Josie nipped at her lip, relishing in the sharp gasp it drew from Aleissande. Aleissande tore her mouth away, her chest heaving against Josie’s as they struggled to catch their breath.
“We have to stop,” Aleissande panted.
“Why?”
“I meant what I said. I need to focus on tomorrow—weneed to focus on tomorrow.” Yet even as she made her argument, Aleissande ducked her head once more, her lips finding Josie’s effortlessly in the low torchlight. Josie let herself get lost in the kiss, her fingers tingling as she raked them through Aleissande’s hair, tugging it from its bun.
Aleissande groaned as she tore her mouth way again. “I mean it,” she breathed.
“You don’t seem to,” Josie teased as she twisted one of her blond locks around her finger. It was just as soft as she’d imagined.
Aleissande grabbed her wrists, her touch tender as she pulled Josie’s hands from her.
“After we take back the palace tomorrow, we can resume this…conversation.”
Josie couldn’t help but smirk. “Conversation?”
Aleissande’s eyes shut as she took a deep breath, as if shecould will patience into her bones. “Do not tempt me to kiss you quiet.”
Josie laughed. “You need to work on your threats, General. They’re not nearly as terrifying as they once were.”
Aleissande shook her head, but she smiled, light and free andhappy. Josie didn’t think she’d ever seen such an expression on her before.
“Tomorrow,” Aleissande vowed.
“Tomorrow.”
56
Aya stared at the granite throne unseeingly, lost to the memories of the last time she’d stood in this room. She swore she could still hear the crack of Tova’s neck reverberating throughout the space.
They’d dragged Will to the dungeons, leaving Aya to her own fate. He’d stayed calm until they tried to separate them, and then he’d thrashed against them, his neck craning to keep Aya in his sights.
An Anima had rendered him unconscious a moment later.
Aya closed her eyes, as if that would stop her tremors. They’d shackled her, of course, but this iron didn’t carry the heavy restriction of her affinities the way the shackles in Kakos had. Not that it mattered. Aya’s power might as well have been buried in the deepest parts of her.
She wasn’t sure she could manage a wisp of it, not with the way grief and panic were warring inside of her.
She’d expected this—to be greeted not as a weary woman returning home, but as a threat. A criminal. A prisoner. She’d expected this. But she hadn’t expected it to bethem.
It shouldn’t feel like such a betrayal. But itdid. Gods, itdid, and Aya hated how the sting of it tugged at her heart, dragging it into the pit of her stomach as she waited.
A loud click sounded from behind her—the throne room doors opening. Aya did not bother turning around to greet the new queen, but she tracked every one of her soft steps toward the throne. Hyacinth stopped just before it, her head tilting as she considered the granite chair,. Her shoulders rose and fell with a deep breath as she turned to face Aya, opting to stand instead.
She had shed her sheer off-white veil, trading it for the crown of granite Aya had last seen on Gianna, now nestled atop Hyacinth’s red hair. Aya wondered how long the High Priestess had waited before she plucked it off the queen’s dead body and placed it on her own head.
Hyacinth’s maroon Priestess robes, however, remained, and they swished against the floor as Hyacinth closed the distance between them. She stopped just before Aya, a small pinch forming between her brows as she held her gaze.
Silence lingered, full of the same tension that used to hover in those sessions in Hyacinth’s office in the Synastysi. Had she known, then, what she was doing? That in having Aya study Evie, she was opening up a channel between her and the demigod so that Evie could return?
It felt like a lifetime ago that Aya had sat petulantly in that chair, refusing to engage with Hyacinth’s pointed questions. One of them rose to her mind now, an echo of a past Aya felt so far from.
Why is it you believe the worst in yourself?
Because she had felt as though claiming her role as the Second Saint was the worst sort of betrayal to her people. A lie that she loathed telling them because she didn’t know how to save them.
But now…now they were the ones who believed it to be a lie, and they had made their retribution known. She could only hope that Hyacinth would hear reason, that Hyacinth would be the one to not see the worst in her.
