Chapter 49
Chapter
Forty-Nine
ZANDYR
T he convoy stretched for more than a mile, joyful voices raised to the heavens.
The elders had started an ancient song of farewell, filled with the sorrow of separation and the sweet promise of return, as a last goodbye to the Capital they might not get to see again.
The road thumped under the weight of over a thousand feet.
Those who could, walked. The elders and the children sat in borrowed carts and wagons pulled by the biggest and strongest oxen the Capital had to offer. The journey would be longer on foot, especially with so many to escort back to their homes, but I wouldn’t risk any civilian getting on a ship until I got rid of the Port Master.
The Capital civilians repaid in kind, showering the convoy in flowers, the sweetness of burning incense filling the air.
It was a joyous goodbye, if such a thing existed. A celebration that the civilians could return home.
After the bridge had exploded–under my watch–I was sure many of them were more than happy to return to their houses, scattered through the fields and mountains.
“This is because of you, Your Highness,” Myron said as we watched the line of people grow outside the city. “They’re all returning to their lives.”
“We all fought in the war.” And we had all lost so many, their souls now in the gods’ embrace and their bodies nourishing the lands next to the Obsidian River for all eternity.
“A shark might have a powerful body, but it needs its head to smell the blood and attack. Otherwise it flops over and sinks.”
“Myron, I never knew you were such a poet.”
He shrugged his pointed shoulders. Even outside of battle, he preferred to walk around without a shirt or armor, as if daring any gaze to linger too much on his tormented form. Very few knew how he’d truly gotten it, but I was taking that secret to the grave, like so many I’d learned throughout the years, willingly or not.
He wore each of his scars and marks with pride, a tapestry of all he’d survived. Including the quickly healing wound on his left cheek, courtesy of one of those fervent Serpents.
“I don’t need poetry and fancy words to speak the truth,” Myron said. “And you look like you’re on death’s door. Thought someone should remind you you’ve won.”
The war, yes.
But now when it came to my marriage.
My illegitimate marriage.
Try as I might, my eyes strayed toward Evie riding at the front of the convoy alongside Adara and a dozen of my best warriors, followed by the carriage carrying Kaya and the rest.
Wolf packs did the same. The strongest prowled in the front and back, protecting the weakest in the center.
Evie had donned the Blood Brotherhood armor once more, riding Zorin as if she’d been reborn as a goddess of the hunt, curls wound tightly underneath her crown.
My hands fisted on Madrya’s reins, who hit the ground and neighed, as restless as I felt. She’d been looking after Zorin since the white nazdran had exited the Capital.
They’d have their time to roam together once we reached Frostfall Reach, but riding together on the long journey was not possible.
Numbing my side of the bond was already torturous, even while keeping my distance from Evie. If I got too close, I risked her feeling all of my inner turmoil.
Myron was right. I not only looked at death’s door, I felt it.
The mere mention of separating clouded my judgement.
Fated mates– true fated mates–meant a bond that would last forever, even after our bodies had been burned and our souls departed. Following each other in death might have been more than the fodder for childrens’ tales and epic odes to love.
If one died, the other could as well if true love blossomed between the pair. If something as unavoidable as death could end one’s life, a very mortal break-up was…inconceivable.
To know your partner, your perfect counterpart, chose not to be with you struck at the most basic instincts such a bond created.
Just as I had my doubts Evie would follow me if I died, I also knew a separation would ruin me more than her. At least she wouldn’t suffer as much as I would, a sliver of good fortune in a sea of misery.
She wanted to leave.
No.
She wanted to leave me.
I sucked in a breath as the bond howled in anguish, almost keeling over in my saddle.
Pathetic.
The Dragon, one of Malhaven’s best warriors, who’d faced an entire army and magicked snakes with nothing but a hope and a grin to be taken down by a thought was truly pitiful.
Between the bond and the oath, thoughts and promises were trying their best to kill me.
Mercifully, Myron remained silent, pretending he hadn’t noticed.
I righted myself, my vision hazing over. No wonder my mother and father were absolutely obsessed with each other if the alternative would have debilitated them.
I suffocated the whirlwind of emotions before it could seep into the bond.
Evie was hurting, too, and the last thing I wanted was to add to it.
I’d already pained her enough with my actions, I couldn’t also torment her with my feelings.
Yet my gaze still trailed her, desperate and defenseless against the pull of her.
I had no clue how to fix this.
How to fix us.
If she wanted to leave, I couldn’t stop her, I knew that much. Even with the threat of losing my own mind, her happiness was more important.
It was the way of fated mates–sacrificing yourself for your better half.
I didn’t want her to go.
I couldn’t force her to stay.
In my darkest dreams, I did.
In my wildest fantasies, I didn’t have to.
Because the Evie in my fantasies wanted to stay. The same obsession and craving which had taken hold of me beat inside her, too, and she couldn’t imagine a life without me, either. She wanted to breathe my sighs and rest her head on my chest. We trained together and we laughed and we loved, and never spent a single night apart, tossing in sheets and moaning until the early morning light, my name a prayer on her lips. The same name she hadn’t called me since the wedding would be spilling from her tongue with wanton abandon as her fingers twisted in my hair and her thighs gripped me closer.
Her eyes would meet mine with happiness, not with uncertainty and that blink of dread that I’ll betray her trust once more. In the morning, I’d get to watch her slowly wake. Kiss that little nose wiggle she always did when she opened her eyes, and relish in the sweet scent of her hair as I kissed her forehead.
Her hands would reach for me with tenderness and love, loathe to leave my embrace.
We’d rule and face life’s greatest hurdles together, always side by side.
That was the future I wanted.
It couldn’t remain a fantasy that would torment me for eternity.
As the last of the convoy exited the Capital in a cloud of incense, with Kylian and half a battalion on its heels, I nudged Madrya into a slow gallop, finally ripping my gaze from the speck Evie and Zorin had become in the distance. Even in a sea of people, I would still know where she was.
I settled at the back of the convoy, my senses on alert for any possible attack.
The war had just ended, but the effects still lingered, like they always did after every battle.
A breaking tree branch could be an archer cocking a crossbow.
The murmur of a creek sounded so much like a stream of blood.
The rustling leaves could hide an assassin–or, gods forbid, one of those monstrous snakes.
The nightmares of war still haunted me and they would for a long time. Since Evie and I weren’t physically apart anymore, she no longer came to me in my dreams. At least I’d spared her the sight of Ryker’s apprentice torn apart over and over again or the howl of the soldiers as they’d been swallowed by the river, to be carried away into oblivion.
Through all the tension, the vigilance, the concern, my mind still focused on how I could save my marriage.
I was a patient man. Most importantly, I’d become an even more stubborn one–a small part of that Vegheara blood was now flowing through me as well.
I didn’t know how and I didn’t know when, but I’d make Evie trust me again.
I was not giving up on us.