His? My pulse speeds up. “Okay. Fine. Besides that.”
He doesn’t turn back around. His eyes travel an unhurried path over my face, and I can almost feel the heat in them on the curve of my cheek, and then on my mouth. His burning gaze snags on my braid, following it across my shoulder and over the swell of my breast. As his eyes dip, his lips part, and his fingers twitch on his thigh.
My breathing turns shallow. Muscles I’m not usually aware of clench deep inside me, growing achy with tension and warmth. The heat simmering in my core quickly spirals through the rest of me, flushing my face with color. I hate that I react this way to him. And I hate that it shows.
Scowling, I flick my braid over my shoulder.
Beta Sinta blinks and turns back around. “That was it, at the time. The Kingmaker. But you’re a lot more than that, aren’t you, Cat?”
The blood still climbing to my face plummets like Icarus falling to the sea. Gods, magic, and the prophecy I try so hard to ignore all collide in my stomach in an explosion of secrets and dread. Anxiety coats my tongue while an icy chill slides down my spine. The feeling is so familiar, and yet it freezes me solid every time.
I take a deep breath and let it out as silently as I can. “Not really.” My voice comes out light and steady, even though I’m about two Hydra heads away from having a panic attack. “I’m from the north. Knowledge of creatures and magic is normal for us.”
He grunts. Agreement? Skepticism? I can’t tell.
I bite my lip, wondering what he really knows. “Why focus on me?”
Beta Sinta shrugs, rolling his muscular shoulders right in front of me. His lightweight tunic doesn’t hide much. It’s hard not to stare.
“I don’t need more brute strength,” he says. “I won this war. There are politics to deal with now—Magoi nobles, and Tarvan and Fisan royals. I need to know who’s lying to me. I need to know the truth so Sinta can avoid more war.”
“The warlord wants peace?” I scoff.
“Am I lying?”
I grit my teeth. “No.” Of all people, I should know. “Power corrupts.”
“Power corrupts the weak.”
Gods! I hate it when I agree with him. “How did you even know what I can do?”
There’s a slight pause. “At first, without drawing attention to myself, I was trying to get a feel for the different Magoi at the circus, but I found myself always watching you instead. First outside Sinta City when the circus crossed back over from Tarva. Then I went to a few performances in Kaplos. When the circus moved south, I decided to follow. I knew there was something different about you, something special, but I couldn’t figure out what.”
His words stun me into silence. Beta Sinta watched me for weeks without my even realizing it? I’m not careless, or oblivious. None of this makes sense—not him focusing on me, and not my runaway mouth at the last circus fair. And since. Information is valuable, and I’ve been spewing it out like it’s worth copper instead of gold.
“How did you figure it out?” I finally ask.
His pause is longer this time. “Strangely enough, it was a dream. I dreamt I was swimming in a vast and stormy ocean in the dead of night. When I couldn’t swim any longer, I sank to the bottom, and you were there. You lit up the dark like a lightning bolt, took my hands, and pulled me to the surface. You told me we could change everything—that you knew the truth.”
My heart seizes and then crashes violently against my ribs. An oracular dream! Beta Sinta was gifted with an oracular dream—Poseidon’s oracular dream—and he doesn’t even know it.
Queasiness turns my insides upside down. Poseidon, why have you betrayed me?
My mind races while my stomach ties itself in knots. What in the Underworld is going on? Why is Poseidon even interested in Sinta? There’s no ocean in the west, his Oracles are on the other side of the realms, and magic has always been weakest here. The Ice Plains get diagonally bigger as you go east. Sinta has the narrowest strip. As the middle realm, Tarva has twice as much glacial territory, and Fisa, in the east, has even more. To core Olympians like Poseidon, these dusty hills, plains, and old forests are an afterthought. As much as I love Sinta, it’s the runt of the realms.
“From there I started thinking about old legends,” he continues. “I went to Mylos for the knowledge scrolls and found you, or the equivalent of you. The Kingmaker—the woman who hears the lie and knows the truth. Basil was the perfect test. I knew he wasn’t who he said he was. I was constantly drawn to you. The dream told me I needed you. After I saw your reaction when Basil lied, I knew what to do.”