I shook my head. “That’s not you, Lia.”
Her lip lifted in disgust as if she had suddenly grown weary of being sympathetic. “You’re hurt, Kaden. I’m sorry. Truly. But life is hard. Pull your Vendan head out of your ass and get used to it. Didn’t you spit out very similar words to me back in Reena’s carvachi? Well, I get it now. So should you.”
Her voice was cold, detached—and what she said was true. Everything sank inside me, falling like she had cut both my breath and muscle loose. I looked at her, even the words on my tongue lost somewhere in the tumble, and I turned away. I walked back out the door, down the hall, not seeing anything as I went, wondering how she’d become so … perfectly royal.
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
RAFE
I leaned against the parapet watching Lia.
I was alone without benefit of guard, Ulrix, or Calantha. Though they let me know often that they were keeping a close watch on me, they were no longer constantly at my side. It seemed all the rules had been relaxed now that the marriage was announced and now that …
I rested my head against my arms.
My mother was dead.
It sickened me that her death gained me more credibility.
I should be home. Everyone in Dalbreck was probably searching and wondering—where is Prince Jaxon? Why isn’t he here? Why has he shirked his duties? Yes, my father would have Sven’s head and mine if we ever got back. That is, if my father was still alive.
Those are the toughest ones to kill.
My father was a tough bastard, just as the Komizar had said. But an old one. Tiring. And he loved my mother, loved her more than his kingdom or his own life. Losing her would weaken him, make him quick prey to scourges he had fought off in better times.
I should be there.
I was back to that again. I lifted my head and looked at Lia sitting on the far wall above the square below. My duty was in Dalbreck, but I couldn’t imagine myself anywhere but here with her.
“There were only small gatherings when I left.”
I turned. Kaden had come upon me silently. He was hidden in the shadow of a column, watching her too. His was the last company I wanted.
“The numbers have doubled every night,” I said.
“They love her.”
“They don’t even know her, just what the Komizar parades through the streets.”
He turned to look at me, his eyes filled with contempt. “Maybe you’re the one who doesn’t know her.”
I looked back at Lia, perched precariously on a high wall. I didn’t like anything about it. I didn’t want to share her with Venda. I didn’t want anything about this miserable land to love her. It was like claws digging in and pulling her into their dark den. But day by day, I saw it. I saw it in the way the bones swung from her hip as she walked, the way she wore their clothes, the way she spoke to them. For her they were no longer the same enemy they had been when we had first walked over that bridge.
“It’s not just the remembrances or the stories,” I said. “They ask her questions. She tells them about the world past the Great River, a world she’ll never see again if she marries your Komizar.”
“She’s embraced it. She told me.”
I snorted. “Then it must be so. We both know Lia always tells the truth.”
He looked at me, his eyes dead still, rolling the thought in his head as if he was shuffling through his memory for her past lies. I noticed the bruise on his jaw and his bandaged hand. Those were good signs. Dissension in the ranks. Maybe the Komizar would kill him before I did.
I lifted my gaze, and so did Kaden. We saw them at the same time.
Across the way on the high terraces, governors and guards had come out to observe Lia, and over at the north tower, framed in his window, the Komizar himself watched over it all. He was too far away for us to see his expression, but I saw it in his stance, the ownership, the pride, the strings he surely thought he pulled on his pretty little puppet.
Her words swept through the square, then echoed back from the walls, ringing clear, and a strange stillness crawled across the air. It was all eerily quiet, except for her.
“It’s how it was in the valley when she buried her brother,” Kaden said. “It stopped every soldier.”
For the Kingdoms rose out of the ashes of men and women
and are built on the bones of the lost,
and thereunto we shall return if Heaven wills.
And so shall it be for evermore.
Evermore.
The final word ate through me—the looming permanence if I didn’t get her out of here soon. I watched Kaden studying her.
“But he’ll be kind to her, right?” I said. “The wedding will be a day for both of us to celebrate. We can wash our hands of her at last. A lot of trouble, isn’t she?”
I watched his jaw tighten, the imperceptible flinch of his shoulder. He wanted to jump me for throwing the truth in his face. I almost wished he would. I’d like to have it done with him once and for all, but I had bigger worries to puzzle out and little time to do it. The wedding had shortened my deadline by a week—and now the others were here. I turned to leave.
“You walk freely through the Sanctum now, Emissary?”
“A lot has changed in a week, Assassin, for both of us. Welcome home.”
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
I had been here for such a short time, but it already felt like a lifetime. Every hour was wrung with fear, and I had to hold back from what I wanted to do more than anything else. The task seemed rightfully mine, as much as love had seemed mine to find all those months ago when I ran from Civica. My destiny now seemed as clear as words on paper. Until one comes who is mightier. A few words with so much promise. Or maybe only a few words of madness.
I took another ribbon from the basket and tied it to a crossbar on the overhead lantern. I had lowered it with the rope so it was within reach, hoping to occupy my mind with something else for a few blessed minutes. Something that took me to a world outside of the Sanctum. But my thoughts kept going back to one thing.
It’s harder to kill a man than a horse.
Was it? I didn’t know.
But there were hundreds of ways, and they all burned within me. A heavy pot swung into the skull. A three-inch knife plunged into the windpipe. A push from a high wall. Every time I passed an opportunity by, the fire blazed hotter, but the desire burned side by side with a different searing need, to save someone I loved when I had let another down so miserably.
If I killed the Komizar, there would be a bloodbath. I had nothing to offer the governors, Rahtan, or chievdars; no alliances, not even a cask of wine to make it worth keeping me alive. My only certain ally on the Council was Kaden, and he alone couldn’t erase the target I would inherit on my back. For now, I didn’t just want to stay alive for Rafe, I needed to stay alive for him. This marriage might not free him, but at least it wouldn’t cut his life short. I would always have that to hold over the Komizar—the fervor would end if he harmed Rafe—a marriage bought us both more time. That was all. There were no guarantees beyond that.
I remembered my conversation with Berdi after Greta had been murdered, not caring about guarantees and thinking I’d marry the devil himself if it offered the slimmest chance to save Greta and the baby. Now it seemed that was just who I would be marrying. I leaned on my window ledge, looking up at the heavens. The gods had a wicked sense of humor.