With what I’d felt from the goddess in my dreams, I didn’t understand. She was so loving and kind. Why would Arion want to end her?
“When is the last time you ate?” Io asked me, and my stomach grumbled in response. She laughed and said, “Come to my room and we’ll feed you.”
I felt a bit anxious about leaving the library, not knowing if we might run into Dolion. Fortunately, neither Io nor Suri seemed to pick up on my discomfort as I trailed behind them.
Io was discussing the potion she’d been working on to break the physical link between Xander and me. “I feel like I have the right ingredients. It’s just the ratios that aren’t correct.”
“Maybe you’d be able to figure it out if you slept,” I said. Suri nodded, agreeing with my point. “We’ve already seen that lack of sleep makes you stabbier.”
Io ignored my last comment. “When I take the fortification potion, if I’m not using magic, it lasts for so long. Sleeping takes up a ridiculous amount of time. I’m getting so much done without distractions. Like I’ve already ordered all our dresses for Erisa’s party.”
I did not care about that party. I wondered if we could skip it. I didn’t want to feed into Erisa’s delusions.
There were more important things to worry about.
We got back to Io’s room and Suri cocked her head toward the door.
“You’re going to find Zalira and Ahyana?” Io asked, and Suri nodded. Once she had gone, I decided this was as good a time as any to ask Io for help. I only hoped that she would say yes.
Taking in a deep breath, I said, “Io? I need to ask you for a favor.”
Chapter Nineteen
“What?” Io’s expression had turned wary. It was very unlike her. She was usually the first person to volunteer to help.
Then I realized why she had reacted that way. She thought I was going to ask her for a favor about her brother.
Like asking her to retract her request that I stay away from him.
“If something happens to me, I need you to promise to do what you can to get the eye of the goddess and then use it to restore Locris. You don’t have to stay, just save it.”
Her face softened. “Of course I would do that for you.”
“I don’t know the right words or what aspect to use but I know you would be able to figure it out.” If anyone had the right kind of magic to fix Locris, it was Io.
“I promise that I will,” she said.
That was a relief. I thanked her. I hoped it would be possible for either her or me to save Locris, but there were so many obstacles in our way. “What if Artemisia destroys the eye?”
“I don’t think that she would,” Io said. “She’ll be looking for a way to use it. She knows it has power, and she will utilize every weapon at her disposal to annihilate us. I’m sure Lysimache never told her that it could restore your nation. Why would she? She wanted Artemisia to wield it against us.”
The only reason that Artemisia would move against Locris was because of Lysimache. Locris didn’t have enough believers to power the goddess, so she would attack solely because of Lysimache’s personal need for vengeance.
The rest of my adelphia entered the room. Suri closed the door so that we could sit and talk. Io handed me a bowl of dates and nuts and I snacked on them as everyone took their spots.
Io told them what we had figured out about Arion and how his followers were most likely planning to attack his mother’s believers to weaken her.
“Could we invoke him?” Ahyana asked. “Call on him since we have his name? Use him somehow?”
“I can’t imagine that would work,” Io said. “We are followers of his mother. He has no power over us or to give us. For all we know, his abilities might counteract our own because they’re enemies.”
“There’s so much we believed that is turning out not to be what we thought,” Zalira said. “It’s scary how one person could trick so many people. It still baffles me that Lysimache made up the tribute race and convinced everyone that it was the goddess’s will.”
It was something I couldn’t think about too much—all those lives needlessly lost, all those grieving Locrian families. “It also wrecks my theory that the red-dirt pirates came after Quynh and me in order to offend the goddess. She wouldn’t have been upset if the Locrian maidens had been taken from the race.”
Zalira shook her head. “The pirates wouldn’t have known that. Your entire nation thought you were doing the goddess’s will—why would it be different anywhere else? No one knew about Lysimache’s lies. So that might still be why they tried to abduct you.”
That was true.
