Page 95 of A Vow of Embers

“What’s wrong?” Themis asked, looking concerned.

“I don’t know. It feels like ... like someone just hit me.” Which was bizarre.

“You’re probably just overtired from not getting any sleep last night. Perhaps you should return to your room and rest. We will talk more later.”

“I’ll do that. Thank you for the invitation. I enjoyed speaking with you.”

The pain was subsiding as I walked but it was still there. It felt very much like when Lykaon had hit me in the face in Locris. I was going to take this tunic off and check my ribs. It almost felt like one of them had been broken.

But just before I reached my room, Io’s door opened and Zalira stood there. “Lia, I need to talk to you.”

My ribs would have to wait. “Of course. What’s wrong?”

She pulled me into the room and closed the door. I wondered where the others were because they’d promised they wouldn’t be alone. Zalira went over and sat down on the bed. “I wanted to talk to you about this first. Ahyana already knows. Stephanos, the one in the prince’s phratry?”

I nodded. “What about him?”

She looked up at me with so much misery in her eyes that my heart ached. “He’smyStephanos.”

Chapter Thirty

Her Stephanos? I remembered back to the night when we’d run from the terawolves—Zalira had told me about the boy she had loved, the one she’d wanted to marry but his parents wouldn’t allow it, so she and Ahyana had joined the temple. His name had been Stephanos. But it was an extremely common name, so when I was introduced to him, it never even occurred to me that the prince’s Stephanos and Zalira’s Stephanos were the same man.

“Oh, Zalira.” I sat down next to her on the bed and put my arm around her. I forgot all about the pain in my ribs. “What will you do?”

“I don’t know.”

“Will you ... go back to the temple?” She was in so much distress. I didn’t want her to be hurting like this. I also didn’t want her to leave, but if that was what she needed, I would understand.

“It probably would be easier to return, but my place is here. With all of you.”

“This has to be so hard for you.”

“It feels a little like being tortured,” she said, then made a sound that was half-laugh and half-sob. “To be so close to him but not be able to be with him. To not love him the way that I used to. I thought you, out of everyone else, would be the only one who could truly understand what this is like. I know that you loved Jason and that was taken away from you.”

My initial response was to deny her claim but that would have been selfish. Because I did know how she felt, even though our situations were very different. At least she didn’t have to share a bed and her dreams with a man who wore Stephanos’s face but wasn’t him.

“What can I do to help you?” I asked.

“There’s not anything that anyone can do. I never imagined that he would be here. That I would have to see him. Be near him but not able to ...” She let out a shaky breath. “I will get through this. My life has been filled with one tragedy after another. What’s one more?”

I didn’t want that for her. To be just surviving. I wanted her happiness. I wanted her to feel complete and joyful.

Zalira was always so strong, so steady. Ready to jump into the fray. I had never seen her this despondent before.

“Do you still love him?” I asked.

“I never stopped.” Her voice broke on the last word.

“Did you ever tell him that?”

“No. He never said the words to me, either. We couldn’t bind ourselves that way when we knew his parents wouldn’t let us be together.”

Rokh had mentioned to me that something had happened with Stephanos’s family. Had they disowned him? Died? “I don’t think his parents are a factor any longer. He’s here and not running his family’s business.”

“That’s true. But it no longer matters. I’m an acolyte. I took vows.”

It all seemed so unfair to me. I couldn’t imagine that a being as loving as the goddess would deny marriage to her daughters who chose to serve her. Why weren’t we allowed the same privilege to fall in love and create a family with someone else?

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