Chapter 53
A week passed before Taras admitted he had come to see Rowan.
Earlier that day, he delivered several letters. Two for Rowan from Davin and Mila, and one for me, from Lynx—an incredibly telling letter that hinted at all the ways Arès was displeased with the happenings at Elk. Coupled with a response from one of my spies, it painted an interesting picture, if a concerning one.
Taras had taken one look at the closed black canopy around my bed and pursed his lips. Now he was here, with Kirill and Yuriy in tow, and a deck of cards in his hand.
I raised my eyebrows, but refrained from reminding him that he said he would never play cards with her, mostly because I didn’t want him reminding me of all the things I thought I would never do when it came to Rowan. Like keeping her alive on purpose.
She sat up when she saw the deck of cards, looking more intrigued than she had even when Taisiya finally brought her biscuits instead of soup.
“Finally willing to sacrifice your pride?” she teased him.
Her voice was rough with disuse, her tone subdued, but she was willingly engaging in conversation.
It wasn’t that she never spoke, just that it was sparse, these days, and rarely animated.
“I’m just hoping it will be harder for you to cheat from bed,” he responded, settling on the bed she had been well enough to leave for days now.
He knew she wouldn’t leave it, though, just as I did. The surprising part was that he was willing to come to her, propriety be damned.
The corner of her lips tilted in a tiny, wry grin. “Well, the joke is on you, because the blankets make it easier to hide cards.”
“I knew that’s how she was doing it!” Yuriy called from the other room.
Kirill let out a booming laugh, louder than the situation called for, and I only shook my head.
Rowan pulled the covers around her— my shirt, granting him a reprieve from seeing her loosened laces at least, since that might have been one impropriety too many for him. I continued with my work, not willing to interrupt whatever was happening here.
Then they played in silence, broken only by the low background noise of Yuriy and Kirill conversing from the chairs in the corner.
It wasn’t precisely uncomfortable, but it did feel wrong, like a symphony without any strings. There was no cackle of victory. No taunting or groaning or snickering of any kind.
Just the steady sound of cards falling gently on top of one another.
Until Taras shattered their unspoken understanding.
“You could have let my brother lie for you,” he said.
I froze with my quill midway through forming a letter, hearing Kirill and Yuriy do the same.
She might not have talked much about anything, but she talked precisely never about the flogging. She didn’t offer excuses about what had happened that day in my father’s study, and I didn’t push her for answers. After the first time she woke up, she had never asked a single question about her illness, her treatment.
She refused to reference her wounds, and barely acknowledged the healer when he came to apply ointment to them.
Rowan swallowed, the sound echoing in the silent space.
“She would have punished me anyway.” Her tone was a shade too even, her features bland to the point of coldness.
Ink pooled onto my parchment, but I didn’t move.
Taras made a thoughtful noise in the back of his throat. “Perhaps. But not as severely. Men take the brunt of the discipline here.”
He said it like she wasn’t aware, but she didn’t react. She had known that, and still, she had stepped in anyway.
“I never could have done that,” she responded, her voice barely above a whisper.
There was no note of defensiveness, no real emotion at all. Just a girl stating a fact like it hadn’t nearly gotten her killed. A single line in the sand she had drawn for the sake of a boy she barely knew.
Had it been that simple when she decided to come to the Summit in her cousin’s stead? No hesitation, no regrets.
I had called her selfish and spoiled and reckless, but I was beginning to suspect only that last part was true. Socairan society hinged entirely on how well you could read another person, and I had perfected that art out of necessity.
It was unsettling to be wrong about her.
Unsettling to worry when she might decide to throw herself in front of a sword for someone when I was trying so hard to keep her alive.
“I know that,” Taras told her, breaking into my thoughts. It didn’t sound like he was lying. Perhaps he did know that, in spite of everything else he saw in her. Perhaps I was the only one who had missed it somewhere along the way.
He cleared his throat, taking a breath to speak. “I suppose what I’m trying to say, badly, is, thank you.”
She blinked uncomfortably. “Yes, well. Watching you lose to me at cards is really all the thanks I need.”
He didn’t pursue the issue, and she didn’t speak after that. But for once, she looked pensive, instead of empty.
It felt like something.
The next week brought little change. My father wasn’t feeling especially lucid, but neither was he ordering any mass slaughters.
Taras and Kirill were letting the implication that I was…enjoying my captive be known, though the latter was more disapproving of that lie than the other. It was the most believable reason for me to be shut up in my rooms, and I couldn’t pretend to be gone for much longer.
They didn’t push on why it was still necessary, though. They didn’t ask me why I had taken to performing my morning training in my study, or why I didn’t even go down to dinner.
Neither did Lemmikki.
In turn, I didn’t ask her why she hadn’t left my bed, or why she still wore my shirts when her own nightclothes would be loose enough for her current needs.
It was a tenuous sort of peace, one that was not without complications. Like now.
I was returning from the lavatory when she whimpered in her sleep, overtaken by another nightmare. They weren’t uncommon for her, though they came more often in the early hours of the morning, when I was already up and moving around.
It was another thing we didn’t discuss.
I laid back down, reaching out to grasp her wrist like I always did to drag her back from wherever she went when her mind rebelled against her. Instead of going still like she usually did, she shivered, burrowing closer to me.
“Cold,” she murmured.
I sucked in a breath, placing my hand against her forehead, then her neck, but her skin was no warmer than my hand.
“No way out,” she said, latching onto my arm and pressing herself against me.
I released a slow breath. She wasn’t ill again, just dreaming about the tunnels. My shoulders didn’t relax, though.
No part of me could when she threw a bare leg over mine.
Der’mo .
I counted in every Socairan dialect I knew, focusing on my even breaths and willing her body to mimic mine. The sooner she was deeply asleep, the sooner I could work on moving her.
Which I very much needed to do.
Several millennia ticked by on the gilded clock before she was completely still. I gently brushed away the curls that had spilled across my chest so I didn’t get tangled up in them, then slowly extricated myself from her soft curves.
She made a small sound of protest, and I let out another slow breath, cursing myself for the entire mess we were in. Then I cursed her, too, for good measure, because damn her for traipsing into my kingdom with her mischievous smirk and her infuriating personality and her endless mass of hair that I could still feel trailing along my skin.
At least I was plenty awake now, and more than ready for my morning training.
Taras did not comment when I did twice as many push-ups as usual, but he did have a small grin on his face when he threw a towel my way.
Kirill asked about Mairi again, and I considered our likely audience as I wiped the sweat from my brow. I had left the bed curtains open in my haste to depart this morning so I saw when Rowan stirred a few minutes ago, rolling from my side of the bed with a confused frown.
Though we had discussed my stepmother more than once, we had always done it when the princess was otherwise occupied or sleeping. Maybe it would be good for her to know that we were on alert, that Mairi hadn’t tried to get to her again.
“The maids say she has been ill again,” I told them what they already knew.
Yuriy laughed, a bitter tone to the sound that was entirely new for him. It was bound to happen sometime, but it made me grimace all the same.
“More likely, she’s just waiting to strike,” he countered.
“A snake, hiding in her den,” Taras agreed, stealing his own glance at Rowan.
I nodded. “Just keep your ears to the ground. If she’s planning something, we need to make sure we know about it.”
I spun enough to look at my lemmikki, to let her see the intent in my gaze. I would not let my guard down where Mairi was concerned.
Not again.