Page 5 of A Vow of Embers

Io’s fingers were twitching and she was having a hard time meeting my gaze. She seemed afraid of me, and it made me feel bad. “Can Lia and I speak privately?” she asked.

“If you won’t do it for her, please listen for our sakes,” Ahyana said, her dark brown eyes shimmering with unshed tears. I felt another pang of guilt that my anger had caused her pain, too.

Then she stood up, which caused Kunguru to fly from her shoulder and land on the windowsill. Zalira and Ahyana left, Suri following behind them. Suri gave me one last warning glare before she closed the door.

“Are you going to stab me?” Io said it lightly, as if she were joking, but I heard the real and probably valid concern in her question.

I had never felt so defeated—not even when we had searched the temple treasury and not found the eye of the goddess, which was the entire reason I had come to Ilion. The prince had destroyed my spirit with what he’d done.

But that wasn’t her fault. “I don’t want to hurt you, Io.”

“That’s a start,” she said with a nod. She sat down on her own bed, her hands in her lap. “You could, and there wouldn’t be anyone to stop you.”

It never would have occurred to me to hurt Io. But she was right—I could. And if I attacked Io, I knew that it would devastate Prince Alexandros. He would get a taste of what he had done to me.

As soon as I thought it, I was filled with shame. No matter how angry I was at her, Io was still my sworn sister. I would never harm her just to get back at him. I still loved and cared about her. It was why her betrayal had stung so deeply.

And it’s why Jason’s betrayal stings just as deeply,some voice inside me whispered, but I ignored it.

She began to open a satchel that I hadn’t noticed at first. She walked over to the center of the room and laid out sticks and logs. She sprinkled something on top of them and they immediately caught fire.

“What are you doing?” I asked, a bit alarmed. I didn’t think we were supposed to be lighting fires in the dormitories.

She took out a vial, a leaf, a knife. She sliced open her hand and let the blood drip onto the leaf, followed by sap from the vial, and then added a lock of her hair. She knelt in front of the fire, holding the leaf aloft. She stared at me, her gaze intense. “By the goddess, with my blood and body, I reaffirm my vow of loyalty to you. I will keep all your secrets and I will never betray you again. I will not tell my brother anything that you don’t want him to know. And I will never lie to you again. I swear it.”

Then she dropped everything into the fire, and there was a green flash. She threw a heavy cloth over the fire, putting it out. Smoke billowed out from beneath the cloth. Satisfied that the flames had completely died out, she removed the cloth and returned to sitting on her bed. I watched as she wrapped her hand with a bandage.

My heart was beating erratically, my lungs constricted tightly in my chest. The enormity of what she had just done was not lost on me. She had chosen the one way she could prove her loyalty to me and that her word was true.

“I beg your forgiveness for hurting you,” Io said, her gaze focused on her bandage as she tucked in the ends. “But I will not apologize for what I did. I would do anything for you, but I will not betray the promise I made to the goddess to keep you safe. That is sacrosanct tome above all other things. Even if it makes you upset with me, I will do what I have to do to protect you.”

“Protect me?” I echoed the words back to her. I was about to tell her she was the last person who could protect me, but the image of her plunging a sword through that man’s neck flashed in my mind. As Ahyana and Zalira had pointed out, Io had already kept me safe, going against her own personal beliefs to do so.

She kept her gaze on her hand. “I know I’m not strong like you, not as fast, not as skilled at fighting. Which is why I’m entrusting you to my brother. He has spent his entire life protecting me; he will keep you safe.”

I wanted to protest. She held her brother in too high esteem.

“Xander will do what I cannot, and I am asking you to let him do it.”

“Io ...” My voice trailed off because I wasn’t sure what to say to her. I didn’t want her brother to come anywhere near me. I would never trust him to keep me safe.

Never.

She stood up and turned her back to me. She pulled her tunic down over her right shoulder. There was a wicked scar there that looked suspiciously like ... “Did someone whip you?” I asked, incredulous.

Io covered her shoulder and sat down on the bed again, looking directly at me. I had to suppress a gasp. In this light her eyes were so like her brother’s that I felt like a complete fool for not realizing their familial connection earlier.

“My stepmother used to beat me. Sometimes she would use leather belts and one time, when she was angry enough, a whip. When she hit me, she did it on parts of my body that no one else would see. I didn’t tell anyone, especially not Xander, because he would have killed her and then my father would have been honor bound to seek vengeance against his own son. I didn’t want to destroy what was left of my family.”

Then she raised her tunic and showed me the top of her left thigh. The skin there was shiny and tight. “Once my stepmother burned me with a heated blade as punishment. I nearly passed out when I had toseal your wound because that smell of burning flesh ... I remembered it all too well. Scent memories are like that, aren’t they?”

I hadn’t considered that Io sealing my stab wound shut might have been hurtful to her. But she had done it anyway, pushed ahead regardless of the bad memories that it brought up for her.

She had saved my life, killed a man to protect me, and she would do it all again. I knew that.

“I’m not trying to get your sympathy. Only to let you know that Xander is the sole reason I’m still breathing. He took on an entire horde of assassins to save me. And I also want you to be aware of the kind of woman my stepmother is. If the throne falls into her hands, all of Ilion will be lost. I can’t let that happen. I won’t.”

“I’m sorry.” It seemed inadequate, given all that she had suffered. It made me wonder how she managed to keep such an upbeat and happy outlook when there was so much darkness in her past.

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