Saros nodded, neither approving nor disapproving.Kai’s heart sank.
He had never done anything worth praise.Not when his brothers all led fleets and built shrines; not when his father was a legend and his mother was a murderer.All Kai had ever been was the failure, rapidly running out of new and exciting things to make his family forget what he had done.
Saros ushered Malia out of the room, chattering about some fancy shellfish his chefs had prepared for them.Kai hoped it wasn’t mussels.River watched them go, looking torn as to whether he should follow or stay with Ione; he opted to stay, his offhand still on his rapier as he stood beside the door.
Hilo sidled up beside Kai, smirking.“That really was something, little brother.”
Meanwhile, Kai felt faint, not that anyone had asked.He swallowed thickly.
A challenge, a game.He liked games, was good at winning them.He would show Saros how useful he was, how spectacular.He would protect Oseidos, protect the priesthood and its devotees.Protect their supposed goddess.
Ione rose in his periphery, stretching indulgently.She swayed past Kai and Hilo without a second glance, rubbed up against River like a cat, and dragged him with her out of the room.
Kai stared after her, thinking.
Whether or not her divinity was bullshit didn’t matter: Ione was important.Once Menon manifested –according to what Mam had heard from Saros, anyhow –Ione would unite their people, hail the end of all wars between Moth and Snake.While Kai doubted her ability, one thing was clear.
He could use her.
You’re a smart lad.A good one.His father’s deathbed words, his huge hand on Kai’s head.Keep practicing those wards.Someday,voirneen, you’ll become something great.
Something like Ahe himself, the person they sang songs about down south.A leader.A unifier.
It felt unbelievable, even now, that a shark of a man could have been made so small by what started as a fever.
Droves of his father’s strongest spellcasters abandoned their fleets after Malia took over, and Kai’s brothers were stupid in their contentment, in their blind willingness to follow Mother Dearest as she paraded them into obscurity.Kai wasn’t good – he had already failed his father immeasurably – but he was smart, smarter than his brothers, his self-righteous mother.With the right backing, he’d earn those spellcasters back and then some.With Menon Apparent’s blessing, Kai would become everything Ahe had seen in him.
Warden of Oseidos.
More.
Holy Seleneschal to the Goddess.
More.
The Victor of the Last War.
It all had a nice ring to it.
Chapter Three
Lina
Time did not douse the fires that still plagued the memories of theCaelosi.Two weeks after arriving on Oseidos, Lina still lied awake on her cot each night, counting the breaths of her neighbours, listening to Ami’s dreamlike mumbling.Waiting for the inevitable child’s cry, the shrill gasp of someone jolting awake.
We’re safe,came the whispered response.Don’t cry.
Like others prayed before bed, Lina tallied all the times in her life she had thought herself safe.A swift slap across both cheeks for swiping a suncake from an altar.The jeers and laughter from her classmates for showing off a healing spell instead of mastering scorching blades.Fire and smoke, the deaths of so many innocents, for believing her brother could not make it past the mist wards that had until then protected Caelos Shrine.
“It’s not your fault,” she whispered to herself, worrying at a hole in her cot with her fingertip.She wished someone else would say it.She wished it was true.
Lina, Castor had called over the roar of the flames, the screams of her new family.Are you there?Are you ready to face Sowelan?
Lina curled up tighter beneath the patchwork quilt and pressed her palms over her ears, willing the hours to pass.The sun to rise.
“Knock, knock.”A hand parted the curtain around her cot.Ami peered in, smiling as always, although her skin had a pallor to it that implied she’d gotten as much sleep as Lina had.“You decent?”
Lina was always decent.She, like many of them, still slept in the second-hand clothes donated to them by Oseidos’s priests.A pair of boots stood ready, just in case, on the stone floor beside her other belongings.A basket of toiletries: toothbrush and comb, a towel, a lump of rosemary soap; an extra dress, worn at the armpits; a bottle of sweet almond hair oil she had traded her ring for.
