Chapter Seventeen #2
Ronan sees me hovering and shakes his head. “You’re right,” he says. “Too far.” Then he moves his chair over and takes one of the chairs from the other side of the room and sits it right next to his at the head of the table.
I smile as I realize what he meant. He could feel my concern, but he thought I was worried about being a few feet away from him. He couldn’t read my mind to know my true worry.
I don’t correct him. It’s hard for me to come by secrets these days when I find I want to tell him anything and everything, and little harmless ones like this one can only help my magic.
“There’s a lot going against Faros at the moment,” I say, gesturing back to the map. “I hope there’s something in Seth’s papers that will make a difference.”
“You and me both.”
The war council is much the same as when I spoke with them a couple of weeks ago, back when we still thought there was a way to stop what was coming. Ronan tells me that there are other members, but they’re out in the field with the legions or at sea with the navy.
Typhon, Lord Cyrus’s son and the former emissary to Nithyria, greets me warmly, grateful to have me back, although I can tell he’s even more relieved that Larus made it through the rescue plan unscathed.
He takes a seat next to Larus near the middle of the table, and Octavia joins them.
“The hairless must stick together,” she says, and the three of them laugh.
Queen Claudia dispenses with formality as she enters. She marches straight to Ronan, who stands to greet her, and hugs him fiercely.
Then she looks at me from around Ronan’s arm. “Come here,” she says. I stand and join them, and to my utter surprise, she lets go of Ronan and pulls me into a hug as well. “I’m so glad you’re back home safe.” Then she tightens her grip on me. “Betray him, and I’ll kill you in your sleep.”
“Grandmother! I heard that.”
“I’m damn well aware you heard it. If I’d wanted to conceal it from you, I would have.” As a wind-born, Claudia could have stopped him from hearing her threat.
Ronan draws himself upright from the near-crouching position he’d adopted out of deference to his elder. He towers over her. “I know you mean well, but do not threaten my consort again. Are we understood?”
His consort. His partner. My eyes meet Ronan’s. He just referred to me as his official partner to his grandmother. Was it a slip?
His face remains impassive, but there’s a smile tugging at one corner of his mouth. No, he didn’t slip up. He absolutely meant it.
I smile in response. Before I was taken, before the siege began, I had hoped to keep our relationship a secret, worried about how Adria would react if I received an official title and introduction.
But there’s no hiding it from her now, and although Ronan is likely saying this just to keep his council from questioning my intentions, if he truly means it, I don’t think I’d really mind.
“You intend to introduce her to the court?” asks Queen Claudia.
“Not right away. I doubt I’ll be convening the court on any business other than the war for some time. But yes, that’s my intention. So, are we understood?”
Queen Claudia mutters something about “impudent little upstarts” and who in the family has “real authority.”
“Queen Claudia? Are we understood?”
Queen Claudia waves her hand dismissively. “Oh, calm yourself. I like the girl. You know that. I just want her to understand that there are people loyal to you who have your back. That’s all.”
I understand her concern. It would be easy to think that I had left of my own accord and that all of this was part of a plan to ensure Ronan’s downfall. In fact, I’m certain that most of his advisors must think that. They’d be fools not to.
And that’s just me. They’re even less likely to trust my brother, especially once he opens his big mouth.
“I appreciate you protecting him, your majesty,” I say to Queen Claudia with a deferential curtsy. And it’s true. I am grateful that there are others who care as much about Ronan’s wellbeing as I do.
“Gods, and I thought you were too nice,” she says to Ronan. “You’re perfect for each other.”
I can’t help it. I know she means it as an insult, but my heart soars when she says it.
As great as it makes me feel, I know there’s at least one person in the room who does not share her opinion. Quinn wheels herself in slowly after everyone else has already taken their seats. She takes the place where my chair was, a spot as far from me as she can possibly put herself.
I feel a tremendous sense of guilt as she reaches for a stack of papers on the table but fails to grasp them. She’s forced to ask Larus to get them for her, and I know it kills her to do it.
“I don’t need your pity,” she spits at me when she catches me staring.
“Quinn—” Ronan starts, but I interrupt the warning he’s about to give her.
“It’s fine,” I say. “We’ll talk later.”
“No the fuck we won’t,” says Quinn.
Octavia, of all people, glares across the table at Quinn, heat behind her eyes. “She has sacrificed much to be here with you. Show her some respect.”
“This has nothing to do with you,” says Quinn, moving to rise out of instinct but being unable to do so.
“Enough,” says Ronan. “Let me be perfectly clear about something before we waste any more time with stupid arguments. I have invited Sylvie to be here with me. If you have an issue, it’s with me, not her.
If you disrespect her, you disrespect me, and I don’t have time to deal with it right now.
Any further insults to the person I have chosen to be with will be met with immediate dismissal. Are we clear?”
Typhon, Larus, and Octavia immediately assent. Queen Claudia does so too without hesitation. But Quinn just mutters to herself.
“Are we clear?”
“Yes, alright, your majesty.” Her voice drips with sarcasm, but Ronan lets it slide.
“Before Taran arrives with Seth, I wanted to discuss the wisdom of acting on his intelligence, assuming he’s forthcoming. Sylvie, from what you’ve observed, do you think he can be trusted?”
Quinn scoffs from across the table.
“Quinn, I warned you—”
“I’m not insulting her. I’m insulting him. Seth. You’re asking if he can be trusted? Seth? You know what he’s like. He’s the most self-serving asshole this world has ever seen. If we give him even the slightest opportunity to betray us, he’ll take it if it helps him.”
“Well, she’s right about that,” I admit. “He told me as much himself. But he also told me that his goal is to be free from Adria. I think there’s a good chance that if you can convince him you can defeat her, he’ll do anything to help make that happen.”
“But how can I tell if I’ve truly convinced him and he’s helping us, or if he’s just pretending and actually leading us to our doom?”
“Hmm, wouldn’t it be nice if you could somehow perceive how he feels and use that information to your advantage?” Quinn has fully turned her ire to Ronan now, just as he told her to.
Ronan glowers at her. “I’m aware of my own magic, thank you. But Seth’s feelings.” He shakes his head. “I mean, it’s like a cage of rats in there. Total chaos. He makes adolescents seem stable. I don’t know if I could get a good enough read on him to know what he’s truly thinking.”
“There are other means of extracting information from him, sir,” says Cyrus. “My interrogators can be very compelling.”
Ronan’s eyes spear his advisor. “I thought we agreed that we don’t rely on torture.”
Cyrus bows his head in deference. “Of course, sir, of course. Only these are desperate times. And sometimes desperate times call for—”
“—desperate measures, I’m aware. But desperate people will say anything out of desperation. I will not have Seth—or anyone else—tortured. Your interrogators can find another way to be compelling.”
I don’t mention the minor torture Seth did to me and Taran or the harsher version he threatened. I don’t think it will help his case, and I do want to make use of his information if we can.
“Let’s just hear him out. If he suggests something insane, we don’t have to do it. Anything he gives away, even by accident, could be useful,” I say.
“Agreed, unless anyone else has an objection.”
No one objects, so Ronan has a servant sent to fetch Taran and Seth from the baths.
We’re served dinner while we wait. I devour the hearty stew and flatbread the servants offer us, having not eaten since we left Seth’s camp last night, as Ronan and Cyrus discuss the news regarding other military options to break the siege.
“Ambassador Berric sends his regrets, but he’s unable to supply any legions at the present. He will be increasing the grain shipments in hopes that some make it through the blockade.”
“Damned coward,” says Ronan. “Years of paying exorbitant prices, and that’s the best they can do?”
“He’s a fool if he thinks he’ll get more out of Adria,” says Typhon. “She controls the Nithyrian coin with an iron fist.”
“Any word from Minar?” Ronan asks Claudia. The city on the southern coast is home to Queen Claudia’s House, House Juni. They’re one of the Great Houses of Selara, and they should be able to raise substantial legions to come to Faros’s aid.
“My nephew believes he can send a force of around ten thousand in one month’s time. Twenty thousand if we can wait until after winter. Cavalry numbers are weaker. One thousand at best. Many of the horses were bought or stolen by refugees.”
Those are still substantial numbers. Seth and Adria’s forces are believed to number about fifty thousand combined, almost every single person of fighting age in Nithyria.
If Ronan had managed to keep every person of fighting age within Faros’s walls, they would have greatly outnumbered Nithyria’s forces, but almost everyone from outside the city has fled, either to the port cities of Minar or Pyka, or to one of the Serath Desert oases.
The remaining legions Ronan has managed to muster within the walls are only a small portion of the population. Much of the city is too young to fight.
“And Pyka?”