I also didn’t want to get mired down in what I should have done differently. I knew it wasn’t my fault, but that wouldn’t stop me from questioning whether I had played some role in it.
And I wouldn’t allow his poor decisions to make me doubt myself.
“I’m going to go get dressed,” I said to my sisters.
“Do you want us to help you get ready later?” Io asked as she got out of her bed.
“For what?”
“The party my stepmother insists on throwing.”
Already? That had come together quickly. I supposed it made sense—it needed to be near Xander’s birthday. “I can call for Parthenia.”
Io nodded and I promised to see them all later. I went back to my own room. Xander sat at his desk, writing. It reminded me of what Demaratus had said in the dream about not receiving a letter from me.
I didn’t want to interrupt him, but I had to ask. “Why haven’t I heard from my family?”
He stopped moving his lead across the papyrus, frozen in place.
“I have sent them a lot of letters, but I haven’t heard back from them.” There had been so many other things going on that I hadn’t realized it earlier.
Xander exhaled and then got up. He walked over to one of his trunks, opened it, and began emptying out the contents. I followed and saw him push a lever to reveal a false bottom.
He handed me a stack of my letters.
All unsent.
I could only stare down at them in shock. My parents hadn’t heard from me at all.
My first instinct was to let the anger currently simmering in my veins explode into life. I had been suppressing so many different emotions lately that they were more than eager to funnel themselves into rage and unleash on him.
And I could fight him now. I could so easily call up my fury aspect and then ...
But I refused to get locked into that spiral again. I did my best to stay calm. He could have had a good reason.I should let him explain.“Why did you do this?”
He seemed surprised. Had he been expecting my rage? “Despite the fact that you tried to hide it, your misery was evident in your letters. I was afraid of two things—the first, that if Erisa saw them, she would use it against us, and the second, that your parents would get on the first ship and come here.”
Xander had told me previously that there were all sorts of spies in the palace who went through the letters sent out. He was right that Erisa would have seen them and I understood why he couldn’t risk that, given how hard we had been pretending to be in love and happy for the court.
“Why couldn’t my parents have come?” A sharp pang of homesickness pierced my heart. I would have loved to see them.
“I wouldn’t have been able to hide who they were and their relationship to you, as I did for Quynh. Erisa would have found a way to hurt them or take their lives. Being in Locris is the only thing keeping them safe.”
He had told me that he’d written to them and advised them that both Quynh and I were alive, so they at least knew that. I might haveeven seen their reaction to finding out. I had always dismissed that as just another dream, but with my night-walking skill ... what if it had been real and I’d witnessed it? Had I actually seen my parents?
Would I be able to do it again?
I shook my head. That wasn’t the point right now. I chose to believe him, to not be upset about what he had done. I understood why he had made that choice. “You did this for me.”
His eyebrows lifted even higher. “I did.”
“Thank you. For protecting them and for protecting me.”
He stood there, as if he didn’t know what to do next. He seemed to be at a total loss. A few beats later, he finally said, “This is not how I thought this conversation would go. I thought there would be more stabbing attempts involved.”
That made me smile. “I can always grab my xiphos if you’d like me to try.”
“I wouldn’t mind seeing it.”
