A Visya withoneaffinity.
Persuasion.
Galda took advantage of her silence, as she often did. “If what you two believe of the demigod is true—that when her power is greatest, her shield is the weakest—then you have the perfect opportunity to persuade her to mend the veil.”
“So you want her to…what? Wait until Evie is at her weakest point? Wouldn’t that mean she’d be tearing down the veil?” Aidon asked.
Galda shrugged. “She would be starting to, only to fix it with her own power.” She turned her attention back to Aya. “You did want to kill her, yes?”
“I don’t…” Aya swallowed. Tried again. “I don’t know if I’m strong enough to persuade her.”
Galda did not waver. “But you’re not an ordinary Persi, are you?” Her gaze flicked to Will, her meaning clear: Aya’s persuasion had long proven to go beyond the bounds of the normal affinity.
Will’s eyes, gray, like the clouds just before a storm, bored into hers. For once, the memory of that day did not seem to haunt them.
“And if you need help,” Natali drawled, pulling Aya’s attention away from her love. “Then you could always leverage this.”
They reached into their pocket, brandishing a small vial that Aya would recognize anywhere.
“We planned to use it on the battlefield to interfere with their warriors’ powers,” Natali explained, tilting the vial of tonic so it caught the torchlight. “I didn’t think it would be effective against a god. Unless…”
“Unless that god had a weakness,” Aya breathed. She turned to Aidon, her heart pounding in her chest. “How much did you bring?”
Aidon lounged back in his chair, a satisfied smirk twisting his lips.
“All of it.”
66
The days preparing for battle were long with all that needed to be done: Battle plans to be discussed and weapons to be made and citizens to be prepared and contingencies to be planned for. And yet Aya still felt as though time was slipping through her fingers like the fine grains of sand the littered the beach in Rinnia.
She and Will had taken to one of the guest rooms of the palace, but they were up early and to bed late, exhaustion dragging them into sleep so quickly that they hardly had time to say good night.
She tried to steal moments where she could—not just with Will, but with Pa, too, and Josie, and Aidon, and Liam.
With all of them.
She told herself it wasn’t in preparation for the worst, and yet…she didn’t believe the lie she was telling herself. She doubted any of them did. The reality of what was coming hung heavily over all of them, lingering like a phantom presence at every quick meal they took together, cutting every stolen laugh far too short.
Aya stretched her legs beneath the table, her muscles aching from the training Galda insisted she do in preparationfor facing Evie. She was in the dining hall, Will seated on one side, Josie on the other, Pa across the table. She’d laid the tonic-laced dagger on the center of the scratched wood surface, careful to keep it sheathed even while the others examined it.
“And they’re imbuing other weapons with it as well?” Pa asked as he dunked his bread in his soup.
“Some of them,” Aya answered as she picked at her own bowl. Will glanced down, tracking her movements, before he gently pushed the bowl away and handed her a piece of bread instead—as if he knew exactly what her stomach, nervous as it was, could and could not handle.
She gave him a soft smile before turning back to her father. “But Aidon says the bulk of the tonic will be used for the first wave of the attack.”
The first wave for which Aya would not be on the front lines. As if remembering this himself, Pa’s mouth twisted into a bitter frown.
“I don’t like the idea of you using yourself as bait,” he muttered darkly. It was an effort for Aya to refrain from sighing. They’d had this argument already.
“She’ll be well protected, Callias,” Josie assured him. “Between Aidon and Will and her own an abilities, there is nothing to fear.”
Aya shot her friend a grateful look. It had warmed her heart to see Pa welcome her friends into the fold of their family so effortlessly—especially when Josie and Aidon were worried about their own parents and their wellbeing.
A murmur rippled through the dining hall, and Aya turned to see Liam standing in the entrance, a grim set to his mouth. He stepped up on the nearest bench, clearing his throat loudly.
Aya knew, before he even said a word, what this meant.
