Chapter Seventeen #3
“Wait, are you telling me you sent Zara to protect me?” The head of the Alchemists’ Guild? He sent the head of the Alchemists’ Guild to protect me during the tournament?
“She offered to go, to be fair. She pointed out that House Verran has a lot of enemies, and I agreed it would be best to have someone with light magic there to help you. Honestly, I think she just wanted to see the sport for herself. I don’t think either of us thought she’d truly be needed.”
Zara had volunteered. I make a mental note to send her something as a thank you. She had been absolutely right.
“That’s two questions you’ve asked me. It’s my turn,” he says. I reach for the wine bottle at the same time he does. Our hands touch, sending a shock through me like lightning. I pull away suddenly, remembering what he said about feeling arousal.
I’ll let him pour.
His breathing falters for just a moment before he regains control. “What do you like to do?” he asks me once our glasses are full again.
I laugh. “All the buildup for that?”
“I’m serious. I told you I’d like to know you. Tell me what you like.”
“Well, you know I’m not great at sword-fighting, but I’m not bad at archery. I can embroider, dance, the usual things. I can actually do a bit of acrobatic tumbling, that part of what I told Soren was true. Oh, and I can play the flute.”
“That’s not what I meant, although I am fond of music. There’s a lute in there.” He gestures back to the living area.
“Don’t tell me you’re one of those guys that plays the lute at the party.”
He smirks. “I would have been, in a different life. I might have been a bard. Can you picture it?”
“I can, actually.” He’s just the right amount of charming and smarmy.
“I can picture you playing the flute as well,” he says.
I can’t let that opportunity pass. “Is that a euphemism, or…?”
He nearly chokes on his wine.
“I’m sorry,” I say, being anything but. My shadows hum their approval at the silly little lie. “I don’t know where that came from. What were you trying to ask me?”
He opens his mouth, blinks, looks back into the palace, bites his lower lip in a way that sends a tingle between my legs, and then recomposes his face, remembering. “Those are things you can do. But what do you like to do? If you had one day left to live, how would you spend it?”
What do I like to do? The truth is, I don’t have a great answer to that question. I’ve spent so much of my life doing what I was told to. So many years being told that what I wanted didn’t matter, that I needed to focus on the good of the house or the people. My duty. My responsibility.
What am I, other than that?
The only thing I can think of is how good it felt to go to the market. How it felt when Soren showed me around. When he told me about all the vendors and the wonderful places they’d come from. “Well, I’d—no, it’s stupid.”
“Tell me.” He reaches across the table and nearly takes my hand in an automatic gesture that sends my heart racing. But he stops short.
Control.
“It would take more than a day,” I say.
“A week, a month. Whatever. It’s a hypothetical, Sylvie. I won’t hold you to the timing.”
I gaze out over the ocean. It’s beautiful out there, waves crashing in the darkness.
I wish he could see it too. “I would get in a boat and sail anywhere. Everywhere. I want to see it all, all the things I’ve read about in books.
All the beautiful places that are painted in our pictures and embroidered in our tapestries.
I want to climb mountains and go to markets and learn how to say hello in a dozen languages.
I want to journey to the Five Wonders of the World and measure them with my own eyes, to decide which one is the most wondrous.
I’ve spent my entire life in Nithyria, and I loved it there, but my father used to promise me that once it was over—once the revolution was over—he’d take me to all the places I wanted to go.
And then he never came back, and we never went.
If I could do anything, it would be that. ”
Ronan stays silent for a long time. His fingertips brush the stubble on his jaw in deep contemplation. When he finally speaks, his voice is low, but it doesn’t carry the warmth I’m accustomed to. It’s raw, almost to the point of breaking. “I’m sorry he never got to take you. I took that from you.”
He did, of course, but the rage I felt towards him for doing so is hard to find right now. It’s strange to be without it. My rage has been my constant companion these past few years. Somehow, it’s been slipping away from me, and I failed to notice its absence until this moment.
Yes, Ronan killed my father. He killed him in a duel my father requested, a duel they both agreed to in order to end the war and save the lives of their people. And I’ve hated him for it for so long, but…
This isn’t the man I hated.
He isn’t the same as the monster in my head. If there’s a version of Ronan that relished killing my father, either he’s hiding it very well, or he’s long gone too.
Because all I can see in his eyes is regret.
“I can’t give you him back, but someday, maybe, I could take you. To honor his memory. I would take you, if you’d let me.”
I don’t know what to say. I should be insulted. To take the trip I’d planned with my father with his killer instead? I should be raging.
Where did my rage go?
Who am I without it?
I can’t trust him. I need to remember what Larus said about how it benefits him to have me on his side. He could be using what I want to win me over. It costs him nothing to make empty promises.
But…his face. The soul-deep sadness in his eyes. The way his voice cracks when he speaks. The tension in his arms, the control he’s holding onto so tightly it looks like it might rip him apart.
There’s a part of me that believes him.
There’s also a part of me that knows that what Ronan said about the endless war between our families—the crimes on both sides—is true. He took my father, but my father took his. To honor my father would be to honor the man who took his father from him, for my sake.
Either he means what he says about ending the cycle of violence between us, or he’s the best liar I’ve ever met.
Either way, the trip he’s imagining won’t happen. But I don’t think about why. I refuse to disgrace this moment, this moment of compassion that I do not deserve, with thoughts about our plans.
“Maybe someday,” I say, but I know he can feel the truth.