Page 6 of A Vow of Embers

“If you’re going to marry my brother, you need to know what you’ll be walking into. My stepmother is not going to be pleased that Xander’s bringing home a wife and potentially creating an heir. She will try to stop him and she will try to hurt you.”

“She can try,” I said. I would welcome the opportunity to introduce her to the pointed end of my xiphos.

Io nodded. “Shewilltry. She will look for all your weaknesses and exploit them in order to destroy you.”

Much as her own brother had done today. That led my thoughts to my sister, and I asked, “Did you know about Quynh? That she was alive?”

Because Io keeping that from me would be unforgivable.

“No,” she responded immediately. “I swear it by the goddess. I didn’t know your sister was alive.”

Part of me didn’t want to believe her, but I did. The same way I had when she’d told me that she didn’t know her brother had been pretending to be someone else to trick me.

“You must be thrilled that she lives.” Her words were hopeful.

A sharp pain pierced my chest, and I put my hand up to my heart. There was a scared joy bottled up inside me that I couldn’t let out. Because I was irrationally afraid that if I did, it would make Quynh being alive untrue. That I would somehow blot her out of existence if I let myself have even a single moment of happiness over her return.

She’s alive,I whispered internally. And I’d been so focused on the prince and what he’d done that I hadn’t really let myself be glad that Quynh had somehow survived.

That was how much of a hold he had on me, and I hated it.

“I can’t really think about her,” I said, not meaning to confess this to Io. But even if she shared it with her brother, it wouldn’t be anything he wouldn’t have guessed. “She’s terrified of the dark and I’ve been imagining her in a prison with no light, scared and alone, wondering if I was dead or alive. And I don’t know if she was tortured, pressed for information, if they ... if those men ...” I couldn’t finish the thought.

Io looked horrified. “Xander would never. Not in a thousand years.”

“You don’t know your brother as well as you think you do.” She had a glorified, fictional version of him in her head that had nothing to do with reality. How a little girl remembered the older brother who had stood up for her.

She shook her head, hard. “I do know my brother and his phratry.”

“Phratry?” I repeated.

“It’s like our adelphia, only for men. They are also organized in groups of five. They take unbreakable vows of allegiance and loyalty to each other just as we do.” She waved her hand, as if dismissing the topic. “But if Xander hurt your sister, or allowed anyone else to do so, I swear to you that I will kill him myself. That’s how sure I am that she’s been kept safe.”

She had just offered to kill the one person I knew she loved more than anyone else in the world. Io would never hurt anyone if she could help it, so the fact that she offered this was meaningful.

I tried to take her measure, to see how serious and honest she was being. Her regal demeanor throughout our conversation unsettled me. I had expected her to be like she had been in our confrontationyesterday—teary-eyed, frightened, repeatedly apologizing. But she held herself as if she were, well, a princess.

A fact I’d never really considered since she’d told me. I thought of the day we found out the king of Ilion had died. I had panicked once I realized that it meant Prince Alexandros would try to press our betrothal so that he would seem like a better candidate to the council of elders when they selected the new king. She had been sad and worried, and I had mistakenly thought it was out of empathy for me, that she had sensed how upset I was. She must have been devastated over the loss of her father, and instead of drawing inward like I might have, she reached out to support me because that was the kind of woman she was.

I felt even more ashamed.

“What is it?” she asked.

“When your father died, you were there for me. I was upset because I knew it would force your brother’s hand in trying to get the crown, and you comforted me. Thank you for that. And I’m sorry that I didn’t know what the king’s death meant to you. You must have been very sad.”

She shook her head. “My father died for me a long time ago. I had already mourned the man he used to be before he married my stepmother.”

I remembered that the other time she had spoken to me about her father, it was when she had admired my xiphos. She had told me that her father had collected swords. I should have known then that she was at least nobility, if not royalty. Demaratus would have yelled at me for that mistake. I was going to have to be more observant when I moved to the palace.

“My father used to be more like Xander,” Io said. “And I know you don’t have a very ... positive opinion of my brother right now, but he is a good man. The two of you are a lot alike.”

“What?” I shrieked, and Kunguru cawed back at me from the window.

It was the most insulting thing anyone had ever said to me.

Which she seemed to realize, as she rushed in to explain. “You’re both smart and capable and loyal to a fault and kind and willing to do whatever it takes to protect the people you care about.”

“I would never kidnap someone and blackmail a person into doing my will!”

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