Page 9 of A Tribute of Fire

Their arrival meant my departure.

“Yes,” my mother said. “Everything is as it should be.”

There wasn’t much for her to do to prepare. The Ilionians would bring everything they needed with them. They knew how poor we were, and that we did not have the resources to properly host them.

It was another way they shamed and humiliated us.

“You should destroy their ship before it even docks,” Doria muttered to absolutely no one’s surprise. She also blamed the Ilionians for Haemon’s death and it had made her bloodthirsty.

I liked her more for it.

“We don’t need to destroy the Ilionians,” I said carefully. I had wondered for a long time how much my parents knew or remembered about the old myths and legends, the way that the Locrians used to worship the goddess. Maybe if they could believe in her, believe that there was away to save our nation, it would be easier for them when I left. “If we could restore the goddess’s favor, find a way for her to remove the curse from our lands ...”

Everyone was staring at me as if I’d sprouted a second head. It should have made me stop talking, as it was forbidden, but I continued. “If we can find the eye of the goddess, we can save Locris.”

“‘Eye of the goddess.’ Why would you speak such heresy at my table? Who believes in those kinds of ridiculous superstitions?” my father scoffed angrily.

How would he respond if I said I did? I wanted to argue with him, to show him that there was another way than to just give in and watch as our people died, but I didn’t want my defiance to be his possible last memory of me.

My mother changed the subject, speaking of the materials Lykaon’s letter had promised so that she and my sisters could make Kallisto’s wedding dress.

“You could join us, Thalia,” she said to me. It was the closest she came to being annoyed these days—using the name I was known by to the rest of the nation.

My actual name, Euthalia, was never used. I had hated it since I was a small child and had insisted on my nicknames. Princess Thalia for more formal occasions, Lia for my friends and family.

“All I’ll do is tangle your careful threads,” I said. While I’d always enjoyed weaving, I wasn’t as good at it as my siblings were.

I also could not make promises that I wouldn’t be able to keep.

Then Doria asked Kallisto what type of embroidery she planned on doing along the edges of her dress and the rest of the dinner was spent discussing my sister’s bridal wardrobe.

But all I could think about was my father calling the eye of the goddess superstition.

It wasn’t. It couldn’t be.

The curse was real. I knew for a fact that the eye was real, that Locris had had its own eye a long time ago.

I wondered how many generations it had taken for people to forget, to turn their backs on the goddess the way she had turned her back on them.

When dinner was over I went out onto the balcony that overlooked the ocean and sat down on a stone bench. Usually it brought me peace to sit out here, but my father’s words were causing me to doubt myself and the plans I had put in motion.

My mother joined me on the bench and asked, “Are you nervous about your own marriage?”

Suppressing a laugh, I said, “No.” It was entirely truthful. I wasn’t the least bit worried about having to marry the foolish, wasteful, selfish prince of Ilion, because no wedding would take place. In a week I would be dead or an acolyte in the temple of the goddess. “I was thinking about what Father said. That he thinks that the eye is superstition. Magic is real. We’ve seen it.”

I shouldn’t have been pressing the issue, as it might arouse her suspicion, but she didn’t look for a deeper context for my statement. “It’s easier for women to believe in magic because we have the ability to make life and carry it inside us. We’re already magic. And it is a magic no man will ever understand.”

In a sense she was right, but that wasn’t what I was talking about. I did consider what she was saying, though. That I carried a spark of magic in me that I might never get to experience.

Initially, after Haemon’s death, I had assumed that I would do what was required of me—I would marry the prince and bear his heirs. Even before my brother had left, I had imagined that I would someday marry and have children.

Become a mother.

One more dream I was most likely going to have to give up.

A horn bellowed, loud and deep. I got to my feet as my racing heart leapt up into my throat.

A giant ship came into view.

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