Chapter Three #2
The weight of that crushes me. Most likely, I’ll be joining as his weapon to hold over their heads, not as the woman he can’t bear to be parted from.
“I want . . . I wish . . .” I trail off and bite the inside of my cheek, but the words tumble out anyway.
“I miss us, Ro. Sometimes I wish it could be like it was in Nyriell.”
His brown eyes warm with the memory of our time in the hidden city of the Dahaka, when we’d been on the run for our lives.
It had been us against the world, or so I’d thought at the time.
I hadn’t known then that he’d been the secret leader of the rebellion all along, and while the knowledge of his lies and the depth of his secrecy had gutted me, I’d forgiven him.
He’d died to save me, after all, and everyone deserves a chance at redemption.
Roshan’s arms tighten around me. “I do, too,” he says. “This will be over soon, my sweet starling. Can you be patient? For me?”
Heart aching, I nod, because what else can I do? “I’d like to visit my father and Amma again. I miss them, and it’s been hard to be alone when you’re gone.”
His breath gusts against my hair, and I feel his hesitation even before he gives voice to the denial.
“It’s too dangerous now,” he says after a careful beat.
“Too many people want to get to me and won’t hesitate to hurt you to do so.
I don’t trust my enemies in Regulus, and I know they have many spies in the capital.
We still haven’t found who was behind everything in Coban.
You’re too vulnerable there, and I need you where I can protect you. ”
Led by Clem and Hamid, Roshan’s kingsguard had interrogated everyone in the court, using a truth herb called Verac root from the northern lands, and no secret plot was uncovered.
Which means either it had been an unlikely coincidence or our palace spy remains at large.
Regardless, I don’t want to be a prisoner, locked in my rooms and slowly losing touch with reality.
In the king’s absence, I haven’t been allowed to so much as leave our quarters without an armed escort.
“You know I can protect myself, Roshan,” I reply, not wanting to argue and lose the preciousness of the moment, but his refusal grates like sandpaper on my skin. “It won’t be for very long, I promise. I just need . . . my family.”
“It’s not safe.”
“For whom?” I snap.
Something like a snarl rumbles in his chest as he tips my chin up, and for a second before his lashes dip down, I glimpse whorls of violet darkening his irises, but when they reopen, his brown eyes are clear, if worried.
I blink. What was that? Had I imagined it?
The combination of my lingering fears about Fero and Vena’s words about war and rising godslayers has me doubting my own senses. But what if I hadn’t imagined it? Suddenly, I recall the same purple flicker in Coban, and fear blooms like acid on my tongue. A seed of darkness can take root anywhere.
I wonder . . . I’ve been inside his mind before, when I’d brought him back to life with my magic. I was able to sense his whole aura then. Could I do the same now?
Surreptitiously, I push out a sliver of magic toward him and brace for the worst, that somehow the king has been compromised by unnatural forces. It would explain everything: his behavior, the strange fire in his eyes, his anger.
But there’s nothing there . . . nothing but him. No darkness. No seeded remnant of Fero. Just love and worry for me, as well as concern for the future of his kingdom.
Appeased, I pull the thread back and find him staring at me as if he’d spoken and I hadn’t responded.
I flush, aware that I’d entered his mind without consent, but my relief at confirming that he’s wholly himself washes away any guilt.
Ensuring that the king is safe from harm, even unknowingly from himself, is in the interests of the entire realm.
I clear my throat as his finger traces my jaw. “What did you say?”
“It’s not safe for anyone, and I don’t think it’s a good idea. Not right now. Perhaps in a month when things calm down.”
Resentment bleeds through me, but I hide it. “You said that weeks ago.”
He drops his arms and scrubs a hand through his hair.
“I didn’t know Regulus was going to make a bid to unseat me with a so-called legitimate nephew.
” Roshan bends to rest his chin on my head.
“I need you, Suraya. I need you here, or . . . we’ll lose everything we’ve worked so hard to gain. After all the sacrifices we have made.”
“Is it me you need or the Starkeeper?” I regret the clipped words as soon as they are out of my mouth.
He sucks in a breath, his voice agonized. “How can you even think such a thing? I love you, Sura.”
Remorse immediately swamps me for voicing such an awful thought, but my inner voice perks up: He doesn’t hesitate to herd you into being his showpiece, either. Frustration flares anew, but I tamp it down. “I’m sorry. That’s not . . . what I meant.”
Roshan sweeps an arm behind us. “Haven’t I given you everything you could want?
A palace? Your own forge? A life of luxury.
” I freeze, surprised at his words. When did those things become conditional?
His thumb feathers over my lower lip. “You’re my queen.
We’re a team, my precious starling,” he whispers. “Us against the world, remember?”
A starling in a pretty cage . . .
And it’s us against the world, but only as it suits him, it seems.
The simmering desolation in my heart swells.
A few sweet, tender words can’t erase the chasm that has been widening between us.
I want to please Roshan because, yes, underneath all the umbrage, I do love him.
But love also requires some measure of reciprocity.
It’s a give and take, not a one-way path, and I have to stand up for myself or risk being overrun at every turn.
“I love you with everything that I am, Ro, but I have to see my father and Amma,” I say. “Don’t you care that I am lonely and dispirited?”
A muscle in his jaw flexes, his mouth going tight. “Don’t be like this.”
“Like what?”
Roshan’s nostrils flare. “Petulant.”
The word is an arrow through my heart and I flinch. “Petulant?” I echo. “You think what I want is petulant?”
He rubs his brow as a divot of irritation forms between them.
“There’s more at stake here than your family,” he replies as if chiding a child, and my spine stiffens.
“Unrest in the kingdom is rampant from the capital to Nyriell, and the Scavs also have ties with this oracle threat, which changes everything. I need you to be safe, Sura. This is for your protection.”
We’re going around in useless circles. I beg and he denies. I’m trapped and I fucking hate it. “You can’t keep me here against my will.”
“I’m the king,” he says evenly.
My eyes sting with a pressure I’m growing to despise. “And I’m your . . .” The words choke me. What am I? I’m his tool. Not his partner or his wife, and certainly not his queen. “. . . subject.”
“You’re more than that and you know it.”
Clenching my jaw, I turn around and grip the balcony rails, my fingers becoming numb against the cold iron. My simurgh uncoils restlessly inside of me but waits for my lead. We have a tenuous understanding when it comes to the king . . . and his reign over us.
“Fine,” I say. “Whatever pleases His Imperial Majesty.”
He exhales. “Sura, enough, please.” When I refuse to acknowledge him, he sighs heavily. “Don’t stay out here too long in the cold.” He hesitates when I remain silent. “You’re the most important thing in my life.”
“Am I?” I ask.
“You know you are. But I can’t afford to be selfish when the people of Oryndhr need me to be the king they deserve, to keep them safe.”
“The king they deserve? Or merely a slightly less tyrannical version of your brother?” I swallow hard at his sharp inhale and glance over my shoulder.
His eyes have gone flinty, mouth a thin line of displeasure.
I recognize the expression. This is the face the king of Oryndhr shows his enemies, not his beloved.
“Ruling by oppression has never led to anything good. Your people are living in fear, under laws that you’ve imposed.
Your army camps on their doorsteps, Roshan.
That’s not safety. You can’t keep someone safe by locking them away! ” I say furiously.
He glares, knowing I’m speaking of more than the people of Oryndhr. “When the threat is over, they will be safe. You will be safe.”
I shake my head. “And when will that be? Six months from now? A year? Ten years?”
“When I say it is!” he shouts.
A loud rap on the bedchamber door has us both swiveling. “Your Majesty? Is all well?”
“Yes,” he calls back to the guard. The king regards me once more, shoving his hands into his pockets and visibly attempting to calm himself. “I don’t want to fight.”
Too late for that. I pin my lips between my teeth, trying to keep my stupid tears at bay. All the power of the universe at my fingertips, and I’m on the verge of breaking down into pathetic sobs.
Roshan steps close and cradles my face in his large hands. “I didn’t mean to yell. I’m on edge about other things, but that’s no excuse. We’ll go to Coban after Eloni, I promise. How’s that?”
“Thank you,” I say thickly.
“You’re welcome. Remember I love you, Suraya, and anything I do is out of love and for your well-being.”
My brows draw together at the somberness of his tone, but then his lips are on mine, silencing any reply.
The kiss is sweet and soothing, stirring feelings inside of me to life—but the grasp of his fingers on my chin tightens ever so slightly when his mouth slants open, demanding more.
It’s not rough, exactly, but it makes me tense, more so when the fingers of his free hand wind into my hair and angle my head back.
Usually, I enjoy his assertiveness in the bedroom, but tonight, after our exchange, it feels like he’s exerting much more than that.
Like this act—this positioning—is a punctuation of something.
His royal will.
When he breaks the strange but not wholly unwelcome kiss, his eyes are flickering with a combination of desire .
. . and despair? I blink. Why would he look so torn?
Perhaps he’s as upset as I am about the distance between us, about the quarrels that have grown more frequent.
Sands, am I the unreasonable one here? He is the king, after all, responsible for an entire kingdom.
“Truce?” I offer softly.
Roshan stares down at me, his handsome face solemn and unreadable.
Usually, he wears his emotions on his sleeve with me, but lately, he has become skilled at hiding them.
He lifts his hand as if to caress my face again, but it lingers in the air between us for a half second before falling away.
“Promise you don’t hate me for loving you too much. ”
“I could never hate you, Ro.”
His smile is small and doesn’t reach his eyes. Alarm bleeds through me and I grasp his wrist.
“We can work through this, you know that, right? All couples have disagreements. It’s natural.” I let out a self-deprecating laugh. “You knew who I was going into this. I’ve never been a passive woman.”
Finally, those eyes light. “No, you’re not.”
“But I love you and we’ll get through this,” I tell him.
“I know we will,” he agrees. He kisses me again, this one soft and barely a graze over my mouth. “Come back to bed soon, please?”
“I will.”
When Roshan goes into the bedchamber, I stare up at the skies, willing my aching heart to calm.
The clouds have thickened, and now the moon is no longer visible.
I lift my palm and call the rune for fire again, watch as a dancing flame appears.
It curls over and between my fingers, not hot but warm.
A flicker of light across the courtyard catches my eye, on a balcony off one of the other towers.
I smile. Aran holds a similar flame aloft.
I lift a hand to wave, and notice the redheaded woman emerging from his quarters to tug him back inside.
Helena. My former nemesis. I say former because she and her father have both bent the knee to prove their loyalties to Roshan and the Imperial House, and, by default, me as the king’s future betrothed.
It’s no shock she has now set her sights on Aran, the king’s most valued adviser.
We would never be true friends—largely because she once tried to kill me in the arena—but I can applaud her ambition. In a world of men, we women have to fight for every scrap of power we can get. I’d never fault anyone for advocating for themselves via any means at their fingertips.
My lips curl into a wry smile. From how easily Aran lets himself be led back to bed, I’d say he’s not complaining one bit.
Good for him.
Apart from Roshan, he and Clem are my only real friends in court, though Clem and I are nowhere as close as Laleh and I had been.
Sadness wells in my heart at the thought of my best friend, who had died under Morvarid’s knife.
The memory of Laleh’s death is gutting. Not a day goes by that I don’t think of her, wishing she were here to delight in the pleasures of the palace we’d once dreamed about.
Go to bed, I imagine her saying now. Or you’ll wake up with unsightly bags under your eyes, and who wants to see that? Go spoon that tall drink of water you call a king . . . and then fork him well.
I laugh softly. Stars, I miss her.
With one last glance to the darkened sky, I step back into the bedchamber where Roshan is already asleep.
I need to be patient with him, I remind myself.
We’re both under immense pressure. What’s a few more weeks or months when we have forever ahead of us?
I slide under the covers and tuck myself into his side.
He murmurs sleepily and throws a heavy arm over me.
“Forgive me, Sura,” he murmurs incoherently. “Own . . . good . . .”
Heart softening, I smile at his unwitting garbled words and smooth his thick, dark hair away from his brow. The gods know the truth of the matter: I’ll forgive him almost anything.