His eyes questioned me as I sat down in front of him. I put my hand into the flame and he swore and grabbed my wrist to pull it clear of the fire.
“I’m fine,” I told him.
Xander turned my hand over, checking it on both sides repeatedly. “How is this possible?”
“Part of the prophecy of being flame-kissed. I don’t burn. It was why I pulled you out of that house in Lycia without getting hurt myself.”
“I just assumed that Io had fixed you up the same way she had with me,” he said, the awe evident in his voice. He released my hand and grabbed the branch, taking it back out to the fire and then returning to me.
Why hadn’t his brothers told him? Maybe they hadn’t realized. They’d been focused on him. Perhaps they had thought I hadn’t been close to the flames. Or they believed, like Xander did, that Io had healed me.
“I don’t understand why you can’t be burned,” he said as he retook his spot in front of me. “For what purpose?”
“Like so many other things, I don’t know.” My nerves felt frayed as I tried to think of how to approach the thing I most needed to tell him.
What he had suspected from the very beginning.
My hands trembled, and I tried to disguise it by putting them under my legs but quickly realized that would bring even more attention to my nervousness.
He would soon notice if he hadn’t already.
“There’s a reason why I have to abstain from sex,” I said.
“So you can do magic,” he said with a nod. “I understand why you would choose that over other things.”
“That’s not the choice I’m making.” I was not picking being able to do magic over him. “I am choosing Locris over ... other things.”
His eyebrows knit together in confusion.
This had been my closest-held secret since I’d arrived in Ilion. “If there was an object of great power that I needed to save Locris, would you take it from me?”
“Why would I do that?” He sounded incredulous.
“During our marriage negotiation, you said that whatever I had planned, you would put a stop to it.” That threat had been in the back of my mind every day since.
He frowned. “I said I would put a stop to it if it would harm me, my family, or Ilion.”
“It wouldn’t,” I reassured him.
“Then why would you think I would take it from you?”
“I ... I don’t know.” I had let my fears, doubts, and worries control me, right along with my anger.
He took both of my hands in his, holding them between us. “You are not my enemy, Lia. You never have been.”
One last fear to put to rest. “What if it could be used as a weapon? If taking it meant you could save Ilion?”
“From my understanding, you’re supposed to do that,” he said with a half smile. “So I’d never do anything to hinder you.”
I pulled in a deep breath to fortify myself. “You were right about why I came to Ilion, why I entered the tribute race. I was looking for something. The eye of the goddess.”
Telling him was actually a relief, as if a giant boulder had been lifted from my chest and I could breathe again. Now he knew almost everything.
“Like what the life mages wear?”
I nodded. “There were two eyes in Locris in the statue of the goddess. One was taken and split up and given to life mages. The other was used by Lysimache to curse Locris so that nothing would grow.”
“Then Ilion should also have two eyes,” he quickly surmised.
