Page 134 of A Vow of Embers

That was a ridiculous impulse. I wasn’t a child. And I needed to clean up the vase that I’d broken. While the idea of him cutting open his feet as he walked on it appealed to me, I would get the same cuts on my own feet.

I needed to remain uninjured because I knew exactly how to prove him wrong.

After all, he was the one who had personally showed me where Troas’s administration building was located.

Chapter Forty-Three

Another sleepless night while I plotted exactly how I was going to sneak out of the palace. I hated it when people accused me of being wrong about something, especially when I knew that I was right.

He left before the sun had risen and I grabbed a quick nap. I was woken up by Luna, who chittered at me from her box. Both Parthenia and Kunguru had done an excellent job of bringing in various insects for Luna to eat, which made her happy. My lizard seemed to love attention. She especially loved it when I stroked her back.

As I moved my finger down her spine, I noticed two new bumps directly across from one another. That was odd.

My adelphia came into my room and greeted me, and I put Luna back into her enclosure. I prepared for their barrage of questions. They had to have heard Xander and me arguing the night before—we had certainly been loud enough.

But none of them said anything. “Aren’t you going to ask me about all the yelling last night?”

“That’s not exactly an unusual occurrence,” Ahyana said as she opened her book to start her word hunt. Suri nodded.

Zalira grabbed her own book. “Breaking things was new.”

They were being so nonchalant, and that argument had felt huge to me. He had been so unreasonable. “You weren’t worried about me?”

“My brother would never hurt you and you can’t hurt him, so no, we weren’t worried,” Io said.

Ahyana ran her finger along the sentences. “As I said, I think you two replace affection and intimacy with arguing.”

That wasn’t at all what was happening. A nagging internal voice reminded me of when Xander had told me that Thrax purposely riled Quynh up just so that she wouldn’t ignore him. I hated when Xander ignored me. Maybe I was doing that myself.

Or maybe he was doing that to me.

Ahyana flicked a braid over her shoulder and I saw that she had replaced her ribbons with silver ones. “I like your new ribbons.”

“Rokh sent them to me. Silver is his favorite color.”

Zalira wore that worried expression that made me want to comfort her, and I continued to share in her concern. Ahyana was going to get hurt.

I let out a grunt of pain. My right arm was throbbing. I lifted it up and saw a large bruise appearing. Xander must have gotten hit in sparring.

“That is so strange. I don’t think I’ll ever get used to it,” Zalira said as she looked at my arm.

“Io is going to find a way to stop it from happening.”

“Yes,” Io said. “There is just so much to get done. But it is on the list.”

I supposed the reason that I wanted them to ask me about the fight was that I was going to use it as a way to tell them about my plans to sneak out into Troas again. I knew they could help me.

But ever since we had all come to the palace, it felt like everything had changed. They were still my sisters, my adelphia, and I adored them. I would do anything for them. But there were so many other things we had to concern ourselves with now. There were romances and secret scrolls from the treasury and me trying to find out whatever information I could about the eye of the goddess without them knowing what they were helping me search for. I had responsibilities to Xander and the court, and I was supposed to still be helping him gain his throne.

And I had to stay away from people who wanted to kill me.

Our days had felt easier in the temple. I thought of Ahyana telling me that she believed I had a different path than the rest of them did. That our split as a group was inevitable.

I didn’t want it to be true but it felt as if it had already begun.

I ran through several different scenarios in my head before the prince returned to our room for the evening. Usually I faked being asleep, but tonight I waited for him.

If I offered him a glass of wine, he would be suspicious. He would know what I had done. I couldn’t give him any indication that I wanted him to drink it. I had put on a gauzy, practically transparent nightdress that I’d never worn before. Io had said that men were easily distracted by women and I hoped this would help me.

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