Chapter Seventeen #2
He found a middle ground. Something between what he truly wants and what he knows is best. I admire that. It’s a sensible thing to try, a de-escalation of whatever it is that’s happening here without running for the door entirely.
But I can’t stay. I shouldn’t. I need to leave; I need to get out of here and clear my head, to think about what’s happening before I do something—“Alright,” I hear myself saying.
What am I doing?
Is this his magic? Is it the reason for the pull he has on me?
“No,” I say more firmly than I truly feel. “I don’t know. I need some air.”
“Come,” he says, and godsdammit, did he have to say that word?
“Did you have to say that word?” My eyes widen as I realize I’ve said that thought out loud.
But wonderfully, miraculously, it fixes everything. It’s so silly, so stupid, that he can’t help but laugh, and finally, blessedly, the tension breaks.
Kerensa, thank you for helping me in my hour of need.
I’m back in the room. I’m back on solid ground. I feel the cool stone through my thin sandals, feel the cool breeze from the open archway.
That’s where Ronan leads me, straight past the shelves full of insights into Ronan’s character that I might have been able to explore if I could’ve kept myself together for five fucking minutes, past whatever hidden doors the servants use that I could have been finding if I’d remembered anything useful at all, and through the archway onto a balcony overlooking the sea.
It’s an incredible vista, of course. Deep blue water stretches to the horizon, a streak of gold shimmering in the last light of the setting sun. Rocky cliffs jut out from the sides, lending the balcony their natural protection, although we’re up far too high for anyone to climb anyway.
It would be difficult to access his chambers from here. Difficult, but not impossible, I realize, as I see other balconies to the sides.
“What are you thinking?” he asks me, and my thoughts scramble, trying to land on something connected to my feelings but not quite so incriminating.
“I’m wondering whose rooms those are, and what they did to earn the view.”
Gods, what a dumb question. Possibly anything but, I don’t know, waging a war against his throne?
He looks at me quizzically. “You know, I never wanted to read thoughts until I met you.”
A strange thing to say. “What do you mean?’
He leans over the railing, and I join him, doing the same.
At a safe distance. “Usually I can guess what someone’s thinking by the feelings that they have.
People aren’t terribly complicated. The feelings they have are largely the same.
Anger, fear, joy, anxiety, desire.” His eyes flash to mine on the last word, and I’m desperately willing the blood in my neck to stay there and not rush into my face.
He swallows, tilting his head to cover the movement.
“It’s not hard to connect their feelings, to guess at the cause of them.
Sometimes it’s the sequence of them that gives them away, sometimes it's the things they say, even if they don’t match the way they feel. ”
He turns to look at me and then shakes his head. “But you’re a mystery to me sometimes. It’s infuriating. I can feel so much from you. Gods, it’s like you’re shouting at me with everything you’re feeling, but I have no idea what any of it means.”
“I’m shouting at you with my feelings?” That doesn’t seem good.
He laughs. “I’m not saying you’re doing it on purpose. But when you’re in the room, it’s like I can feel no one else. It’s nice, actually. My power—it can be overwhelming when a lot of people are around. You quiet the noise.”
I smile a little, and he leans a little closer. He looks so lovely in the dying sunlight. It catches the gold strands of his hair and illuminates them from behind, casting a faint glow around him.
Or maybe it’s his own internal glow. It’s hard to tell.
“If you want to know what I’m thinking, just ask,” I say.
“Will you tell me the truth?”
Not likely, but maybe sometimes. “I’m shadow-born, like you said. It’s in my nature not to.”
“I don’t believe that for a second.”
“Sacrilege? And from the God-King himself?”
He smiles mischievously. “All day, every day.”
The aspects of the schools of magic are written in the Codex. They’re sacred. The crime of sacrilege has rarely been punished in the last one hundred years, but at a minimum, it will get you a good talking to from a priest, which is reason enough to avoid it.
I want to ask him more about that—how does someone manage to lead the national religion, a religion that holds him to be the reincarnation of a literal god on earth, and also speak against it?
But a pair of servants arrives then, one holding a tray and the other a tablecloth and utensils, and I realize I missed how he summoned them and where they came from.
Maybe Ronan is right. I may be a shadow-born, but I’m also the world’s worst spy.
“Just against the railing there,” he directs them as they set a small table and move it onto the balcony. “Perfect.”
“I’m sorry to make you wait,” says Ronan as he takes the seat across from me. “But you can never be too careful.” He gestures, and one of the servants lifts a cover and takes a bite from something that smells like perfectly fried fish as another lights a candle.
My mouth waters, and my stomach growls angrily. I’m starving.
“I’ll take my chances,” I say, reaching for one of the covers, but he smacks it back down.
“I have to insist that you don’t. It won’t be long.”
I don’t see why I should have to wait for the royal taster. It’s not like someone is going to poison me.
“Finally, a feeling I can read loud and clear. No, I don’t think someone is going to poison you, but they could certainly poison us both.”
“Have you ever eaten anything warm in your life?” I don’t know how he can stand eating cold food. I always made Seth heat my dishes if they took too long coming from the kitchens.
He lifts the cover off the fish and holds his hands over it. In just a few seconds, it begins to sizzle. “I manage.”
“Cover it back up. It smells too good.”
After an agonizing wait, the servant appears to be very much not dead, and Ronan finally lets me gorge myself, which I do with great enthusiasm after he reheats my food for me.
“Tell her servants to make sure she has food to take with her to the arena on tournament days. She’s starving.”
I open my mouth to protest, but I really am starving, and it’s a nice gesture.
There’s a slight pause after we’re both done, and it reminds me a bit of Larus waiting for me to talk. I take a sip of wine—damn, it’s delicious; Nithyrian for sure—and fire away. “So what do you want to know, Ronan? You asked me to dinner. You want to know what I’m thinking. Ask me.”
“Are you liking it here?”
Here? “In the palace? Or Faros?”
“I take it you don’t like one of those. Which is it?”
“The palace,” I admit. “I don’t mind your chambers—”
“Good. You’ll be back here,” he says, wiping his mouth and then freezing, napkin still in hand, as he realizes what he said. “For dinner. I meant you’ll be back here again for dinner—”
“I like the décor here,” I explain, ignoring the way my pulse races at that little slip-up. “The rest…”
He leans over the table, moving the candle to the side and dropping his voice low. “I’ll tell you a secret: I hate the palace too. I had these rooms redone to my own taste.”
After the war. These rooms had once belonged to his parents.
For once, I’m grateful that we lost our home.
I never had to see the rooms my parents slept in pass to my sister.
I couldn’t imagine using them myself, feeling their presence every time I was in them. I don’t blame him for changing things.
His parents. My parents. Gods, we’d all lost so much. I wonder what they would say if they could see us sitting at this table together.
His brows furrow. “You’re doing it again. Feeling things at me that I don’t understand.”
“I was thinking of our parents.”
“Ah,” he says, and he takes a deep sip of wine. “That explains it.”
“Can I ask you a question?” I ask after another pause.
“Go on.”
“How did you know about the bruise on my back?”
He looks off across the sea, searching for a way to explain it. “When I touch you, I can feel the blood flowing through your body. It’s like a map in some ways, the way it appears in my mind. I can feel when something isn’t flowing as it should, when it collects somewhere or exits through a wound.”
When it collects somewhere. Like a bruise, or…
Like arousal.
“Exactly,” he says, tilting his glass to me. “I got that one. And yes, it’s every bit as embarrassing as you’re imagining.”
Gods. I tell myself to never, ever let him touch me again.
Or maybe to let him touch me right now.
Godsdammit, keep it together.
“I’m sorry I wasn’t there today to heal you. I was following a lead on Vesper that led nowhere, unfortunately. We didn’t get anything useful from Marcella; it seems like the two going missing weren’t related. I won’t miss another of your events.”
“Please don’t,” I say. “You don’t need to come.” I don’t really want him to come. I’m not sure how well I’ll perform, knowing he’s watching.
“I won’t let something like that happen to you again.” He leans back and crosses his arms, defiant.
I scoff. “You sent me into danger yourself.”
“That was different. I was there.”
His mouth sets into a firm line. Fine, I’ll let him have this one. But I still want to know how he knew what happened. “Did you send someone to keep an eye on me?”
“No,” he says, picking up his fork and flicking it across his empty plate. It’s an obvious lie. “Alright, yes. I did.”
My face flushes, and for once, I can’t tell if it’s from embarrassment, anger, or some kind of primal appreciation for being protected.
“And don’t tell me you didn’t need it because you did. It’s a good thing she was there, from what she told me.”