I swallow. “Ianthe, then.” I turn to my sister. “She’ll bring the healer here.”
Griffin hesitates, considering. I’ll never know if he would have agreed because Appoline stops us all.
“I have my coin.” Appoline pats my hand. Her increasingly unfocused gaze slides over me from below. “I saw this was my time.”
I blink in shock. “You’re a seer?”How did I not know that?No wonder she looks so lost. Her eyes are turned to the inside!
“I sent our healer to the hunting lodge this morning. She’s across the grounds.” Her voice comes out wheezing and wet, but Appoline still sounds like she thinks that was a fantastic idea.
Bellanca goes limp, the fight and the fire draining from her. Her eyes fill with tears again. “But why?”
“So you’d know you couldn’t reach her in time. So you wouldn’t get hurt trying.” Appoline smiles again. “So you wouldn’t blame the Alpha and the Origin for my death.”
I gasp, and my stomach does something truly acrobatic that leaves me short of breath. My eyes fly to Griffin’s. He looks just as stunned.
Bellanca shakes her head, quietly crying. Lystra sobs loudly, and Ianthe goes to her.
“Let them go!” I order sharply.
I’m almost surprised when Griffin and Flynn comply. They look more than ready to grab them again, but the two Tarvan women don’t try to run.
“Listen to me,” the seer tells her sisters, something steely veining her fading voice. “I believe in the Alpha and the Origin. No harm must come to Princess Eleni. You must protect her with your lives.”
The blood drains from my face so fast I see spots. When it comes roaring back, it thunders like a storm in my ears. Just for a moment—a crazy, irrational moment—I thought maybe it wasn’t real. That I was wrong. Otis. The knife. My sister’s blood. But I know better. Sheisgone. Itwasreal. I saw her in the Underworld.
“You can’t save her.” I can barely push the words past the burning thickness of unshed tears in my throat. I try to blink the sting from my eyes but end up seeing her long blonde hair spread out like a sunset, gold streaked with red. “Eleni’s dead.”
Appoline looks so peaceful, but the blood on her lips turns the saliva in my mouth to ash. “Eleni is dark like the night.” She lets go of my hands, and her fingers brush the end of my sable braid. My heart starts beating too fast. I know whose hair is darker than mine. “And bright like the day.” Appoline’s small hand stops over my heart. “She joinseverything.” Her hand doesn’t move again, but she’s still smiling, like she accomplished some great feat, or this day ended exactly how she meant it to. Her eyes, blessed—and cursed—with the sight, don’t close. They stay open and haunting.
She joins everything.Night. Day. North. South. Magoi. Hoi Polloi.
Me. Griffin.
An anguished sound leaks from me that mixes with Bellanca’s and Lystra’s broken sobs. The spark of life low in my belly is suddenly so obvious I can feel it pulsing with every thump of blood through my veins. My heart hammers. I can hardly breathe. Only panic jumps up and down my throat. I fought the living dead, braved the Ice Plains, nearly drowned, got mauled by the Hydra, competed in the Agon Games, and confronted the Tarvan royals…all witha babyinside me?
I slowly turn my head, and my wide eyes collide with Griffin’s steady gray gaze. He looks appallingly unsurprised.
I can’t believe him!All those times he ordered me to be careful, to not take a hit to the middle, his paying closer attention than usual to what I eat. That must be how they grow such big men in southern Sinta. Stuff pregnant women with meat.
I see joy in his eyes. And worry.Over my reaction?Heshouldbe worried. “You knew, and you didn’t tell me!”
Griffin looks taken aback. “No. But I thought maybe… I hoped…”
“I’ve risked my life over and over!” I explode.
He crouches next to me, the line between his eyebrows deepening into a harsh groove. “And over and over, I asked you to stop taking unnecessary risks.”
I snort loudly. “What I consider an unnecessary risk completely changed about thirty seconds ago!”
He takes a deep breath and then swipes his hand through his hair, shoving it back. “I didn’t want you worrying about one more thing when I could have been wrong. There are plenty of reasons for you to be tired and emotional.”
“Tired and emotional!”Oh Gods, I have been tired and emotional.“So this was another ‘wait and see’? How is thatevera good idea?”
“If I’d put ideas into your head, ideas that might not even have been true, you would have fought differently, overthought things. You don’t change technique in the middle of a battle, Cat. That’s how you lose your sword.”
I get what he’s saying. I’m not sure I agree. And he doesn’t know that powerful Magoi,ifthey’re paying attention, can feel the new life force inside them almost immediately. “Well, I might have hesitated once in a while!”
“Exactly. Hesitating is what gets a person like you killed.”
