21. Kye
Kye
There did not exist a time in my history when I hadn’t returned to Laurier Palace, the castle in which I’d been born and raised, and not fantasized setting flames to the towers.
Each time I left, it was like shedding heavy armor. I could move, I could breathe. I could fly. To go home was to don plates of iron and mail. To protect myself from a possible attack from every angle, slowly suffocating as I did.
Hadrian was the only one who had ever understood, though he bore the weight of it easier than I did. Or at least, more gracefully. There was little about me to consider fucking graceful.
I rocked back in my saddle at the sight of the towers rising from behind the tree-encrusted hill ahead, and my brother offered a benign, knowing clap against the back of my shoulder.
“I can send you back to war, if you prefer,” he teased patiently, though I knew the offer was serious if I wanted it.
He’d ordered that I escort his party back to the City of Towers, and when General Senan had tried to argue, my brother had locked eyes with the man and calmly asked if the general was defying the orders of his future king.
My gaze slid to Maren, sandwiched between Diara and Aitne on that hostile fucking mongrel she called a horse. Then to Aegir, only a brief distance away. “No.”
Hadrian’s hand found the crest of my shoulder and squeezed.
The bruises along his face had mottled to green during the fortnight we’d spent traveling.
Now they stained his cheek and jaw a dingy yellow.
He smiled in his placating yet proud sort of way, smoothing his straight hair from his eyes and fixing the collar of his shirt.
Leal halted beside me, grinning. “Getting pretty for the palace ladies,” he said, crossing his arms as he watched Hadrian primp. Head down, Hadrian offered him a small wink as he rolled his sleeves, though we both knew it was his father, King Emilius, he was tidying himself for.
Aren and Dimas slowed their horses as well. With the palace in sight, Fox gave an impatient yawn. “It’s a blessing you don’t stop to do the same, Leal. We’d be stuck here for hours,” Aren said, snapping his fingers for Fox to heel.
Leal buffed his nails against his coat. “Don’t need to with this face. Court doesn’t stand a chance.”
“Not while their eyeballs are in their head,” Aren mused. “The palace nobles go mad for medium-ugly people.”
Leal paused his buffing to raise a brow. “How medium are we talking?”
Are you coming? Maren asked into my thoughts. She watched us from over her shoulder, dark waves spilling down her back. Beside her, Lady Diara Verrata of Pirounesse had also stopped to wait for us, though as Hadrian followed my gaze, she turned abruptly, forging ahead toward the top of the hill.
I’ll just be a minute, I thought back. My fingertips found my gold-dust ring, and I turned it absently, its edge smooth over my knuckle. Maren looked over the five of us with faint curiosity before shifting her hips, guiding Kolibri forward, Aitne following clumsily on her own mount.
Aegir and Sindri traded a few words before splitting apart, the hulking guard aiming for the tall seaside cliffs to the west. Selena and her sister Cebrinne waited for the Venusian monarch to join them, diverting from Maren’s party toward the wing Selena once shared with Thaan.
Dimas observed them in silence, massaging his neck in vague interest. He finally dipped his head. “Are you going to do anything about him?”
Our eyes trailed the tall Naiad, his silver cloak rippling out behind him.
I pursed my mouth. Dimas had fought alongside Leal and me at Winterlight.
He was useful in battle, skilled with both a blade and a bow, though despite his broad size, his true assets lay under silent feet and a knack for hiding under shadows.
His words often traveled under a cloak of finesse, laying unsaid offers before me.
I tapped my fingers over my thigh, watching the Naiad head toward the palace. We’d decided he would take the apartment Thaan had once shared with Pheolix. I’d agreed, knowing it might be the simplest way to keep my eye on him. A king I hadn’t even known existed. “Nothing. For now.”
I felt them shift, uneasy with that response, and I sighed.
“Maren needs someone to teach her shit no one else can.” Over the course of the journey, I’d tried my best to answer their questions.
About Maren, about the sirens, about the lightning, the healing, the reason we’d forced them all to eat shield weed every few days—a demand Leal loudly protested until he’d learned his mind was at stake.
I’d filled in gaps in the small ways I could.
Yes, my wife has magical abilities.
Yes, she is a queen among her people, with a colony under the sea.
Yes, she can control the water nearby—enough to clot blood or feel her way through the dark.
No, you aren’t allowed to know anything else, so quit fucking asking.
Leal popped a peanut into his mouth, crunched with his teeth, and spat the shell into the frozen grass. “Well. Just let us know when you want us to kill him for you.”
“And start a war with an enemy we don’t understand?” Aren rolled his eyes, glancing at me. “Would have been easier just to marry into Illuskia.”
Hadrian nicked a peanut from the little canvas bag open over Leal’s knee, twisting it in half with his long fingers and popping it between his smile.
“If you think he’d have had an easier time with Yrenna Flaneari, you’ve never spent a full day in the Illuskian court.
Of course, Kye’s always enjoyed the thought of a woman bullying him a bit too much.
He is a glutton for torment. That’s why Maren fits him so well. ”
“Have I?” I nocked my head in the direction of the red-haired woman riding beside my wife. “How was your time with Verrata before Rivea caught up to you?”
Hadrian loosed a small cough, clearing his throat and grumbling something about needing to check in with the magistrate of foreign affairs.
“Don’t leave us hanging, Prince,” Leal shouted after him.
My brother simply glanced right and left, then raised a covert middle finger in Leal’s direction.
Maren wasn’t in my tower rooms.
She wasn’t in her rooms either. Aitne was—a fact that sent a spark of guilt through me. “Sorry,” I said, raising my hands in response to the alarm in the shy Naiad’s eyes after I yanked her door wide. “I’m just looking for my wife.”
“Your cordae?” She relaxed, seeing I wasn’t interested in walking past the open door.
The honey-haired Naiad had grown a little more familiar around humans in the near month we’d spent together on the road, though when given the option, she preferred Selena or Olinne over anyone born without flukes.
“She said to meet her in Selena’s rooms.”
I nodded, closing the door as I strode to the tower steps.
Leihani, are you still with Diara?
We’d learned, when we’d stopped in Ochire so Diara could find her parents, that the Verrata family had been moved to Laurier Palace following the evacuation of mountain towns.
The knowledge seemed to tighten all the threads within Diara, binding her so tight with anxiety she barely spoke the remainder of the trip and rode her horse twice as hard.
We just left them, Maren sent back to me. We’re almost to Selena’s door. Nori is meeting me there to hear Aegir explain what I need to learn as Queen.
Halfway down the curving flight of stairs, I paused. Then took them two at a time. I’m on my way.
You don’t have to come.
The Darkness I didn’t.
You could rest if you wanted.
The fuck I did.
I’m coming, I said, and thought I caught a small wave of unease from her, though it vanished before I could tell for sure.
Aalto in the clouds, it was cold for a day in the middle of winter, even with the sun shining thick over the sea.
Wind blasted me from the side as soon as I stepped onto the sky bridge.
Taking the enclosed passage below would have been warmer, but in this season, the open overpass was the fastest route, even though the seaward gusts raked across my cheeks and batted my skin raw, scraping through my hair like a pair of talons.
“You’re in a hurry,” said a voice inside the doors at the opposite end. Posted outside the Admin offices, Hadrian leaned against the wall. “Where are you headed?”
“Nowhere,” I muttered, my boots loud on the marbled floor as I treaded around the corner past him. I hesitated, then ducked back in. “Want to join me?”