But we had acted on it.
Had my words somehow caused this? I was the one who had told Lysimache that I would go home and have sex with my husband. As if I had spoken it into existence.
That woman was haunting me. I thought of how she had stopped caring about other people because it had brought her too much suffering and grief. She had closed herself off to everyone.
Would I do the same?
Didn’t I have to? How was I supposed to keep my vows when Xander kissed me like that? Wasn’t turning off my emotions the only solution?
Tears blinded me and I ran into someone.
“Lia? Are you all right?” It was Dolion.
I shook my head, not trusting myself to speak. He led me into a small sitting room. I had come down to the main floor and not even realized it.
“What happened?” he asked as he closed the door. “Did someone hurt you?”
Again, I shook my head. No one had hurt me.
Except me.
I went over to the table and chairs and sat down, running my hand along the edge of the table to give myself extra leverage because I wasn’t sure that I could control all my limbs properly.
“Ow!” I said when a small piece of wood went into my finger. I held it up. Did Xander feel this?
This was what he had done. He had embedded himself deep in my skin, a painful, constant reminder that no matter what else I was doing or thinking of, he was there.
“Let me help you with that,” Dolion said. He took out a small knife and used the tip of it to dig the splinter out of my finger. It hurt but not as bad as what had just occurred in my bedroom. A few seconds later it was over, the piece of wood gone, but my finger still throbbed.
“I’m sorry about what happened today with Lysimache,” he said. The polite thing to do would be to acknowledge what he was saying and forgive him. But I was still too upset about today’s events. I didn’t have it in me to be benevolent.
He moved his chair close to mine so that we were nearly touching, which surprised me. “Lia, it is so hard for me to see you this way. There have been so many times when I have witnessed how unhappy you are and it tears me apart.”
What? My pulse spiked. This didn’t sound like ordinary concern. It almost sounded ... romantic. This was not the way he should speak to me. “You’re saying this because you are my friend.” I needed to make certain that line was there.
Then Dolion reached for my hands. I was so shocked that I didn’t immediately pull away as I should have. “I would be more than a friend to you if you would let me.”
I yanked my hands from his. “I am married. To your phratry brother.”
“It’s not a real marriage.” I remembered the day after our wedding, when Xander had told me that his brothers all knew the truth of our relationship. “He doesn’t make you happy. I could make you happy.”
“You don’t know what you’re saying,” I protested. I didn’t feel that way about Dolion. At all.
“I heard your conversation with the high priestess. I know that you have to remain celibate. I would honor that. I would respect your vows. My intentions toward you are pure.” Was he implying that Xander’s weren’t? What had Xander told his brothers?
He leaned toward me and I jumped out of my chair. He stood slowly, his gaze never leaving my face. “I would take care of you. Erase your sadness, wipe away all your tears. Treat you the way you should be treated.”
“Dolion, no.” I didn’t know what else to say.
Something that looked like anger briefly flashed in his eyes. “You would let him use you to get what he wants. You’re a means to an end for him.”
“At one point I believed that, but now—”
“Now what?” he interrupted me. “He’s seduced you into trusting him?”
The Lia from a few weeks ago would have believed everything that he was saying. But too much had changed.
His shoulders dropped. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what I’m doing. It was just ... when I heard your conversation and you told Lysimache that you were going to go home and have sex with Xander, I thought that I had run out of time to tell you how I felt. To let you know that you don’t have to stay with him. We could run away from all of this.”
