“I need you,” Terena sobbed, “please don’t leave me. Not when I just found you again. Please.”
Rydon raised his eyes, finding Melanos, who watched the scene with a scowl.
“He’s not dead,” the god said, stopping a few feet behind Pytho.
“He took a dagger to his head,” Rydon snapped.
“You took a dagger to the heart; you’re not dead,” Melanos scoffed as he motioned at Rydon with his hand.
There was movement near his foot, and Rydon looked down to see Daris’s fingers twitch. Rydon jolted, his hand snapping out and catching Jason’s arm as he stared down at Daris. The commander’s head moved so slightly he would’ve missed it had he not been so focused on him. Then Daris’s hand reached up tostroke Terena’s hair.
Terena pulled back, her face streaked with tears and snot as she blinked at Daris, the lid of his good eye fluttering open.
“How?” she asked so softly Rydon barely heard it.
Melanos looked at her as if she’d asked something idiotic.
“He’s Eudaemon.”
CHAPTER FORTY
Terena’s knee bounced as she sat next to Daris’s cot in his tent. She could hear the murmur of voices around them, but her eyes never left his face while he slept.
The tent flap rustled, and Terena glanced up to see Sonah, her hands clasped around a bowl.
“You need to eat,” she whispered as she inched closer. An owl hooted as the flap dropped. The lantern on the table cast a weak light in the tent, and for the first time since they’d gotten back to the camp, Terena wondered how late it was.
She gave Sonah a tired smile. Kneeling beside her, Sonah sighed and set the bowl on the ground.
“How is he?” she asked after a while.
Terena gazed at Daris. The army surgeon had tended the wound, dressing it with a bandage wound around his head, covering the damaged eye. Terena’s breath hitched as she thought of how he’d looked. His beautiful blue eye gone and in its place a hole surrounded by ridged, angry flesh and blood. She had looked away as she lifted his hand to her lips, muttering nonsense to herself. Prayers and bargains to the gods.
“Pytho made him a potion that seems to help,” she answered at last.She reached out to brush his short hair back from his forehead. “He was in so much pain.”
“I heard Melanos say Daris is like Rydon. A Eudaemon.”
“Aye.”
“How? I mean… did you know?”
Terena looked at her with a frown. “I would’ve told you, had I known.”
Sonah dropped her chin and nodded.
They sat in silence for a few minutes, Sonah looking at her hands while Terena continued to stare at Daris, her eyes dropping to his chest to watch him breathing.
“Good,” Pytho said as she poked her head inside the tent. She came inside and around to Sonah’s side as she peered down at Daris. “He’s still asleep.”
“Pytho, how is it you didn’t know he was Eudaemon?” Sonah asked, her tone curious.
Pytho shrugged. “I see only what the Fates allow me to see.”
“How is it that Melanos knew?” Terena asked, her voice sharper than she’d intended.
The oracle raised her black eyes and stared at Terena with sadness. “He is a god,” she said after a few moments. “He must sense it.”
“Aye,” Sonah said while shifting her legs beneath her. “He told Rydon he thought we knew, because we all traveled together. He knew when you were all at the cave.”
