Page 211 of A Vow of Embers

There was much for me to think about on my own, so I changed the subject to Luna and how I thought she might be able to communicate with me.

“Maybe it was a coincidence,” Ahyana offered carefully. As if she thought I might have gone mad.

It hadn’t felt coincidental, though.

We talked about the magic. What Io had done and whether she could do it again. If it would ever get easier for her. None of us had any answers.

Zalira opened up about what had happened with Stephanos, and Ahyana held her hand the entire time.

“There have been so many things I’ve been furious about,” Zalira said. “I had to survive on my own for a year before Ahyana was old enough to race. Everything was stolen from us. Our parents are gone. Sometimes I worry that it made me too hard, too angry.”

I knew exactly what she meant.

“You have a right to be,” Ahyana told her.

“Maybe I do. But I don’t want to feel this way anymore. I don’t want to be closed off. I want to be open. To life. To love.”

It was also what I wanted. I wanted to stop being so angry. To stop thinking the worst of others. To find a way to be happy again.

Io started to say, “But we can’t—”

“I know,” Zalira interrupted her. “But I want to be in a relationship. To be able to tell Stephanos that I feel about him the way he feels about me. Create that bond that will knit our souls together. I can feel where he is right now, like I could internally track his location. If I was blindfolded, I would be able to walk straight to him. It’s fainter when he’s further away, but when we’re closer like this?”

She put a hand over her heart, as if she wanted to smooth away the pain. “I can only imagine how much stronger it would be if I told him I loved him, too.”

This had to be agonizing for her. It was a good reminder as to why I should protect my heart from Xander. I didn’t want to be in this kind of pain.

The pain I was dealing with now was more than enough.

“He’s your soulmate,” Ahyana said to her sister.

Zalira nodded. “I know that we are meant to devote ourselves to the goddess. But he and I are the same. Two halves of a whole. I will always feel like a part of me is missing without him.”

We fell into silence then, listening as the wheels rolled over the stone road. I turned to watch the scenery, not wanting to focus on Xander’s back. Zalira’s words filled my head and I wished that I could help her. Find a way to ease this situation.

I saw a skeleton lying on the side of the road. A sign said he had been a bandit and had been left here to rot, denied the peace that came with a burial in the earth.

The locals had left him as a warning.

An uneasy feeling settled in my gut.

Io spent the trip reading. I tried to do the same, but it made me feel ill to read while the cart was moving, so I gave it up.

We stopped a few times to stretch our legs, to water the horses, to relieve ourselves.

When it was nearly nightfall, Xander chose a hill for us to make camp on. I was stiff and tired as I climbed out of the cart, as were my sisters. Xander and his men immediately started to set up two tents. Itlooked as if they had done it a thousand times before, and within a few minutes, they were constructed.

As we watched the men work, Ahyana said, “I’ve been thinking. We should try to alter the life mage’s phrase with our own aspect. Maybe we can do magic, too. Like I could invoke pollinators by saying ‘Dea Karpophoroi’ ...”

Her voice died out as we heard a loud humming sound. A large swarm of bees flew overhead, as if awaiting command.

And then Ahyana slumped to the ground.

The bees flew away while we crowded around her.

For some reason I had assumed that only Io could wield magic. It made sense—she was the one the goddess had visited in person, the one who most fervently believed, the most devoted.

It had never occurred to me that the rest of us might be able to do magic as well.

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