Chapter 2 Goodbye, Son Of Apollo

• Orion arrived that morning holding another woman’s hand.
• Summer warmth followed him into the sickroom. Three years had sharpened his face and broadened his shoulders beneath a white cloak fastened with Apollo’s sun. Once, I would have forgotten everything but the sight of him.
• Now I watched his fingers tighten around Melantha’s.
• Paean, one of Apollo’s senior healing priests, followed with a box of herbs. He bowed to me, then looked away before I could return the greeting.
• “You’re truly awake.” Orion stopped beside my bed. Wonder softened his face, but beneath it I recognized something less welcome: the uncertainty of a man whose plans had suddenly changed. “How do you feel?”
• “Clearer than I have in years.”
• Melantha moved closer to him. He did not let go of her hand.
• “Callista, we should speak honestly,” he said. “I paid your healers. I sat beside you until even Athena said you might never wake. I honored our promise.”
• He sounded as though he had rehearsed it.
• “And?”
• His jaw tightened. “Melantha was there when I had no one. I love her now. But I’ll still marry you. I owe you that much.”
• I knew every word. In my first life, I had heard them and clung to the offer, certain that marriage would give me time to win him back.
• I could still remember lying awake beside him, afraid to move in case he withdrew the arm he had laid across me out of habit.
• “No.”
• Orion blinked. “No?”
• I held out my hand to Melantha. “The pendant.”
• Alarm brightened her eyes. After a glance at Orion, she unfastened it.
• The owl lay cool in my palm. He had given it to me on my sixteenth birthday, promising that only his future wife would wear it. I had believed him so completely that I wore it beneath my clothes when I trained, afraid of scratching the silver.
• I closed Melantha’s fingers around it.
• “It suits you,” I said. “You can keep his promise too.”
• Paean shifted behind them. Orion’s face flushed.
• “Don’t play games with me.”
• “I’m ending our betrothal.”
• Sunlight flared around him, bright enough to sting my eyes. “You took a knife for me. Our names have been joined since childhood. Everyone knows you’ve wanted this marriage for years.”
• “I wanted you, Orion. You’ve just told me you want someone else.”
• He stared as though I had misunderstood an offer any sensible woman would accept.
• Melantha laid a hand over her stomach.
• “Please don’t fight because of me,” she whispered. “Especially now. The baby feels everything I feel.”
• Orion drew her against his side. There was pride in his face, and a challenge I could not understand until he spoke.
• “Melantha’s carrying my child. Nothing you say will change that.”
• Paean dropped the herb box.
• The lid split. A bitter smell spread through the room, and suddenly I was back in another bed, listening to the same priest tell me the Fates could be cruel.
• Before the attack, before the years of sleep, there had been another baby.
• Mine.
• Orion saw my expression. His anger softened into pity.
• “I’m sorry about the baby we lost,” he said. “But Melantha is stronger. She’ll protect this one.”
• For a moment, I could not breathe.
• I had pulled them both out of the snow. I had been bleeding, barely able to stand, and still I went back for Melantha because leaving her had never occurred to me.
• He knew that. He had held me when the healer said our child was gone.
• “I lost our baby saving you,” I said.
• Melantha’s hand tightened on his sleeve.
• “Callista, that isn’t what I—”
• “Don’t finish that sentence.”
• I worked the sun ring from my finger. For years it had left a pale band on my skin. I dropped it into the cup beside his hand.
• “Protect your new family. You are no longer part of mine.”
• He looked from the ring to me. “You’ll regret this when your temper passes.”
• “You keep mistaking a decision for a temper.”
• “You’ve been awake for a few hours.”
• “Long enough to ask you to leave.”
• The bronze mirror on my table filled with black mist.
• “She shouldn’t have to ask twice,” Lysander said.
• Orion turned. “Lysander.”
• “Still here, Orion?”
• Sunlight flickered against the mirror’s dark surface. Melantha lifted her head, suddenly intent. She had announced her pregnancy only moments before, yet she was already studying the man on the other side of the glass.
• The mist cleared enough to show an arch of black stone. Lysander stood beneath it in a charcoal tunic, a sword at his hip. He wore no crown. When his gray eyes found mine, the other people in the room seemed to cease to interest him.
• “I’ll reach Athena’s house by midnight,” he said. “The crossing is being opened. Can you wait safely until then?”
• He sounded controlled, but his hand was tight on the sword belt.
• “Yes. Thessa’s with me.”
• “No,” Orion snapped. “She won’t be receiving you.”
• Lysander looked at him. “You had three years to decide what you wanted. You don’t get to decide for her as well.”
• Paean crouched to gather the scattered herbs. His hands were shaking.
• “Callista is confused,” Melantha said. “Surely she can’t promise herself to someone else the day she wakes.”
• “I can accept a courtship.” I faced the mirror. “Bring a witness, Lysander. I want no confusion about whose choice this is.”
• His answering smile changed his whole face. For the first time that morning, something loosened in my chest.
• “I’ll bring Hermes,” he said. “He enjoys delivering news that ruins someone else’s evening.”
• The mirror cleared.
• Orion seized the bedpost hard enough to scorch it.
• “You’re doing this to punish me.”
• I looked at the man I had once loved enough to die for. Part of me still wanted him to understand. That part would have to learn to live without an answer.
• “I’m leaving you,” I said. “You can call it whatever makes that easier to hear.”