Page 25 of A Veil of Gods and Kings

I lifted my bow.

Thwack, thwack.

Two arrows whistled through the night sky.

The men cried out as they hit their mark.

I sighed, and Temi folded up her sleeping mat.

“What are you doing?”

She shoved the mat into her bag. “They might have had friends. We aren’t sleeping here.”

I nodded. “I’ll be right back.”

“Where are you going?”

“I’m getting my arrows. I told you it’s a pain in the ass to make new ones.”

She chuckled, her shoulders dropping. “Be quick then.”

An ocean breeze swept over my skin, bringing with it the brackishness of fish and mollusks. The oars dipped into the water with a rhythmic plunking. The sails thumped as they rippled in the wind. Deckhands marched past, their sandaled feet clipping against the wood floors.

Temi leaned onto the edge of the boat beside me. “You’re looking nervous.”

“Perhaps I am… a bit.”

“What about?”

I shrugged.

She nudged her elbow against mine. “Is it Hyacinth?”

“Yeah,” I breathed out.

“What do you not like about him?”

“You mean beyond the fact that my father sends me here to get me to be more like him?”

She sucked in her lower lip. “Did you spend any time with him at the decade dedication?”

“I did.” I clenched my jaw as a fish jumped out of the water before diving back in. The decade dedication was technically a week-long sporting event where other countries competed. But it was really an opportunity for different nations to rededicate themselves to the gods and for those deities to dose out a healthy dose of equal parts fear and awe to human leaders.

“So, what was he like?”

I sighed and leaned farther against the railing. “He’s two years older than me and was just seventeen. But he was prudish even then. He attended all the boring lectures, performed the rites just as expected of him, and did every damn thing his father requested of him.”

Temi scowled. “And this is the reason you hate him? Because as a kid on a trip where everyone was watching him, he obeyed his father?”

I shoved up from the side of the boat. “No, Temi, it’s not that. It’s because that entire week—and still now—my father used him as an example of a perfect child. And, more than that, of how much of a failure I was—am.”

“Your father isn’t worthy to speak to you,” Temi said, “much less to be your parent. But, what does that have to do with Hyacinth?”

I shook my head. “Nothing, if he hadn’t played it up. Every time I did something my father disapproved of, Hyacinth would be there, and he would act perfectly, showing me up. At first, I thought it was a coincidence. But, then it kept happening. It was like he wanted to find my father’s favor by shaming me.”

Temi paused, wisps of hairs loose from her braids twisting around her face.

I dropped my voice to a whisper. “You remember all that happened… shortly before then.”