Page 201 of A Vow of Embers

“You saved my life, you saved my life,” I muttered under my breath to remind myself how much I owed her so that I wouldn’t scream at her in this open area, where anyone might walk by.

“Quynh agreed with me that it was a good plan,” she added, and that only made things worse. Quynh wouldn’t come and talk to me, but she had no problem conspiring with Io?

“How did it go?” Ahyana asked brightly. “Are we going to have to hide you from temple guards?”

“No,” I said. Things had been headed that direction but I had kept my vow.

Barely.

Now they all looked disappointed. “Did all of you help her?” I asked. How long had they been plotting this?

“It was a sort of experiment.” Io’s words tripped over each other in her haste to get them out. “I wanted to see how he would react. What did he do?”

My mouth hung open slightly. I couldn’t give them details. “He was very ... persistent. Persuasive. Vigorous.”

“Vigorous?” Ahyana echoed, her eyes dancing in the low light.

Io nodded with satisfaction. “So he reacted the way I expected he would.”

“I thought you were going to stay out of our relationship!” I protested.

“I was, until you two decided to become the only people in the world who could get one another killed because of this bond between you.”

We hadn’t decided that. It had happened to us.

Something she well knew.

I crossed my arms. “You were deliberately trying to get us to have sex?”

Io flinched at my words. I knew the entire thing made her uncomfortable, but she was the one launching a secret campaign that might very well get me killed by temple guards when I broke my vow.

“I understand that things are tricky between you and Xander. That there are feelings involved.” When I opened my mouth to contradict her, she hurried to finish before I could interrupt. “Both negative and positive feelings. I thought a small push might help you figure things out easier.”

She’d done the opposite. She had just added another degree of difficulty and complication to my situation.

“There’s something else I should have told you,” Io said, looking down at her feet. “I had a dream on what would have been your wedding night. The goddess appeared to me, and that hasn’t happened in a longtime. She told me that you and Xander were meant to be together. Truly married.”

“That’s wishful thinking,” I said with a shake of my head, ignoring how quickly my heart beat. “Something that you’ve hoped for and so now you’re dreaming about it.”

It couldn’t be true.

“I worried the same thing myself, which is why I didn’t mention it. Then when I found that entry about how you had to consummate, it made me think maybe that was why the goddess had appeared to me. That she knew what was going to happen and the only way through whatever is coming is for the two of you to stand side by side.”

She made me want things I couldn’t have.

Desire was not the same as love, and I would be a fool to confuse the two.

“Then a few days ago, I had a dream that we were all at the birthday party. The goddess was there and she handed me the honeyed wine. I saw myself give it to Xander. I know what a message from her feels like, and this was one. I’m certain of it. So I did what she wanted.”

Which meant that the things she’d just said about it being an experiment or to put us on equal footing had been nonsense. She hadn’t wanted to tell me about the dreams.

“Why would this be the goddess’s will?” I asked, confused.

She shrugged. “I’m not the one who makes the rules.”

“That was why you did all this. Sweetened my skin, made me sparkle. Why you put makeup on me. The perfume.” She had wanted him to be unable to resist. “Why did you choose a black dress?”

“I wanted him to remember what you looked like before. I hoped to evoke some good memories.”