Chapter 52 #2
‘You’ve done enough for your people,’ Hark countered, his voice becoming harder with each syllable.
‘I won’t leave them to fend for themselves. Do you know how long my people suffered after Kastonia swarmed my kingdom? I can’t, Hark. Not when Elrod is still on the throne. He’ll find a way to blame Cyrus for what I did and he’ll wage war.’
Hark looked at her, his eyes steely when she met his gaze.
‘It’s not up to you to keep fighting. Let Kastonia come for you; they won’t risk touching Hadalyn, not when they’ve seen you fly away on a fucking dragon.’
Thara growled low and long through the bond.
It was all so tempting. All of it. To live here. To forget. To never drag a knife across a thief’s throat on the orders of a king. To never push herself to the point of passing out again.
‘I need them to be safe.’
‘They will be,’ he urged, reaching for her hand. She didn’t know why she let him take it. Perhaps she was becoming weaker the longer she stood on this balcony lit by stars and soft torches.
‘Arla, Hadalyn is safe. The magic-wielders are safe. You are safe here.’
Something in her was shifting, and it scared her beyond anything she’d ever experienced before. Something hot and burning, and something she wanted for herself.
‘Halos gets to come here – and her children,’ she stated, her voice shaking as she lifted her chin and made her demand. Something flashed in Hark’s eyes – the pleasure of being challenged, perhaps – but she saw the fight leave just as quickly as it had come.
‘If Halos wishes to leave Hadalyn, she’ll be more than welcome in Flambriar.’
A promise. A home. Perhaps, if she could force herself to let go.
A whinny sounded in the night and her legs threatened to buckle at the noise. Vetta.
‘Where?’ she choked out and Hark was already leading her by her shoulders to the far side of the balcony. From here she could see Vetta and Eros looking up at her from stalls in a courtyard delicately lit with tiny white lights. Vetta whickered again.
‘She’s safe,’ Arla said on a sob, pressing her hands against the stone of the balcony to steady herself. She hadn’t known emotion like this, and it felt like it had been battering her since she’d awoken.
‘I do hope I’m worthy of the same reaction, Dragonhart.’
‘I hear from Jack that your horse has been rather unruly since you’ve been parted. I didn’t fail to mention that her disposition obviously matches yours.’ Hark smiled, a blinding, lovely smile that had Arla spilling into her own grin.
‘Ow, stop, it hurts,’ she said, clutching her side. She didn’t mind. When was the last time she’d laughed like this, so freely?
‘Stay,’ he said, his face softening into something pleading and solemn. Her laughter ceased immediately, and she felt her heart splintering because she didn’t know what to do.
‘Hark, they need me—’
‘We need you, Arla. I—’ He ran a hand through his hair. ‘I need you. Gods, I can’t hope to lead this kingdom on my own.’
Gods.
Hark. Ruling Flambriar.
She’d never known he was the heir to the Kastonian throne, let alone a secret kingdom he’d kept hidden from the world.
She’d believed him to be an ambassador. Just an ambassador.
But, oh gods, she couldn’t understand it.
Hark! A king! She’d have laughed if someone had suggested it before they set out on this journey.
She couldn’t settle her thundering heart.
‘I am no queen, Hark.’
‘I’m not asking you to be one,’ he countered. ‘But I’ve seen you sit in court, I’ve seen you organise soldiers, I’ve seen you become a queen in your own right and if anybody can hope to lead Flambriar, to keep them safe, it’s not me. Not without you.’
‘You seemed to manage just fine until now,’ she whispered, not sure she was really hearing him right.
‘Arla, I’m twenty-two. It’s taken everything I have to build this place. I’m exhausted. I’ve spent four years trying to do this, keeping it secret, working in the shadows and I cannot do it on my own anymore. So please, stay.’
Oh gods, she was going to break if he kept talking like this.
‘If I stay,’ she began, her voice trembling and tripping over every word. ‘If I stay,’ she continued, ‘I need your word that if anything happens to Hadalyn, we create an army and we go to their aid—’
‘Done.’ Oh gods.
‘If your father makes a move against the … magics again’—it was a strange word on her tongue, but she supposed she had to get used to it—‘I will burn him and his kingdom to the ground.’
‘Yesss,’ Thara hissed.
‘I’ll help you do it.’
He couldn’t truly mean any of it, could he?
‘I can’t promise to lead a kingdom, but I will keep them safe,’ she offered, not understanding herself what any of this promise would mean, but Hark was grinning at her, his balance switching between his feet as though he couldn’t wait to declare her to his kingdom.
‘And Hark—’ Gods, she was going to do this.
She was going to lay her heart bare and reap the consequences for it.
Gods help her. ‘I can’t do this anymore.
I can’t pretend that my heart doesn’t falter when I hear your voice.
And I can’t pretend that I don’t feel my body soften every time I catch a scent of whisky.
And I can’t pretend that I don’t search for myself in you, that I don’t look to find something good in me because it comes so easily in you.
And I know you don’t feel the same way, but I can’t do this without you knowing.
And if it’s too hard I will build my own place to stay down there.
’ She flung an arm out in the direction of Flambriar and its occupants, not realising how heavily tears were streaming down her cheeks until those same tears landed on her cold hands.
‘I can’t pretend with you anymore. I can’t pretend that night in Irelliad meant nothing.
I can’t pretend I don’t long for those touches and those smirks and the moments where I think I might come undone.
And if you want me to stay here, I cannot be around you. I can’t drive myself insane anymore.’
Silence.
Complete, all-consuming silence.
Her chin dipped to her chest, sending a cascade of salty tears dripping onto the floor.
Okay, then.
She had laid herself bare, and still it had not been enough.
But then his hands were on her cheeks, lifting her chin gently and she was meeting blue eyes through her tears.
‘You are infuriating,’ he whispered softly, a caress of breath on her face.
‘I have loved you from the moment you drove a knife through your palm at dinner. I watched you train every day hoping you would find an excuse to argue with me – and you did – for two years. I haven’t been able to breathe when I’m around you for a long time, Arla.
And when I watched you close your eyes and felt your blood beneath my fingers, I thought that if you were going, I was going with you.
Because for too long I have denied myself the privilege of navigating this thing between us, and I’ll be damned if you make it to the eternal gates and inhabit another world without me getting the chance to tell you: I would have followed you to the next world.
And the one after that, and anything else that comes after.
I will not pretend either, Dragonhart, because I have loved you for too long to break our hearts any longer. ’