Page 152 of A Vow of Embers

“They have spent more time together than you and I have.”

It felt like there was something else he was saying, some underlying meaning, but I knew he wouldn’t explain. “Quynh told me thatthey were only friends. That the kiss was a onetime mistake. I don’t understand.”

“Maybe she hasn’t said anything to you because she knows about your irrational hatred for him.”

“What? It’s not irrational.”

“Thrax has done nothing to deserve this reaction from you.”

“He—” Xander was right. I was every bit as overprotective of my family as he was of his. I wasn’t behaving rationally. I hadn’t been for a long time. Quynh had remarked how unlike me this constant anger was. I didn’t want to keep feeling this way. I wanted to let go of it, but it had been part of me for so long that I wasn’t sure how.

“It feels like I’ve been so angry all the time that it has become my default emotion. My first reaction and I—”

“Leap off beds at men for wearing your sister’s bracelet?” I heard the teasing lilt in his voice.

“Yes. I don’t want to be this way.” I didn’t feel like myself.

“You can choose to be different. To change things.” He let out a deep breath. “We both could.”

He was right. Perhaps admitting it would be the first step toward choosing differently. “I might have overreacted by leaping at Thrax.”

“Might?” he repeated, and I both heard and felt his amusement. There was a pause, and then he said, “You have been using your anger to cover up other feelings. I know because I do the same.”

“What do you think I’m covering up?”

“Fear of the unknown, for one.”

He’d said he did the same. “What do you fear?”

Another long pause. “A great many things.”

I had only a moment to wonder what this goddess-blessed man could possibly fear before he went on. “But if you keep behaving like this toward Thrax, if you don’t change things, you will drive your sister away. It has become serious between them.”

I couldn’t lose Quynh. That was the last thing I wanted. “How serious?”

“He loves her.”

Everything stopped. “What?”

“And she loves him.”

Now I sagged against him. “That’s not true.”

“It is.”

“Have they said the words?”

“Yes.”

My shoulders collapsed and my legs stopped working. His arms around my waist were the only thing keeping me upright.

Quynh had bound herself to Thrax. To his home, Ilion. It was why she had behaved so strangely when I’d spoken to her about the two of us returning to Locris. Despite telling me that he was only her friend, she had been falling in love with him and had no intention of going back with me.

I was her sister. The first person she should have told. How could Xander have known before me? Why wouldn’t she have confided in me?

“Why didn’t she tell me?” I couldn’t keep the misery out of my voice.

His tone was soothing. “She knows that you hate him. Perhaps she was worried about upsetting you. Or she might not have wanted you to object and possibly ruin her happiness.”

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