We were interrupted by Io shrieking with joy next door, and I assumed another lost pet had been returned to her.
“You might need to keep an eye on your sister,” I said. “I’m worried that she’s become a little bloodthirsty.”
He nudged my knee with his and heat blossomed where his skin touched mine. “Because you’re a bad influence.” He said it jokingly, but his smile faltered when he saw my face. “What do you mean?”
“Io thinks we should kill whoever did this.”
“I don’t disagree with her. Why do you?”
Xander needed more of the story so that he could understand. I told him about finding Lysimache and shared her true backstory—that she had used magic to stay alive for a thousand years, waiting to exact her revenge on both Ilion and Locris because of what my ancestor, Ajax, had done to her sister, Kysandra, after the Great War ended.
“Lysimache intended to fight her way out but I didn’t let her. I was so furious with her. I wanted to kill her,” I said.
He shrugged. “And?”
I liked that he didn’t judge me for things like this. That he understood.
“If your sister is right and I really am the savior ... life is sacred to the goddess. I’m worried that in order to be worthy of her favor, I have to treat life as sacred, too. I knew I couldn’t strike Lysimache down in anger and vengeance. I think it might have offended the goddess if I had. But it was a struggle. I stood there, wanting to, my sword raised, and then ... I heard your voice. Telling me I could choose to be different. It gave me the strength to stop.”
I heard him suck in a sharp breath, as if my words deeply affected him.
“We can both choose to be different,” I said. I put my hand in his, and after a moment, his warm, strong fingers wrapped around mine. I kept talking, telling him how we’d found Antiope and how she’d said “hammer of Arion,” a phrase he was unfamiliar with, and that Artemisia was involved with the people who spread the red dirt. “I remembered that she had a reddish-brown hammer tattoo on her chest like the one we saw on the enemy soldier in Lycia. I only wish I had remembered sooner.”
“Why does that name sound familiar?”
“Artemisia?” I asked, and when he nodded, I said, “She was the one I fought the night of the new acolyte race.”
“The one who hurt you. I already want to kill her.”
That gave me an illicit thrill. I liked it far too much when he sounded deadly on my behalf. “There’s a statue of the goddess in the temple, and it was covered in a thick layer of gold. Artemisia stole the gold.”
His jaw clenched while he took in this information—I wondered if he was coming to the same conclusion that Zalira had about what Artemisia planned to do with that much wealth.
“Gold alone doesn’t explain why she would slaughter everyone at the temple. Or why they came here intending to kill you and your adelphia.”
My husband had always been far too clever for his own good. My chest felt impossibly tight as I worried about his reaction to what I was about to tell him. “I think she did it because ... priestesses and acolytes can do magic.”
Chapter Four
A long silence stretched between us as I waited for Xander’s response.
“What?” he finally managed to say.
“My adelphia can do magic.”
At that his eyebrows shot up his forehead. “Can you—”
“No,” I interrupted him. “Not me. But everyone else can.”
He seemed truly astonished. “What—how—what—”
I’d never seen him at a loss for words before. “That life mage apprentice they found passed out, the one you thought I had something to do with? I might have temporarily kidnapped him and forced him to tell me how magic works and then made him drink a potion that caused him to forget and fall asleep.”
“I wish I could say I was surprised—”
“But you knew,” I finished.
“I knew.”
