The Triumphant (The Valiant #3)(74)

“Sorcha is your sister,” the queen interrupted me. “Not your chaperone. She has her own destiny and you have yours, and one day those roads will diverge.”

I blinked at her, startled by the sharpness of her words.

Her expression softened, and she smiled at me. “I simply meant that you are a woman grown now, Fallon,” she said. “With a life of your own. You’ve been following in your dear sister’s footsteps—whether you meant to or not—since you were a child. You have the chance now to take your freedom and find your own road and see where it leads you in the wide world. Greece, Hispania, Thrace, Carthage . . . wherever you’d like to go. I would give you money and means. Whatever you need.”

I sat there, silent, lost for any kind of answer.

“Or,” the queen continued, “you can stay here. And I will give you a place and position of honor in my guard, if that is what you want. What you want, Fallon.”

“I . . .”

“You do not know what you want.”

“Yes.” I shook my head. “I mean, no. I don’t. I don’t know.”

She sighed and gave me a sympathetic smile. “Might I make a suggestion?”

“Please, Majesty.”

“A night spent in the temple of Sekhemet.”

I blinked at her. “Will that help?”

“I think it might.”

She dismissed me then, without further enlightenment. As I left the queen’s chambers and made my way back to my own room, I thought I saw a shadow moving in the gardens that bordered the breezeway. But when I stopped to look, I saw only the silhouettes of date palms swaying in the night breeze. It could have been any one of Cleopatra’s guards or slaves or even one of my own sisters. But the hackles on the back of my neck lifted, and I wondered if Sekhemet had not already begun stalking me, to prey upon or protect me. And I wished, with all my heart, that I could still hear the voice of the Morrigan whispering in my heart.

But the goddess had been silent, and I wondered if she had abandoned me after my demands of her on the road to Cosa. I wondered if she’d finally turned her face from me forever.



* * *



—

“Where are you going?” Elka asked. Again. It was a question she asked of me a lot. And I rarely had a satisfactory answer.

“I told you,” I sighed. “I’m not supposed to tell you.”

It wasn’t that I didn’t want to tell her. It was just that a priest from the temple of Sekhemet in Alexandria had sought me out after the morning meal that day and told me—in private—that the queen had made arrangements with his order and I was to be granted a private communing with the goddess. That night. And I was to tell no one. For reasons that weren’t quite clear to me other than that the goddess herself was . . . private. Secretive.

What did I know? Other than that I was a rudderless ship on an unknown sea and I needed some kind of . . . pilot, landmark, something to point me in the right direction. So I heeded the priest’s admonitions to keep my temple visit a secret and didn’t tell Elka where I was going. I didn’t even tell Cai.

“I’ll be back in the morning,” I said to Elka. “Try not to wreck the palace while I’m gone?”

She crossed her arms and raised an eyebrow, watching as I stepped onto the reed skiff, accompanied by the priest—a tall man with a shaved head and soulful brown eyes named Intef—and the boatman pushed off, working the single oar with practiced strokes to take me to the mainland. Out of sight of Elka back on the palace dock, I reached into the little pouch I wore on my belt and took out the lioness amulet Cleopatra had given me. I usually kept it tucked away there, along with my whetstone and Tartarus key. I stared at it for a moment, at the wise eyes of the goddess, and then clasped it around my neck. The queen had given it to me for protection, but I silently placed more trust in the swords I wore on my hips for that.

The air in Alexandria was perfumed with waves of spice and sweetness, rolling over one another, heady in my nostrils and hot-soft on my skin—which had gone from rosy to freckled after all the hours I’d spent out in the sun. The priest led me silently through the streets of the city, laid out in an orderly grid of wide, swept avenues, lined with temples and shops and the houses of the wealthy, decorated with the fantastical statues of Aegyptian gods, half-human and half-animal, striding boldly or standing serenely in little garden squares kept lush and green with water carried from the sacred River Nile.

The late afternoon was mellowing to evening when we reached the southwest quadrant of the city and the temple of the lioness. Inside Sekhemet’s sanctuary, I found a place of peace and shadows. Ponds crowned with lotus flowers floating on emerald lily pads sparkled beneath the dappled shade of thorny-branched trees called myrrh. Inside the temple proper, there was a central chamber guarded by double doors, dressed in sheets of beaten silver like Cleopatra’s rooms back in the palace. Instead of pastoral scenes, though, they were inscribed with scenes of war and carnage on one side and peace and plenty on the other.

Inside, there was a large main sanctuary surrounded by nooks and niches fitted with shrines and altars, private alcoves for worship, and public space for ritual. Double rows of stately columns marched toward a far dais, where a larger-than-life figure of the goddess Sekhemet was carved in black granite. She was seated overlooking a shallow bronze brazier filled with smoking coals in front of a long rectangular reflecting pool. The center of the sanctum roof was open to the sky, and I could imagine the stars reflecting back off the still, dark surface of the water at night. I thought about how beautiful that would be and then remembered I would find out soon enough.