And Aron just smiles, happy for the first time since I’ve met him.

I feel sick. “Well,” I manage faintly. “This is a bad time to say I told you so, but…I told you so.”

“This makes no sense.”

“No shit.” I rub my head, wanting to cry with the pain of it, but crying won’t do any good. Aron’s not exactly the most sympathetic of audiences.

“This is my temple. These are my people. They worship me. Why would they try to kill me?” Aron’s pale brows furrow and his scar seems that much darker against his skin. “Are they mad?”

“Or they know something we don’t. Also, spoiler, it wasn’t you they came after. It was me.” I jab a thumb into my chest. “So you want to tell me the reason behind that?”

He stares at me for a long moment and I expect one of his snippy comebacks. But then he just shakes his head. “I do not know. I understand none of this.”

I press a trembling hand to my forehead and find it wet with blood. God. I just want to cry. Cry and then race to the nearest clinic where they can stitch me up and give me something to calm my nerves before I have a nervous breakdown. Someone sent a murder squad for me. Not the god I’m serving.

Me.

And he’s no help in the slightest because he doesn’t know anything. I can’t blame him for that, but at the same time, I feel helpless in the face of everything that’s happening. “Do you believe me when I say we can’t stay here?” I ask him again. “Because someone’s going to come looking for these men. And while you’re a badass with that axe, if they send twice as many after us next time, you might not be able to stop them before they kill me.”

I wait for him to say something shitty about how it doesn’t matter if I die because he’s the important one, but he only gazes at me thoughtfully and then nods. “Where should we go?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know anything about this place. I told you, I’m not from here.”

“Then let us go to your land.”

“I wish we could, believe me.” I rub my bare arms, covered in goosebumps. “As for where we should go, we’ll figure it out on the road. Maybe other temples aren’t full of assholes. Maybe we can find a nice innkeeper or someone that has answers. I don’t know. All I do know is that staying here is basically asking to be murdered in our sleep.”

“I didn’t sleep,” Aron says absently. “I still couldn’t.”

“We’ll add that to our growing list of problems,” I tell him, trying to keep the crankiness out of my voice. I’m scared, tired, and hurting. Of course, that’s been the norm ever since I arrived here, so it shouldn’t freak me out as bad as it has. But someone just tried to murder me tonight. Me, not the god who showed up uninvited.

There’s something about this whole “anchor” thing that no one’s telling me, I suspect, and I don’t trust the prelate or anyone else in this stupid temple to give us the right answers. For now, we have to leave and go somewhere where they might help us, and it’s not here.

“Grab some shoes and some clothes, Aron,” I tell the god as I kneel beside my old owner and begin to search his pockets. I find a pouch with a few coins in it attached to his belt and a holstered dagger, and grab them both. Then, I decide to take his belt because his seems way handier than mine. Actually, they all have better clothes than I do. I glance around at the dead bodies. It’s awful to think of stripping the dead, but me in slave gear is going to draw attention to us, and it’s freaking cold and has no pockets. I check the next body, but his tunic is covered in gore. There has to be one that isn’t completely gross.

“What are you doing?” Aron asks, his tone imperious once more. “Robbing the dead?”

“No, I’m robbing the assholes that tried to murder us.” I glance up at him even as I slide a few more coins into my pouch. “Or how far do you think we’re going to get without money in this city? In any city?”

He frowns at me, crossing his arms over his chest. “I am a god. I have no need of coin.”

“See, that’s where you’re wrong on both counts,” I tell him, and move to the next body. Success. This guy’s neck looks like it was broken instead of blood everywhere. Yay. I grab one arm and then try to push him onto his stomach. “Help me with this.”

Aron reaches over and helps me turn the guy. A moment later, I’ve got his long, red cloak freed and I’m working on dragging his tunic over his limp body.

“What do you mean, I am wrong?” Aron asks. “That I am not a god?”

“You know you are. I know you are. But to be honest, it’s better for everyone if no one else thinks you are. I mean, what if these people have been ‘Anticipating’ your return so they can murder you and take your place? How do we know that’s not the trick?”

He’s silent.

I look up at him and there’s a faint frown on Aron’s face. I kind of feel like I just explained to someone that Santa isn’t real, but we’ve got no other choice right now. “So what do we do?” Aron asks finally.

“We go incognito. Try to get some answers. And once we know what is going on, we figure out how to send you home, and send me home.” I grab a scabbard and hold it out to Aron. “So we need weapons. And clothes. And shoes. And we need to hurry before someone else returns and sees that we’ve killed the welcoming party.”

I expect Aron to protest, but he picks up a handful of the cloak and studies it thoughtfully. “Show me how to wear clothing, then.”

A short time later, both Aron and I are both dressed in tunics stolen from the guards, belts with weapons, cloaks, and the strange, leather boots that lace up the side of the ankle. I’ve taken the allegiance tags from the guards and pocketed them. I’m holding onto the money, too, because I don’t trust Aron to remember how important something like that is. I just wish I knew how much we had, but the coins here don’t look like anything I can tie back to specific dollar amounts.

I’m pretty much the worst anchor he could have picked, ever. But we share a common goal at least—getting home.

It’ll have to be enough for now.

“I do not like this,” Aron tells me as we slip out of the secret passageway, clutching our weapons. He’s got a sword and I’m holding a dagger in tight, sweaty fingers.

“Me either, buddy,” I tell him. “Me either.”

God, I really, really want to go home.

OceanofPDF.com

11

The moon is an unpleasant, bright red and huge in the sky over the night. I’m so tired that I don’t want to do anything but crawl into the nearest bed and go to sleep, but I know we can’t do that. I’m tempted to find a stable and a friendly horse that won’t mind sharing his stall, but something tells me we’d be smart to get off this little island and out of Aventine entirely.

Aron doesn’t say much—thank goodness—as we race out of the temple grounds and head for the docks. They’re surprisingly not hard to find. Stragglers from the big festival are still along a wide, cobbled, torchlit path and so we follow them as they head to the ferry.

The ferryman’s wearing soldier garb just like us and nods as we approach. It’s too dark for him to see under our hoods, but I feel my heart pounding anyhow. He ushers us on and doesn’t ask for money, and then it’s that simple to get away from the temple itself. The ferry waits a few minutes for the last few stragglers, and then pushes off from the shore, the guards poling the flat boat across the moonlit waters.

I lean in close to Aron. “From this point on, your name is Grover.”

Even though it’s dark and he’s hooded, I can still see a frown on his pale jaw. “That is a stupid name. Why?”