Page 146 of A Tribute of Fire

I bent down and caught his eye. He cocked his head to the side to look at me more properly.

“Can you talk?” I asked him.

I half expected him to answer. It wouldn’t have surprised me if he did.

Instead he just squawked. I let out a sigh of disgust. It was a foolish whim. I grabbed my broom and headed back to the temple.

But I did think about Jason and how he’d said a little bird had told him of my plans.

Too many things were happening at once. I couldn’t properly evaluate each separate incident in order to come up with reasonableexplanations. I was just more and more confused. I hated that there were so many things I didn’t understand and couldn’t puzzle out.

During my tutorial that morning with Maia, all I could think of was all the questions I had that I couldn’t say out loud. I only half listened to everything she was saying while the unanswerable issues I’d discovered swirled around in my head.

Dowries? Marriage? There had been no mistaking what I’d seen.

“Was there ever a time when temple priestesses got married?” I asked, interrupting her.

“Of course not.” She sounded scandalized. “Why would you think that?”

“I heard something during dinner the other day. Another acolyte, I think.”

“That’s not possible. It didn’t happen. Someone is making up lies,” she said.

Frustrated, I slunk down in my seat. I knew it wasn’t a lie. I had an official government document that proved otherwise.

Maia apparently felt as if she had failed my education in some way due to my erroneous belief, and it caused her to launch into more extensive, detailed explanations that made our session go long. I tried to force myself to pay attention but it was a losing battle.

Because of the delay, I had to hurry from my tutorial to the gymnasium. I was no closer to understanding what I had uncovered.

Zalira was sparring with Ahyana. Suri saw me first and nodded. I nodded back at her. She made the same hand motions she had yesterday when we’d sat on the riverbank.

Tell them.

It surprised me. What did she know? How did she always seem to intuit that I was keeping secrets when everyone else was oblivious?

Maybe the goddess spoke to her more often than I thought.

“How did things go?” Io asked anxiously when I came to stand next to her.

“Fine.” It was an inadequate explanation for what had occurred over the last few hours. I could still feel the phantom imprint of Jason’s body against mine.

Strangely enough, even though I’d just seen him, I missed him.

“I found out that my hair is red. Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked.

“We thought you knew!” Zalira said, surprised.

“It used to be light brown.” Now all my adelphia looked shocked.

Ahyana spoke first. “That happened to a woman in our old neighborhood. Remember, Zalira? Her family got lice and she had to shave all their heads to get rid of it. She’d had straight hair but then it grew back in curly.”

Even if they’d seen this type of thing before, I never had because no women in Locris cut their hair. It had been such an important part of my identity that I felt a little betrayed that it was growing back in differently.

I didn’t think anyone here would understand that, though.

“Who told you that your hair was red?” Io asked, her eyes narrowing at me. I knew that my sneaking out had been hard on her because of how much she cared about me. I’d expected her to be teasing and laughing with me this morning but she was being particularly somber.

I glanced over her shoulder and saw Suri, standing behind Io. Even though I hadn’t said Jason’s name, it was like Suri knew. My chest tightened. Was she going to find a way to communicate that to everyone else? How did she know?

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