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‘They’re ten minutes out, Tomas can barely speak and Sophia is wearing her best dress and shiniest shoes because her dead aunt’s coming to town.’
Oh, dear God.
‘Breathe,’ said Silas.
‘Sophia’s secure?’
‘In the playroom, under guard.’
‘And Anastasia?’
‘On the battlements with Tomas.’
Then that was where he wanted to be. He adjusted course and when he got there and Ana smiled at him he felt his world settle again into something he had a hope of controlling. He clasped Tomas’s arm next and drew his childhood playmate into an embrace.
‘Hell of a day,’ he said. ‘Let’s go find out who she is.’
‘They’re stopping,’ said Ana, and it was true. Less than five hundred metres from the walls the two riders had stopped to dismount. The man held out his arms and slowly turned in a circle and then shed his riding cloak and then his outer tunic. He heaped them on the ground and a scimitar followed. The rifle at his back was added to the pile. A sheathed knife at his ankle got thrown on top of that. The woman did the same with her weapons, up to and including the long slender pencil-like rods in her hair.
‘Hidden knives,’ said Tomas.
‘Well, at least she’s getting rid of them. I’m sure she’ll feel lighter,’ said Ana, responding to Casimir’s dark amusement with a shrug and open hands.
The woman’s dark hair was plaited and fell to her waist. Her features were proud and her movements graceful. Casimir stared hard and tried to fit the face of a child onto the face of the woman who rode, but it was no use. Claudia or not, time had moved on and she was not the sister he remembered.
They left their belongings in two neat heaps and remounted their horses, their pace sedate as they continued their approach.
‘Send someone out to pick up their belongings and tell the snipers to stand down,’ he told Silas.
‘Snipers?’ Ana looked aghast.
‘Precaution.’ Time to get to the stables. ‘Coming?’
‘You really need to stop making that sound like a command,’ she said.
‘King,’ he countered, and took her hand so that she could feel its tremble and know he was holding onto his composure by a thread and that he needed her close.
‘I don’t suppose there’s a rule book for this meeting?’ she asked. ‘Protocol to follow? Curtseys to make?’
‘No. But if I falter, step in.’
‘I will. But you won’t falter.’ Her quiet certainty buoyed him. This was what it was like to have someone in your corner, he thought. This was what it felt like to be the recipient of someone else’s strength.
He felt the warmth of it and finally, willingly, let the last of his defences fall. He wanted this with all his heart. This world in which he loved hard and was loved just as hard in return.
‘I love you,’ he said in Russian. ‘So much. I understand now, what it feels like to stand beside the woman I love and feel loved in return. You were right. There is no place I’d rather be.’
She stumbled and would have teetered but for her hand in his.
‘You pick your times,’ she muttered, but her hand tightened in his. ‘I can’t believe that out of all the opportunities you’ve had of late, you’re telling me this now.’
* * *
The stables weren’t like any other stables Ana had ever seen. Twenty stalls capable of holding three or four horses apiece ran either side of a large central square. The square was covered in sawdust and the stable hands kept it immaculate. Huge wooden doors stood open at both ends of the square. Doors strong enough to hold invaders out more than horses in.
Ana waited alongside Cas, with Tomas on her other flank. A dozen more security people stood dotted around, all of them armed.
The male rider was the first to dismount, doing so before he reached the doors and walking his horse in. His gaze fixed on Casimir as he let his horse’s reins drop and he stepped forward. ‘Your Majesty,’ he said. ‘It’s been a long time.’
Casimir nodded. ‘Welcome, Lord Ildris. Who’s your companion?’
Lord Ildris waited a beat before speaking, as if choosing his words with the utmost care. ‘A future for a future,’ he offered quietly. ‘She’s the negotiator you requested and speaks for the people of the north and for herself.’
