Chapter 14 #2
Though I wanted nothing more than to sink into him, I forced myself to step back.
“Who are you trying to convince, Renn? Me, or yourself?” I pointed to the door.
Hated each tear that streaked down my face.
“We need this. Adoel Nicosia will continue to take and take and take until there’s nothing left. ”
“But it doesn’t have to be marriage,” Renn ground out, set into the floor like one of its stones. “There’s time to negotiate.”
A chuckle—more like a dry bark—wrenched up my throat. “She is here, Renn! We can’t do anything. We can’t be anything.” I swiped at traitorous, awful tears. “Your future wife is in this castle, and you need—”
One stride was all it took to close the distance between us.
One stride to block out the room, to take my face and press his lips to mine, to silence, for a moment, every protestation clawing out of me, leaving bloody trails in their wake.
But his scents of honeysuckle and pinewood only encouraged more tears.
The pulsing of his anguish, even through the basalt wall, mingled with mine and threatened to erode my heart to nothing.
When we broke apart, I blinked my vision clear. “Will you stand here and tell me that marrying her would not be the swiftest way to garner Antsan’s support?” I tried to spark a fire so I might hold a single ember, for anger was so much easier than despair.
I found nothing.
“Yes, it would be the path of least resistance,” he admitted, “but it isn’t the only one. I’ll . . . sort it out.” His doubt proved strong enough to knock against the basalt wall. “I’m meeting with Sir Arquan in the morning. Politics are not simple. There are ways—”
“You have to marry her, Renn,” I interrupted, though my tightening throat choked out my voice. “As soon as possible.”
I’d yet to find a spark, but I felt Renn’s through the muffled link. Saw it in the way he glowered. “I don’t have to do anything.”
I turned away from him and escaped to the far window, letting the cooling evening air wash over me. Took a moment to steel myself again, to form a rebuttal, but every time I tried, a sob threatened to break my teeth.
He followed me.
“I think,” I whispered, unable to look at him, “you are so used to getting what you want that you fail to see the reality set before us.”
Oh, his ember burned, and I wondered how hot it would smoke if I didn’t have that basalt wall around my heart.
“Yes, I’m a king,” he said. “Yes, I’m wealthy.
I command thousands. I have the mark of the gods and the fear of my citizens.
” He stepped beside me, his focus hot as the noon sun.
“And yet I’ve never had anything I truly wanted. ”
The peasant in me wanted to rail against him, but he continued.
“Not the clothes I wanted, not the friends I wanted, not the body or abilities I so desperately wanted.” His fingertips brushed my elbow. “But I want you. I will sink Cansere into the sea before I let anyone take you away from me.”
My lip trembled as I fought not to cry anew. “Am I supposed to be charmed by that?” I countered, looking into the shadowed bailey, too cowardly to gaze upon his face. “Find it romantic that you would let your own people be overrun, enslaved, even drowned for the love of me?”
“If I were saying it for poetry, Nym, then yes. But I am not.”
I wiped the handkerchief across my eyes. They’d become raw from all the crying and all the stifling of crying. “There’s a bloody handkerchief by the basin. Is that recent?”
“Don’t change the subject.”
“How sick are you?” I touched his jaw—the sensation of his stubbled skin against my hand both thrilled and scalded me. Dowsed, but again, his breathtaking orbs of color were only scarred, not broken, and my magic had no effect on them.
As I returned to the present, he took my hand and kissed my palm. “All the more reason for my healer to stay close.”
I pulled from his grasp. It felt like snapping a finger. “I do believe you. I believe you will try to find a way. But this has always been our story, Renn. This was always how it was meant to end.”
I might as well have poured cold water on that ember. I couldn’t feel it anymore.
My throat tightened more, but I forced the words out. “We can’t be together. We can’t be seen together. She is here, Renn. For the sake of your people, our people . . . we can’t.”
“Nym—”
“I need somewhere else to stay tonight.” I dropped my eyes. The glimmer in his, paired with the trembling of our link, threatened to undo me. How would we ever survive with our hearts indefinitely connected?
He turned away from me. I did not look at his face, but tension vibrated from him. His hands formed tight fists at his sides. Anger and sorrow, determination and helplessness, pounded on the wall I’d built. A full minute passed before he said, “The room above mine is empty.”
I nodded, even as I shattered. “Thank you.”
The room had only a bed with an old mattress in it.
Half the size of Renn’s, but it would do.
Yet I could not simply sit there and wallow in agony and despair.
My head ached from thinking and rethinking about the events of the day, as though I might find some balm for the hurt, or some majestic loophole that would let me have him.
There was not, but neither would I allow myself to be a liability to him, so piece by piece, I tore down the basalt wall surrounding my lumis, so if I were to be injured beyond my own ability to repair, another might be able to help me and therefore help Renn.
I wasn’t sure if the castle had any other healers. Not ones of the craft. But in the absence of that wall, the gaping emptiness of my lumis echoed back at me. Ursa was not here, and I could not build anything that might squelch the pain of her loss. She was simply gone.
I did, however, keep the smaller wall around the merlon of my heart, afraid to touch it for fear of somehow breaking it, letting the pounding of Renn’s misery stoke my own.
I splashed cold water on my face until its swelling eased and sought out Eden.
Somehow the soldiers and staff stationed at Derren Castle knew me, or perhaps simply saw me ride in with their king, for when I asked where I might find the princess, none tried to bar my way.
Eden’s room was in the partially crumbled east tower, away from most of the ruckus of the castle.
And though I had to pick my way by candlelight, I discovered myself desperate to see her.
When I knocked at her door, a young serving girl, perhaps fourteen years of age, answered. “Yes?”
“I apologize for disturbing you, but I’m looking for—”
The door wrenched open, the wild eyes of the princess—far better fed and groomed than last I’d seen her—landed on me. “Nym!”
She pushed back her attendant and flung her arms around me. Began to cry. Nearly three weeks had passed since we separated, without a means of knowing how the other fared.
Oh gods, these tears. Would I ever stop crying? “I’m safe,” I whispered, rubbing her back. “You’re safe.”
The serving girl, whom I later learned was named Piya, stepped out into the stairwell, leaving Eden and me our privacy.
Her room was sparsely furnished, much like Renn’s: a low bed, a wicker shelf, an old, splintered table with a few lit candles.
The only place to sit was the bed, which Eden led me to, and I perched on the edge of it while she sat in its center, bringing blankets over her lap despite the warm night.
Her short hair was uncovered, unadorned, and the circles around her eyes betrayed lack of sleep.
I was glad Renn remembered my request to see she had an attendant, and I hoped having another woman in the room with her might ease her stress.
I considered my dark room in the opposite tower. The thought of losing the shield of Renn’s body at night, his light in the darkness, the steadiness of his breaths, made my heart twist.
Before she even asked, I told her everything that had happened to me.
Talked about Horgansten and Elantriana’s clients, my journey into Catalaine and Klepton, my ultimate dive into the strait and how Renn had pulled me from the water, pretending every mention of his name didn’t bleed me like barbs pressed to my flesh.
And I realized Eden didn’t know—at least, I had not told her—that I was in love with her brother, that craftlock bound our hearts together, that he was my daylight and my starlight, or that he had been.
No one but Sten knew, though it was likely Commander Stonelay had pieced it together.
I had to keep it private. I had no claim on Renn anymore.
I would not doom my countrymen, my own family among them, for the selfish sake of my bleeding heart.
So I left off the time I’d spent with him and asked, gently, “Eden . . . are you having nightmares, too?”
At first, my question turned her as hard as the castle walls, but when I said too, she instantly softened.
“They’re terrible, Nym,” she whispered, as though not wanting our guards to overhear.
“They are relentless. When I take short naps in the day, usually no. Or I’m not asleep long enough for them to become truly horrible.
But at night . . .” She shook her head. Blinked rapidly.
“At night I’m still there, and he is still there, and I can’t escape him, no matter how much I fight. I worry what Piya might hear . . .”
Gooseflesh rose on my arms. Surely her dreams were worse than mine. Nicosia had only succeeded in certain forms of abuse with me. Surely Eden had suffered everything that vile man could imagine.
I didn’t have the right to feel as broken as I did.
“It gets better,” I promised, though the words felt empty. “Eventually, it will get better.” I lifted my hands, fingers spread. “Do you want me to dowse on you? Are you in any pain?”
She shook her head. “Nothing your magic can balm.” She stifled a yawn.
“Sleep, Eden,” I offered. “I’ll stay with you. I’ll wake you, if I sense any distress.”