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Alexander didn’t seem to have heard. “So, what are you? Daughter of Ares? Daughter of Keres?” he mused. “I met a daughter of Keres on the Satyr Plains. She could make a beast’s limbs come apart with a look. They’d just unknit themselves like the threads holding them together came apart. I’m making it sound less painful than it is.”
No, that sounded plenty painful.
“Doesn’t matter what I am.”
“Does your name not matter too?” he asked, moving into my line of sight. “Or do you prefer the many nicknames I’ve chosen for you?”
“My name doesn’t matter because of your many nicknames,” I returned. “Even if I told you, you’d still call me traitor.”
He gave me a long look. “Fair enough. How about this? If you tell me your name and where you’re from, the nicknames stop.”
“Really? No more traitor, rat, orpretty paper?” The last one was new and confusing. Why did he call me pretty with so much disdain?
Alexander laid a hand over his heart. “You have my word.”
Weighing my options, I couldn’t find a downside. My name wasn’t a secret. I just didn’t want my interrogator, Jason, to believe he could get me to open up. Too much knowledge of what was going on in my head would get him killed. He hadn’t been kind to me, but neither had he been cruel. I didn’t want him dead.
“My name is Aella Galanis. I’m from a small village trapped between the sea and stone. Port Delphin.”
He bobbed his head, then flicked over my shoulder. “Did you get that, Jason? Aella Galanis. Port Delphin.” I whipped around, eyes bugging at our shadow listener. “Now you can dispatch a few Apollo sons to find out everything there is to know about her.”
Alexander shook his head, walking out. “Gods, I should take over questioning her. It’s much easier than you’re making it look.”
“I— You said—”
“Pack your bags, Aella,” he broke in. “Tomorrow begins your new life in Deucalion Academy.”
I told him what I thought of that through the slammed door and all through the night while he tried to get off with his tavern maid. His guest finally gave up around midnight, but I didn’t—shouting and swearing that he’d never get me through the gates of the academy.
I needed to find my way out of another pair of chains. All the time I had left would be devoted to searching spell and magic shops for a way to dispel an actual parasite in my soul. I’d visit every library. I’d learn everything there was to know about every deity there was. I would not go to Deucalion Academy.
“Are you listening to me?” I headbutted his liver, yanking a grunt out of him. I had a good angle from my position in the back of the cart. “I’m not going!”
“Rhea and Cronus, woman!” Alexander burst out. “What will it take to shut you up?”
I told him I would if he did something filthy and illegal with a donkey.
“Gag her,” he told Castor. “And tie her up at the back of the cart!”
I got in one last headbutt before Castor dragged me over the bags and secured my chains far enough from Alexander Jackass. That was his surname and legacy, no matter what anyone told me.
“Why do you think she hasn’t tried to escape?” Castor asked the guys. “We’ve witnessed her power. Why doesn’t she use it?”
“My guess is she’s a daughter of Ares,” Alexander replied. I fumed at the way they spoke about me like I wasn’t sitting right there. “You know they can only use their powers under specific circumstances. Like if that hand you have on her hip goes any lower.”
Castor flung away like I burned. “An accident. I’d never try anything on with a traitor.”
It was an accident. His hand ended up there when he was wrestling me to the wood. He didn’t notice in the midst of his conversation. What did surprise me was that Alexander both noticed and bothered to warn him off touching me inappropriately. Maybe I didn’t imagine that moment between us when our gazes locked in that dirty cell.
He did know what Nico tried to do to me, and not only did he approve. He was impressed.
So impressed he’s sentencing me to another kind of prison to uphold a law that should be abolished. Yeah, he can still go fuck a donkey.
I appreciated what the army did to protect us all and our way of life. But now that I knew what it was—what itfeltlike to kill against my will, I never understood the deserters more. A life where you don’t get to choose... isn’t any kind of life at all.
“It’s also likely,” Jason put in, “that she’s counted up the odds against her and made the wise choice.”
Pushing myself up, I glowered at the source of his comment. Jason said it wasn’t safe for them to transport me three against one wild card, and the man wasn’t one for idle remarks. That morning when Alexander checked me out of the inn, we walked outside to the twenty-man escort waiting to take little old me to Deucalion Academy.
