53. Kailin
KAILIN
I used to think love meant never letting go. Now I wonder if, sometimes, the opposite might be true.
—From the journal of Kailin Strom
We were halfway through lunch when the knock came.
Shovia looked at me. "That's probably the mail."
I hadn't gotten a letter from Alar since the one about his brother suffering a big setback, and then his private message to me that had left me in tears. I had been waiting for the next blow to fall, dreading the knock on the door that would announce the mail, but there hadn't been any for days.
I'd been studying with Saphir in the mornings, flying with Veynathei after lunch, and lying awake at night because my heart was heavy, and Alar's words kept repeating in my mind.
The despair in his letter was affecting me, making it difficult to fight what was becoming glaringly more obvious with each passing day.
Ravel wanted me, and as much as he kept himself in check, and I kept denying it to myself, the loneliness and desperation were eroding my resolve.
It was no excuse. I loved Alar. I hadn't stopped loving him just because fate had torn us apart.
I wanted to do the noble thing and stay true to him even if he could never return to me, but the pragmatic voice in my head, which sounded a lot like my grandmother, was telling me that was an unrealistic plan.
"I'll get it." Morek rose to his feet. I watched him walk toward the door as if in slow motion.
The letters I'd been sending Alar after his last one hadn't reached him yet, and between Codric and me, we'd done our best to keep his spirits up, letting him know that we were praying for Arlen.
The words I had given Codric to translate into their cipher represented the most sunlit version of myself I could get away with while still sounding like me, and every cheerful line had been a small betrayal, because the truth was that I was coming apart at the seams.
Morek opened the door and then returned with several envelopes.
"Anything for me?" Shovia asked.
"Yes." He threw her an envelope, and she snatched it from the air.
The one under it was made from the luxurious ivory stationery that I was familiar with, and my stomach dropped and rose at once, the way it did each time a letter arrived from Alar. Worse now, because I was teetering between hope and dread.
So close to the ball, this letter would hold the answer to whether he'd pulled off a miracle and was coming home, or he hadn't and was letting us know that he would be named heir.
Shovia put down her envelope. "The letter from my mother can wait," she said, though no one had asked. Morek set aside the letter addressed to him without so much as glancing at the front of it to see who it was from. They were both watching me, or rather the ivory envelope.
Codric pushed back his chair without a word and went to his and Shovia's room to fetch his notepad and a pen.
While he was gone, I picked up the envelope, turned it over in my hands, and opened it.
I removed the two folded pages of what looked like gibberish and ran my fingers over the script.
I knew it wasn't Alar's writing. He'd dictated these to a clerk in Tarina, who had written them down in his own hand and sent them racing across the border, so they reached me in days instead of weeks.
There was nothing of Alar's actual hand anywhere in it.
Codric came back, drew up a chair, and held out his hand. I gave him the letter, and he put the pages on the table.
I watched his expression as he started untangling the words from the cipher, writing them on his notepad.
Nothing but a slight widening of his eyes and a relaxation of his shoulders sparked renewed hope in my chest, but then his eyes narrowed, his jaw set, his mouth narrowed, and his pen strokes slowed, as though he were reluctant to write them down. The sparks of hope sputtered and died.
I knew what was coming. The first part, the one that had his eyes widening, was for everyone, but the second part was for me. He was going to take me to my room again and give me the bad news.
"Okay." He let out a long breath through his mouth. "Here it goes."
He lifted his notepad. "'We prayed for a miracle,'" he started reading, "'and Elurion answered. Arlen recovered beyond anything I dared hope. He passed a test I would never have thought him capable of passing just a week ago. He is now restored as the crown prince. My work is done.'"
"He did it." Shovia clapped her hands. "Seven hells, he actually did it."
"Then he's coming back," Morek said, looking at me and grinning, his whole face alight. "Does that mean that he's coming back?"
Elu forgive me, my heart leaped with joy despite my suspicion that bad news would follow the good. I allowed myself to feel relief and joy and to imagine Alar walking through that door, Alar on Veynathei's back, Alar's arms around me and all those lonely weeks without him undone.
Then I noticed that Codric had stopped reading.
He set the notepad down, looked at me, and his expression was so mournful that the joy curdled in my chest before he said the words I was dreading.
"The rest is for Kailin alone," he said.
The others went still for a moment.
"What's going on?" Shovia asked.
"I'm just doing what Alar is asking of me." Codric pushed away from the table and stood with the notepad in hand. "I'm sorry." He turned to me. "Come on. Let's get it over with."
I followed him down the short hall to my room with the dread pooling in my stomach cooling and hardening, becoming cement that made it difficult to walk, to breathe, and I wondered if this was the last time I was going to follow Codric so he could deliver devastating news to me, or whether this would become my new reality, and every letter from Alar would hit me worse than the previous one.
In my room, I walked over to my bed and sat on the edge like I had done the last time, and just as before, Codric took the chair from my desk and turned it to face me and unfolded the pages.
"'There is no way to say this that won't hurt you,'" Codric began reading. "'That's why I asked Codric to read the rest of this to you alone. I know how proud you are, and how you'd rather no one saw you bleed. I can at least give you this.'"
Codric swallowed hard, and I just became numb because I had to in order to survive what he was about to read to me.
"'I might be free of the crown, but that's the only thing I'm free of.
When Arlen was restored, the whole tower of marriages my mother had built came tumbling down, and things became much more complicated.
Catonia made a promise to Tarina to deliver them a prince and an alliance.
When Arlen was made heir again, they could no longer deliver him to Cardilia, the crown princess of Tarina.
As a future queen, she couldn't join him in Catonia, and we were in breach of agreement.
A broken promise between crowns has to be compensated for lavishly and generously, or it makes an enemy, and Catonia cannot afford antagonizing an ally and turning Tarina into an enemy.
The compensation the Queen of Tarina demanded was me, but not as a match for the crown princess.
Now that she had leverage, she decided to use her less valuable asset to secure an alliance with Catonia, and demanded me for her younger daughter, Idrilia.
The alliance keeps Tarina from turning against my father. '"
I stopped breathing.
"'My betrothal to Idrilia will be announced at the ball,'" Codric kept reading, and his voice was getting less steady the further he went.
"'I have never met her, or if I have, I don't remember her.
I don't even know what she looks like, and I don't care.
I don't want her, and I never will. The marriage will be in name only. '"
Codric looked at me as if that was supposed to be good news.
It wasn't.
It only meant that Alar's life was going to be miserable.
Disappointed to see my lack of response, Codric lowered his gaze back to his notepad.
"'There is one small mercy buried in all this that I cling to.
Tarina shares a border with Elucia. If I can persuade them to let me live there rather than in Vedona, I will be nearer to you and Veynathei.
Near enough, perhaps, for Veynathei to pick me up and ride to the Citadel, if Saphir and General Lesten would allow it. '"
My eyes were burning.
Perhaps this wasn't the end. Perhaps there was a way to salvage what little we could from this terrible situation.
Codric didn't lift his head to meet my eyes, though, and I had a feeling that the bad news wasn't over yet.
"'But perhaps I shouldn't. Perhaps I could just ride Veynathei from time to time because our bond demands it.
You deserve better than stolen afternoons with a man who belongs to someone else, even if it's only on paper, a man turning up at your door when he can get away.
And knowing you, you would let me, because you are generous and you love me, and you would waste your life waiting in the cracks of mine.
You deserve so much more than such pitiful crumbs, even if you tell yourself that it's enough.
It would not be enough, and I would hate myself for doing that to you, and one day you would look at what I had let you give up, and you would resent me for it, and you would be right to do so. '"
A sound came out of me that I didn't consciously emit.