Chapter 26
Aeldryc
I had sixteen men saddled and armored in the stable yard.
Bram was stamping beneath me, catching my mood the way warhorses do—pulling at the bit, nostrils flared, ready for a fight that did not exist because the enemy was not an enemy but a boy who had walked out of the Queen’s sitting room and vanished.
It had been three hours since I had stood in that room like a fool with the word “marry” ringing in my skull and done nothing. Said nothing. Let him walk away from me because my mouth had stopped working at the precise moment it mattered most.
I had checked all of his usual wandering spots; our rooms, the kitchens, the guards’ quarters, the tailor’s workshop. I had sent men to the gates. No one had seen him leave. No one had seen him at all. But Periwinkle was missing, and Thom was nowhere to be found.
He is small and he does not know this city and he was upset and he could be anywhere. He could be in danger, and it’s my fault.
“Commander,” Thyren said, pulling up beside me. “The gate watch confirms no one matching his description has left the palace grounds.”
“Could he have slipped out?” I tightened my grip on the reins. “Spread the search to the outer grounds. Every building, every garden, every—”
“Commander.”
That was not Thyren. That was Voss, and his voice had gone strange—tight with something I could not identify. I followed his gaze to the far end of the stable yard, where the path curved around from the palace gardens, and there was Pip.
He was walking. Not running, not injured, not in distress.
Walking, at a pleasant amble, along the gravel path in his ridiculous shorts and his brightly colored shoes, leading Periwinkle by the reins as though the horse were a dog on a leash.
Periwinkle was ambling too, his head bobbing contentedly, his tail swishing.
There was a flower crown on Pip’s head.
It was made of dahlias. The Queen’s dahlias. The pale blue and soft pink dahlias from the royal hedge maze—the ones for which, not six months ago, the Queen had threatened a gardener’s apprentice with execution for cutting a single stem without permission.
Periwinkle was also wearing a flower crown. It was looped around one ear, slightly crushed, made of the same dahlias. The horse looked as pleased about it as a gelding could look about anything.
Pip had a third crown in his hand. This one was larger, more elaborate, with trailing vines.
He looked up at the full company of the Grey Guard assembled in battle formation in the stable yard, and stopped.
“Oh,” he said. “Um. I think there may have been a misunderstanding?”
The relief hit me like a physical force—a wave of it, so sudden and so violent that for a moment my vision blurred and my hands shook on the reins and I could not breathe.
He was alive. He was here. He was standing ten yards from me wearing a crown of stolen flowers and looking mildly confused about why there were soldiers everywhere.
Then the anger arrived.
I dismounted Bram, swinging down so fast that my boots hit the cobblestones hard and I crossed the yard in strides that felt too slow, each one a small eternity, and Pip’s eyes went wide as I reached him.
I boxed him in against the stable wall, an arm on either side of him. His breath caught and his ridiculous flower crown slipped sideways over one eye.
“Ow,” he said. He blinked up at me through a curtain of dahlia petals. “Why is the Grey Guard assembled? That wouldn’t be… to do with me, would it?”
I stared at him.
“Why is the—” My voice was a wrecked thing. I barely recognized it. “Because you vanished. You walked out of the Queen’s chambers and disappeared and no one could find you and I thought—”
I could not finish the sentence. The iron rings vibrated, pulsing, reacting to the panic still flooding my body even as the cause of it was right here, pinned against the wall, blinking at me with those impossible blue eyes.
“I thought you were lost,” I said. “Or hurt. Alone somewhere in a city you do not know. I was ready to send half the palace searching for you. I had riders at the gates. I was going to ride through every street in Feravael until I found you because I cannot—” My jaw locked.
“I cannot have my resonant injured and cold and alone.”
Pip put a finger on my lips.
Just that. One small, warm finger, pressed gently against my mouth, and every word I had been about to say evaporated.
“Shh,” he said. “Be quiet for a moment.”
Behind me, I heard Voss inhale sharply. Then Thyren. Then what sounded like the collective intake of breath from sixteen armored soldiers who had just witnessed a five-foot-six human shush the Commander of the Grey Guard.
“I said—”
“Aeldryc.” Pip pressed the finger more firmly against my lips. His eyes were bright and steady and fixed on mine with an intensity I had not seen before. “I said be quiet. I have something to say.”
I was quiet, though I really wanted to tell the Grey Guard to leave.
Behind me, no one left, because they were deeply nosy, every last one of them, and I would deal with that later.
“I did not mean to scare you, and I am sorry for that.” Pip studied me.
His finger was still on my mouth and his eyes moved over my face with a slow, careful attention—the kind of look I’d seen him give fabric he wanted to remember, or food he wanted to taste again, or a sky he thought was lovely.
He was memorizing me. Reading something in my expression that I had not realized I was showing.
Then a smile broke across his face like sunrise.
It was not a small smile. It was the full, devastating, incandescent thing—the one that made his eyes crinkle and his dimples deepen and his whole body seem to lighten, as though joy had mass and his had just become weightless.
“The thing is, no one ever would have looked for me,” he said.
I frowned. “What?”
“Back home. If I’d gone missing for three hours in San Jose, nobody would have even noticed.” His smile wobbled, steadied. “And you? You assembled a war party.”
“It is not a war party. It is a search detail. And of course someone would look for you—you are—” I struggled with the words, which was unusual, because I was not a man who struggled with words.
“You are wonderful. You are maddening and brave and absurd and wonderful, and you do not deserve to be missing for even a single hour of a single day. Not from my sight. Not from anyone’s. ”
Pip’s eyes went glassy.
He jumped.
He launched himself upward and I caught him against me. His arms looped around my neck and his legs wrapped around my waist and his mouth found mine.
The kiss was not gentle. It was fierce and messy and tasted of salt and flowers and the faintly sweet residue of whatever he’d been eating, and the silver at his throat sang so loudly the sound resonated in my teeth.
He pulled back. His forehead pressed against mine. His breath was ragged and his flower crown had fallen off entirely and his fingers were digging into the back of my neck with a grip that suggested he had no intention of letting go.
I set him down gently. My hands were shaking again, but differently now—not with fear but with something bigger, something that did not fit inside my body.
“Where were you?” I asked, because I needed a moment before I could do what he was asking me to do.
“Did you know there’s a huge, wonderful hedge maze in the front gardens?”
“You took a horse in the Queen’s hedge maze?”
“Periwinkle wanted to. Also, in case you wondered, I don’t have a fantastic sense of direction.”
I closed my eyes. “I was vaguely aware of that.”
“Of the hedge maze, or my sense of direction?”
“Both. Last week you called the west tower the south wing.”
“Oh, come on. Who keeps track of which way is west?”
“Pretty much everyone,” Vaelith called. I shot her a glare. “What? The sun sets there. How can you not know?”
Pip tilted his head. “Oh. Is that how you tell?”
“Vaelith. Go. Now.” This time, I heard the clatter of my soldiers shuffling away. “Everyone out.”
“I needed a moment to gather my thoughts before confronting you about the marriage thing. And Periwinkle and I agreed that riding him was not the best option. So I walked him instead. We found the maze and went in, and we couldn’t get out.
It’s really tricky. I think it might be enchanted? The turns don’t make any sense.”
“The Queen does not allow horses in her hedge maze. And it is not enchanted, you simply need a sense of direction.”
Pip considered this. “Tell that to Periwinkle. It was his idea.”
I looked at Periwinkle. Periwinkle looked at me with the placid indifference of a horse who knew he was very pretty and would be allowed to go anywhere.
“I made flower crowns. Three of them,” he said, holding up the third, the elaborate one with trailing vines. “This one’s for you, but you were busy assembling the cavalry, so.”
“Those are the Queen’s dahlias.”
“Oh! I should tell her how lovely they are!”
“She has threatened execution to those who pick them.”
Pip laughed, and waved a hand. “I’ll have to ask her about these execution threats. We all know she can’t possibly follow through on them. She wouldn’t have any subjects left!”
“Pip, stop making jokes.”
He bit his bottom lip and stared up at me. “I told myself I would be honest with you the moment I saw you looked so scared, and you should know I love you. It’s important, even if it’s a scary thing to share.”
My heart leapt into my throat, and I swallowed, hard. “If you love me, why did you run?”
The brightness in his face flickered. “I wasn’t running. I was—taking a walk.”
“But why?”
He looked down at our hands. “Because I thought you didn’t want it. Couldn’t possibly want it. The Queen said marry and you just—froze. And where I’m from, when you bring up a long-term commitment with a man you’ve been casually fucking and he freezes, that’s not the best sign.”
“You think we’ve been casually fucking?”
“You’ve been searching for a way to send me home this whole time!”