Chapter 22 #2
Anger melted away as his lips parted. One of Harthon’s hands landed on my shoulder, the other skating to the back of my neck. I should have despised the weight, considering the venom we’d just thrown, but my senseless muscles relaxed under his touch.
“What did you sense?” he asked.
“It was like a tug within me. I followed it up a lookout tower and to a window. It stopped when I took in the view.”
Okay, so when I said it out loud, it sounded rather pathetic. Like it was nothing.
But Harthon didn’t think so, because he asked, “Where’d the window face?”
“South. But there was nothing beyond that.”
“The Domus is to our south, as are Sixth and One on the other side of it.” His thumb began stroking back and forth just below my hairline as he processed the information.
“Keep following the feeling. Meeting or not, always follow it.” He frowned.
“And next time it makes you late, lead with that information.”
I waited for an apology, but he didn’t continue. “Next time, give me a moment to tell you that information before getting so grouchy and accusatory.”
That thumb halted, and he drew back. “Grouchy?”
“That’s what I said.”
His nose scrunched as if I couldn’t have slung a greater insult. “I don’t get grouchy.”
“You were irritable and angry with a big scary scowl on your face. That’s grouchy.”
“I wasn’t grouchy. I was serious. Livid. Furious. Terrifying. Intimidating.”
Perhaps those words suited him better, but now I was just having fun. “You were grouchy. Sort of like North. Maybe you’ve been spending too much time with him.”
He scoffed. “North and I are similar in a lot of ways, but demeanor isn’t one of them.”
“Now you’re getting defensive.”
His hands lightly squeezed. “Because I won’t allow you to call me grouchy when that’s not what I was. Grouchy is for petulant children, old men, and North. Not me.”
I smirked. “It seems like you’re getting irritated again. Your grouchiness is peeking through.”
His lips pressed together. “Are you trying to start another fight?”
“No, I’m just having fun, and you’re making it far too easy.”
“And here I was, about to do something nice for you. Something you’ve wanted.”
Wait a second. “What do you mean?”
Harthon lifted those big shoulders. “Clearly I was misguided.”
“I just helped you secure an alliance with Aric. I deserve something nice,” I argued, not caring that I was taking every bit of bait he dangled before me.
“But you just sought entertainment at my expense. That negates your help.”
“That is not enough to negate my help.”
“As Princeps of this Territory, I deem that it is.”
I planted my hands on my hips, and his hands fell from my shoulders. Their departure was far too disappointing. “Your delicate feelings are equivalent to big political alliances?”
“Us Princepes have very delicate feelings.”
I stared at his serious face, and then at him, with his muscled build and strong features, and I couldn’t help but burst into a laugh. “I’ll go make sure Aric’s aware of your delicate feelings, so he never hurts them,” I told him, turning for the door.
He caught my arm, spinning me back around. A smile ghosted across his lips. “You should do that more.”
“What?”
“Laugh.”
My belly fluttered as I stood there, realizing that laughter was…rare for me. During my life in the village, there weren’t many instances that called for it. But in this moment, it’d felt so natural. “There’s never been much to laugh about.”
There’s never been anything to laugh about…until now, with you.
“Maybe that will change,” he replied vaguely, and I didn’t know if he meant that he would change it, or that fixing our world with the resources beneath the Domus would change it.
“Maybe,” I echoed, not really believing it. Life was too hard for laughter to belong here.
His hand lingered for two more heartbeats, and then he released my arm and walked to the doors. I stood rooted to the spot, still in a bit of wonder that he’d had me giggling like a damn child after a heated argument.
“Are you coming?” he called over his shoulder.
Jolting into action, I caught up to him in the hallway. “Coming where?”
“To the stables.”
“Are we going somewhere?”
He glanced at me as we descended a staircase. “You’re learning how to ride a horse.”
I’d nearly forgotten about his promise all those days ago. Between the trip to Josenne and my training, riding a horse was the last thing on my mind. Excitement bubbled at the idea of flying over the ground on horseback. Of being able to ride for myself when we traveled.
“Who’s teaching me?”
“Jac. You might remember him from our trek here from Koerlyn’s Territory,” he answered, and I felt a twinge of disappointment that it wasn’t him.
Which was silly.
He was Princeps. He obviously had more pressing matters than teaching me how to ride. And he wouldn’t assign someone to teach me who didn’t know what they were doing.
“And while I did say that this is something nice for you, I should warn you that you might hate me for this within a day,” he cautioned.
“I’m not sure I follow.” How could I hate anyone for teaching me to ride a horse?
We stepped outside and approached the stables.
“There is no soreness like that of learning to ride a horse, which means you might not be able to train as much as you’d like. And you’re going to need as much training as possible if you have any hopes of beating Callen,” he answered, and my excitement began to ebb.
How did he even know about the bet? “I have a month. I’ll be able to beat him,” I stated with a confidence that was slowly dwindling. First Stefano had voiced his doubts, and now Harthon.
We stopped just inside the stables, the scents of horse and sweet hay melding into something that wasn’t entirely terrible.
A man with deeply tanned skin acknowledged us from where he took a saddle off the wall.
It was the same man who’d thanked me for saving Joris and given me something for my neck. He had to be Jac.
Harthon greeted him before turning to face me. “I sure hope so. Your name is rather pretty, and I’d hate to replace it with that nickname, even if only for a month,” he said before leaving me in the stable with Jac.
As Jac beckoned me over, all I could think was that Harthon found my name to be pretty.
* * *
The familiar stone stairs rose before me, disappearing around a corner as they spiraled up.
It was the fourth time in the same number of days that I’d been drawn to the tower. Each time, I’d come and climbed it, and only at the south-facing window did the compulsive feeling relax.
Today would be the same. At least the soreness was more bearable than in my past two visits.
Harthon hadn’t been jesting when he warned me of the pain that came from learning to ride.
While I was getting a hang of the technique rather quickly, my muscles weren’t used to so much squeezing and squatting, and I’d hardly made it through my last few morning training sessions with Callen.
With Stefano, the pain had limited me to punching technique only.
Callen was all too pleased with my temporary impairments. We both knew I couldn’t afford to lose a day in training to beat him.
With a sigh, I looked beside me at Ana, who’d decided to accompany me to the tower.
She’d joined me for meals the past few days, teaching me more about Fourth, checking in on how I was, and generally making conversation.
I received nearly daily reports from her regarding the mission to get Merelda and Marsik—a mission that was slow-moving, thanks to Koerlyn’s heightened patrols in his Territory that made a stealthy passage difficult.
She might be Harthon’s minister, a wealth of knowledge and political skill, but she was rather easy to be around. Fun, even. She was trying to befriend me. It was slowly beginning to work.
“You don’t have to follow me up there,” I told her. She’d gain nothing but exercise from the climb.
She raised a shoulder. “I don’t mind. I haven’t seen the views from up there in a while. Plus, I’ve been sitting at so many meetings the past few days, I’m dying to move.”
“Alright then.” I twisted around to address Stefano. “You also don’t have to follow us up there.”
“Yes, I do,” he stubbornly replied, refusing to take a single break from his guard duty. Per usual.
Like everyone else, he wasn’t privy to my situation.
He’d never been told that I wasn’t actually the magvis, but with all the time he spent with me, I imagined it was rather clear I wasn’t the all-powerful being.
I’d been climbing the same damn staircase for four days in a row without a reasonable explanation.
I was also novice in my combat abilities, and I certainly didn’t act like a magvis in his presence.
Skies, Ana had openly asked me about my progress in front of him, and he didn’t even bat an eye.
But he’d never questioned me. He was too loyal to Harthon to do such a thing.
And he was also too loyal to Harthon to shirk his responsibilities and save himself from this pointless climb.
There was no sense in arguing with him.
With a sigh, I began my ascent. A few minutes later, we were at the top, and I stood at the open-air window, the tension releasing from my chest. Blue sky peaked through the clouds today, but the field and hills to the south looked the same as always.
It was just a direction. A very broad direction.
Ana inhaled deeply, her eyes fluttering closed. “This is nice,” she said, exhaling long and slow.
A chilled breeze threatened my tidy braid. “If I was trapped in meetings with North and Callen and other Lords, I’d appreciate the fresh air too.”
She leaned over the edge of the sill, the shiny curls of her hair billowing behind her. “It’s the view, too.”
I scanned the field and hills again, no longer impressed by the vastness of the land as I once was. “I guess.”
She laughed lightly, nudging me with her elbow. “I know. It’s the same gray, barren wasteland as always. It’s nothing special. But the land and the skies were once alive, you know?”
That time was long gone.
“I was three when the Domus appeared,” she revealed.
“For three years of my life, I was in a living world, not that I remember much about it. But still, whenever I look at it now, I think that maybe it can live again.” It was a wistful comment from a generally non-wistful person.
Ana was almost always factual and realistic, if not a bit saucy in her delivery.
“Getting the resources from Centralis won’t do anything to fix this land. It’ll help people live better, but that’s all,” I reminded her.
If I’m even able to find that path into the Domus.
She smiled, but there was sadness in it. “Trust me, I know. It’s just sad when you think about it. All the potential this place has.”
I’d never really considered its potential, just took the current miserable state of this land as an unchangeable fact. I supposed that was what divided us. What made Ana and Harthon into leaders, and me into…me. I never thought of potential, of what could be.
Except now, I was beginning to.
I was starting to think of how things might change for these struggling people if I got us into Centralis. And for a short while, after my nightmare in the woods, I was thinking of how it might feel for Harthon to kiss me again.
Of course, that thought was gone now.
Totally gone. Mhm.
But still, I was slowly beginning to think in terms of potentials.