of honey. A bowl of plums . . .”
Straton opened the leather satchel hooked on his belt. He procured a silver Akkia and flicked the coin at Laneus with apparent disgust. The silver tumbled to the ground, and Laneus scrambled to recover it.
“Get up,” the commander now spoke to her, rough-hewn.
Halcyon struggled to rise. He took hold of her arm, his grip like iron, and dragged her across the market, the crowd parting for them. Eventually, Halcyon got her feet beneath her, and he shoved her forward to walk before him up the hill to where the temple sat. The white pillars gleamed in the light, and smoke plumed upward to the clouds in lazy strokes. And there stood Bacchus on the stairs, watching them come.
“Lord Commander,” the priest greeted.
“Lord Priest,” the commander returned as Halcyon struggled to ascend the stone steps.
She finally reached the top, panting. She could feel the men’s gazes flicker to her; both sets of eyes were inscrutable.
“A private chamber?” Straton requested.
“This way, my lord,” Bacchus said, motioning for them to follow him into a narrow atrium. It led to an arched door, the ashwood carved with fauns and laurel trees, and within was a small chamber. The priest’s bedroom, sparsely furnished. There was a hay mattress in one corner, a stool, a table covered in scrolls, a brazier whose embers still flared warm.
The same chamber where Halcyon and Xander had met with the priest, weeks ago. The memory was sharper than a blade in her side as Bacchus left them, closing the door in his wake.
Straton refused to look at her. She felt as if she had turned into a shadow; she slid to the ground and sat in a heap, the last of her strength zapped.
She could hear him breathing. He sounded just as ragged as her, as if he could finally drop his appearance and reveal how exhausted he truly was. He was no longer hiding his devastation. His heart was broken, had been broken for days, and his face exposed his anguish.
If she was to ever have a moment to try to explain what had happened, why she had run . . . it was now.
“Lord Commander . . . I am sorry.”
He stiffened. Still, he did not look at her. “You are sorry it happened or sorry you could not get away?”
His words cut deep. Halcyon wondered if he truly thought she was unrepentant for killing Xander.
“Do you know me so little, Commander?”
He ignored her.
And she pushed herself to her feet, armor creaking. “You have only trained me the past eight years. You chose me for this, Commander. You chose me, and you chose Xander, and if you think I have changed overnight, that I have morphed into a creature that holds no morals, no feelings, then you are not the man I believed you to be, either.”
He turned and glared at her. But a small gleam of respect had returned. Her words forced him to dwell on that which he did not want to: he had hand-chosen her, out of a thousand other possibilities. And he had chosen Xander. In a way, he had brought this upon them all.
“Xander and I were doing just as you asked.” She reached out to steady herself on the table. “We were preparing to fight without our sight. I was blindfolded, and I was sparring with him, and I . . .” She stopped abruptly, because Straton’s face was suddenly terrible to behold.
“And what then, Halcyon?”
“Do you really believe it, Commander? That I would murder Xander?”
He cast his eyes away. “It would be an easy out for you. If Xander was dead, you would be absolved from fulfilling the mission. If you had been afraid—”
“But I was not afraid!” she cried. “I told you from the very beginning. I would go. And what is easy about turning my back on what I vowed I would do, Lord Straton? You cast me into a mold that I do not fit, and you know it and should be ashamed of such lies!”
“I should be ashamed?” he snarled, stepping closer to her. “I think that is you, Halcyon. Coward of Isaura, who ran when she should have remained.”
There it was. The word she was waiting for. Coward. It split her open, and she staggered, because she believed it.
She should have remained with Xander. She should have waited beside his body, waited for the commander to come.
But even now . . . she knew that she would do