Chapter Nine
Pel
The silence stretched longer, almost more than Pel could stand, before Tor said, “I will.”
Both Tama and Pel’s mother practically sagged in relief. Pel caught what he thought was an aborted move on his brother’s part to support Tama. There was such a story there.
“I’m not the only one who needs to consider it, though.” Tor squeezed Pel’s hand. “We need to talk about it, and I need to consider everything that you’ve just said.”
“Of course,” Pel’s mother agreed immediately.
“How many exiles are willing to pledge their Fealty?” Tor asked. “What percentage of the whole?”
“Just over five thousand are waiting,” Pel’s mother told them. “There are fewer than a thousand who refuse to pledge their Fealty to anyone.”
Pel couldn’t really blame them, not now that he knew what some of the rulers had been doing during the war, not now that he knew what his father had been doing.
Five thousand people wouldn’t match any of the existing realms in size, but the Fealty was still, unquestionably, treason.
“Could we have a few minutes alone, please?” Tor asked.
The others obediently rose to their feet.
“I’ll send Cavun out to retrieve you when we’ve finished talking. If you can just step a little ways into the forest.”
“Of course,” Pel’s mother said.
Bav still didn’t look happy, but he also looked like he didn’t want to let them out of his sight. Cavun and Tama both looked like they had something to say.
Tor raised an eyebrow at Cavun. He made a complicated face, and then he spoke.
“Not everyone joined the exiles during or immediately following the war. There are some who joined more recently, who didn’t like the way they were being treated in Tond. They’re just people who are trying to live a good life. I think you’d be good for them.”
He nodded at them and then went to stand just outside the cave.
Pel wondered who he knew who’d joined the exiles.
Was that why he’d sided with the two of them when they’d gone up the mountain?
Well, that was fine with Pel. Seeing the exiles as people seemed to be exactly what was lacking these days.
These people had renounced their Fealty and fled twenty-five years ago—and now they were willing to pledge themselves to Tor simply because he’d stood up for them, defending them when no one else had.
They hadn’t even all been there, and it had made enough of an impression.
Now it was just Pel, Tor, and Tama around the fire. She was wringing her hands together and looking altogether distressed.
“What’s wrong?” Tor asked gently.
“He accused me of doing only what served me and not thinking of other people and what they needed or deserved to know.”
They didn’t have to ask who “he” was.
Tama sucked in a sharp breath, then exhaled through her nose in a harsh burst. “He’s not wrong. I promised I wouldn’t say anything, but I always knew he deserved to know.”
What would have happened if she’d told Bav? Would he have kept it from everyone? Would he have revealed it to Pel and Lara? Would they have tried to meet? Might it all have gone horribly wrong?
There was no saying now, of course. Tama hadn’t said anything, and it didn’t seem like Bav was going to forgive her for that anytime soon.
“He needs some time to work through it all,” Pel offered, not liking to see her so distressed, although part of him really did wonder what might have been. He tried to envision knowing that his mother was alive, maybe meeting up with her, having one parent’s approval…
It was hard to imagine.
Tama’s nod was stilted, and it was clear she wasn’t at all convinced. She looked down at her hands, seemed to realize that she was wringing them, and abruptly stopped. She dropped them to her sides, where they curled into fists.
“I was about to do it again,” she said, not looking at them.
“Hide something because I wasn’t sure that it would help our cause.
Because I wasn’t absolutely certain, and I convinced myself that it wasn’t my place to interfere.
” She looked up at them, resolution etched onto her face.
“But I’m sure that you don’t know, and I’m pretty positive, so I can’t—I can’t not say anything, even if it makes you decide not to risk it. ”
Pel and Tor exchanged glances, clearly both baffled. Pel watched her shoulders rise and fall as she drew another deep breath and let it out in a rush.
“When you bonded,” she said, sounding like she was picking each word carefully. “You were intimate, weren’t you?”
Pel felt heat crawl up his face. This was definitely not a topic that he wanted to discuss. He glanced at Tor, who was looking at Tama with a very narrow gaze.
“Yes. How did you know?”
“Because I felt something else when I healed Prince Pelun. Not just that you’re bonded, though the magic is unmistakable. There’s a chance that I’m wrong. But it felt… different.” She licked her lips. “It felt like it does when I heal women… sometimes.”
Tor sucked in a sharp breath. “How sure are you?”
Her eyes filled with tears. “Pretty sure. And I don’t want… I don’t want anything to happen because you didn’t know any better.”
A wild, radical idea was insinuating itself in Pel’s brain, but he was resisting it, because that would mean, it would mean—
“Thank you for telling us,” Tor said gravely. “We need a few minutes.”
She nodded, rose to her feet, and headed out of the cave. Cavun marched a little farther away so that he wasn’t within hearing distance if they spoke quietly.
And Tor turned to Pel, a look on his face that was hard to interpret.
“Hey,” he said.
Pel managed something that was half laugh and half emphatically not. “Hey.”
“Are you panicking over there?” Tor wanted to know.
“Maybe a little?” Pel said, swallowing convulsively. “I kind of thought that we figured this lesson out.”
“Except apparently for the bit where I’m a fool,” Tor acknowledged ruefully.
“I thought Blending during sex would feel really great, and it didn’t occur to me that it meant that our magics were already connected to one another in pretty much the exact way that they’re not supposed to be if you want to prevent—as it turns out, really a lot of things. I’m sorry.”
“Are you?” Pel asked carefully.
Tor’s eyes flew to his, and then he tugged Pel closer and kissed him, gentle and full of so much emotion that Pel wanted to cry.
“Not remotely,” Tor said emphatically once he released Pel.
“I mean, it’s terrible timing, it’s not something that I thought we were capable of, and I would never have wanted to do any of this without our actually talking about it, but it seems as though our bodies and our magic maybe decided for us?
” Carefully, he asked, “Is it something you wanted?”
Pel sighed. “It’s not something I thought was possible, not without the intervention of the High King, anyway. Didn’t Terila’s parents need the High Queen’s magical blessing each time they conceived?”
It was still circling round and round in his brain, part of him not able to believe it at all, but the rest of him quite sure that Tama would never make this up—if for no other reason than because she was worried that the truth would sway them away from doing what she wanted them to do.
“Yes, they did,” Tor agreed. “But clearly, we’re extra special.”
Pel snorted another laugh that sounded a bit too wet.
More seriously, Tor said, “I’m guessing it’s because I’m Varex’s twin. The same thing that let me tap into his magic on the mountain let me give us the magical boost that was needed to conceive.”
That was as plausible as anything else that had occurred so far.
Pel swallowed. “I didn’t even consider the possibility.” He’d dismissed all of Tor’s talk about preventing pregnancy, in fact. “So I’m… I’m secretly delighted and entirely terrified, especially just at the moment.”
Because Pel had been running around doing dangerous things, things he would never have done if he’d realized it wasn’t just his own life that he was endangering. Except, of course, that if he hadn’t done them, Tor might not be here right now, and his death might have killed all of them.
A shiver raced through him at how close to disaster they’d come. He didn’t actually feel any different, but his entire world had rearranged itself.
“What about you?” Pel asked.
“The same,” Tor agreed with a rueful smile.
“I love you so much, and I definitely want a life and a family with you. This wasn’t at all how I thought that might happen, in so many ways.
I’ve been trying to figure out how I was going to put up with living with either Fernila or Forex, and I was determined to make it work…
Only it suddenly seems like there’s a whole new option—but only if I commit actual treason, which my brother would actually be within his rights to sentence me to death for.
That could cost me not just you but also our baby.
” Tor’s face was tight with worry and fear.
“That makes me want to say no to the entire thing and not risk it.”
“But if you don’t risk it, what happens to your sister and your niece and your brother—and the entirety of the United Realms?
” Pel pointed out gently. “Whoever’s behind this, it seems like it’s a well-thought-out plot.
If it’s Nostex, the plan has been in motion for nearly twenty-five years.
Even if it’s Yomil or Fernila, it’s likely been years in the making.
Even if you try to sit it out, you’re in their way. ”