she wanted to return Selene’s cold stare, to reveal there was nothing less about her for descending from a broken god. Indeed, it only made Evadne all the more dangerous, for she had come from the one divine who was not afraid to break.
She wanted to give Selene a knowing smile, to touch the relic hiding beneath her clothes. To rise up on sightless wings and kick every single one of their chalices over, until the wine sprayed over their perfect clothes and ran like blood along their perfect floor.
But Evadne would have to be wise, as Halcyon had begged. She would have to be careful, as her parents admonished. She could not let these high-ranked people anger her. She must earn their trust. So she held her position and breathed, waiting with a placid expression.
“You must love your sister very much to take her place here,” Selene stated.
“Yes, Lady.”
At last, Selene looked away, and Evadne was released. She quietly stepped back to make her rounds to the other chalices, refilling them. Cosima began to speak of the illness she was treating in the infirmary, mentioning how wonderful it would be to possess Magda’s Sunstone Ring of Healing at a time like this, and Evadne felt the tension ease, the attention drifting away from her. Until she came to Damon’s side. He stopped her without a word, laying his hand over the mouth of his cup, the silver on his finger glittering like a warning.
Evadne returned to the embrace of pillar shadows.
This time, she did not let herself become distracted by the family’s conversations. She kept her gaze on them, watching their chalices. They soon forgot about her again, a girl in the shadows.
Save for one.
Damon did not eat; he did not drink. He hardly spoke again. But he looked at Evadne, meeting her gaze from across the room, and there his eyes remained. Directly on hers.
She looked away first, unable to hold that uncanny stare of his, brown and blue, like sky meeting earth.
And she knew that he had been aware of her the entire night, no matter what she had previously believed. He had kept track of her, as one does the height of wine in a chalice.
Or as one does a viper.
XIII
Halcyon
Miles from Straton’s villa, down the winding streets of Mithra and beyond the western gates, through the moonlit barley fields, Halcyon finally arrived at the quarry outpost. She was chained in the back of an iron caged wagon, and she was alone, the only prisoner to be brought to the quarry that night. She could hear the howl of the wind in the foothills, and she stared at the distant fires of Mithra, a city that never slept. The queen’s palace blazed on the summit, and Halcyon could hardly stand to look at it, to be reminded of how she had failed.
Evadne.
She breathed her sister’s name, hoping the wind would carry it east, to where Evadne now dwelled in the commander’s villa.
The guards unlocked Halcyon from the wagon and escorted her into the outpost. Torches were pegged along the walls, casting uneven light on the rough-hewn walls, and Halcyon walked mindfully, her back still tender. She was brought into a chamber. It looked to be some sort of workroom; there was a desk lit by a lamp, and a lonely chair positioned in the center of the floor. Shelves lined one of the walls, laden with scrolls and stacks of papyrus.
She was instructed to sit in the lonely chair. Halcyon obeyed, and the guards chained her to iron rings in the floor. As if she could run anywhere.
They left her in the workroom, and she sat in the quiet, listening. She must have sat there for hours, whoever she was to meet purposefully delaying to make her feel forgotten and inconsequential. She watched the moonlight drift across the floor at her feet; she watched the oil lamp almost extinguish. She counted the number of scrolls on the shelves. And then, at last, just when she was about to doze in the chair, the door opened.
She expected the quarry lord, imagining him to be a burly, weathered individual who would be overseeing her the next five years.
But a slender young man greeted her, dressed impeccably in the garments of a mage. A silver ring gleamed on his forefinger, his eyes probing as he stared at her. His hair was long, sleek and fair as corn silk.
He did not belong here any more than Halcyon did.
Mages were forbidden