If he thought that I would leave Quynh, my adelphia, Ilion, with everything that was going on, he couldn’t possibly love me.
Because he didn’t know me at all.
My grandmother had taught me how to let down a suitor kindly, and I tried to remember her words. “Dolion, while I appreciate that you—”
Before I could react, his mouth was on mine, kissing me. Revulsion filled the back of my throat. This was so wrong. I quickly put my hands on his chest and shoved him away. I wiped my lips with the back of my hand, as if I could erase it. “Do not ever do that again.”
“Don’t lie to yourself out of some kind of misplaced loyalty. You enjoyed that.”
Nothing could have been further from the truth.
Dolion was not the man I had thought he was.
This made me look at everything that had happened between us through a different lens. Like when he had brought me flowers. I had thought it was a nice, friendly gesture, but it had been because he had feelings for me.
I remembered how jealous Xander had been that night when he found Dolion and me together. And nothing had even happened. What would he do if I told him about this?
He might actually attack Dolion. And I didn’t want their relationship to be destroyed. They were still phratry brothers.
“I am not going to tell Xander,” I said. It was not for Dolion’s benefit, but because I didn’t want it to hurt my husband. “Whatever friendship you and I had is over. I don’t want you to speak to me or come anywhere near me.”
He stared at me and said bitterly, “I shouldn’t be surprised. This is what you do. Destroy the hearts of the people around you, oblivious to the pain you cause.”
He wrenched the door open and left while I stood there, unsure of what to do next. Would he tell Xander? I couldn’t imagine that he would, but if he did ... would Xander believe that I had nothing todo with it? That Dolion had kissed me and I had immediately put a stop to it?
I couldn’t stay in this room. I exited and went right, toward the main library. That felt like a safe place to go. No one except me ever went in there.
Maybe if I could hide here the rest of the day, nothing else bad would happen.
I tried reading but I couldn’t concentrate. So instead I sat there with a book open in front of me and stared out the window. I thought about my life and how wrong everything was and how I didn’t know what to do to fix it.
Hours and hours passed while I sat and stared and pondered.
“There you are!” It had started to grow dark when Io and Suri came into the library.
“How did you find me?”
Suri smiled to let me know that she had been responsible.
“And why are you awake?” I asked Io. “You took a potion. I thought you were going to sleep for a long time.”
“I’ve slept long enough. The dose I took this morning was a small one so that I could get back to work. After Zalira told us what happened with Lysimache, Suri and I went to my mother’s library to search for answers.”
Io didn’t know this, but I supposed that it was now technically my library, since Xander had gifted it to me. Back when she was trying to convince me to love her brother, she would have seen his gesture as romantic, which was why I hadn’t told her. Now I worried that it might hurt her that he’d given it to me instead of her. And that she would be upset about the potential implications.
“We tried to look up information about people who worship Arion but couldn’t find anything. And Suri couldn’t sense any books about his hammer. I do remember Maia mentioning something about god-weapons, weapons forged and used by the gods in their battles with one another, but that information doesn’t seem to be in the library, either.”
“Perhaps Lysimache was able to destroy those books.”
“We did find one book that spoke about Arion and his hatred for his mother,” Io said. “He is close to his father, the sun god, and despises his mother for rejecting his father. It also said that he always thought his sister, with her celestial powers, was their mother’s favorite, while he was bound to the earth and metal. He blamed and resented his mother for restricting his gifts. It’s why he sold his sister into marriage, to punish both the mother and daughter.”
“That ... sounds incredibly petty. You would think gods would be above such things,” I said. “Lysimache said Arion wanted to destroy the goddess. Do you remember that line I read to you from the book Suri found for me? It said the gods bickered over mortals because they draw their strength from their believers.”
“So if Arion wanted to destroy his mother, he would have to kill everyone who believes in her to weaken her.”
I nodded. “I can’t imagine that it would be easy to destroy an immortal goddess. If he could eliminate where she draws her strength from ...”
We sat there quietly for a few moments, absorbing this information. “Again, I understand why the goddess doesn’t want us to have children,” Io said with a shudder. “Can you imagine what it must feel like to have your own son hate you so much?”
