“What’s that look for?” Tolly says sharply, reading my face.
I exhale slowly. It isn’t the job that bothers me, not really. “Elane says I’m hiding.”
“Well, she’s not wrong, is she?”
“I wear metal spikes most of the time; I’m a bit difficult to miss,” I snap. For emphasis, I gesture to the still-bleeding cut over his eye. My brother is far from deterred, fixing me with a weary stare that makes me fumble for words. “It isn’t—I shouldn’t have to stand there and tell the world what I am. I should just be.”
Because Ptolemus has no skill in hiding emotion, or even in expressing it, sometimes he can be too simple. Too blunt. He makes too much sense. “Maybe in a century that will be true. People like you will just be. But now?” he says, shaking his head. “I don’t know.”
“I do, I think.” This is Montfort, an impossible country. A place I could have never dreamed of a few years ago, so different from Norta, the Rift, and any other reality I believed in before. Reds stand up with the rest of us. The premier has no reason to hide who he loves. “I’m different, but I’m not wrong.”
Tolly tips his head. “You sound like you’re talking about blood.”
“Maybe it’s the same,” I murmur. Once again, there’s that familiar curl of shame. For my cowardice now, for my stupidity before. When I refused to see how wrong the old world was. “Does it still bother you?”
“You?” my brother scoffs. “Eve, if anything about you bothered me, I would have said something by now.”
“That’s not what I meant,” I mutter, swatting him on the shoulder.
He dodges the blow with ease. “No, Montfort doesn’t bother me so much anymore. It isn’t easy, to relearn how things just are,” he says. “And I’m trying. I check my words. I keep quiet in mixed company so I don’t say the wrong thing. But sometimes I do. Without even knowing it.”
I nod, understanding what he means. We’re all doing the same, fighting against old habits and old prejudices as much as we can. “Well, keep trying.”
“You too, Eve.”
“I am.”
“Try to be happy, I mean,” he says, his voice sharp. “Try to believe this is all real.”
It would be easy to agree, to nod along and let the conversation end. Instead I hesitate, a thousand words caught on my lips. A thousand scenarios playing out in my head.
“For how long?” I whisper. “How long will this be real?”
He knows what I’m saying. How long before the Scarlet Guard loses ground and the Nortan States implode? How long until the Lakelanders decide to stop licking their wounds and return to fight? How long can these days last?
Patrol service is adjacent to joining the Montfort military. You get a uniform, a rank, a unit. You drill; you march; you make your rounds. And when the time comes, when the call goes out, you fight to defend the Republic. You risk dying to keep this country safe.
And Elane never asked me to consider anything else when I thought about joining patrol. She won’t push me away from it.
Slowly, I turn the re-formed bracelet on my wrist, shifting the metal to catch the light. I could make a dozen bullets from it easily. “Would you fight for this place, Ptolemus?” For Montfort, and for our new place in the world.
“I’d fight for you. I always have and I always will.” His reply is quick, without thought.
So is mine.
“I need to give you my letter.”
FOUR
Elane
The bath takes longer to fill here. Either because the water has to be piped up from the lake below in the city, or because I still haven’t mastered the art of doing it alone. It feels silly to call for servants these days, especially for something I should be able to do without help. And I must admit, knowing I am able to perform the task myself—it’s a satisfaction I’ve never had before.
I sit in the water long after it’s gone cold and the soapy bubbles have melted away. There’s no reason to rush. Eve will be back soon, trying to hide her regret, already wishing she’d gone with her brother instead of remaining here. I heave a breath, gathering the energy I’ll need to calm her down and soothe her enough to sleep. For someone so accustomed to physical pain, she has absolutely no idea how to grapple with emotional turmoil. No matter how much I tell her to lean on me, she always resists, and it maddens me to no end.
Shifting, I tip my head back, letting my hair splay out in the magnificent bathtub. It’s smooth, rippled with stones like a riverbed, and the water looks dark in the waning light. I doubt we’ll be able to afford something so grand once our time in the palace runs out. I should enjoy it while I can.
But before I can reach for the faucet to pour more scalding water into the cold, I hear movement in my chambers. A door bangs open in the salon, then the bedroom. Evangeline—and a companion.
Annoying.
She’s harder to deal with in front of an audience. Too proud to show her cracks.
The air is colder than the water, and I shiver as I step out onto the tile floor, almost flailing for my robe. I tie the fur-and-silk garment around myself, wondering if Davidson will let me keep it. I have a weakness for fine things, particularly ones in this emerald shade of green.
The voices in our bedchamber are familiar. Eve, obviously, and my own former husband, Ptolemus Samos. His deep timbre is difficult to mistake, and I relax a little. We shared something, he and I. Something neither of us wanted. A marriage of convenience, yes, but a marriage against our hearts as well. We did what we could to make it easy for each other, and for that I’m grateful. My father could have given me to someone so much worse, and I have never forgotten how lucky I was.
Lucky, my mind echoes, a taunting sound. Another might find no luck at all in the life I’ve led, in being forced against my nature, cast out of my family, fleeing to a strange place with nothing but the clothes on my back and a noble name from another country. But I survived it all and, what’s more, so did Evangeline. I’m lucky to have her with me, lucky to have escaped the future we were doomed to.
When I emerge, I brace myself for their bickering. Ptolemus isn’t one to raise his voice, not with his sister, but he might for this. He knows she should be abdicating with him as much as I do.
“Tolly,” I say, greeting him with a wary smile. He nods in return.
Both of them look unkempt, with new bruises blooming over their exposed skin. “Sparring?” I muse, running a finger over the purple spotting at Evangeline’s temple. “Who won?”
“Not important,” Evangeline says too quickly.
I smile in my soft way, squeezing her shoulder. “Congratulations, Tolly.”
Ptolemus doesn’t gloat. “She’s just eager for a rematch.”
“Always,” Evangeline huffs. She takes a seat on the edge of our bed and strips off her boots, leaving them discarded and dirty on the lovely carpet. I bite my tongue and refrain from scolding her about cleanliness again.
“And what exactly did you win?” I ask, looking between the two siblings. Both of them know exactly what I’m asking, no matter how much I dance around it.
Silence settles over us, thick as one of Carmadon’s huckleberry pies.