.
All I could think of was asking whether he had six of those delicious ridges on his abdomen or eight and if he would let me count them with my lips.
“You were able to sleep last night,” he commented.
I wasn’t sure why he’d brought it up. Sleeping felt akin to other bedroom activities and I wasn’t sure that was the best thing to discuss.
“No nightmares?” he asked.
“None.”
He wore a self-satisfied smile, as if he had been personally responsible for that outcome.
“I did have a very strange dream, though.” I described it for him, told him everything that had happened and what I saw and how confused I felt by the entire thing.
It was nice to have someone to share it with.
“I’m not sure who the man was,” I said.
“You said he had wings on his sandals?”
I nodded.
“That was Eramis.”
“Eramis?” I couldn’t keep the shock out of my voice. “Why would the god of thieves be in my dream? No, more importantly, why would he be there with Invara?”
“Do you not know the story of your goddess’s true love?”
Confused, I responded, “Invara loves fighting.”
“Thousands and thousands of years ago, when he was a child, Eramis’s parents arranged for him to marry the goddess of discord. It was thought that his nature would be a good balance for her volatility and chaos.
“After he came of age, one day he went walking through the woods. He came upon the most beautiful being he had ever seen. It was Invara, fighting a giant. She won her battle and pulled her sword on Eramis, thinking he was a foe. He reassured her that he wished only to know her and spend time with her, and to his surprise, she agreed.”
I had never, ever heard any of this. He had to be making it up.
“As time went on, Eramis and Invara fell madly in love.
They were the true balance—her protectiveness and ferocity offset by his mischievous spirit and cunning mind.
They wished to be married but the arrangement his parents had made still stood.
They met in secret and tried to find a way for the agreement to be broken.
“It is said that the goddess of discord found them in bed together and swore vengeance on them both.
She went to the council of gods to complain about how she had been wronged.
Eramis presented his side, that the arrangement had been made without his consent and that he had found his true love.
He wanted to spend his eternity with Invara.
“The goddess of discord demanded compensation and that she be allowed retribution against the pair. She knew too much about what the king of the gods had been up to while away from his wife, and so the king took her side. He decreed that Eramis and Invara were to be bound away from one another. They could not be together, could not touch, could not speak. So they spend their time circling one another, never able to be with the being they love most.”
“That is horrible,” I finally said. I didn’t know how else to respond to it. No wonder Invara was angry. I would have been, too. It sounded like they had picked the absolute worst goddess to jilt.
Was that why Eramis stood away from her and didn’t speak? Because he couldn’t?
Two things happened at that moment—our server brought us more fish and the server that Zain had given the necklace to located its owner. She seemed shocked to see the necklace, and her husband helped her to put it on. She held on to the stone tightly, probably afraid that she might “lose” it again.
“Do you think your dream was real?” Zain asked me.
“I don’t know. Have you ever had Eramis appear to you?”
He had taken a bite of food and nearly choked on it while laughing. “Why would a god appear to someone like me?”
“Why would a goddess appear to someone like me?”
“Because you are a goddess.” He said it matter-of-factly, as if this were common knowledge.
“I—” What was I supposed to say to that? “Lia—I mean, the queen of Ilion—speaks to her goddess regularly in her dreams. I know it’s possible but I don’t understand why it would happen to me.”
As I’d told Lia, I was no savior.
“Did Invara speak to you?”
“She did. She only said one word. ‘Win.’”
“There you have it,” he said. “Invara wants you to win the tournament. I suppose that means there’s no hope for the rest of us. What are you planning on asking the diviner stone after you win?”
“I want to be the leader of my clan when my mother is gone. I thought it was a foregone conclusion, but a few days ago, she told me that she was going to choose my elder sister to be her heir. There has to be a way to convince her; I just don’t know what it is.”
“In case you’ve forgotten, I am a master strategist. Tell me about your mother.”
So I told him everything I could about her and the things she’d said to me before we’d parted.
When I finished, he asked, “Why is this so important to you?”
“I—” I didn’t know how to explain it to him. I wasn’t even sure that I understood all my motivations. There was disappointment with a bit of betrayal and the sense that recently things had not been turning out the way I’d expected them to. “It just is.”
“Then the solution is easy. Get married.”
I immediately recoiled. “I don’t want to get married.”
“Why not?”
“Thracians take marriage very seriously. It is the most sacred of all our vows. And I’ve never met a man that I wanted to be tied to for the rest of my life.”
“Haven’t you?” he asked playfully.
I shook my head at his flirting. While I could see that his idea had some merit and might even work, that was a step too far for me. When I got the stone, I would ask it how to convince my mother and preface it by saying that the answer couldn’t be “marriage.”
We finished our food and Zain left to settle our bill. I watched the woman with the necklace and she still clutched the sapphire tightly.
It was shocking how easy it had been for him to take it from her. How little effort he’d had to put forth.
And knowing he could do that to me just as easily—swoop in and take my heart and walk away as if he’d done nothing wrong—worried me.
So my smile felt a little forced when he rejoined me. We walked out of the tavern and I saw that it had become completely dark. The moon was full and the stars shone brightly, making it easy for us to navigate the city streets.
He was telling me about the time he had been hired to travel across the ocean to Ellas to steal a golden elephant the same size as a small horse when the hairs on the back of my neck rose.
We were being watched.
I put my hand on him and he immediately fell silent. His face turned serious and he began to scan the area around us. He must have had the same feeling I did.
“Someone is stalking us,” I whispered.