He straightened, looking down at me with such a blazing expression that I struggled to breathe.
“It’s just so hard sometimes,” he whispered. “I’m more like my father than I would like to admit. I lose control sometimes too.”
“No.” I shook my head firmly. “You’re nothing like your father. He’s the one who forced you to have so much control, but once you have the throne, your life will be different, Darius. I truly believe that.”
He looked away with a haunted expression. “I wish I could believe that too.”
I reached forward and gripped his jacket with both hands. “Then let me believe it for the both of us.”
“You’re more patient with me than I deserve, Verene. I don’t know why.”
I laughed shakily. “Because my aunt might not be King Cassius, but she still wears a crown. I know something of the pressures and dangers that come from standing too close to such a position.”
Something in his expression changed as he looked down at me.
“Is there something you’re not telling me, Verene?”
I swallowed, unable to meet his eyes. He must have read the truth in my face, but I didn’t speak.
“No,” he said quickly, “forget I said that. I can’t demand honesty from you when I keep everything to myself.”
“I wish…” I gulped, my throat dry. “I wish we didn’t have to have any barriers between us.”
“Maybe one day,” he said, his voice gentle. “In that perfect future you’re believing for us both.”
“I hope so,” I whispered.
When I was with Darius, every moment had an intensity that the rest of my life lacked. Every part of me felt alive and burning with energy, and everything seemed possible. Nothing had prepared me for meeting him.
And yet I knew, without the smallest doubt, that Darius and I could never be anything more than this burning potential unless we could be open with one another. But I knew the reasons I still clung to my secrets, and I could only assume he had good reasons for his own.
I swallowed and stepped back, although my legs felt as if they would give way beneath me without the support of his warmth and strength. He swayed toward me, his eyes suddenly locked on my lips, and everything in me wanted to respond. But instead I made myself say the words I knew would break the moment.
“People change, Darius.”
He straightened, his brow creasing. “Not Jareth, if that’s who you mean. On that day, by the fountain, after our father left, we vowed that we would always protect each other. And we always have. And we swore that together we would pull my father down from his throne. We were six and eight, Verene. And we have never wavered from that purpose. Jareth would never betray me, just as I would never betray him.”
I licked my lips. “Well someone has betrayed you. And it wasn’t me.”
He shook his head. “It’s possible my father guessed. Or just acted out of an abundance of caution.”
“I thought you said he’d abandoned caution.”
Darius sighed. “I thought he had.” His face hardened. “But whatever it was, it wasn’t Jareth.”
I said nothing, unsure why I found it so hard to believe him in this one matter, when I trusted him so implicitly in everything else. He must have read my doubt in my eyes because he turned away.
“We’ve been gone too long,” he said, his face in shadows. “It’s time we returned.”
Chapter 18
We returned to the Academy the day after Midwinter, the whole group seeming flat and tired. Darius and I didn’t speak or interact, and Jareth avoided me too.
Even Layna seemed quiet. I had turned from my conversation with Darius outside the ballroom only to find her standing in the garden, just out of earshot, watching us. I turned away from whatever was in her eyes, not wanting to see it. And I didn’t ask her what she meant to report to my aunt. I couldn’t seem to muster enough energy to care.
Bryony could tell something had happened, but she also recognized I needed space. She made an extra effort to engage both Alvin and Tyron in conversation on the long carriage ride back, leaving me to sit in moody silence. When I thanked her, she waved my words aside. She had managed to make a shopping expedition on the day before Midwinter and seemed reasonably content with the whole trip.
“It doesn’t compare to Corrin,” she told me, when we finally arrived back at the Academy, “but I think Kallmon has potential.”
I agreed with her assessment, although I knew it would never realize its potential while Cassius sat on the throne. Which led back to the same problem that had existed before we ever stepped into the carriage in the first place. The Academy stood between Darius and the crown he had to claim, and his future crown stood between him and me. The web had grown so tangled, I could no longer see a way through.
Duke Francis decreed we should have an extra rest day to recover from the journey, and then classes resumed as normal. Although there had been no attack on me during the trip, I continued to only observe the arena battles, and Mitchell made no protest at the arrangement.
In discipline class, we moved on to the healers, and I almost made a serious error, connecting with one of Raelynn’s compositions for the first time when she was healing what seemed a straightforward cut. The cut itself was simple, but the layers of medical knowledge that flooded my mind when I took command of the working nearly made me lose the contents of my stomach. I barely retained control and was left shaking at the thought of what could have happened if I had lost it.
I was much more wary after that, connecting only with the trainees, and carefully choosing the compositions. After the healers, we moved on to the Royal Guard class which included both Dellion and Jareth. I didn’t know if Darius had said something to Jareth about our conversation, or if Jareth had merely absorbed my attitude at the ball, but he didn’t make any further attempts to be friendly.
I tried to look at him with fresh eyes after Darius’s story about their childhood, but no matter what my mind said, some deeper, instinctive part of me insisted there was something off about the younger prince. Something in him couldn’t be trusted.
Amalia took us to work with the law enforcement class when our two weeks with the Royal Guard trainees were completed. The class was heavily weighted toward first years, most likely a result of Darius choosing it the year before.
The instructor was nothing like how I had imagined a Kallorwegian law enforcement officer, and in our second week, I finally asked the question that had weighed on me since Kallmon.
“How can law enforcement support the people—the regular people—and uphold the laws when you don’t have accessible buildings even in a big city like Kallmon?”
“The commonborns are the seekers’ problem,” a brash first year said, jumping in before the instructor could answer.
“No, indeed. The princess is right,” the instructor corrected him in a gentle voice. “Important as the work of the seekers is, there is far more to enforcing the law than ensuring unsealed commonborns are kept away from the written word. There is many a criminal who has never dreamed of reading or writing. And law enforcement serves all citizens of Kallorway—mage or commonborn—regardless of rank. Indeed, we are the greatest of the disciplines because we are the only one to sit even above the king. All are subject to the law.”