Chapter Thirty-Two
Ronan
Lord Cyrus, I can tell by the timing of his interruption, is well and truly sick of my shit.
We’ve been going back and forth over this farm tax and subsidy issue for weeks.
It’s the typical story: we need food to live.
The kingdom needs taxes to support itself.
Someone is going to win, and someone is going to lose because this system is fucked beyond repair.
And somehow, as always, doing the right thing is the one thing guaranteed to make everyone unhappy.
“I’m sorry to ruin your evening, your majesty,” he says, sounding anything but, “but the heads of House Grana and Modesto are here tonight, and if I can just get your thoughts on—”
“Do whatever you think is best.”
There’s a woman standing out in the cold who is practically screaming the most beautifully lurid feelings at me, and I fully intend to spend the better part of the evening inside of her, farm taxes be damned.
“Sir? But there’s the issue of the fishing rights as well. House Nauta demands to speak with you—”
“Are you telling me that what you want to do is the wrong idea?”
Cyrus raises his silver eyebrows so high I think they might reach his hair. “No, sir. Not at all. It’s just that—”
I sigh. The man is exhausting, but he has a better sense for these things than I do. Every time he’s told me I need to speak with someone, he’s been right. If House Nauta needs to hear whatever bullshit Cyrus has come up with from my lips, I might as well get it over with or pay for it later.
“Very well,” I say, following him inside with a regretful glance back at Sylvie.
Gods, Sylvie. I can still feel her longing for me, even though I must be a hundred feet away by now.
I’ve been waiting for so long for this. For her.
I never thought I’d be able to share myself with someone in this way.
Never thought anyone would see me the way I see them, would know me the way I have no choice but to know them.
To be able to share my feelings with her.
It’s the greatest thing that’s ever happened to me.
And it’s her.
Of course it’s her. It had to be her. I’ve never met anyone so incredible. So good. So smart. So capable of seeing through the lies she was raised with. I’m so fucking proud of her. I knew I was right about her. I knew she could do it.
And she did.
I’m yours, Ronan, she said.
I can’t believe it. I probably shouldn’t believe it, in spite of what I feel. She came here to kill me, I’m certain of it, and I ought to assume that everything I’ve felt from her has been an act. She’s probably still trying to kill me.
And fuck me, I’d let her. I’d let her kill me just to feel her touch.
She is killing me. It has been killing me, watching her from a distance.
Watching the way the freckles on her cheeks dance when she laughs at one of Quinn’s stupid jokes in the dining hall.
Watching her twirl the ring she wears on her finger when she’s nervous, when she feels my eyes on her.
Feeling her fear from across the palace and not being able to comfort her, to hold her.
Trying desperately not to think of her, not to think about touching her, not to let the unrelenting desire echo between us.
Trying to give her the space and time she needs.
Trying to trust that she’d come back to me.
She came back to me.
I can still taste her on my lips, sweet like honey. I want to be back there, between her legs. I want to lie on the bed and let her straddle my face, let her smother me to death with her dripping wet—
Fuck, I need to calm down. My throbbing hard erection is just about the last thing I need during these tax negotiations.
I suppose I also ought to visit a washbasin before letting Thaddeus kiss the ring, considering where that finger has been.
Sylvie’s feelings shift a bit as I wash my hands. Sadness and anger. Talking to someone? Taran, probably. I know I’ve complicated things between them by telling her, but they’re both reasonable people. They’ll work through it eventually.
I’m drying my hands when I feel a sudden, stomach-dropping flash of fear and panic from her.
Then terror.
FUCK.
I throw open the washroom door, nearly knocking over a young boy from House Faber. “Guards! With me!” I shout, shoving aside anyone who gets in my way.
“Ronan?” calls Cyrus.
“It’s Sylvie. Get Quinn.”
I slam through the exterior door, and I’m running down the stairs when her feelings vanish.
They’re gone.
They’re just gone, as suddenly as when she falls into a deep sleep. I choke, my heart in my throat, as I consider what it could mean.
“Sylvie!” I shout.
Someone is there under the streetlamp on the ground.
My blood turns to ice. No. It can’t be her.
It can’t be.
It isn’t.
Gods, the relief is…short-lived. It’s Taran, and that’s also terrible. I can’t feel him either, and Sylvie is nowhere to be seen.
“Find her,” I shout to the guards clambering directionless behind me. I’ll head for her myself just as soon as I know if Taran’s alright.
I reach down for him. He’s only a couple of years younger than me, but he looks like a boy down on the ground, slumped on his side. There’s no blood visible, and when I touch his forehead, I can’t feel any wounds or bruises.
His blood is still flowing. I sigh in relief.
He must have been ambushed somehow. Taran’s a skilled fighter. If there had been combat, he would have fought back, but his sword is still at his side. Maybe it was a sleeping elixir like the one I took to the warehouse.
If so, it has an easy fix, and I need him with me if someone has taken Sylvie. “Healer!” I shout. “Bring the smelling salts.”
There’s some commotion on the steps now as some of the theatre goers come out to see where the guards rushed off to. I’m fortunate that an alchemist is among them. I don’t recognize the white-haired woman who approaches, but I’m grateful to see her brown robes.
She kneels and holds a vial up to Taran’s nose. He jolts awake, thrashing out and pulling himself upright suddenly. “Sylvie,” he says to me, reaching for his sword.
It’s not Taran’s first time being woken this way.
The alchemist still crouches on the ground, looking shocked. “He really ought to—”
“Thank you,” I tell her.
“Your majesty!” she exclaims, just then realizing who she was speaking to.
But Taran and I are already running for the nearest alley.
“Ronan!” yells Quinn from far behind.
“This way.” I have no idea if I’m heading in the right direction, but my legs don’t care. They need me to run to her.
“Sir, over here!” It’s Stella from an alley to the south.
Taran and I turn on our heels, and Quinn manages to catch us as we race for Stella’s voice.
Stella is gasping for breath when we reach her. “I saw a figure in the alley. I can’t find them.”
“With us,” I tell her, and she falls in behind me.
I’m losing my goddamn mind with worry as we race down the darkened street, dodging under a line of washing. There are people in the homes nearby, but none of them is Sylvie. None of them feel as though they’re hiding or running or doing anything out of the ordinary.
Where the fuck is she?
She’s alive, I tell myself, willing myself to keep calm long enough to find her. To help her. She’s alive she’s alive she’s alive she’s alive…
We follow the alley as it turns in another direction, and I realize where we’re going just as Stella does. “The doorway Sylvie led me to, sir?”
“I think so,” I say, breathing hard from the run.
“Where?” asks Quinn.
“I’ll explain once we get there.”
The doorway where Mery told us he saw Vesper, the doorway Sylvie’s alchemist went through, isn’t far from here. It’s very close, I realize with a sinking feeling in my stomach.
The door is unlocked, and the interior looks as empty and untouched as Sylvie described it. “There must be something here,” I say. “Some way in.”
“Some way where, Ronan? What’s going on?”
“Look for anything out of the ordinary,” I say, and then I explain to Quinn and Taran what we’ve been up to and what we think is going on.
Both of them are furious at me for not telling them. Well, Quinn is furious. Taran is quietly disapproving, bordering on betrayed.
“I can’t believe you didn’t trust me,” says Quinn as she knocks a dusty picture frame from the wall. “You trusted her even back then?”
Quinn had been deeply critical of my trust in Sylvie back in the beginning, back before the archery tournament changed everything.
“She’s definitely trying to kill you, Ronan,” she had said.
“Her and that sister of hers. They are 100% here to murder you, and you’re flirting with her!
I can’t believe you even invited them. I’ve always known you were an idiot, but this is a new low, even for you.
If you were that desperate for a woman, I have a dozen I could recommend—”
I’d cut her off there.
“Always,” I say. I don’t blame Quinn for not being able to understand.
She doesn’t—and can never—understand people the way that I do.
And she’s not wrong that feelings matter little compared to actions, but she also doesn’t live with other people’s feelings in her head all day, every day.
She doesn’t know what it’s like to know someone inside and out the minute I meet them.
She doesn’t know how rare it is to find someone who not only doesn’t disappoint you, but someone who fascinates you and challenges you and humbles you.
Someone who reminds you not just that it’s worthwhile to care, but that there are things in this world worth caring for.
Taran pushes a cobweb-covered desk back to check behind it, and I come over to help. “You could have told me,” he says.
I nod and say, “I know.”
This is all I need to say to him.
“What are we even looking for? Are you sure she was here?” asks Quinn.