Page 39 of A Tribute of Fire

My sister was strong, but she wasn’t invincible. I didn’t know what to do.

Other than not leave her behind.

“What was that about?” Quynh asked, her dark eyes blinking at me.

At first I wasn’t sure what she meant, given where my thoughts had gone, but then I realized she was talking about Jason. She sat up next to me and stretched.

“With Jason?” I clarified. “He was just bringing us breakfast. Pasteli. You should have some.”

I didn’t manage to distract her, though.

“How do you know him?”

“I met him. The day of the celebration for Kallisto’s betrothal.”

She wasn’t put off by my casual evasiveness. She studied me before announcing, “Something happened between you two.”

Were my cheeks red? Had I somehow tipped her off? “What would make you say that?”

Quynh arched one eyebrow at me. “How well I know you.”

I should have taken that into account before I’d started trying to avoid her question. “I met him in the tree courtyard and we might have ... we kissed.”

“You kissed an Ilionian?” She practically shrieked the words.

“Not on purpose!”

“I just ... can’t believe your first kiss was with an Ilionian.”

“Neither can I. The thought of it makes me sick.”

That wasn’t true. The memory of that event excited me, and I wanted to seek him out and do it again. To see if it would be different this time now that I knew who he was.

To find out if I would enjoy it as much.

I suspected that it would be just as intense, just as satisfying, which was concerning because I didn’t know what it said about me.

But I could never share any of that with another person. It was far too humiliating to say out loud.

“You shouldn’t have been alone with a man you didn’t know,” she said, and I could almost hear my mother’s voice, as she had told us the same thing many times over. “He could have seriously hurt you.”

“I ...” My voice trailed off because I realized that once he’d stepped out of the shadows, there had never been a moment where I had feared that Jason would harm me.

Maybe that had been due to my naivete or just the power of his kisses, but I hadn’t been scared of him. Even when he’d held me down and I couldn’t move.

Unlike Lykaon, whom I had immediately found terrifying.

“You’re right,” I finally said, since I had sat there in silence for too long. “I should have left the moment I saw him. Then I never would have kissed a horrible Ilionian.”

“They can’t all be bad,” she said.

“They can,” I disagreed. “Especially Jason. He’s transporting us to be hunted.”

I wouldn’t say that he was taking us to be killed. When I spoke to Quynh about what was coming, I would stay positive for her benefit. Maybe if she believed that she would make it through, then she would.

“We’re all subject to the same rules,” she said. “He’s no more at fault for this than we are.”

That seemed like a weak excuse to me. “Someone should stand up against this archaic event.”

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