Chapter Two
Tor
Rin was nearly as efficient as he was fun-loving, so everything was organized the next morning just as though it had always been planned. No one could accuse Tor of shirking his duty. He was leaving with an honor guard of ten, servants, food, clothing, and supplies.
Rin had even requested the traveling carriage.
“What could I possibly want with a traveling carriage?” Tor demanded, appalled.
Even Varex still rode as often as possible, though he was stuck in the carriage when Fernila was traveling with him, because of course she couldn’t just ride a horse.
“What if it rains?” Rin asked, eyes twinkling. “Wouldn’t a sodden prince be beneath the realm’s dignity?”
Tor swore at him, which only made Rin laugh, and Tor couldn’t help but grin in response, though he pointed out, “That’s what I have a cloak for.”
If he were being truly ostentatious, that was what he had his magic for.
There was nothing like using your power to protect yourself from the weather to make you appear extravagant and puffed up in your own conceit.
(And magic liked to be grounded, to be attached to a floor or wall or a person who was standing on the ground and so on, so it was actually quite a challenge to use a free-standing shield to protect yourself from the rain.)
“What if you bring the Princess back?” Rin wanted to know. “She’d need a coach, wouldn’t she?”
“Shut your mouth,” Tor said with a huff of disgust.
Rin was still grinning like a fool, and Tor didn’t seriously try to convince him to leave the carriage behind. It probably was the responsible choice. As long as Rin didn’t actually try to make him ride in it, it would be fine.
Varex came to see Tor off—or possibly just to make sure he really left.
“It will all be for the best,” Varex told him, clasping his arm, his blue-eyed gaze intent with an earnestness that Tor didn’t ever display himself. “You’ll see.”
Tor huffed a breath. “Just because you came out of the womb two minutes sooner than I did doesn’t actually make you smarter than I am, you know.”
Varex’s face fell into that disappointed look with which Tor had become so familiar. But Tor refused to feel guilty. Varex was the one who was trying to marry him off like he was a prize stud. Seriously, what made him more qualified than Tor to know what was going to make him happy?
And if Varex was simply the King doing what he believed needed to be done for the Realms, then Tor didn’t have a relationship with him which necessitated any guilt.
Tor hoisted himself into Monster’s saddle and looked down at his brother—a rare occurrence.
“Safe travels, Tor.”
It almost sounded normal—the normal from before the coronation, before the wedding, when things had been good.
“Try to misbehave a little while I’m gone,” Tor suggested with a wink. “We’ve got to keep people on their toes.”
Varex actually rolled his eyes, and Tor’s stomach unclenched a little, and he smiled more genuinely. The man might be an obnoxious jerk a lot of the time, but he was still Tor’s brother.
And then they were off, way more of a cavalcade than Tor usually took with him when he traveled, unless he was, say, moving the army, which he didn’t get to do anymore because he was no longer in charge of it.
He was now simply the High Prince of the United Realms, and he was utterly determined to prevent his brother and Fernila from questioning his ability to follow orders.
Of course, that didn’t mean he couldn’t get creative about how he was executing those orders.
Rin laughed when Tor said his first stop was visiting his sister. “Of course it is.”
This was far from the first time that Rin had come along with Tor to see Ada, and he was thus well aware that the capital city of Scala in Lotar was… kind of in the opposite direction of Glomar in Vayrin, where Princess Terila was no doubt being beautiful and obnoxious at this very moment.
Fortunately, Varex hadn’t thought to put any time restrictions on his orders, and that meant Tor wasn’t doing anything technically wrong.
It would take about five days to get to Scala at their measured pace. Tor wasn’t dawdling, but he sure wasn’t pushing the horses when his ultimate destination was one he had no interest in.
Nexa was a well-fortified city, and it would always be home, but something in Tor relaxed a little once they made it out into the surrounding area and they began to see rolling fields and trees and wide-open space.
The last chill of winter was still in the air in the mornings, but spring was upon them, and Tor could see evidence of green and growth everywhere.
The sounds of nature and the peaceful villages and towns were always reassuring, a reminder that the peace in the United Realms had been holding for over twenty-five years.
It was why, after several days of travel through Alossa, they passed into Lotar without fanfare. Varex had married Ada off to King Stronex’s heir, and relations remained happy and peaceful, as they had since the peace accords.
Tor might not agree with everything that his father and mother had done, but he knew that they’d worked ceaselessly for this peace, for an end to the fighting and vying for power that had escalated to all-out war.
Tor had been almost ten when the final disastrous battle had occurred.
His father had died, but his mother had finally secured the surrender of those rulers who had been holding out against the idea of a unified realm—or who had wanted to take over their entire island and wipe out every other ruler.
Fernila’s father, King Nostex, had fought hard against submitting to anyone, just like King Forex of Tond, and Sovereign Gornexi’s parents in Bessar, but they’d all eventually admitted it was the only way for their realms to prosper.
Tor’s mother had labored ceaselessly to ensure that the peace would last—which was how Nostex’s daughter had wound up married to the High King.
Tor still thought arranged marriages were foolish and unreasonable, and he definitely didn’t want to bet the fate of the United Realms on them.
Even if Varex’s was somehow happy (he still didn’t understand it), how could his brother fail to see that didn’t mean everyone’s would automatically be as happy?
That sometimes, people couldn’t just “try harder” and get along?
Varex might be blind, but Tor wasn’t, which was why he was coming to see Ada, hopefully avoid Prince Thurnil, and mostly stay out of King Stronex’s way.
Varex and Gornexi were the only two rulers who hadn’t fought for land and power, both the children of rulers who’d fought in the war.
Sometimes, Tor thought it would be better if all of them had passed their rule on to someone else.
But of course, no one would have agreed to that, and fighting for that particular principle would just have led to more deaths throughout the realms.
Tor knew this system was far from perfect—and knew that he’d come out nearly at the very top of this particular power structure—but he also remembered the fighting and the fear that had seeped into his childhood.
This was better. Each realm had retained its autonomy. There were still Queens, Kings, or Sovereigns of each land. Varex was simply the High King to whom they all pledged their Fealty, and that meant that all their people by association were similarly pledged.
They’d redrawn borders and agreed that peace was the most important consideration if they didn’t want to wipe one another out and leave a barren rock in the middle of the ocean.
United, Tor thought they stood a chance. But he was aware that humans weren’t always very good at being thankful for what they had without wanting more (and more and more).
Tor thought his needs were quite prosaic. He wasn’t trying to take over anything. He didn’t want to fight with any of his neighbors. He simply didn’t want to marry any of his neighbors, either. That wasn’t so unreasonable, was it?
He loved his sister desperately, but any time he spent with her, he was filled with a renewed desire not to be trapped like she was.
But Varex never listened when Tor tried to bring that up, and Ada had insisted that her marriage wasn’t a topic she’d discuss with either of her brothers. She was always delighted to see Tor, though, even if she sidestepped his questions about how she was really doing.
They hugged for a long time, and Tor clasped her smaller form to him and wished futilely that he could turn back time. Just one decade, and their mother would still be alive, they’d still be at peace, and Ada wouldn’t be trapped in this marriage.
If only magic worked like that.
Failing that, he wished that he could scoop her up and just… carry her back to Nexa, where she’d once been safe and happy. Of course, she’d probably punch him in the nose if he tried.
Her husband, Prince Thurnil, was a couple of years younger than she was, and as far as Tor had ever been able to observe, he generally acted as though he wasn’t married.
Never quite to the point that Tor could drag him back to Varex and demand the bond be dissolved—the risks outweighed by the benefits—but certainly not with the care and devotion that Ada deserved.
He was very handsome, and he had pretty manners when he wanted to…
but like Tor had tried to explain about Terila, there was more than looks to be concerned about in a life-long bond.
Tor tried to visit Ada frequently, spending time with her until she finally sent him away again before he could actually get into a fistfight with her husband or perhaps just run him through with his sword and have done entirely.
“It would start a war,” Ada always pointed out. “And you know what else might happen.”