Chapter 21
“I don’t want her to do it.”
I didn’t hide my displeasure at the soldier’s words but folded my arms and looked at him like he was a petulant child. Let him suffer with his traditional way of thinking, then.
I stood in the infirmary with Physician Addsmuch; we were trying to inspect the health of as many soldiers as we could before the attack, which had been confirmed by Renn’s spy network.
Dragons were massing in Klepton. Whitestone had spoken the truth.
Brien lingered in the doorway, on guard duty, and Dan spoke with him, having had a break from his own training, which was far more physical than magical.
His loose shirt bore long sweat stains, but he didn’t complain.
He never complained, ever since our parents passed.
Like he couldn’t bear the thought of being a burden.
This soldier, however, didn’t have the same grace. He suffered from a rash across his torso, likely from an allergic reaction of some sort, but while I could heal it with a touch, he shied away from me, preferring the physician treat it instead.
Addsmuch shrugged. “Your choice, lad. Let me mix up a salve for it. See if you can change out the soap you’re using for your laundry. That might be the culprit.” The physician turned toward his now heavily stocked shelves and selected a few things. “Nym, would you grab—”
“I’ve got it.” I took a mortar and pestle off another shelf and passed it to him. The soldier flinched as I reached over his cot. “I’m not contagious, you lackwit. And better for you if I were.”
Brien snorted. “Play nice, Nym. He’s in my platoon.”
I turned back to the shelves. “I’ll see if we can’t track down some new soap—”
The link exploded.
I gasped, hand flying to my breast. My heart began racing as brightness poured in, filling my lungs, my throat, my stomach. Bubbles pressed against my ribs, and a sweet sensation, like golden honey, ribboned throughout me, warm and cool in waves: joy and relief, joy and relief.
Tears sprung to my eyes. Renn. Two things came to my mind that might ignite such exuberance. The first, the end of the war. Unlikely. The second—
“Nym?” Brien’s fingers brushed my arm. “Are you all right?”
Physician Addsmuch said, “Perhaps sit down a moment.”
I fled from the infirmary and darted down the hallway.
Brien called after me, but I hardly heard him.
My blood ran circles through my limbs and rushed in my ears.
Warmth enveloped my core like I’d swallowed the sun.
Burning, aching hope tugged a laugh free as I wiped tears from my eyes.
I felt half crazed as I took a turn down a corridor, but upon seeing it crowded, retraced my path to take the servants’ stairs that hugged the perimeter of the keep.
The door to the war room was ajar when I arrived.
I grabbed its handle and swung it open, but the space within was dark, empty of bodies.
Delirious with elation, I turned full circle in the hallway before rushing to the nearest slitted window.
The setting sun burned brightly at the corner of my eye.
Squinting against it, I searched the bailey for him, searched for—
Pressing a hand over my half-heart lest the thing beat its way free from my chest, I returned to the narrow servants’ stairs and took them up, thighs burning, stumbling a little, for the steps were steep and uneven.
I came out on one of the ramparts, the full marigold sun greeting me.
Shielding my eyes, I searched the bailey again.
The portcullis had been lifted, the drawbridge lowered.
The delegation could not be here for the attack; it was too dangerous for them, and should they perish, no word would make it back to their king.
No news yet that a deal was struck. And surely a deal had been struck.
I nearly called out his name. It popped and crackled at the back of my tongue, but there were so many bodies, I’d only call attention to myself, and I was barely containing myself.
My quickening faith, my erupting hope, mixed with the flooding of his revelry and respite felt like some kind of drug.
Like something wild pumped through my veins.
Like the gods had touched me, too, and I might fly off this keep and dive into the sky.
I ran the length of the rampart, overenergized, sweat forming on my temples as I searched, gaze shifting from soldier to soldier to staff to soldier.
I came around the east side of the keep and followed the battlement all the way down to the southeast corner, practically throwing myself across the merlons for a better view, tears flowing from the piercing sunlight and uncontained jubilance.
A breeze and the soft tap tap of boots touching down. I spun around and saw him, two paces from me, just as his light-woven wings dissipated into the sunset. The brilliance of the sky made him look crafted of fire, and when he grinned, I beheld heaven.
I don’t know who stepped forward first. Maybe it was simultaneous.
But one breath we stood apart on the rampart and the next I was in his arms, clutching him as I had after he’d pulled me from the sea.
I wept and he laughed, lifting me off my feet and swinging me around.
Then he kissed me, bending me back over his forearm, pouring into me the rest of his victory, as though it hadn’t already engraved itself onto my very soul.
“You did it,” I whispered when we broke apart.
“I did it,” he sang against my mouth.
I grasped his ears and kissed him again. A freeing kiss, without the fear of watching eyes, without the fear of devastating consequences or partings. I made promises with my lips, my breath, my tongue, drawing out each one, savoring every moment of him.
“You are mine, Renn Noblewight,” I murmured.
“I have always been yours.” He kissed the juncture of my jaw. Unwound my hands so he might clasp them in his. Kissed each of my knuckles and then held them like something precious. His eyes glowed like sapphires, like blue moons and deep summer skies.
“We had a deal,” he said.
I smiled so widely it hurt. Laughed so genuinely it sounded like a dream. It was not a flight of fancy, where I was young again and he a farm boy, but neither was it a hope chained and desiccated, where I was a woman too broken by men to ever trust another.
He was my everything.
“Yes,” I whispered, and that heavenly smile returned. “I will marry you.”
I realized then that we were not entirely alone on the rampart; I spied my brothers in my peripheral vision, having tracked me down here, concerned over my welfare. I only glimpsed them before Renn kissed me again; Dan, looking all-knowing and satisfied, and Brien, looking shaken and awkward.
But the winding joy, the trading of victory, overwhelmed anything else I might feel. I knew the moment would be fleeting. The war lingered, ever-present, and soon would come to our very doorstep. The future, however long or short it may be, would be littered with turmoil and trial.
I wanted all of it. Every tear and every smile, every angry word and gentle touch. He was worth it.
We were worth it.
No success of the heart would stop Sesta’s dragons, and so before the sun crested the eastern horizon the next morning, the Antsan delegation gathered in the bailey, preparing for their long journey back home, a trek across Canseren soil, and then sailing across Salm’s Rest. I’d heard Antsan ships were the fastest in the world, but the march on land would be hard on them.
We didn’t know exactly when Nicosia would strike, but the princess and her retinue ought to be as far from here as possible when he did.
I left the kitchen and approached the soldiers; we’d tied up travel rations in spare burlap from onion bags.
I passed my last to Jonras, who nodded at me kindly before affixing it to a mule.
Just beside him was Princess Azra’s white mare, fully saddled, mane and tail braided, but I did not spy her telltale red hair among the group.
Renn lingered by the portcullis, speaking with Sir Arquan. Over what, I’d have to ask later.
I was about to step back into the kitchen when Princess Azra emerged, two freshly baked loaves of bread in her arms. She scowled at me straightaway.
“I pray for safety on your journey,” I said, and I meant it. Even surrounded by guards, trekking across a foreign country at war was dangerous. I knew it personally.
Her delicate brows pinched together. “I don’t need your prayers, healer. Nor your well-wishes. I imagine you wish to gloat, your conniving maneuvers superior. But you are not. And you never will be.”
Perhaps a year ago, her words would have rankled me. But in truth, Princess Azra merely made me tired. It seemed exhausting, pouring so much energy into a fight no one else wanted to join. Wringing oneself into a bucket no one else would carry.
She did not break away, which I took as invitation. Softly, I asked, “Do you really believe that?”
She leaned back. “Pardon?”
I clarified, “That the random circumstance of your birth truly makes you better than others.”
She scoffed. “The fact that you think it random speaks volumes about you.”
I studied her face. Her days at Derren Castle had brought out more freckles across her nose and forehead. She was still so young—only Dan’s age. “I don’t believe you.”
She opened her mouth to retort, but I pushed on.
“I think you are far deeper than you let others believe. And in that depth there are pains you try to hide. Errant motivations that drive you to act as you do. We all have them.” I took a deep breath.
“A princess is no different, to that end. I hope you are able to overcome them. I hope you find true happiness, Your Highness.”
If my sentiments had any effect on her, she masked it well. “You are a liar and a fiend,” she growled through clenched teeth. “A liar, a fiend, and a whore, and you will not manipulate me into thinking otherwise.”
I clasped my hands before me. Yes, I was tired, but the Antsan princess burrowed under my skin so easily. She got the better of me. “How much more the pity, knowing you lost to that.”
It was a catty thing to say. I knew it the moment the words left my lips, and I regretted them. But Princess Azra had no retort save for the flushing of her cheeks. She pushed bodily past me, and I let her go, returning to the kitchens to scrub dishes for the next meal.
By the time I exited again, the Antsan delegation had gone.