Chapter 29 Thessia
Thessia
Thessia paced the tent nervously.
The Vestriya Now preshow music echoed from the main theater, magically projected to fill the night, while conjurated beams
of light shot high into the darkness. Outside the flaps of the preparation tents, pages, stagehands, and contestants rushed
from place to place. The clamor was impossible to ignore.
Or impossible unless one was fretting about the fate of one’s questmates.
“Don’t worry,” Celine consoled Thessia. “River will teleport them in soon.” Celine’s sympathetic gaze followed her panicked pacing.
“Why hasn’t she yet?” Thessia replied.
“She’s probably just waiting for the right moment,” Celine reassured her gently.
When the tent opened, Thessia practically pounced on the page who entered with the scroll listing the night’s contestants.
She snatched the parchment, while the page, startled by the queen’s haste, scurried out into the night.
Celine moved urgently to Thessia’s side as Thessia unrolled the heavy, ornamented sheet. They read hastily, until a rush of
relief hit Thessia when she reached one contestant’s name.
Benjamin Slime—Poet.
“Ario’s in,” Thessia confirmed.
They kept reading until Thessia found the other name she wanted. Sir Hugh—Harp. Thessia exhaled. “Oh, thank the Ghosts—” she started to say.
Celine shrieked.
Thessia sprang into defensive action, her eyes flying to the tent flaps to face whatever danger undoubtedly interceded—until
Celine stabbed the scroll with her finger. “River has entered the competition?” she exclaimed.
Thessia followed to where she pointed to the name Fearless Flyer—Acrobat.
“I have to speak with her,” Celine said. She rushed from Thessia’s tent, leaving the bewildered queen to her scroll.
With the safety and position of the members of her party confirmed—if somewhat professionally surprising—Thessia found her
gaze wandering to the tent numbers next to each contestant’s name. Vulgaris Brothers—Comedy, T.18 . . . Erick Theo—Hamsterjay Juggling, T.47. Thessia wondered briefly how such a feat was possible. Lockwood Cheer—Hand Magic Insta-Sculpting, T.67 . . .
Sir Hugh—Harp, T.81.
Thessia had some spare time before facing down the Deathrose Guild, exposing Vestriyan corruption, and clearing Galwell’s
name, didn’t she?
Without second-guessing herself, she strode from her tent into the night. Following the numbered signs, she navigated the
muddy walkways of the ancient city’s venerable ruins, the pathways running through enigmatic, half-destroyed stonework hinting
inarticulately at the glories of lost eras.
Thessia found black tent 81 without difficulty. Hearing the notes of a harp within, she slipped inside.
Hugh did not notice her entrance. Thessia smiled, watching him as he was preoccupied with his music. Sitting on the room’s low wooden stool, he strummed his harp, focused, picking out the shape of a new melody with experienced hands.
It was a shame. He could’ve made a marvelous songstar.
He hummed softly to the music his nimble fingers summoned from his harp. The song was melancholic. Full of yearning. The more
Thessia listened, the more the wistful chords pulled at her emotions. She didn’t want to interrupt him, yet she could not
help herself.
“What are you writing about?” she asked softly. “Paramar Bay?”
Hugh startled. With her mention of his hometown, the tips of his ears reddened.
“Why do you think that?” he replied.
Thessia struggled to put into words what his music had conjured in her. “It sounds almost . . . homesick,” she explained.
Hugh’s eyes found hers. His gaze hummed with something soft and serious. Even with his harp silenced, Thessia felt she could
hear the phantom strains of longing chords.
“Homesick is exactly right,” he said.
He did not elaborate. Nor did he speak to the song’s subject, Thessia noticed. Perhaps not Paramar Bay, then. One could, she
knew, be homesick for memories. For a quality of light, or the sounds of a laugh. For feelings.
For people.
Her heart fluttered. Hugh dropped his gaze, clearing his throat. “The problem is, I’m shit at lyrics,” he murmured.
He restarted his strumming, his voiceless melody sharpening with his new effort.
“You would sing again?” she asked, remembering the night he sang for only her in their carriage.
His gaze flitted back to hers. “I find myself inspired anew.”
Wistfulness strained in her now, Hugh’s magic coaxing her exhausted heartstrings. She wanted to reach out and touch someone, to be touched. She wanted the feeling of home that comes with the right embrace. His magic entwined with his music in his inimitable caress.
“I’m not sure you need lyrics,” she exhaled.
Hugh smirked. His style changed, his playing becoming lower, more urgent. Thessia felt the emotion in the darkened tent . . .
shift. Her cheeks flushed, her heartbeat picking up. Fire grew low within her.
“That’s hardly fair,” she fought to say.
“Is it?” Hugh replied. His hands stilled on his harp. The silence offered Thessia no reprieve from the desire coursing through
her. “It’s how I feel when I’m around you.”
Thessia had no reply. She wanted to be the conquering hero, yet she could not conquer the want consuming her now. Ghosts,
how she had resisted. How hard she’d fought the feelings she’d started to have for him—on the Sapphire Palace, on their disastrous, wondrous honeymoon, on this quest.
With no more obstacles in their way, Thessia found that instead of winning the fight, the fight was winning her. With this
extraordinary man playing his extraordinary music, she could only surrender.
“You’re not marrying Galwell,” Hugh said.
“I’m not,” she whispered.
Hugh carefully set down his harp.
“I have to apologize,” he said, “for breaking my promise to you.”
Thessia paused, thrown. His promise? Did he mean his . . . wedding vows?
“You thought I would be a safe fake husband because I could never love again,” Hugh continued. “But it turns out I’m a traitor.
To Zaralie, and to you, to the word I gave you.”
Thessia heard the emotion constricting his voice. The raw pain piercing his sturdy frame.
“Hugh,” she managed. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying I’m not the knight I should be. I’m . . . terrified. Because I already gave my heart to someone whose loss broke
it,” Hugh said. “I don’t know if I could survive loss like that again.”
Loss like that. Now Thessia understood.
Loss like Ezio’s public assassination. Loss like the Deathrose Guild’s shadowy promise to kill the queen of Mythria.
“And I’m . . . not a safe person to love,” she completed quietly.
“No,” he confirmed. “You’re not.”
Oh, how she wanted to rush to him. Wanted to hear the three words he’d avoided saying. With Hugh’s scent surrounding her,
his caress embracing her, his music filling her, she wanted to convince herself they would defy the odds together.
But courage was for heroes. Idealism was for lovers.
Queens, however, could not afford hope.
Thessia knew they could fail this night. If they failed, the guild would succeed. She would die. How could she ever contemplate surrendering to her passions? How dare she ever imagine freedom from everything facing them? How could she put Hugh through more tragedy? How horribly would it break him?
She loved Hugh. Finally, she understood the feeling wholly. Thessia had obeyed no ruler but herself in years, yet now love
held merciless sovereignty over even her.
She knew what she needed to do. What love demanded.
“Don’t, then,” she uttered. Her commandment was clear and cold even while her heart cracked with her words.
Hugh’s eyebrows furrowed with confusion until he realized what she meant.
Don’t love me. Don’t hope for us.
“That’s what you want?” he replied.
Thessia nodded, only because she was certain she could not manage to repeat herself. Her sobs would rebel, an insurrection of the heart.
She stepped back, wishing she had not come. But turning to flee, she nearly collided with someone entering the tent.
“Good, you’re both here.” Ario swept in with nervous preoccupation, oblivious to the wreckage he’d just entered. “I’ve written
something for the competition and I—I think it might be good. It might be my best poem ever,” he explained urgently.
Flustered, packing away the jagged pieces of her broken heart before they caused more harm, Thessia fought to understand.
“You . . . you what? Ario, you’re not really going to compete,” she reminded him. “You’ll use your time onstage for the plan.”
The prince shrugged hopefully. “Surely the plan could incorporate some poetry, though? Just . . . look,” he pleaded, thrusting
the parchment toward Hugh.
Hugh’s hand shook when he took Ario’s poem, the only hint of the emotions waging open war within him.
When he started to read, however, his expression changed. His hand steadied. He mouthed words, his eyes widening.
While Ario practically vibrated with nervousness, Thessia watched Hugh with mounting incredulity. “Is it . . . good?” Ario
finally ventured.
“It’s not a poem,” Hugh replied.
Ario wilted. “It’s not?”
“No.” Hugh looked up. His gaze found the prince’s. “Now I know what I can sing onstage. Ario . . . you’ve written a great
fucking song.”