“She’s in a safe house nearby.”
“I need to question her to find out what she knows.” I let out an accidental yawn, covering my mouth with my free hand.
He shook his head. “I will take you to her first thing in the morning. You need to rest. We both do.”
I thought of the nightmares I’d had last night because I’d been out of his arms and was glad that I wouldn’t have to deal with that again now that we were back together.
“Go and use the washroom first,” he said.
A bath sounded divine. There was so much dirt under my fingernails from digging that I didn’t know if they would ever be clean again. Not to mention the dried-over blood in the places that Lysimache had managed to superficially cut me. I stood up, and I wasn’t sure if it was my imagination, but he seemed reluctant to release my hand.
I walked over to the washroom door and turned to see him watching me. A spike of longing pierced my gut, and I was struck with the urge to invite him to join me.
And given the heated, hungry look in his eyes, it felt like he knew exactly what I was thinking.
But he waited. Xander didn’t speak, didn’t make a move.
He was leaving it to me to act.
The words burned on my tongue, and I was about to say them when I heard Io exclaim, “You found Phoebe!” while Phoebe meowed loudly.
It brought me back to myself. This couldn’t happen. I knew better.
He always made me forget. When I was with him, it was as if he were the only thing in the entire universe that mattered.
I went into the washroom, closing the door behind me.
But I didn’t lock it.
While I undressed, I allowed myself to fantasize about him coming in here. What he would say, what he would do, the way he would make me feel ... my skin began to flush in response.
I had just gotten into the water when the door opened. My heart leapt until I saw who it was. Io, Zalira, and Ahyana.
“We need baths, too,” Zalira said as she shut the door.
“Where is Suri?” I asked as I reached for a bar of soap.
“She’s looking for Priam, one of my mice,” Io said. “She seems to think that my birds flew away but that Priam’s still in the palace.”
I wondered if that was the only reason she hadn’t come with them. Suri usually bathed alone, and I assumed that was because she didn’t want anyone to see the self-inflicted scars that she kept hidden under the wrappings on her arms.
As my sisters got into the pools, it occurred to me that if I had asked Xander to join me in my bath, and he’d said yes, Io would have found us in here together. She had been our biggest advocate, wanting us to be together, and now she was part of the reason I had to try and stay away from him.
Zalira let out a satisfied sigh and leaned her head against the edge of the pool. Io was talking about her ideas for new potions—she wanted to create a fortification one so that their magic would last longer and had already started planning out what plants she could use to separate my physical link with her brother.
When Io dunked her head into the water to rinse her hair, Ahyana took advantage of the temporary silence to say, “I know this is probably not the appropriate time to mention this, but there are no more temple guards.”
She was right. I put a hand over my chest as if that could calm my galloping heartbeat. Zalira exchanged a worried glance with me.
Io lifted her head and pushed her hair out of her face. “And?” she asked, not immediately seeing where Ahyana was going with this like Zalira and I did.
“That means there’s no one left to bury any of us alive if we break our vow of celibacy.”
The look of panic on Io’s face might have been comical in another situation. I decided to put her out of her misery. “I still have to use the eye to save Locris and need the goddess to find me worthy of wielding it. That hasn’t changed.”
“And you’re the savior,” she said. “You can’t be the savior if you break her laws.”
“That thought had occurred to me.”
