22. The Price of Duty
The Price of Duty
The terms were simple. The truce would be immediate; the terms of peace, five hundred years. All land that Stag Court had claimed would be ratified. All prisoners of war would be returned with haste. The corpse of Prince Elion Xirangyl, were it found, would be returned to Raven Court for interment.
As the victors, we chose the location of the signing.
We met the last of the Raven Princes at a nothing town just inside of the new borders of Stag Court.
He looked hollowed-out, as if someone had scraped the inside of his ribcage clean like someone emptying a gourd of its guts.
His ice-blue gaze was hard as he pressed the seal of Raven Court into the papers, the shadows under his eyes dark with grief.
Alluin did the same for Stag Court, his face emotionless as he sealed the end of the war. A soldier handed him a scroll-case; he passed it to the prince without looking at it. “For your records,” he said, as cold and remote as the glaciers.
Prince Xirangyl looked at it as if he couldn’t comprehend why he would touch it. One of his soldiers took it instead, edging past the violet-haired prince as if she thought he might shatter if someone brushed against him.
His eyes lifted to Alluin’s. “Where is the Stag Prince?” he asked, rancor curdling his otherwise smooth voice. “Is the Beast who murdered Phazikai too ashamed to look me in the eyes?”
Soldiers growled. Alluin didn’t even blink, his heart so deeply buried that I hadn’t seen him make an expression in days. “The location of my prince is not your concern,” he said with lethal calm. “You may leave now. I suggest you do not return without explicit invitation.”
The prince lifted his lip in a sneer, but he didn’t protest. He turned and walked away, his soldiers falling in around him, and didn’t look back.
Some hours later, I found Alluin at the deer-lines, one doe already carrying a set of packs as he saddled the second. I watched him for a moment before clearing my throat. “Were you really going to leave without saying goodbye again?”
Alluin’s shoulders hunched and ears pinned back. “I… I need to go,” he started, guilt dragging at his voice. He looked towards me, grief cracking the mask he’d been wearing for weeks. “Zhiolas, I… I…”
“I’m not here to stop you,” I said, walking over. “You’re going after him, right?”
Alluin hesitated, then nodded. There was only one ‘him’ to whom I would be referring.
“Good. He needs you,” I said softly, even though my heart ached at the thought of how long it might be before I saw Alluin again.
We hadn’t talked about what had happened on the night Phazikai had fallen.
Not about the way Dain had bound him, not about me using my allure to help him, not about the kiss or my confession or how I’d ridden through the night carrying the sleeping General of the First Army in my lap like he was my beloved.
There hadn’t been time. And now… Well, what was the point?
He let out a shaky breath. “It could be you,” he offered. “Or…us.”
I gave him a sad smile and shook my head.
“I think it needs to be you,” I replied.
“Someone needs to be at the Antlered Palace to keep people from trying to erase him, and I’m the one people want to please.
You’re the implacable one. You’re dedicated, relentless, and as loyal as the rising of the sun.
Plus,” I added, the corners of my mouth trembling, “you’re the strategist. You can outthink him. ”
“Oh, Zhi,” he said, looking like he might cry.
We stood there, looking at each other, our paths diverging because of duty and love. It could be years before I saw him again. Decades.
I’d survived it before. I would survive it again.
I held out the small packet I’d brought with me. “Here,” I said quietly. “Find a place for it.”
Alluin frowned, but he took the package, holding it like he was weighing it. “What is it?”
Carefully, I let out my breath, refusing to make this harder than it had to be. “Pencils.”
“Pencils?” he asked, his hand slowly closing around it and his ears dropping down.
“For the letters, dummy,” I said, and I started crying after all, my eyes stinging and vision blurring.
“Did you think I was going to just let you go? I have money now. I can buy the finest of flicker-birds. I know ink will be hard to come by in the howling wilderness, even if he goes to Droesh like I think he will, but you can sharpen a pencil with a knife. I’ll try to write on only one side of the page and I’ll do my best to get them stilled when you send them back so you can hoard them, but you’re going to have to come up with what you’re going to write beforehand because I’m not sending you any extra for drafting.
There’s only so much paper a flicker-bird can carry when they flicker direct and you know I’m surely not going to be able to keep myself from filling up more than my fair share—”
Alluin grabbed me in a hug. I clung to him. He felt so perfect in my arms, the foundation of my world in the body of a man.
“I wrote you one already,” he whispered fiercely. “I left it on your pillow. I know I’m not very good at showing my heart, but I tried. I wasn’t going to leave without letting you know why.”
I nodded against him, my face buried against his neck as I breathed him in. Sunlight, spruce, leather, and the heat of summer filled my lungs, Alluin’s scent like a talisman against pain. “Go swiftly, and come home safe to me,” I said in a rasp, never wanting to let go.
He ran his hand over my hair and settled his face closer. “I’ll do my best,” he promised, and I let that promise sink into my soul like an anchor for eternity.
“Shaeulo,” the letter opened, “It was never meant to be my house.
I never wanted it to be a mausoleum to my long past or some inviolable temple.
I wanted it to be for you, in all your sunlit chaos and wild-hearted beauty.
I wanted you to understand that all of me is touchable to you, but instead I made you feel that there was nothing of me that you were allowed to touch, and for that I carry such depths of regret that I struggle even to think on it.
“You have been so vividly happy these past years that I hesitate to change anything.
Yet Dain has broken his own heart and ours with it, and I have gone to bring him home.
Not to the Antlered Palace—home. So, I am hoping that there might be a home for us to return to, if only for a few days or nights.
“You need not do anything if you do not desire to do so. If you desire to live as we have lived these past years, then I will be happy that you knew it would make you happy. I think the months and years will grow long, though, and you are so rarely one to brood endlessly. Thus, I encourage you to do whatever it is that you desire to the place where we both once lived, whether that be painting every wall pink or burning it down and replacing it with a hut made of sticks. It’s yours to do with as you like. It’s always been yours.
“In fealty and in love, your Lu.”
My hands trembled. I had to take a moment before turning the page over, my eyes burning with tears I refused to shed.
He’d never called himself mine before.
On the back, written like an afterthought, were the words, “The couch is in storage with Stelmen all of it.
I could do whatever I wanted with it, and Alluin had no recourse until the end of the term.
It didn’t go both ways, obviously, because I hadn’t signed anything, so everything I owned was still only mine, as was my income.
Alluin didn’t gain anything from signing over his assets for the next two hundred eighteen years, five months, and twenty-two days—an incredibly specific number that I was willing to bet my eyeteeth was exactly the length of time we’d known each other.
He’d simply done it, because against all his protests to the contrary, Alluin was incredibly demonstrative when it came to his devotion.
“You dick,” I muttered, staring into the middle distance. “Now I have to redecorate the whole damn house.”