Page 5 of Thief of Hearts

And he was still standing? I would have thought she would cut him off at the knees for breaking this millennia-old tradition.

Did she not care?

She had been acting strangely ever since we got here, and now this?

I was about to plead my case. I wanted to train Minha. If she was battle-favored, I had to be the one to show her how to use it to her full advantage. But then Quynh moved next to her husband, slipping her hand in his as she faced me.

The gesture let me know she supported Thrax and that they were resolved in their decision.

There wouldn’t be anything I could say to convince them otherwise.

Kyra came running over, looking upset. “My braid!” One of her braids had come loose. Lia moved to fix it and Kyra said, “No. Daddy do it.”

Xander began to expertly braid his daughter’s hair while Lia just shook her head. “Kyra has him wrapped around her finger.”

I was still reeling from the revelation that Thrax and Quynh were breaking tradition. It wasn’t the first time that my brother had done so, but this felt worse. Wrong. Like something bad would happen because of it.

My mind was buzzing when Lia announced, “My adelphia! They’re here!”

I tried to smile but all I could think about was that Minha wouldn’t be taught by us. I had been really looking forward to it, and it was like my brother had just yanked the rug out from under my feet.

“Aunt Suri!” Kyra screeched the words and launched herself at Suri, who smiled and turned the little girl around in a circle while holding her tightly.

“I feel very cheated that Suri is her favorite,” Lia said lightheartedly. “After all the vomiting and the torture of childbirth, her not sleeping through the night until she was a year old . . .”

But it was obvious that it didn’t bother Lia in the least as she went over to greet her family.

Suri was quiet, like Minha. I had only ever heard her speak less than a handful of times. I had gathered that something traumatic had happened in her past, but she seemed extremely happy with Xander’s younger sister, Io. They had been running their goddess’s temple in Troas together and welcoming acolytes. Io was telling Lia all about their incoming recruits, waving her hands around in excitement.

The last two members of Lia’s adelphia, Zalira and Ahyana, stood with their husbands, Stephanos and Rokh, waiting their turn to hug Lia.

Wonderful. Even more people who were in love.

But they were Lia’s sisters, and that made them mine as well.

I joined them, greeting everyone in turn. Zalira had cut her dark, curly hair short since I’d seen her last, while Ahyana’s braids had grown even longer.

Ahyana said, “We were going to wait until later, and I know this is your going-away celebration, but I hope you don’t mind us stealing your thunder, Basileia.”

“You may steal all the thunder I have,” I said.

Her eyes danced as she turned back to her adelphia. “I’m pregnant.”

“Ahyana!” Lia shrieked, pulling her in for a hug. Her stomach kept her from getting very close. “Does this mean you figured it out?”

The other woman nodded. “Rokh’s mother spent so long trying to teach me how to use the power her way, but once I realized that all I was doing was controlling, for lack of a better word, my own pollination, I used my aspect from the goddess to make sure both of them were girls.”

“Twins?” Thrax said, clasping Rokh on the shoulder. “Excellent work, brother.”

Rokh was the one who turned into a raven. I vaguely remembered something about the males in his family being forced to shape-shift even though it was painful, and how the mothers chose to have daughters to prevent that. It seemed Ahyana had figured out a way to do that herself.

“And she’s not the only one,” Zalira said shyly, putting a hand on her stomach.

“You too?” Lia’s voice went to a decibel that only dogs would be able to hear.

“You know Stephanos and I wanted to wait for a little while before we had children, to get back some of that time that we had lost,” she said, holding his hand. I recalled something about his parents keeping them apart when they were younger. “But when Ahyana told me that she was ready to get pregnant, I knew it was time. I want our girls to grow up together.”

“You’re having a girl, too?” Io was the one shrieking now.