Page 19 of Stolen Fates
She arched an eyebrow. “Are you that arrogant to refuse my help?”
Leukos didn’t honour that with a response—because it was true, he didn’t need anyone’s help—and turned his mare around back onto the forest trail. He’d wasted enough time. If the Blood Wolf was tracking him again, he needed to keep moving.
Behind him, the Amazon snorted. “Of course you are.”
He galloped away and breathed a sigh of relief when she didn’t pursue.
Leukos tried to put the strange encounter with the Amazon to the back of his mind. But the next day, as he cooked over the small campfire he’d lit close to the forest edge, she found him again.
“You’re going the wrong way,” she announced, emerging on foot from between the trees like some angry dryad. Her horse followed at her back then veered off to go graze beside Leukos’ mare.
Leukos’ attention returned to the rabbit skewered on a stick, roasting over the fire. “I’ve been heading north for days. The Blood Wolf can’t have overtaken me.”
“The Blood Wolf isn’t the only danger in these parts.”
If she meant Rasennan patrols or brigands, Leukos could handle them. He was used to such encounters after travelling through Achaea for most of his teenage years. Yet he said nothing, hoping his cold attitude might discourage the Amazon.
Instead, she laid down her leopard’s pelt and sat across from him. Up close, the firelight revealed an array of thin scars adorning her arms. “Why do you refuse my help?”
Leukos raised his head to meet her lone shimmering eye. “I don’t trust you.”
She scoffed and leaned back on her hands with an amused expression. “If I wanted you dead, you’d be dead already.”
“Is that supposed to reassure me?” His attention shifted to his sheathed sword, which lay atop his discarded cloak a few feet away. He should have kept it closer.
The Amazon’s lips curled at the sides. “I’ve pledged myself to the Achaean goddess who sought my help. I am bound by honour to keep you safe, whether you like it or not.”
Achaean goddess? It couldn’t be. She was either misinformed or lying.
Either way, his patience ran thin. Did she plan on following him all the way to Eluvia? He didn’t know what the Amazon wanted with him or why she insisted a goddess had sent her to him, but he needed to get rid of her. He didn’t need her help, and travelling with an Amazon at his side would only draw attention—the kind he didn’t need.
He turned the stick in his hands with more force than necessary. “And as I made clear, I don’t care about the gods.”
“Careful,” the Amazon warned, her tone sobering as she glanced up at the darkening sky. “They might be listening.”
“Stop talking about them as if they are still here!” he snapped, unable to contain his ire any longer. “They haven’t been seen in years. The Rasennans destroyed so many of their temples after the invasion that they’re no doubt dead. No one is listening and no one is coming.”
Her lone eye narrowed and roved over his face, suggesting his words might have struck a chord with her at last. That they might even be enough to convince her to leave him alone.
Instead, she kicked out her legs in front of her, the flames casting elongated shadows across the forest floor. “That’s not how it works.”
He glanced up from his roasting meal. “What?”
“That’s not how it works, how the gods remain alive.” Her words hang in the night air like a riddle to be solved and her annoying, secretive little smile returned. “For someone who grew up at the Megarian court surrounded by tutors, you seem to know very little about the immortals. It’s not about the temples, but our faith and belief. As long as some continue tobelieve in them and make offerings, the gods are never truly gone.”
Leukos’ father had once said something similar, but delving into memories of his deceased family never ended well.
“And if you know their true name,” the Amazon continued in a smug tone, “you can summon them. Even force them into a pact to gain a Gift.”
She stared at him from across the crackling campfire, looking far too pleased with herself, and Leukos wanted to throttle her. Every child throughout the Empire knew about the Gifts. You were either Gifted by a patron god or you made a significant enough offering and hoped for the best unless you knew the god’s true name. Then the pact was sealed no matter what.
He forced a breath through his nose, but the cool night air did little to quell his frustration. “The gods’ names are long forgotten,” he argued. “The priests kept them secret and now they’re all dead.”
“Well, the Empire’s invasion of Achaea doesn’t sit right with the Achaean Twelve, I’m told.” Sitting up, she leaned closer to the fire, its glow illuminating her determined features. “They want to help.”
Leukos scoffed. “They’re ten years too late.”
With a shake of her head, Phoebe pulled back, muttering something under her breath that sounded like “Huntress save me” and seized the waterskin from her belt. She quenched her thirst with hearty gulps, water trickling down her chin in a manner somewhat undignified for an Amazon. It made Leukos doubt whether the Achaean artists who had drawn their portraits had been at all accurate.
