Chapter Twenty-One
Xandril
The battle map on the table swims before my eyes, roads and borders blurring and doubling in my weary vision.
I’m not getting anywhere with this.
With anything, it feels like.
It’s been nearly a week since my fever broke, and I’ve seen no hint of my bride roaming the castle. Has she been avoiding me?
Could I blame her?
Why couldn’t I just thank her for being at my side, for tending to me when no one else could? Why couldn’t I show my genuine gratitude instead of chasing her off with disrespect?
She deserves better than that. Better than me.
And maybe that’s why I haven’t been seeking her out, either. If she wants to keep her distance from me, I won’t prevent it.
I groan, pushing back from the table. Every moment I’m not engaged in something to restore the throne, my mind wanders back to Ingrid.
My thoughts linger on her soft features, the challenge in her eyes, the way she stands her ground.
The moment I stop moving, stop planning, stop working, I’m sinking in a pit of quicksand, suffocating under the weight of my failures.
I’m not a husband. I’m not even a king. How much longer can I keep up the charade before it all comes crumbling down?
It would be easier to handle this all with steel in my hand.
Sitting in these meeting rooms, listening to endless reports, trapped by etiquette, my legs twitching to move about the room is not how I work best. If I have to sit through one more lunch with a distant noble whose only reason to visit is trying to pilfer the coffers of the peasant king who knows no better, I might end up tossing someone out a window.
Hilduin won’t forgive me if I interrupt the guards’ training again. She’s made it abundantly clear that there won’t be another conversation about the issue; she’ll leave for the front instead.
She’s valuable anywhere she goes, but I need her here. Just like I need—
Val…
The curled end of his tail is all I can see peeking around the corner of the next hallway. I freeze in place, breath held as I retreat. Slow, quiet as I can manage, keeping my eyes on his tail until I’m far enough away it feels safe to exhale.
The last thing I need right now is another lecture about how I’m letting everyone down. I’ve got enough of that in my own mind these days. It might never be enough, but I’m dealing with things in the only way I know how.
“I knew you were avoiding me,” Val says, stepping out of another corridor ahead, tail twitching behind him.
I look back over my shoulder—he was just…
“Mind telling me why?”
I have no excuse.
Val sighs, dragging a hand through his hair. “I’m begging you to stop making me the sensible one.”
“I don’t know what I’m doing.” There’s no one else I’d ever admit that to, and Val knows it. His tail stills, the frown in his brow smoothing out.
“Shit, Xan… None of us do.” He pauses for a moment, takes another heavy breath, then relaxes his shoulders. “Come on,” he says, patting my arm encouragingly. “We’re overdue for a drink.”
The cold is bitter as ever, our breaths fogging in the air as we huddle into the gathering area in the barracks.
There’s a roaring fire warming the place, high spirits around games and stories, even someone in the corner playing an instrument while another sings.
It’s like an entirely different place compared to my first time here.
And even here I can’t escape thoughts of Ingrid—the scarves, shawls, and other knit items around the room are surely from her.
“He lives!” Hilduin exclaims, waving me over to her corner of the room. “Y’know, when I told you to stay out of my training, I didn’t mean you had to become a complete stranger,” she says, pouring me a mug of ale while Val and I sit at the round table on either side of her.
“Been busy,” I mutter. My appearance hasn’t made as much of a ripple here as it did the last time. The guards are much more used to me being around, but it’s still unusual enough that I can feel the attention on me.
“Right, right. Restoring the reach. How’s that going?” Hilduin asks. Val chokes on his ale.
I grunt. “Not getting any warmer, is it?” Draining my mug, I start to stand. This was a mistake. I don’t belong here any more than I belong on the damned throne.
I don’t know where I belong anymore.
“Wait,” Hilduin says. “I didn’t mean—”
“He knows you didn’t,” Val says, venom in his voice just for me. “Sit down.”
Heat flares through me, orange light glowing on the table between us. “Careful,” I growl.
Hilduin looks like she wants to spring out of the corner and leave us to it, but Val is entirely nonplussed.
“You came to have drinks with friends. Sit. Drink,” he says, a challenge in his eyes.
I could pull rank on him here, humiliate him for his insolence, but then I’d lose any goodwill I’ve earned with the guards, and he knows it.
Still grumbling, I sit back down.
Hilduin pours me another mug of ale.
We drink.
As hard as I try, I can’t hold onto my anger. The three of us sitting around a table drinking together in silence while everyone’s nerves are tight as bowstrings would be comical if it wasn’t my fault.
As it is, it just starts to make me feel an ass. And more than a little ridiculous.
Val said it himself—they’re my friends. They’re not out to get me or hoping for my failure. There are plenty of others in the reach who are, but not these two. I’ve got to save my ire for those most deserving.
“I’m sorry,” I sigh, filling Hilduin’s mug, then Val’s, then my own from the pitcher on the table. “I—”
“You’ve got a lot going on, I know,” Hilduin says. “You’ve broken my bones in fights, Xandril, it’ll take more than a tantrum to hurt me.”
Shame floods me, and not even drowning myself in ale will soothe that. Tantrum is exactly the right word for how I’ve been behaving.
“You’re doing what no one else can or will,” Val says.
“I’m doing nothing. Nothing I’ve done has made any difference. Every day the reach is closer to its end, and I can’t stop it. I think…I may have been too late. The damage is done. I don’t know if there’s any hope of mending it.”
Hilduin snorts, quickly trying to hide her derision in a drink of ale.
“Something to say, Captain?” I ask, a warning in my tone. Friends or no, there is such a thing as speaking too freely.
Hilduin’s expression turns contrite, but before she’s able to recant, Val holds his arm out to stop her.
“When’s the last time you spoke to your bride?” he asks.
My whole body goes rigid. I’ve no doubt he knows the answer, but that’s not why he’s asking.
He’s needling me. I may have been avoiding my bride, but that doesn’t mean that Valenar has been.
I don’t think for a second he’s done anything inappropriate, but that doesn’t stop a shot of jealousy from streaking through me, a possessive growl building low in my chest.
“What does she have to do with anything?”
My friends exchange a look, seeming to have a silent conversation between them. They’re able to say too much without words, and it makes me shift in my seat. Have they been colluding behind my back? Strategizing how to handle me like they would an invading army?
“You’re an intelligent demon,” Val finally says, unbothered by the rising heat making my body glow. “I’m sure you can figure it out.”
Gripping the edge of the table is the only thing that keeps me from getting carried away. My claws dig into the surface, and the splintering wood helps channel some of my anger. There’s not another demon in the realm who could take that tone with me and get away with it. And Val knows it.
“Just talk to her,” Hilduin pleads, doing what she can to ease the tension before Val and I work things out in our usual way. “Spend some time with her. She may not be from our realm, but she’s not without a heart.”
“Or a brain,” Val adds with a half-grin.
“Mm,” I grumble, incredulous. “You’re saying a human has the answers to saving Emerald Reach?”
“We’re saying,” Val emphasizes, the humor in his voice fading, “you can’t do this without her. And the sooner you stop fighting it, the better chance we all have.”
My gait is unsteady as I head up to the royal bedchambers. Too many ales and too many hours lost to recounting old war stories and reminiscing about simpler times. It was a nice distraction, but that’s all it was. Time I couldn’t afford to waste, spent on selfish frivolity.
No wonder the throne still rejects me.
There’s a light coming from within Ingrid’s room that makes me stop with my hand resting on my doorknob. It’s late; she’s bound to be asleep. And if she’s not, she certainly won’t want to be disturbed by me.
But there’s an ache in my chest when I turn back toward my door that goes away when I look at hers.
When’s the last time you spoke to your bride?
Just talk to her.
The voices of my friends haunt me, and there’s just enough ale in my system that I can’t remember the reasons why they’re wrong.
Before I’m able to stop myself, I’m knocking on her door, quiet enough that I can almost convince myself she won’t hear it.
Just as I’m going to turn away and pretend my friends didn’t get to me, Ingrid’s door opens, her angelic form a shadow in the doorway.
“Oh! Hello… I was expecting Morwen. Well, not expecting, it’s too late for her to be checking in on me, but I didn’t think… Hi.” She tilts her head to one side as if that last word is meant to be a question.
“I was wondering if we might…talk.” I try not to cringe at how ridiculous that sounds.
“Talk?” she echoes. It sounds even more ridiculous with her confusion added. “What about?”
“I…don’t know,” I admit. Hilduin and Valenar probably didn’t think I’d get this far.
“Are you having trouble sleeping, too?” she asks, opening the door a fraction more, enough that the halo of light from her fireplace makes her hair shine like gold. “I have supplies to make tea, if you’d like a cup? I’ve grown rather fond of duskthorn.”