“Or you could have asked him nicely and I’m sure he would have told you whatever you wanted to know. What did you ask him?”
“I asked him about your pleasures-of-the-flesh situation. He verified that you had to abstain in order to do magic.”
Why did I feel disappointed? I knew it was the truth.
“What if he’s wrong?” Xander asked me carefully.
If the life mage was wrong ... I would have wasted a lot of time that I could have spent naked with my husband. “I don’t think he is.”
Because I didn’t know what the actual rules were, and what Lysimache and other high priestesses had tampered with, there was no way for me to be sure.
I supposed it didn’t matter now. I had made up my mind to break our physical link the only way I knew how.
But I wasn’t sure how to go about it. My seduction attempt last night had been successful. This was entirely different, though.
“The life mage repeatedly told me women couldn’t do magic. Which I know for a fact isn’t true,” he said. “Which made me think his information might not be accurate.”
“I think magic was always intended for women.”
“You might be right, considering what happened at training today. I needed to work out some ... aggression. I drank your fountain water.”
He had? “What happened?”
“It made me so fast and strong that Thrax couldn’t keep up with me at all. There wasn’t anyone I could fight.”
I wanted to laugh. He actually sounded disappointed. I might have created a monster. “So should we distribute it to everyone in Troas? Make all the soldiers strong?”
“It won’t work. I gave some to Thrax and Stephanos and they both got violently ill. They threw it all up. They’re fine now.”
“Why can you drink it?”
“Maybe because I’m goddess-blessed.”
If the magic had been intended for women, it made sense that it wouldn’t work on most men.
But my husband was not most men.
“Perhaps we should spar to test it out. You with the fountain water against me with my aspect,” I said. That would be an easy way to get physical with him and let one thing lead to another.
“A different night, maybe. I’m too tired.”
Luna snorted in her sleep, and it reminded me of all the things I hadn’t told Xander about what my adelphia and I had discovered. That I needed him to not be his usual overprotective self and let me go look for the greatest weapon.
“Do you remember when you thought I had broken into your treasury?” I asked.
His eyes narrowed. “Yes. Why? Did you do it again?”
“No.” I tried not to sound indignant. “But I did do it back then.”
He briefly looked triumphant that I had admitted to it but he didn’t interrupt me.
“Suri went with me and I asked her for what I was supposed to find in there. I thought you were keeping something from me. She found a scroll labeled ‘the greatest weapon.’ It was blank. And wetried to figure out how to make it reveal its secrets. We stumbled on how to solve it by accident.” I explained how Io had spilled water on it and how we added each of the elements until there was only one left.
“Aether,” he correctly surmised. “And that’s why you brought the terawolf back. Because they’re supposed to be part aether dragon.”
He was so clever. “Yes. But it didn’t work. Until we realized that we already had an aether dragon.”
His eyes went wide. “You’ve been keeping an aether dragon from me?”
