Chapter Fourteen
Kai
Ione was already wearing a ring when he met her the next day, a single pearl wreathed in silver leaves.
“Oh, this,” she said, lifting her hand to the dim light of the altarhouse.
“I thought it best to announce ourselves quickly, and I already had a ring I liked. But – yes.” She took it off and handed it to him. “You can put it on me.”
A political marriage wasn’t precisely what he’d envisioned for himself. Actually, he wasn’t sure what he’d envisioned, but it wasn’t slipping a ring he didn’t even buy onto the finger of a woman who tolerated him at best.
But as she looked up at him, Kai thought that he liked the way she did. Like she saw him, accepted what she saw with a tenuous, wary sort of trust. I’m in your hands, her eyes said: Don’t fuck it up.
It wasn’t nice or sweet. None of it was. But he’d made a deal and he’d do right by it.
She regarded the ring briefly before lifting her hand again, expectant. Struck by an unpleasant jolt of something he would later categorise as sympathy, Kai bypassed her hand and kissed her forehead, which might’ve been nice or sweet if he didn’t lurch back, startled by the heat of her skin.
“You’ve a fever.” He touched her forehead with the backs of his fingers. “You well?”
She waved him off and strode ahead to the lunarium where Saros and her parents took their breakfast. “A headache,” she said simply. “I get them sometimes.”
He hurried after her. “And it’s definitely not, ah…” He gestured at her, and when she didn’t respond he added, a mite desperately, “I mean, I don’t need to be getting you a tonic, right?”
“A headache the next day is not a symptom of pregnancy, you cretin.” She sighed, ever suffering. “I assure you, I already took a tonic. It’s just a headcold. Maybe Saros coughed on me.” She shuddered. “I was joking, but it’s probably true and now I’m upset.”
She stopped before the glass doors to the lunarium and faced him, and limned by the early morning sunlight, Kai saw how pallid she was. Mournful.
“You’re certain it’s a headcold?”
Ione lowered her eyes. “I’m just… very sad. I couldn’t sleep last night, thinking about…” She hugged her arms as though chilled. “I still don’t like it. The suddenness, I mean. I keep expecting her to return, to explain herself. For it all to make perfect sense.”
Frankly, it didn’t make sense to Kai, either. While Lina hadn’t gone into detail about it, he had surmised that it was Castor who had burned her. So why return after hearing he’d survived the Leviathos’s raid?
Whatever the reason was benign, he supposed, although that wouldn’t do much to help the fact that she’d gone and Ione was hurt. The binding ward still held over her – he could feel it, dimly – so if she’d had it in her mind to cause any trouble, it would serve its purpose.
“If she’s returned to Soliz,” Kai began, watching her. “I might run into her. Eventually.”
She issued him a hateful look. “And you will leave her. Unharmed.”
“I mightn’t have a choice, Ione.” He clasped her shoulder. “We’ll come out the other side of this. But you have to understand it won’t be with peace.”
The fire dulled as reality set in, making her seem small, withered. And because Kai wasn’t nearly as heartless as he would’ve liked, he opened his arms, let her nestle into them, too-warm.
“I just feel very hollow,” she whispered into his shoulder. “My stomach, my chest. Scooped-out, empty. Lina made me feel…” She trembled, he sensed, with a self-loathing he was only too familiar with. “And it is all so stupid. Stupid to be so sad, stupid to think we can avoid bloodshed.”
“It’s not stupid to be kind, Ineen.” He rested his chin on her head. “Na?ve and pointless, maybe, but not stupid.”
He heard her suppress a snicker and smiled. “Oh, go to hell,” she said, although her voice was fond.
It was not lost on him that he had hurt people in similar ways. He hadn’t yet decided how River would react to their engagement – possibly with violence; he could only hope – but he could imagine how smug River would feel to know that Kai felt bad.
He squeezed her once and released her, kissing her forehead again for good measure. “Well, then,” he said, mustering a smile. “Will we go ruin your parents’ day?”
She smiled back, wistful but genuine, and let Kai open the door for her and usher her into the lunarium.
The air drooped with humidity, even at this early hour; each leaf and petal glistened with dewdrops, making the plants seem crystallised, suspended in time.
Ione lifted her chin, leading Kai through the flagstone paths lined with summer foliage.
She was a queen again, steely and untouchable, neither happy nor sad.
And he, her royal guard, her right hand, her sword, followed.
This was what he wanted. Power, prestige, his name remembered for centuries to come. Not the end of his father’s era, but the start of a new one.
“Good morning, River,” Ione said, like this was any other day and not one where Kai might finally get stabbed.
River screeched to a halt before them, an empty tray slung under one arm – playing busboy for Saros again, wasted talent – and glanced between Kai and Ione like he was trying to piece together a particularly abhorrent puzzle.
Kai’s mouth went dry, every spiteful thing he’d wanted to say to piss River off, prove River right, dying at the way River looked at him.
So different, worlds different, from how he looked when they played music together. Kai gritted his teeth and banished the memory, scorned it. Ione had wanted an exorcism, but little did she know, he’d needed one, too.
Queen Ione’s icy veneer melted, leaving her suddenly bereft of speech.
She clasped her hands behind her back, glanced up at Kai as though this was his job, and then settled on, “Well – I would like my seleneschal to be the first to know.” Wordlessly she held out her hand, let River peer at the pearl ring.
He said nothing for what felt like hours, his expression running the gamut from confused to furious to heartbroken. And then, with one last disgusted look towards Kai, River pivoted and began down a narrow side path.
“Oh, wait.” Ione lunged, grabbing his arm and dragging him back. “Don’t be like that. I want you to understand.”
He sighed and scrubbed a hand over his face. “Ione,” he murmured, pained, “I know you’re upset that Lina left. And you’re hurt. And you’re afraid, and you feel helpless because Menon still hasn’t – ”
“You’re describing how I’m feeling well enough,” Ione said dumbly, tilting her head; she was, Kai registered, trying to make River smile. “And yet, you are still mad at me.”
“It’s a political marriage,” Kai said, and why he thought that’d help, he had no idea.
“Don’t speak to me,” was all River had to say back. He leaned the tray against a flowerbed and clasped Ione’s arms, held her in front of him like he was scolding a puppy. Ione, that is a bad man. “Ione – ”
“Look, this was her idea,” Kai threw in, and River visibly seethed. “We made a deal.”
“Do not – ”
“Stop, stop.” Ione wrested herself from his grasp.
“Listen. River. I’ve made my decision, and as the warde – as Kai said, it was my idea.
” She squeezed his hands, released them, stepped back.
“I’m tired, my head is pounding, and don’t want to deal with an argument.
So I’m going to disappear for three minutes – ” She held up three fingers in case they needed help.
“ – and when I return, I want both of you alive, not bleeding, and past this.”
She left before River could complain, striding off towards a fountain bubbling beneath a trellis of vines dripping with pink flowers.
Kai’s gaze flitted to River’s rapier. “She said alive and not bleeding, now.”
“Shut up, Kai,” River hissed back, his tone tinged with remorse. “This is no time to be making jokes. She…” He pressed his fingertips against his eyelids, groaning. “Of all the things you could’ve done…”
Some heady concoction of rage and hurt fluttered in his stomach, and Kai swallowed back a defensive This wasn’t even my idea.
“Oh, no, did you think this had anything whatsoever to do with you? Did you forget, by chance, why I arrived on Oseidos to begin with?” He stepped around River, a slow circle.
Easy, callous; the person Kai had aimed to be.
“A marriage contract was… a surprise, I admit. A pleasant one. Mutually beneficial, you’ll see. ”
He paused, ensuring River’s sword was still sheathed.
“We’ll sail south soon,” Kai went on, “See what money and men can be inspired to help our cause.” Movement made his heart stutter, River’s fingers twitching beside the hilt of his sword, contemplating.
“Don’t worry,” Kai said, coming back around to stand before him.
“Ione will still need her loyal seleneschals at her side.”
“Oh.” A wrinkle formed beside his mouth, perhaps a grimace, contemptuous. “I’m invited, am I?”
“Unless you want my men guarding her.” Kai grinned, light-headed. “Or, hell, what if I really am the monster you think I am? What if I – what was it you said about me? – use her as a plaything?”
River huffed out a humourless laugh, his fists clenching. “If you think I’ve thought about you for a second since that day – ”
“Oh, I know you have.” Kai tilted his head, daring River to unsheathe his sword, to raise his fist, to make the first move. “But don’t worry. You’ll be with her – with us, sorry – every step of the way.” He edged closer, closer, well within range. “Standing off to the side. Pouring tea. Watching.”
A hint of a smile, although there was nothing happy about it. “And waiting. And whispering, advising, when you’re not around.” River’s eyes flashed. “And judging, which goes without saying. You’re really going to let your fiancé walk around wearing a ring Cynthia and I gave her for her birthday?”
Kai reddened, and worse, River’s hands relaxed, fingers unfurling.