His footsteps echoed across the floor, from the hall to the terrace. Roa looked to the door, but it was shut.
Worst of all? Her slippers were lying in full view. Just out of her reach.
Roa cursed her own carelessness.
To Essie, who was somewhere out in the garden, she said,This is all your fault.
Essie sent a golden feeling back—her version of a laugh.
As if this was funny.
Roa felt like such a fool. If she answered Dax, he would clearly see she was hiding under his bed. He would want to know why. But if he knew what she’d done just now—lying down in his sheets, breathing in the smell of his pillows—there was only one conclusion he could come to.
Roa squeezed the letter in her hand.
I need to give it to him,she thought, even as she lay frozen in place, her cheek pressed against the cool dirt floor.
Dax stood at the window now, the breeze ruffling his curls. Roa’s heart pounded as she watched his fingers loosen the laces of his shirt, then roll his sleeves up to his elbows. She watched him kick off his boots and lean, barefoot, against the sill as he stared out across the sand sea.
Sighing roughly, he turned around, then sank slowly down the wall to the floor. He sat with his knees bent and his hands tangled in his hair, like he was trying to solve an unsolvable problem.
Sooner or later, he was going to see the slippers beside the bed. Then see Roa beneath it.
Better to get it over with...
But at the same moment Roa decided to reveal herself, someone knocked on the door.
Roa went still, pulling back as Dax rose to his feet.
Halfway to the door, though, something made him stop. Heturned back, paused, then came toward the bed.
Roa could only see his bare feet as he bent down, then his fingers as he reached for her slippers. He picked one up. All he had to do was get down on his hands and knees...
All he had to do waslook.
Roa bit down hard on her lip, praying to any gods who just might happen to be listening.
The knock came again. Dax straightened.
“Who is it?”
“Just me,” came a too-familiar voice. Lirabel.
The king went to answer the door, taking the slipper with him.
Roa let out a breath.
“Oh, Dax.” Lirabel’s strained voice echoed through the room. “We’re in so much trouble.”
She was pacing. Frantic. Her sandals had tracked sand in, and it scattered in her wake. “I’d hoped it was just an illness...”
“Lirabel—”
But whatever Dax was going to say fell away as the room plunged into a stilted silence. And even though Roa could only see her friend’s legs, she could hear Lirabel’s tiny punctuated gasps of breath.
She was crying.
“Today I counted,” Lirabel whispered when she’d gotten control of herself. “It’s been eleven weeks.”
