Chapter 30
Melia
Being dead wasn’t so terrible.
The Seragian ship had sailed out on the morning tide. Salt wind cooled her cheeks as she sat on the deck in the shadow of the massive, wind-filled sails. Watching Abia disappear in the distance filled her heart with ache: the last connection to her old life, melting into the horizon.
Her health was still fragile—the encounter with her father’s blade was a close call. Close enough, in fact, to kill Princess Melia of Elmar. She touched a bundle of documents in her pocket for reassurance: She had a new name now, a new future before her.
It was an unexpected gift, and she planned to enjoy it.
· · ·
The surgeon who’d never introduced himself had sewn her shut, and the pretty, stern woman who called herself Celandina nursed her in a small room in an unfamiliar house.
Fever gave Melia nightmares of her flesh burning, of blazing embassies and funeral pyres.
Death sat at the foot of her bed every night, wearing Ferisa’s face.
“Take me with you,” Melia begged.
“No, little raven, it’s not your time,” Death who was Ferisa said.
Then one morning she woke up and Amron was sitting beside her, no trace of burns on his face, his hair reverted to its glossy splendor.
“You’re dead,” he told her.
“Excuse me?”
“Officially, I mean. Dozens of people saw your father stab you. I testified later that you tried to run away, collapsed in an alley, and died. The body was never found, but Abia was in so much turmoil no one paid it too much attention. My word was enough.”
“And my father?”
“Executed in the main square. The nine Elmarran guards who attacked the embassy were hanged, the rest of them banished. The Empire is appeased, the carevna happily reunited with my brother.”
She averted her eyes, focusing on a square of sunlight on the white wall.
The news should’ve hurt, but somehow the words coming out of Amron’s mouth dissolved like smoke.
All the death and fury and grief were the burdens some other Melia had carried.
This Melia—the dead Melia—felt more alive than she had in years.
“What am I supposed to do now?”
He didn’t answer immediately. Silence filled the room, broken by a lonely bird keening in the garden.
“Pick a new name, go someplace wonderful.” He smiled, but his eyes remained serious.
It sounded deceptively, stupidly simple. But then, wasn’t that the exact thing she’d been dreaming of all these years?
“And you?”
“I’m going to Elmar, to snuff out the last flames of the rebellion.” The sunlight gilded his pale complexion, and she remembered their first night together, the gentle touch, the quick retreat. “You saved my life, I saved yours. There are no debts between us, you’re free to go.”
The truth was sharp-edged and cold, like an ice blade.
“I wish I could’ve loved you,” she said.
“I wish I’d been a better husband.” His kiss was long and sweet, the warmth lingering on her lips when he moved away. “Goodbye, Melia.”