Her eyes narrow. “You can still call me Jo.”
He looks at her for a moment and then frowns. “Your hair is a mess.”
Her eyebrows wing up her forehead. “That’show you start our first conversation in months?”
Panic flits through Flynn’s brown eyes. He looks like he’s fallen into quicksand and doesn’t know how to get out. He scratches the back of his neck, his face turning a ruddy color. “It’s only… I just thought something might be wrong.”
“Did you?” Jocasta crosses her arms, the movement thrusting her breasts up and revealing a good deal of skin at the neckline of her low-cut gown. Flynn tries so hard not to notice.Poor Flynn.
“Did you need something?” I ask.
He looks at me like I’m his savior. I’m getting that a lot lately. I hate it.Don’t these people know I’m doomed, and that I’m going to doom everyone along with me?
I guess not. Because I haven’t told them.
“Helen is leaving,” Flynn says.
“What? She just gave birth.”
“She says she can travel, and she looks like Zeus is chasing her with a thunderbolt. The woman is scared.”
Of me, of course. Either she thinks I’ll accuse her of my near-death—because, obviously, if someone tries to kill me, it must be family—or she knows her husband outed me to Griffin, and she’s afraid I’ll retaliate.
“Griffin is stalling your cousin and her family in the courtyard.”
I swallow, suddenly nervous. “He told you, then?” If Flynn knows Helen Fisa is my cousin, heknows.
Flynn grins, surprising me. “I knew you were holding out on us. Knowing you, it had to be something momentous.” He claps me on the shoulder, nearly sending me flying. “Glad you didn’t disappoint.”
Relief unties the knot of worry inside me, leaving me feeling absurdly emotional. “Tell Griffin I’ll be right there.”
Flynn nods. To Jocasta he says, “Jo.”
“Flynn,” she answers coolly.
He shuts the door, and she turns to me, dropping her crossed arms. “Well, that wasn’t awkward at all.”
I shake my head. “Not at all.”
“He’ll hate me now. I was awful.”
“It’ll take more than that for Flynn to hate a person he’s known nearly his whole life. Besides,” I say, thinking about how I treated Griffin for weeks, “men like a little awful. It keeps them on their toes.”
She frowns. “You think so?”
What do I know? I’m a disaster at relationships.“Don’t listen to me. Kaia would probably give better advice.”
Jocasta laughs. Then sighs. Then looks at the door.
I stop with my hand poised over the doorknob, glancing back at her. “I guess you know, too?”
Her chin notches up as she shifts her focus back to me. “Of course. All the family knows. Beta Fisa.My Gods.” She shakes her head. “Griffin wouldn’t keep something like that from us. Besides, he couldn’t have. When you disappeared, he looked like he’d been trampled by a herd of Centaurs and then sat on by a Cyclops. I’ve never seen anything like it. He was destroyed.” Her blue eyes harden as she adds, “It’s a good thing you didn’t really run away. I would have had to find you.”
It takes a direct order from Egeria, Alpha Sinta, to get Helen out of her carriage. I watch from the shaded terrace overlooking the woods. If I’d known it was going to be this much trouble to talk to Helen, I would have just let her go.
Helen leaves her infant boy with her husband and his parents. I’m not a fountain of experience in the matter, but I don’t think a woman leaves her newborn unless she thinks the child is safer without her. Once Helen finally starts toward me, she walks with her spine straight and her head high. As she should. She’s Zeta Fisa. After me, only three people separate her from the most powerful throne in the realms. And to think, I started out with seven siblings and she with four.
A team of dark horses prances, impatient. Oreste steps down from the carriage, leaving the door open and the baby inside. Preparing for a speedy escape?
