Page 35 of A Veil of Gods and Kings

We passed a clumping of Astilbe that trailed along the path beneath the boughs of heavy-leafed limbs from trees whose trunks lay covered in ivy. “You don’t seem interested in this presentation.”

“Oh.” I plucked a handful of the flowers, and some of their miniature petals fluttered to the soil. “I’m not, but, you know—” I shrugged like that might explain everything.

“Must you marry, if you don’t want to?”

“I want to marry, just not a stranger.”

“But you have to—choose a stranger, I mean?”

I sighed. We reached a hill that looked over the palace walls to the fields of long grasses and stretching cliffs in the distance. “My father wouldn’t make me if that’s what you mean. But, it’s one of the best ways I could help my family. If I marry someone that is well connected, it would help our kingdom.”

Even if it resulted in me leaving my home and friends and life I loved. And binding myself to someone I didn’t know. A pit of discontent sank into my stomach, a spark of fear swelling alongside it that I might end up married to someone that I wouldn’t love. That I’d spend my entire life trapped with someone I didn’t care for. My whole existence defined by my children and who my brothers were. My throat ached, but I cleared it hard. It was my duty. It was how I would help. Cyn and Emrin had their own burdens in different ways.

Temi hopped up onto a low garden wall and tapped her heels against it. “Are the expectations the same for your brothers?”

“In a way, yes. If they marry well, it will help as well. But, they are both expected to stay here. I’m the one who has to leave.”

I pulled myself up beside Temi, my fingers gripping into the rough texture of the bricks. She twirled a vine around her finger. “What do you wish for though?”

I lifted my face towards the endless heavens stretching above us, letting my heavy curls drape down to the small of my back. That’s a question I would avoid if anyone else asked, but something about Temi caused a desire to share to bloom within me. “Do you want to hear the most ridiculous answer in the world to that?”

“Absolutely.”

I huffed a laugh. “I always dreamed of being a wild horse.”

Temi’s eyebrows creeped up her face. “A horse?”

I laughed hard enough that my stomach ached with it. “I told you it was ridiculous. I don’t know.” I gestured to the hills beyond that lay splashed in shadows of distant clouds. “Free. Never having to study languages that no one speaks or stay cooped up inside or marry a stranger or wear dresses again.”

“You don’t like dresses?”

“I hate them.” I lifted the fabric of my skirt and let it fall with a flump again. “What about you?”

“Dresses are fine.”

I plucked petals off the flowers I held, and they careened towards the grass. “Not about dresses. I mean, if you could do anything or be anything, what would you be?”

She crossed her ankles and shifted her gaze back to the view. “I’ve never really thought about that. I’ve always worried so much about losing my brother. My daydreams have always been finding ways to keep him.”

“Why might you lose him?”

She shrugged. “When he ascends as a deity, he won’t be able to spend much time in the human world again.” Her eyelashes fluttered, and she blew out a shaky breath. “We’ve lost many people in our lives, but through everything, we’ve had each other. I’m afraid that’s ending though.” A butterfly swirled through the air, landing for a moment on Temi’s knee and flashing its painted wings twice before taking off. “He’s an idiot sometimes, but I love him.”

“Well, maybe that’s brothers in general.”

She turned back towards me, another smile on her face. “Maybe so.”

And we stayed in the gardens, hiding from our futures together, for several hours, watching as the sun slinked its way down the sky.

12

Apollo

I pulled my legs up against my chest. I sat on a roof, tucked in the shadows of an eave. Looking over the edge always made my stomach swirl and my heart patter around like it had clicked off track. But if I pushed back and ignored how close I perched on top of something, I could sit right in the heart of the world without anyone noticing me.

The city played out below. A baker stacked piles of warm loaves onto a cart, their rosemary smell trailing up to me. A man scolded a boy, who stuck his lip out while two women nearby wrapped their arms around each other's waists as they burst into laughter. Were they friends? Lovers? Heading to dinner? What might their stories be?

A waft of smoke hit me from meat roasting on a spit.