Chapter 55 The Return
The Return
The pools are quiet when I return the next morning, earlier than before.
Kentan does not look surprised to see me.
He inclines his head slightly as I approach, then looks away again, giving me the space to enter without pause.
I step into the water slowly. The heat closes around me at once, but this time there is no resistance beneath it.
No pull. No lingering strain. It is simply gone.
I lower myself fully, testing it without meaning to.
Nothing. I sit back and for a moment I do nothing but feel the absence of it. "I have much to learn," I say. My voice carries easily across the space between us. "About beasts. About siakars."
Kentan shifts slightly, his arm resting along the edge. "You will," he says. "It comes with time." A brief pause. "Just remember you are not one. That is perfectly alright."
I look toward him. "Are you not a siakar? Or a beast of some kind?”
The corner of his mouth moves. "No." Something almost amused in it. "I have power, but I am not a beast." He lets that sit a moment. "That is why my brother adopted Colsar and made him heir to the Sovereign’s seat. I was unfit."
There is no bitterness in his voice.
I shift slightly in the water. "We are going to Veynar," I say.
His attention moves, just slightly. "That will be interesting.”
"In what way?"
"Veynar has always been interesting," he says. "It has always been ruled by Rathmor feeders." He pauses. "You have met King Sevrin."
"Yes."
“I have always wanted to see a Yorali and a feeder interact,” Kentan says. “To see if it is true that feeders can control Yorali blood to do as they please.”
I laugh, a small sound that slips out before I can stop it. “I met Prince Tamal of Yorali once,” I say. “He did not seem afraid of Sevrin.”
“Perhaps it was false bravado,” Kentan replies. “Or perhaps he has some sort of leverage over your king.” A brief pause. “Because it is known that those from Yorali are careful around feeders.”
I stare at him. "Truly?"
"Truly." He shifts his arm slightly beneath the water. "That is why they rely so heavily on deathmagic. They do not trust the rest of it. They are paranoid about it."
"Even the Yorali king?"
"The king protects himself," Kentan says. "But not completely." He looks toward me briefly. "That is why he has always wanted an heir that is half feeder, so they say.”
Something moves through me, slow and heavy, going deeper than the rest. I do not respond. “I am finished,” I say. Kentan turns his head without protest. I rise from the water.
I do not know whether that kind of power, over an entire country, even its king, is something to be feared or something else entirely.
I do not know how I feel about my daughter having it.
The corridor is quiet when I step into it. I take only a few steps before something catches me from behind and lifts me cleanly off the ground. A sharp sound leaves me before I can stop it, and then I twist.
"Enovar—"
He sets me down just as quickly, laughing, and I turn into him without thinking, my arms coming around him as though the distance between us had not existed at all.
"You are here," I say.
"I have been here a few days now," he answers.
I pull back and look at him fully. "You did not come find me."
"I have been occupied," he says, unbothered. "Training with the Avanki." He gestures vaguely down the corridor. "They have taken over one of the outer training grounds. You will hear them before you see them."
That tracks.
"You look well," he adds, studying me.
"I am."
He nods once, satisfied. "Good."
We walk together without needing to decide where we are going. He meets the children easily, Kiss taking to him faster than I expect, Ari watching him with quiet interest in that way that already feels like something more than observation.
"They are perfect," Enovar says.
"They are."
He spends longer with them than he intends to, I think.
Or perhaps exactly as long as he intends to.
We talk after that, not strategy and not plans, only the small details he has gathered since arriving.
What he has seen. What he has heard. The way the palace has moved since our arrival.
Who is watching whom. Which guards have changed their patterns.
It is nothing and it is everything, and by the time the day begins to fade I feel clearer, more like myself.
"Dinner?" he asks as the light shifts.
I hesitate. "I am going to eat with Colsar."
He nods once, no reaction beyond that. "Of course."
We part easily.
As I walk back through the corridor the thought moves through me quietly.
Colsar had said yesterday that today we would do dinner, just us.
I find myself looking forward to it more than I expected, not for strategy and not for Veynar, but simply to be near him.
The thought sits low in my chest, quiet and a little unwelcome.
I do not push it away.