Chapter 4
The window in the back of the throne room overlooked a fountain in the courtyard, a past king raising a hoe and a sword as he stood upon a sphere depicting the full moon.
Two weeks earlier, as much blood as water had filled the pool surrounding that marble moon, and bodies ravaged by scavenging wyverns had been draped around the fountain.
Syla couldn’t let herself forget what the stormers had done—how many they’d killed.
And she couldn’t forget that the man who stood beside her, his hands clasped behind his back, had been a part of that invasion.
Vorik hadn’t yet spoken, merely stopping to gaze out the window with her, but his face softened when she looked at him, her eyes doubtless full of questions.
Before speaking, Vorik glanced back at Fel, the only protector who’d followed Syla across the throne room, though numerous soldiers remained along the walls, and a server wandered nearby with a tray of beverages. Was he someone’s spy? Maybe so.
“I shall find it difficult to woo you with so many ill-tempered generals lurking in the area.” Vorik tilted his head toward the table where Dolok and Mosworth had settled on one side and Jhiton opposite. Numerous of their soldiers stood behind them as the two parties faced each other.
“Generals?” Syla asked to emphasize the plural. “Is your brother ill-tempered?”
“Usually, quite.” Vorik smiled, his back to the room as he faced her, the expression for her alone.
Fel stood far enough back to give them a modicum of privacy. He had been the one, after all, to suggest this plan.
“If you can’t woo me, you’ve no hope of getting islands out of me,” she said.
“You know I’m here for the cobbler.”
“I know you’d like a cobbler. I doubt that’s why you’re here.” Syla gazed into his eyes, inviting an explanation.
Why had the dragon riders been brought along? And what did the tribal leaders truly want? Since they’d barely acknowledged her, she doubted they’d come because she’d invited them to negotiate. If anything, they were using her invitation as an opportunity, but to do what?
Vorik spread his arms, as if he didn’t know why he was there.
Syla doubted that, but she wasn’t surprised he wouldn’t tell her.
Since she’d learned without a doubt that he had nothing to do with the Freeborn Faction, he’d stopped trying to pretend he was anything but a loyal stormer, his older brother’s dutiful soldier.
She couldn’t fault him for that, but she wished things could be different.
Syla lifted a finger to wave the server to them. He’d been around the castle for years, and she managed to dredge his name from memory.
“Rodderen, isn’t it?”
He blinked in surprise. “Yes, Your Highness.”
“Please go to the kitchen, and see what’s in the pantry.
If there are fresh baked goods, have them wrapped up so that we may send them along with the stormers.
As a sign of goodwill and a desire to foster something besides hostility.
” Syla needn’t have explained her reasoning to the server, but she wasn’t accustomed to giving orders and expecting to be obeyed.
At the temple, she’d been treated as an equal among her colleagues.
Further, she was reluctant to test her power in the castle and find out that the staff wouldn’t obey.
“Ah.” The server looked at Vorik, then bowed and backed away. “Yes, Your Highness.”
“Do you think the rest of my people will be as easily won over as I was by a cobbler?” Vorik rested a hand on his chest.
“That would be nice—it’s fortunate that the castle baker survived the massacre because she makes excellent desserts.”
Vorik grimaced at the word massacre but didn’t try to absolve himself of having been involved, nor did he suggest that it was a melodramatic word for what his people had done. It wasn’t.
“I also wanted to send the server away. I think he’s someone’s spy.
” Syla looked toward Relvin, but there were, as she’d already gotten the gist, many people with their eyes on the throne.
With a chill, she recalled the now dead Sergeant Tunnok from Harvest Island proposing to her on behalf of his eighty-year-old father and suggesting that if the old man couldn’t get her with child, he would gladly step in.
“Your position here is tenuous,” Vorik said, more of a statement than a question.
She needed to get intelligence from him, not the other way around, but it sounded like he could already tell that. “For now. I wasn’t in anyone’s plans.”
“Are you intending to insert yourself into their plans?” Vorik looked at the back of her hand, though the birthmark had stopped glowing.
“Is that your way of asking if I’m going to attempt to arrange my coronation?”
“More or less.” Vorik looked her up and down. Assessing her physical fitness and presentation to determine if it was suitable for a monarch?
Maybe not. His gaze lingered briefly on her chest. He might simply have their past liaison in mind.
Syla had a thousand things besides sex to worry about, but her body heated under his gaze, a tingle that had nothing to do with magical power flowing through her.
“I haven’t decided,” she said. “I would have to gather allies and probably win the support of the populace. Since I’ve healed a number of our local people, the latter might not be that hard, but most of my allies are fellow healers. We’re not an overly martial sort.”
“You’d have the power to acquit yourself against formidable enemies if you wished.” Vorik smiled, gazing into her eyes now.
Oh, that was nice. Not only the smile but the encouragement and belief behind it.
What she’d done to earn it, she didn’t know, but she wished she could lean on him—trust him—because she dearly needed someone supportive.
Right now, beyond those healer colleagues that had survived the destruction of Moon Watch Temple, she had Sergeant Fel and Aunt Tibby and not many more.
“Captain Lesva was vehemently irked that you didn’t give up your secrets to her when she attempted to extract them from you,” Vorik added.
“You mean when she tortured me?” By the eyes of the moon, that had been an excruciatingly painful hour that had seemed like an entire night.
The only good part had been that the interrogation had been delivered through magic that hadn’t maimed and disfigured her the way physical torture would have, and it had been within her ability to heal the damage that it had done.
Mostly. More than once, she’d woken from nightmares, that woman’s hard face inches from hers.
Mental traumas were never as easy to heal.
“Yes,” Vorik said quietly, all humor gone from his face. “I regret that I didn’t find you in time to keep that from passing.”
“I’m happy that you came at all when you had… another mission. Your captain was frustrated. I think she might have killed me eventually.”
“She would have passed out from your odious candles before then, I’m certain.” His eyebrows twitched, the only indication that he might resent the tiniest bit that she’d caused him to pass out.
“Candles of Serenity aren’t odious. They’re magnificent.”
Vorik snorted. “How did you refrain from losing consciousness as well?”
“We use them in the temples often to sedate patients undergoing surgery. Most healers build up an immunity to the vapors over time.”
“Ah. It was clever of you, then, to bring them.”
Syla didn’t think her impulsive decision to stuff them in her backpack had been brilliant, but she didn’t wave away the compliment.
If he thought her clever, maybe he would be less inclined to try to trick her again.
Though it was likely he was doing that right now.
He must have been sent over here by his people to extract information from her.
“How did you convince Wreylith to come to your aid for a third time?” Vorik asked. “She couldn’t have needed more healing salve.”
Speaking of extracting information…
“I’ll answer that question for you if you tell me why your chiefs accepted my invitation when they have no plans to negotiate.” Syla crossed her arms over her chest and waited to see if he would deny that.
Vorik’s face turned wry. “I wasn’t told.”
That wasn’t the answer she’d expected. “You weren’t told why you were coming?”
“General Jhiton ordered me and the others along to guard our leaders.”
“I thought… Well, you’re reputed to be your general’s trusted right-hand man.”
“I hope that’s still true. You may have noticed that our plan to get the Harvest Island shielder didn’t turn out that well, and my dragon had something to do with that.”
“Because of his love for Wreylith?”
“It moved him to make an inappropriate choice.”
“Love can do that.”
“Indeed.” His eyebrows twitched again. Why was that expression so appealing?
Syla had the urge to step closer to him, to rest a hand on his chest, to gaze up into his eyes, and to part her lips for a kiss. But even if they had been alone in the throne room, she couldn’t have. He was the enemy.
“For my curiosity only, you’ll not tell me how you lured Wreylith into helping you?” Vorik asked. “She was pivotal.”
“If I answer, will you tell your people?”
He started to shake his head.
She added, “What if your brother asks?”
Vorik paused and looked out the window thoughtfully. Then he sighed. “If he asked, I would tell him. And he did ask after the battle. He wanted to know why, by all the cursed minions of the storm god, the wild red dragon involved herself. Not only that, but she called other dragons to help.”
“Yes, she did. It was glorious.”
“For you.”
“Yes. It was even more glorious when your dragon bit your general’s dragon in the ass.”
“It was the left flank, and I should glower at you for delighting in what was quite embarrassing to me.”
“Glower all you wish. I’m having a painting commissioned.”