Chapter 12
CHAPTER TWELVE
She wasn’t a burden.
The queen’s words haunted Lia as she rode Storm through the mist toward the Skyward Seas. She breathed in the brine-filled air with a sigh, the salt steadying her. The threat of drowning had receded, at least for now. However, she knew it would surge again. She knew what she had to do.
Kayce and Lia’s favorite spot was an alcove in the side of Mount Fealtek about twenty feet above the mist. It housed a small meadow, large enough for several winged horses to land and graze with tall pines and oaks set a little further back.
The cliff’s walls peered from between the floating tree limbs, the crawling vines boasting violet mistcup blooms every spring.
A waterfall fed into a creek before it spilled over the cliff’s edge and evaporated into the clouds.
Between the vines and waterfall, the outpost was well hidden.
Spotting Kayce’s profile in the tree line, Lia waved as Storm’s hooves bit into the earth to slow on touch-down. He was busy whittling, crafting an arrow from one of the many fallen branches that littered the ground. Several more were piled on the stone beside him.
“Whatever happened to training in style?” Lia teased. She knew he had a whole cache nearby of the best arrows the Forge Guild could craft.
“Training never stops.” He flicked the hair from his face as he glared. “You had to go to a ball to get a taste of the finer side of life I’ve tried to open your eyes to?”
She scoffed, turning for the waterfall. “If you think that’s the case, then I hope delicacies from the other night are inside.”
“You would doubt me?” Kayce dropped the arrow he was working on.
He darted across the creek, using several stones worn smooth by the water and years of booted feet.
Lia was right behind him, weaving between the trees.
Even with the coloring canopy and dancing leaves, the floating limbs kept them hidden.
The water was a gentle roar, no louder than rainfall, and it covered a path large enough to allow a volatequis and its rider to slip behind the waterfall.
Kayce slid his hand across a smooth stone, triggering the doors.
Engraved with the royal crest and preserving all within, double stone doors slid open to either side.
From the dust and critters upon discovery, it had been long forgotten, but Lia knew it had started as one of the first outposts of the realm, hewn from the mountain face itself.
The main room could have been found in the castle.
The long, rectangular room was split in two by a simple wooden wall, one section housing paddocks for winged horses while the other held common tables, chairs, and a small cooking area.
The studded stone walls on either side of the doors housed the armory.
Kayce had an eloquent collection of weaponry that now resided there, arrows included.
The opposite side of the door was the stable, wide enough to allow the volatequises passage.
All around them, centuries of carvings covered the walls from the different watches stationed there.
Depictions of ships flew through crashing waves.
Sea monsters attacked several vessels. Roaring lions prowled the bottom of the walls.
A stone staircase carved in the back of the room spiraled up to the next floor.
With the stairs worn smooth from centuries of use, the wall winding up the staircase depicted dwarves tunneling the mountain and battling the mountain wyrms.
It was fitting that Kayce and Aurelia should have rediscovered this place, even before they joined the Ranger’s Guild.
Over the years, they had outfitted it for their needs as Trident and Harpy, but of course, Aurelia made sure the finest cushions and crystalline lamps their coin could purchase made their way amidst Kayce’s shipping maps and daggers.
She had loved it upon first sight, the history and quietness of it.
The veins of amber crystalline splintering through the walls and ceiling, like strings of lanterns overhead, only amplified that this was a place where the world could disappear.
Kayce headed over to the table, the amber glow of the jeweled lamp casting leftovers from the inaugural ball in a filigree of shadows.
For the first time in over a week, hunger ravaged Lia’s stomach.
Hunger had never claimed her stomach so fiercely in a dream before.
She had eaten, knowing she needed to, but genuine hunger had evaporated the instant that Mom had told them the news.
“I could eat as much as you on a good day.”
Instead of rising to the jab, Kayce studied her with a slight smile before nodding. “I nearly lost my head trying to wrangle this out of the kitchen, so please savor the fruits of my labor.”
“You’ll be lucky to get a bite for once.”
“Ravenous thing!” He snatched a tart before sitting at the table. Crumbs scattered over their latest maps of the Skyward Seas.
“Sweet Chef Rosalind was in a mood today?” Lia snorted before tearing into a roll filled with cheese, roasted pine nuts, and tart jam. She groaned as the various flavors burst on her tongue.
Kayce huffed, suddenly finding a speck of dirt on the table captivating. “Perhaps Captain Luddeck should hire her to guard his black market goods like she does the kitchen. It would certainly make our jobs of stealing it back much harder.”
“She has far too much time on her hands,” Lia mumbled.
“Her throwing arm? She nearly took my head out. She could hit a sparrow mid-flight in a hurricane while standing on a rocking ship.”
Lia reached out to pat his head. “Poor, helpless ranger, chased away by a frying pan.”
He swatted her hand, sending her into peals of laughter. It was the lightest she had felt in days. Perhaps deciding to tell Kayce was the right decision after all. But she didn’t want to chase this lightness away yet. How did one find the right time to emotionally vomit all over someone?
Kayce continued on about the chef’s violent tendencies. She had tuned him out as she struggled with how to open up, how to broach the subject—
“Maybe that’s why Terranth hasn’t asked to court you yet. He knows how good you are with a blade,” Kayce muttered, throwing an apple core at the waterfall. It whizzed through the air with suspicious force, a loud splash echoing off the stone.
Lia choked on her food.
Terranth court her? As in—dating? She hadn’t written about that, hadn’t even hinted at it.
And while she nearly always preferred books to people, Lia guessed what a man with certain intentions looked like.
And Terranth had that look. But then he’d let Kayce step in so easily, looking almost victorious at the intrusion.
Face a wash of scarlet, Lia stuttered. “He speaks so prettily to anything in a dress. And that was the first time he’s seen me wear one in…
well, a long time.” She tore off another bite and talked around it.
“Not all of us were playing with knives while we were teething. If I didn’t know for a fact you were born to royalty, I’d have called you a heathen. ”
Kayce inclined his head in a bow. “I think that’s the best compliment you’ve ever given me. And I believe my family would agree with you.”
Lia hardly registered the words, reeling at Kayce’s implication. But also, the sheer impossibility of it. Her dreams had often taken on a life of their own, but for a member of the royal family to appear interested in her?
She was a nobody, sequestered in a bedroom outside Seattle. They didn’t know that, but maybe that was why “Lady” was a title Lia always shrank away from. Even as Aurelia. Imposter syndrome at its finest.
“Regardless,” Kayce prattled on, “he was with you half the night—”
With a look, he was silenced. Lia almost felt guilty with the way his cheeks flushed, his mind finally caught up with his mouth.
“For the death of the matter, no one is getting romanced—” A loud whinny cut Lia off. Then, a scraping of earth as if something pawed at the ground. Like something had landed just outside the waterfall.
“What was that?” Lia stood, hand going right to the long dagger sheathed at her hip. But noting Kayce’s ease, her eyes narrowed. “What did you do?”
Because of course he’d done something.
A roguish smile curved his lips, tension disappearing. “Why don’t you go find out?”
Please don’t be something gross, please don’t be something nasty.
Both of them exited their outpost, hopping back over the creek where Storm couldn’t be bothered from his meal. Much to her relief, what she saw was neither gross nor nasty.
A stunning white volatequis ate peacefully. The winged horse lifted her head with a cheerful nicker in greeting.
“She’s yours,” Kayce said from behind. “Not that Storm or I don’t enjoy your company, but since you’re a full-fledged ranger, it’s about time you had your own mount.”
A slight tremor took hold of her hands when Lia reached for the volatequis’s muzzle. “Kayce…”
“She’s a two-year-old purebred, her parents both from strong bloodlines—some of the best. Seagrove’s sister, actually. She’s fearless, like you. Strong, light on her feet, gentle yet battle hardened.” He paused. “And unmatched in beauty.”
Fearless. Oh, how she wished.
Lia had hardly heard the way Kayce’s voice softened. The other words he had said. Her throat closed, the volatequis leaning in to examine her. Not for the first time did Lia wish that this—Norenth, Kayce, and everything else that came with this world—was her normal.
Papa’s story was a cruel joke.
Closing her eyes against the familiar burn and the rising waves inside, she leaned her forehead against the side of the horse’s face. Not yet. Not in this beautiful moment.
“I…I don’t deserve her.” Her voice was hoarse, hardly over a whisper. “I’m not fearless.”