Page 20 of A Vow of Embers

“You bribed your way into the lottery? You got yourself chosen deliberately?” Now he was watching me like I was some kind of unusual animal that he wanted to better understand. “What is it you want?”

Hadn’t we just spent the last little while going over exactly what I wanted? I didn’t understand his question. “I already told you what I want and you agreed to it.”

“Why did you come to Ilion?”

What explanation could I give him now that he knew I hadn’t been picked by chance?

“I’ve spoken about this with my phratry,” he continued on. “I’ve never believed that a princess of Locris was selected randomly, let alone two. So why?”

The prince was too smart, too perceptive. “Because I wanted to make sure I didn’t have to marry you.”

A ghost of a smile formed on his lips. “That didn’t work out very well for you. Princess Thalia, have you ever gambled?”

It was such a severe topic shift that I wasn’t sure of what was happening. “What?”

“When you gamble, you often have to lie. To convince your opponents to play the way you want them to. After you do it for long enough, you realize that people always tell on themselves. When they’re lying they change their demeanor or behavior without even realizing it. You do the same thing. When you’re lying, you touch your mouth. As you did just now.”

Was that true? I hated the idea that he could read me. That he would be able to see when I was lying to him. I made myself a vow that I would do my best to be aware of my hands whenever I was with him.

“My phratry has theories. Thrax thought your lie was true—that you joined the temple to avoid having to marry me. But you’re not a coward, and that would be a cowardly thing to do.”

I felt very much like a coward right now. I wanted to run away from him. I didn’t want the truth to be exposed to the light. I had specifically asked Io if she had told her brother that I was looking for something and she had repeatedly assured me that she had not. I had believed her.

And I was afraid I was about to find out that she had betrayed me again.

“Dolion wondered about your relationship with your family. He thought maybe you wished to run away from them. There are two problems with that theory: The first is that marrying me would have accomplished the same thing, so there was no reason to risk your life first. The second is the fact that you happen to adore your family.”

“Something you are exploiting,” I said with a snarl.

He continued talking, as if I hadn’t said anything. “Rokh thought you might have been particularly religious, like Io, and wanted to join the temple to serve. He doesn’t know that no one in Locris worships the goddess, that you have removed her from every part of your lives.”

Except the tribute.

“Stephanos thought that you had a love affair go badly and you joined the temple to get away from him. Or, alternatively, that youlove this man so much that you joined the temple so that you wouldn’t be forced to marry another. The problem there is that his notions are impractical and overly romantic and you’re neither one of those things.”

I hated that he was speaking about me as if he knew me so well. I put my hands under my legs so that I wouldn’t accidentally touch my mouth. “He’s right. There was someone else. A man that I was very close to. I spent the entire last year with him, every single day.”

He didn’t need to know that the man was Demaratus. And maybe if the prince believed this lie, it would knock some of that male arrogance out of him.

“Do you have feelings for this man?”

“I love him.” True, but not in the way the prince meant. Something flashed darkly in his eyes, his entire visage changing, before his calm, detached demeanor returned.

“You love him and yet you never kissed him?”

I should have guessed he’d bring that up, given that the prince knew he had been my first kiss. And every other kiss after that. He was trying to wound me. I had to admit, “No.”

“Why wouldn’t you have mentioned the man you’re in love with when you were writhing underneath me in that bed?”

Shock slammed into my chest, followed quickly by anger. I wanted to protest that I had done no such thing but I recalled perfectly that I had. “You were there. He wasn’t.”

I could see my barb hit its mark by the way his mouth tightened. I was not the only one who unconsciously betrayed my true feelings.

“And yet it was not his name that you moaned against my neck.”

“It wasn’t yours, either,” I retorted, trying to keep those memories at bay. He wasn’t Jason. “And I was not myself that night. I was under the influence of the honeyed wine.”

It was a pathetic attempt to defend myself, a fact he pounced on. “Is that the excuse you’ve been using so that you can sleep at night?”