This was like an infection.
Lina shook her head, groaning.“I need to wake up.After everything you went through on Oseidos, everything you must’ve been feeling after, you came to Soliz for me.”Tears pricked her eyes, but she forced them down and bowed her forehead against Ione’s.“And – you brought me back.”
Ione traced Lina’s jaw, the line of her neck.The faint bruising she still felt across her throat from when Sowelan snapped Kai’s ward in half as easily as a length of thread.Ione cupped Lina’s face, her thumb sweeping across her eyelashes, brushing away her tears.
“I’d still be there, without you,” Lina whispered.“Doing gods-know-what for Rigel and the rest of the high priests.”She played with Ione’s hand, thinking, her eyes on her own missing fingers.There had to be something they could do, some way out of this.Sowelan reverberated, made her blood course electric through her veins, and she thought – believed, with every inch of her – that this could not possibly be the rest of her life.
“I know you hate him, and that this might be risky,” Lina began, pensive.“But – could Saros do it, d’you think?I don’t know if Kai could without accidentally killing me, from how you said he lost control at Soliz, but – ”
Ione frowned.“How do you mean?”
Lina gestured at herself.“Remove Sowelan?From me?I mean – ” She glanced away.“I’m sorry, I’m sure you don’t want to talk about it.And – maybe I’m naïve to think Saros could do it, orwoulddo it, but since so much of the higher-tiered stuff is similar between pyromancy and hydro – ”
“Lina.”Something in the way Ione was looking at her frightened her, still frowning, her confusion clear.Ione shook her head, her mouth opening like she meant to say more, but nothing else came out.
Lina’s heart skipped and she grasped Ione’s hands, the words tumbling from her: “I know you hate Saros.I hate to ask.But if he could – he’s an Archpriest for a reason, right?Hecould, probably, couldn’t he?”She sensed belatedly that Ione was pulling away, but she couldn’t let go, couldn’t stop herself.“I don’t want Sowelan.I don’t care what Saros does to Him.I just – I want my body back – ”
“I know,” Ione said quickly, apologetic.“I know, but – Lina, Menon just… left me.”She looked down, her face reddening.“There wasn’t a ritual or anything.I didn’t even know She’d gone.”
Lina’s skin prickled, the air suddenly too warm.“That… that isn’t possible, Ione.”
“But nothing – nothinghappenedto me.”She freed one hand and wrapped it around her own neck, eyes still trained to the uneven floorboards.“Right up until the moment I… I thought She was still with me.”
“Something had to have happened,” Lina said, her mind racing through what little she knew about the ward Rigel had described while she was awaiting her fate.From the way Ione told it, Kai hated possessing Menon, so he couldn’t have been the one to move Her.Whoever did it had been stealthy; it would have been a months-long process if it had happened without Ione’s knowledge.
“I was born with Menon,” Ione insisted weakly.“I never felt… like you do.Or Kai.”
“If how Kai and I feel is any indication, Sowelan and Menon hate this,” Lina grumbled, brushing her arms and legs as though Sowelan was a serpent, a segmented belly slithering up and down her body.“Sowelan didn’t choose this, and Menon wouldn’t’ve, either.”She pressed a palm over her heart, sensing His displeasure.“Trust me,” she murmured.“A god wouldn’t inject themself into a mortal body on purpose.”
Ione shifted uncomfortably, her eyes darting.Thinking.“I was born with Her,” she repeated, desperate.“My hair, my skin – Mother said that the high priests saw me and knew I just had to be Menon.”
Lina gaped.Thatwas what they told her?She thought of the albino peacocks on Oseidos, treasured, supposedly Menon-blessed.And the scores of brown chicks hatching from eggs, sold off, disposed of.
Her hands clenched into fists.“If the high priests were the ones who called you divine,” she ground out, “then it was one of them who did this to you.”
She imagined Ione as a baby, her parents overjoyed to behold her.And the high priests, seeing not a child but an opportunity, a fitting candidate.A cage for a god.
Ione gripped a fistful of her dress, her jaw clenched.She swallowed hard.“Why you?”she managed, hoarse.“For Sowelan – why you?”
“He wanted my brother.Apparently this was what Castor was working towards.”Lina huffed out a mirthless laugh.“Successor.I thought that meant he was angling to take over as archpriest after Rigel retired.Shows how much I was listening.”She sighed.“With Castor dead, Rigel had to change tack.Find someone with a magical signature as close to Castor’s as possible.And me stupidly walking right through those doors saved him a lot of trouble.”
Finally Ione lifted her head, her wide eyes boring into Lina’s.“So…” She trembled – not from fear, Lina realised, but from rage.“Your magical signature had to be… similar to Castor’s?”
Slowly, Lina nodded.
Ione stared ahead, still shaking.“So mine and Kai’s – Because we – ” Fury twisted her mouth.“Because we – grew close, our magical signatures…”
Without warning Ione launched to her feet, pacing, eyes down as she wrung her hands together.“That’s why,” she hissed, “He was so pleased when we announced our engagement.He hadn’t even seemed surprised, just – happy.”She stifled a disgusted curse.“He would ask, sometimes, at dinner.‘How are you getting on with our warden?’I thought he was just mocking me, reminding me how powerful Kai is, how much helikedhim – ”
Saros.Of course.Lina hadn’t been the only one to notice how he looked at Kai, covetous, inciting more than a few crude jokes from some of theCaelosi.But it wasn’t that sort of desire, but the desire, instead, for a tool, a shiny new weapon.
Ione whirled, looking like she wanted to break something, hurt something, and Lina rose to catch her, fold her into her arms.Hold her together, like Ione had held her when she woke up from Sowelan’s possession.
Ione sobbed, the tears finally coming.“This was what he wanted.Get Kai close enough to me so that he could switch Menon over to someone he could control.Glorify a Mahina son, bring in all their money and influence and naval prowess…” She heaved, made a choking sound.“He wanted us to –expectedus to – ”
Lina held her tighter.“We’ll run,” she whispered.“We’ll leave.Go south, hide away somewhere.We’ll never see any of them again.”
Ione didn’t seem to hear her.“Years of disappointments.Hundreds of failures.Countless burdens on my shoulders – save our people, do more,bemore – and when I couldn’t carry it all, he just took it away from me.”She pushed herself out of Lina’s grasp, her eyes burning with a hatred deeper than words could describe.
