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Verol drummed his fingers on his thigh. “She can’t trust him.”
“Can’t and doesn’t are two different things, my love.”
“She shouldn’t.”
“I am begging you not to push her on that. You do remember what it was like to be that age, don’t you? If I recall, your parents hardly approved of me. You didn’t speak to them for a year after.”
“This is different.”
“How?”
“They didn’t approve of where you came from. It was a baseless dislike. Numair is Alaric’s nephew. It would be only too easy for Alaric to use him to get to her. The Kinthing hasn’t calmed since she came to us. It is always worried. When Alaric was here and once he was gone.
“And don’t even ask me to contain my anger over him dragging her away like that. It was reckless and Alaric’s demand to see her only proves that. Even if Numair doesn’t harm her intentionally, he’s bound to do it through his sheer idiocy.”
Numair would never hurt me. It was Clare’s first and only response to the words the Song pulled from the common room, carrying them down the hall to her ears.
She understood why it had brought them to her, brought her Verol’s conviction that she wasn’t safe with Numair because the Kinthing didn’t feel she was safe. But Numair wouldn’t hurt her.
You think he will not, the Song said, but how can you be sure?
Because I know him. And I know you. And it is to you the Kinthing answers.
If you’re certain, then, it replied, in that casual manner intended to instill doubt in the person it answered.
But she knew better. Numair was her friend. And she was his. Nothing was going to change that. Not even the fact that she could still feel the featherlight brush of his lips against hers, the touch of his hand on her cheek. Not even the beating thrum of anxiety that already whispered, Did we ruin everything?
She stood, water cascading down her body, and ignored both the Song and her own concerns. When she dressed, she intentionally chose the plainest of her outfits and left her face unpainted, her hair unstyled. Then she left through the window, saddling Kialla and riding for the palace before Quin or Verol could stop her.
Chapter Seventy-Five
The First Prince of Faelhorn
The Song retreated within her as she passed through the Outer Gate. It had been with her so constantly these last few weeks that its abrupt departure was jarring, a harsh reminder of who had returned to these grounds since she’d last left them.
She had barely walked through the palace’s front entryway when one of the guards broke away from his station, halting her with a brief bow. “His Majesty asked to see you the moment you arrived. If you would follow me.”
With little choice in the matter, she did. He led her to the second floor, to the end of a hallway and a set of wide oak doors. He rapped smartly, the doors opened, and Clare choked on the sudden, intense need to vomit. The sickly sweet stench of Alaric’s magic permeated the room, inundating her nostrils, coating her skin with the oil-slick taint. It was far more potent than it had been the last time she’d seen him, when she had almost inured herself to its feel.
Nor was that the only thing different about the Alaric that stood before her now and the one who had left. He had easily dropped ten years, looking more like a man in his early thirties as opposed to his forties, the lines about his eyes lessened, the salt and peppering of his hair having reverted to an undiluted brown. He no longer looked like the urbane king. He looked like what he was: a general of war who had conquered the world with magic, brute force, and bloodshed, and yet found that his stranglehold on power had not lessened his fear that it could all be taken away.
She felt herself staring into his eyes as if she looked through a mirror in time, a portal into a future in which she stood precisely where he did now. She had wanted wealth and status, certain they would insulate her against fear, but they had done neither. Because the fear was in her, in the past, and in him, in the present, and she didn’t know how to destroy either of them.
He held her gaze, as if he knew exactly what she was thinking. If he’d returned to Veralna yesterday, he didn’t appear to have slept or changed clothes in that time. The soldier’s leathers he wore were dirt-stained and flecked with blood, and she felt as if she was seeing the true king of Faelhorn for the first time. He stood at the head of a table, across which was spread a map of Faelhorn. El-Dennon, at its southern-most tip, was a blacked-out, ruined space.
Next to Alaric stood the two proconsuls who had been with him when she’d marched in and demanded to speak with him before, along with another four people she didn’t recognize. None of them looked pleased to see her, especially when Alaric told them to, “Continue without me,” and cut a path across the floor to her.
“Walk with me.” He held out his arm and Clare forced herself to take it, to not cringe as his magic caressed and stroked against her skin. Stolen magic. Magic that whispered of death and atrocities far more recent than the ones he’d left with.
He led her down the stairs, out of the palace to that same garden path they had walked before. She felt his magic snuff out the heating spells, allowing winter’s chill full rein, as if he wanted her cold. “Have you reconsidered what we last spoke of here?”
A woman who was smarter than she was stubborn would have prevaricated. “No.”
“Do you know how many people I have had to kill since I left Veralna?” There was an edge to his voice, as if he laid the necessity of each one of those deaths at her feet. As if he had decided she was the missing puzzle piece in his plans, and he only needed to push her until she fell into place.
“I am not an antidote to war, Your Majesty. I am not a flower you can pin to your collar and make the world see a benefactor instead of a conqueror. If you truly wish to reform your image, to make them love you, why don’t you marry? Everyone loves a love story. So fall in love, Your Majesty. With a commoner, perhaps.”
“This is your advice to me?”
