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Verol jerked his hands free of Marquin’s. “She isn’t a feral animal. And it isn’t her responsibility to fix this. She never asked to be born with the power she holds.”
“Neither did you. But you can’t avoid it any more than she can.”
Verol shook his head. “It was different for me. I had a life, before this. I…don’t think she did. She deserves to now, however much of a one she can have.”
Sensing a thaw, Marquin stepped into it. “What good is a month or six of an idyllic life if it means she doesn’t have one at the end?”
But Verol didn’t relent. “What good is her survival if at the end of it she’s done too much to enjoy living? You think I don’t understand how poor our chances are? You think I have suddenly forgotten that it would take a miracle to destroy him?
“I haven’t. But don’t ask me to ask this of her. Don’t ask me to trick her into it, to train her for it while pretending I am not. I can’t give her that weight. I won’t.”
Marquin didn’t answer. He didn’t know how to. He didn’t want to put this on the girl either. Verol thought him harsh, but he was trying to protect her in the only way he knew how. When decades of bitter experience and failure told him that he and Verol could not win this fight for her, and common sense said she could not hide forever, it only made sense to prepare her.
But Verol thought he only wanted to throw her at Alaric like a battering ram, and he clearly took Quin’s silence for disagreement.
“I know that I am not the easiest man to live with. This power, this Kinthing, would be no partner’s joy. Yet knowing that, you broke the moral codes all mages live by to keep me here when I would have faded.”
The heartstone in his staff pulsed in response to the mention of its creation.
“So I will ask you this only once. Do you want to lose me, Marquin?”
This was what it came down to, then. He would give anything for Verol, and Verol would give anything for the girl. The potential of the world forever falling under the rule of a self-made god-king, because Verol would never put her at risk.
It didn’t change his answer. “You know I don’t.”
Verol nodded jerkily and headed for the door. “I’m leaving in one hour. Come with me, and you won’t.”
Quin would go. Of course he would go. But he had a different agenda. They could hunt these relics of legend more relentlessly than they ever had before. They could dig up the provinces’ mages of rare and unique abilities, and try to convince them they had some chance of defeating Alaric. They could sow the seeds of political rebellion.
But while his husband sought to build Clare an army to protect her, Marquin would be the more realistic, if less kind, guardian. The only army that might protect her was the one she led herself. And if Verol had forbidden him from suggesting she take the helm of this fight, Quin had little doubt she would come to the conclusion herself, eventually.
He simply had to hope that, in between now and then, she was as clever as he thought her. Clever enough to survive.
He started to rise, to begin the preparations for their travel, when his gaze fell on the box they used to communicate with Phoenix. He settled himself behind Verol’s desk and wrote a brief note.
Verol and I will be gone for some time. His apprentice, Clare, will remain here. I do not know if you are in a position to do so, and I am not requesting any information about your station but, if you can, watch out for her. She is…important.
He dropped it into the box before he could overthink the wisdom of it. Phoenix had been careful with their correspondence with them over the years, never giving any hint as to their identity. It had made trusting them difficult, in the beginning, but the relationship was so well-established at this point that if they’d harbored ill-will toward the Arrendons, they’d had more than a few opportunities for betrayal.
The risk felt different this time, though. Because it wasn’t himself or Verol he was trusting Phoenix with. It was her. It felt like a fist had squeezed tight around his heart. He’d told himself, all these years, that it was Verol who had never gotten over Marie. Had told himself mere days ago that it was Verol he was worried about, should anything happen to Clare.
But Marie had called Quin Father, too. He’d been there when she’d taken her first steps. He’d been just as sleep-deprived as Verol as the two of them figured out how to be unexpected parents to an orphaned infant. And when she was older, when she’d woken from nightmares in the middle of the night, he was always the one she’d expected to check under the bed and in the darkened corners for lurking monsters.
He had told himself he didn’t trust Clare. He’d convinced himself she couldn’t be trusted, this young woman who was so different from the child they’d lost before. But the truth was, he’d actively kept his distance from her. Because Verol wasn’t the only one who might not survive another Marie.
Chapter Forty-Seven
I Promised You That Much
Verol and Marquin never returned to the palace. Clare had waited up the entire night for them and she hadn’t even known why. She’d passed the time with Numair’s reading books, and once the sun rose she went into the suite’s common room, intending to have breakfast sent up. But when she entered the shared space she found Fitz occupying it, and he’d already ordered what looked like enough food for four people.
When he nodded to the seat across the table, where a clean plate and utensils were waiting, she decided she really had no cause not to join him. She filled her plate, but when she went to pour a cup of coffee there was barely enough left to fill her mug a third of the way.
She glared at him. “You drank all of it?”
He shrugged.
“The entire carafe.”
