CHAPTER 26 CALLYN
CALLYN
Somehow, I’m back in my bed in the bakery, and I can’t quite make myself believe it. It’s not that I never expected to come back here. It’s more that I never expected Alek to be lying right beside me.
Across the hall, Nora is asleep in her own room, little Sinna curled up beside her. I checked on them an hour ago, and the princess had her hands wrapped around Nora’s arm so tightly, as if my sister were a full-grown doll.
I offered my bed to the queen, but she declined, choosing instead to follow Tycho and Jax back to the forge, where my friend intends to get to work.
The familiar plink- plink- plink of his hammer is a sound that’s deeply embedded in my consciousness.
I’d hoped to have an opportunity to reunite with my best friend, because so much about him has changed, but it seems that we’re on opposite sides again, at least in a small way.
I saw how he looked at Alek.
I also saw how Alek talked to him.
As usual, my thoughts are a mess. Even now, we’re in bed together, but we’re not in bed together. We just have a lot of people who need sleep, and not a lot of areas to do it. Two feet of space exists between us. Honestly, we were closer in the carriage.
“You should be asleep.”
His voice is a low rumble, barely audible over the sound of the rain on the roof. I look over. “So should you.”
“What troubles you, Callyn?”
“Ah . . . literally everything? What troubles you ?”
He doesn’t smile. If anything, his frown deepens. “Their plan is so . . . reckless.”
He sounds so aggravated. I study him in the shadows.
Beard growth covers his jaw now, and his hair is a tufted mess from the rain.
He stripped his armor a while ago, so now he’s in a loose tunic and trousers, but they’re damp and rumpled from the downpour.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen him quite this unkempt.
“If you’re worried about it,” I say, “maybe you should be in the forge helping them.”
He scoffs. “Helping them with what? Making arrows? Lining the edge of my sword with their steel?”
“Yes . . . ? Those actually sound like phenomenal ideas.”
“Callyn. Tycho has two soldiers and a lazy blacksmith—”
“He’s not lazy,” I say hotly.
Alek continues, unperturbed. “The queen only has you and me. The Truthbringers killed her courier. No help is coming. We have no army, no guards, no defense, yet they intend to summon the Truthbringers and the scravers here. The king barely survived the first attack, and he had a field of soldiers. We have almost no one.”
“You’ve forgotten Nora,” I say. “The queen has her, too.”
“Ah, yes, the key to surviving the battle! Your sister.”
I shove him in the shoulder. “Stop being such an ass.”
“I’m being a realist.”
I sigh, because he’s right as usual. “I know.”
We lapse into silence again, and something about it reminds me of our time together in the carriage.
I think of the way he finally began to share his true thoughts with me when we were alone in the darkness, compared with how he spoke to Jax and Tycho in the barn— or even the way he’s speaking to me now.
I wonder if things between us will always be like this: sharp and brittle, with any softness hidden behind shards of glass.
But then his voice quiets to a murmur, and he says, “Truly, I understand why she’s doing it.”
For a moment, I’m not entirely sure I heard him correctly. I look over again, staring into his eyes. “You do?”
He nods. “The king sacrificed himself to protect her. So now she’s going to sacrifice herself for him.”
As soon as he says it, I hear the truth of it.
Of course that’s what she’s doing. Of course.
No wonder she didn’t protest when Alek said we needed to go to Emberfall.
No wonder she was so eager to take Nakiis to find Tycho.
It has nothing to do with helping the scravers or hiding our magic.
It has nothing to do with Lady Karyl or the Truthbringers.
It has nothing to do with any of this. Not really.
It has everything to do with the king, and how desperately she misses him.
I can’t believe I didn’t see it earlier. I’ve been seeing her pain for weeks, how badly she’s been suffering.
No wonder she crawled through fireplaces and evaded the guards.
“She loves him,” Alek says. Then his voice takes on his usual cynicism. “I don’t know why, mind you, because the man has the personality of a plank of wood—”
“Alek.”
He falls silent, looking back at me, and I reach out to put a hand against his cheek. His jaw is prickly, and I drag my thumb across it, barely grazing his bottom lip. He seems to stop breathing, his eyes so intent on mine.
“You’re so disheveled,” I say flatly, because I know it’ll make him crazy.
He nearly sits straight up in bed. “I am not disheveled—”
I rap him on the hand, like he’s a child. “Hush, you’ll wake the princess.”
Alek clamps his mouth shut, then drops his voice. “Fine. But I am not—”
“Downright unkempt,” I add. “I thought your House was known for style and—”
He puts a hand over my mouth. “Stop, before you truly offend me.”
I laugh softly behind his fingers. But then his thumb brushes across my lip, and it’s my turn to stop breathing. When he leans down to kiss me, it’s not the swift surety I’ve always felt before from him. There’s a question. An inquiry.
So I kiss him back, and I’m struck by the fact that it’s . . . gentle. Not that he’s ever been forceful or demanding in his intimacy. Just that he’s always so arrogant. This almost feels vulnerable.
When he draws back an inch, I almost grab hold of his tunic and pull him closer.
But then he traces a warm finger over my lip and says, “Callyn, as lovely as you are, I have spent far too many hours on a horse for me to be a suitable bed partner.”
It’s so unexpected that I burst out laughing. “Aww,” I say with feigned sympathy, stroking a hand down his chest. “Are you a bit sore—”
“No!” he snaps in a fierce whisper. “I am filthy.”
He’s so outraged about his state of being that it just makes me laugh harder. “I can’t possibly think of any other man who’d put cleanliness above—”
“Callyn.”
He sounds so stern that I curl in on myself, trying not to giggle so loud. I’m sure it’s stress, but I don’t care. He’s just so ridiculous.
But then he strokes a hand along my hair, and it’s so gentle and soothing that it steals every bit of laughter from my body. I blink and stare at him, my body gone completely still.
“I’m very sorry for the way I treated you,” he says softly. “I regret every word.”
I’m frozen in place, because I can’t imagine any possible way I heard him properly. “Pardon?” I say.
He flicks his eyes skyward and taps me on the nose. “Go to sleep. We’re going to war in a few hours.”
I take hold of his hand. “No. Say it again.”
He goes still. “I know I hurt you, and I’m sorry.” His fingers wrap around mine. “If I could undo it, I would.”
There was a time when that would’ve been enough to unwind everything that’s happened between us, but not now. But as I consider the way he sat beside me on the carriage and revealed shadows of his past that I don’t think he’s ever shared with anyone, I wonder if we’ve begun to forge a new path.
So I give his fingers a squeeze. “You still can,” I say.
A light sparks in his eye, and he leans in to brush his lips against mine. Very soft, very chaste, but it sends fire through my veins anyway, especially when he smiles. “I’ll try.”