Page 95 of Between Two Kings

“People are already getting hurt, Tem. We’re starving. What do you expect us to do?”

Tem shook her head, staring up at him, trying to understand. “This isn’t working, Gabriel. You aren’t hurting anyone but yourselves. Do you think the royals care that the church burned down? This will only affect the villagers.”

“They’ll care soon enough.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“The royals are just the beginning. The snakes are next.”

A chill ran down Tem’s spine. “When will it be enough?” she whispered.

The wind was picking up now, howling down the alleyway. Gabriel stared down at her, his eyes gleaming in the darkness. “When they give back what they took from us.”

Then he turned and left her.

Chapter Sixteen

It was the first time Gabriel had ever let her go without kissing her on the cheek. Tem felt a single tear fall, tracing the place where his lips should have been. She stumbled back through the forest cold and alone. Multiple times, she fell along the path, groping her way with no sense of direction. She was crying so hard she barely heard her name.

“Temperance?” Apollo emerged from the forest like a ghost, his bare skin glowing in the darkness.

“What are you doing here?” Tem gasped. She’d never seen him outside the caves.

Apollo stepped closer. “You said you were in the village. You were hurt.”

Tem’s brain was barely working. She struggled to put the pieces together: Apollo was here. He had come to find her. Apollo was here.

“Why are you crying? What happened?”

Tem had no idea how to answer him. Why was she crying? Was it because she’d just seen her childhood church burn down before her eyes? Was it because people had gotten hurt, and it was her fault? Or was it because the brother she needed was not the brother before her?

Apollo stepped even closer, brushing his thumb gently over her cheek. “Tell me how to fix it,” he murmured. “Please.”

Tem closed her eyes, focusing on nothing but his touch, letting it ground her. The intimacy of the moment was crushing. They had to stop meeting like this—alone in the darkness, immediately after something traumatic had happened. It was only a matter of time before it ended in disaster.

“Why the tears, Temperance?”

Tem opened her eyes. “The villagers are angry.”

Apollo raised an eyebrow. “Are they now?”

“Yes.”

“At whom?”

“The royals. And…” She paused, wondering how much she should say. “Caspen.”

Apollo raised his other eyebrow. Tem didn’t know how much he knew—if he was aware that Caspen was the one who broke the truce—that he had broken it for her.

“The villagers will not harm us, Temperance. They fear us.”

She shook her head. They did not fear them enough. The snakes are next.

“If they come near us, we will turn them to stone,” Apollo said. “They will not stand a chance. Petrification is our greatest power.”

Again, her inadequacy reared its head. Tem dropped her voice to a whisper as she said, “Not for me.”

“What do you mean?”