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Nausea stirred in my gut. Even if my people saw the Voidborn as a threat, they still might try to lock us away.
I was aware Casimir was waiting for an answer, never mind how I probably should have had one before he even asked. My tutors had trained me in strategy and tactics. I should have been better prepared for this. Yes, the Jeweled Coven had insisted we return to the capital city of Lumilia before the Voidborn could harm the magical nexus there—to say nothing of our own plans to retake my throne and free all the giants my father had locked away. But in reality, I’d only woken as a vampire a few days ago, I’d spent most of the journey across the Wild Lands sleeping in a glass box so the sun wouldn’t kill me, and most of the time before that trying not to die, which meant how we’d accomplish any of those plans was something I hadn’t had a single moment to figure out.
“I’m not sure,” I admitted finally, ashamed of myself. “I need to find out what allies I might still have in the royal court, and what they now believe about the accusations against me, as well as determine who may have tried to claim power now that my father, stepmother, and I are no longer there.”
I scanned the night, my skin crawling at moonless depths of darkness beyond the small circle of light cast by our fire. “From what I’ve seen, we might be in the southern province of Sinaria, which is the domain of one of my father’s most loyal allies in the court. If we visit Lord Thomas here and I can convince him I’m not a murderer, he might be able to give me a better idea of what we’ll be facing when we reach Lumilia.”
“But what if he tries to arrest you instead?” Niko asked worriedly. “If he was so loyal to your father, and he thinks you killed him…”
I winced. There was that possibility.
“Then we do whatever it takes to get her out safely,” Dex said, no debate in his voice.
The twins nodded, and I could feel the wave of agreement coming from Ozias too.
It hurt and it warmed me all at the same time because while my heart swelled at their unwavering love and support, it also terrified me that they might be harmed in their efforts to protect me.
“Indeed we will,” Casimir said with a nod of his own. “But assuming he believes you are not the villain your stepmother claimed you to be, what will you tell him of your men here?”
I hesitated. And then there was that too.
Gods, how would we navigate this?
The problem wasn’t only that most of the men with me were giants, even if they didn’t look like the rest of their kind. No, my nation frowned heavily upon “non-traditional” relationships, and Lord Thomas was nothing if not traditional. He’d even put in a complaint when the palace staff tried to change the palace banners to satin rather than the silk we’d used for the previous fifty years. Never mind that the war had made silk hard to come by. It was tradition.
What would he think of me, of us, and of how we were about as unconventional a group as anyone could come by? The fact this was a consensual, respectful relationship where all members were aware of each other and welcomed each other would hardly matter. My people thought anything except one man and one woman together was immoral and abhorrent.
I never thought I would have something like this or meet men who would welcome something like this. Before I’d been driven away from my home, I’d never even considered the possibility it could exist for me.
And now, I didn’t want to hide. I truly didn’t, because I hated behaving as if I was ashamed of what we had and who we all were to one another.
“Tell them we are your allies,” Dex said gently at my silence. “Everything else can wait.”
Reluctantly, I nodded, though I still felt sickened by the need for the deception.
But then, I reminded myself, it wouldn’t be forever. Once I had my throne and I could solidify the court behind me, I could start working to change things and help my people accept that relationships that didn’t match what they were accustomed to could still be valid and beautiful and respectful to all members involved.
Because deriding the idea that people could love as we did served no one. We were not harming anybody. We were not deceiving each other or manipulating anyone so we could be together. We were all consenting adults who chose each other and chose to love this way. And in truth, I was also not so vain as to believe that I was the only one in all of Aneira who wished to love in this way, and yet who couldn’t do so openly because of social rules dictating what love had to look like in order to be “good.” How many of my people were living and loving in secret, just as committed and loyal to each other as we were, and yet who were afraid every day that they’d be discovered and scorned—or worse? How many of them were suffering, unable to make the changes I could simply because of the position of privilege I’d been born to occupy?
I sighed. Gods, there were so many things I needed to change in my country, from this to the unjustly imprisoned giants, and so many other issues besides. And I had to change them. I couldn’t back down. Not when I would be the one with the most power to do it.
Assuming I could succeed in claiming my throne.
“Will this lord have forces to aid us if we face opposition once we return to your capital?” Casimir asked.
And then there was that.
I winced. “All the provinces have standing militias to aid them in case of attack, as well as forces they contributed to the war with Erenelle. Most of those returned home when Erenelle fell and the Erenlian leadership erected their own version of the Warden Wall, sealing everyone out.”
Casimir gave me a quizzical look. “The giants created their wall after the war, not during it for protection?”
I glanced at the others, not sure what to say since the only explanations I’d ever heard for that were disrespectful, to say the least. For years, my father and his generals claimed the reason the Erenlians hadn’t built their own wall was simply that they were not as skilled with magic as us. That they didn’t care as much about protecting their people. That they were corrupt and couldn’t agree on even the most basic safeguards for their own citizens, let alone something as massive as creating their own version of the Warden Wall.
And so on, and so on.
But then, in the last days of the war, a magical wall suddenly rose around Erenelle, sealing the borders completely. Not even the Erenlian prisoners brought to the edge of it could cross, though the generals and prison keepers claimed they were simply refusing to do so.
As far as I knew, no one had entered or left that land ever since.
