Page 151 of A Vow of Embers

“I thought you might have a way of convincing her that I’m not aware of,” he said. “Because I have tried everything.”

He was implying that he knew my sister well, while she had assured me they were only friends and ... My gaze slid down, and it was then that I noticed something on Thrax’s wrist.

Quynh’s bracelet.

Chapter Forty-Nine

I stood up on my bed, towering over them both. “What is that on your wrist?”

Both men looked shocked at my reaction.

“It is a token of your sister’s affection,” Thrax said.

For a moment I couldn’t see or hear. There was only white, blinding fury blocking all my senses. “My sister said you were only her friend! Did you steal that from her? Take it off or I will cut it off!”

That bracelet meant so much to me. I couldn’t bear to see it on his arm. Some part of my mind whispered that I was overreacting, but I didn’t care.

I was only vaguely aware of Xander saying dryly, “It wouldn’t be the first time she’s chopped off someone’s hand.”

Thrax’s wrist was so much bigger than my sister’s. He was going to stretch out her bracelet and ruin it. I had carried that with me when I had thought her dead. When I had thought he was the one who had taken her from me.

For so long it had been the only piece of her I’d had left.

It felt like he was making a mockery of that by wearing it now.

“Quynh gave this to me,” he said. “I did not take it from her. I would never dishonor her by—”

At that I leapt at him, hands outstretched.

But Xander caught me by the waist and plucked me out of the air, pulling me hard against him. “Remember our agreement,” he said.He was having a hard time restraining me as I struggled against him. I couldn’t think, couldn’t behave rationally. All I could think of was Quynh and how I needed to protect her from Thrax.

“I suggest you go,” he said to the other man.

Thrax quickly did so, shutting the door behind him.

“There are so many people in this palace that I have to kill!” I yelled in frustration, still trying to get free.

Xander waited calmly behind me, not allowing me to go very far. He let me spend my energy until I tired myself out.

He was muttering words against my neck, and it made me go still so that I could properly hear him. “Sweet, biddable, demure ...”

“What?”

“Those are the lies your Locrian ambassador told me and my father when your parents broke the betrothal contract with your older sister and offered you in her stead. That you were sweet, biddable, and demure.”

The ambassador had told him that I was like Kallisto. I was nothing like her, never had been. He really had been lied to.

Xander was still muttering. “They sold me a false bill of goods.”

Bill of goods? “I’m not chattel or livestock!”

“More’s the pity for me—my life would be a great deal easier if you were a cow!”

Despite my wrath, that struck me as funny and my anger turned into laughter. After a moment he chuckled too, and I relaxed against him.

After we stopped laughing we stood there for a while, both of us calming down. I could feel his quickened heartbeat against my back and tried not to enjoy the way his hot breath spilled onto my neck.

There were other things happening I needed to focus on. “Maybe if I could have spent more time with Quynh, she wouldn’t have been so lonely and sought comfort from Thrax.”