Page 83 of A Vow of Embers

As if they were friends. My pulse hammered in my wrists.

“I ... I don’t understand.” What was she trying to tell me?

Quynh shook her head. “I didn’t trust him at first. How could I? I didn’t understand what he was doing. If he had taken me to kill me later or to ...” Her voice trailed off and she didn’t need to finish her sentence. I knew what she had worried about a strange man doing to her. “He brought me to a large house not too far from the palace and I was put into a guest room. And that was how I was treated. As a guest.”

“They didn’t ... do anything to you?”

“Other than feed me and talk to me and keep me safe? No.”

This wasn’t at all what I had pictured. I had imagined that they had put her in some prison cell and kept her locked away in the dark, afraid and alone. That they had beaten her and denied her food. Violated her. “Why?”

“That was what I wanted to know. I wouldn’t speak to Thrax, and in the beginning, he was the only one who came to see me. He brought me all my food and I refused to eat. I thought he might be trying to poison me.”

I nodded with satisfaction, pleased that she had been careful.

“So he would eat from my tray and he would stay and talk to me. For hours and hours. He told me all about where he had grown up. How much he had loved his mother, a mighty warrior, and that after she died, he had traveled here to Ilion to meet his father, the king. He told me about his brothers, how much he loved and admired Xander, adored Iolanthe, respected Rokh. The people of his family became real to me as he told me story after story.”

I did not like where this was going. It was like Thrax had charmed her and tricked her, only she hadn’t realized it.

At my expression she let out a sigh of exasperation. “Don’t look at me like that. I knew what he was doing. I knew that he was trying to make me comfortable, to get me to trust him, to have me open up.”

“Did they ask you about me?” Was that why they had taken her? Had they hoped that Quynh would tell them personal details that Alexandros could use against me?

“Not once.”

I had never doubted my sister in my entire life and I hated that I questioned her now. I wasn’t sure I believed her.

But why would she lie to me?

She wouldn’t. If there was anyone I could trust in this world, it was Quynh. “Then why take you at all?”

“Xander and Thrax watched over us during the race. He told Thrax that if something happened to me, he was to intercede. Because of the time that we’d spent talking on theNikos, the prince knew that I wasn’t Locrian and so they could circumvent the rules.”

“That doesn’t answer my question.”

She lowered her gaze slightly. “I don’t know why. Neither does Thrax. He has a theory, though.”

“A theory?”

“He thinks that Xander had come to care about you and took me because he knew what I meant to you.” Her eyes flicked up. “He hid me and kept me safe for you.”

Outraged, I stood up so quickly that I felt lightheaded. “That’s not true. He let me suffer. For weeks. He could have told me at any time that you were alive and he didn’t! He took you to use you as a bargaining chip. To force me into marriage. Because I would have refused otherwise.”

She reached up and wrapped her hand around my wrist, gently tugging me to sit down again. I did so reluctantly, my heart still beating rapidly.

I wouldn’t believe it. It wasn’t true. He hadn’t done it to be kind. He had done it to control me.

Prince Alexandros was not nice. He was a manipulator.

And now his brother had manipulated my sister.

“Why do you speak so well of Thrax?” I demanded.

“We have spent a lot of time together, talking. He has shared so much of himself with me. Bared his soul. I was able to see the man that he truly is. There is much to admire about him. Not only his strength, but his kindness and his humor. He is very gentle.”

I raised both of my eyebrows at that, alarmed.

She rushed to say, “Not in the way you’re imagining. He annoys me most of the time, but he has been a friend to me.”