The war council has convened once more. Though Adria has been forced to retreat, the harbor is still blockaded, and no one knows how long we have before the fighting begins again in earnest.
Still, it’s hard to focus on what lies ahead of us with the taste of victory in the air.
I’m beginning to get swept away in it myself. The wine is flowing freely, a party raging loudly in the ballroom down the hall and a hundred more in the streets. It’s hard not to be taken by the city’s immense relief, short-lived though it may be.
But as pleased as everyone is, no one is as pleased with themselves as my brother. He accepts the doting attention of the council with an almost sickening amount of gratitude, relishing their praise without the least amount of shame, without any guilt for being the cause of at least half of their grief up until now.
The only one who doesn’t share in the adulation is Taran. He joins us late after checking on Elia in the infirmary, bringing good news about her recovery but nothing but icy disdain for my brother’s good humor.
“Come on, General. You can go back to cleaning his boots now.” He gestures to Ronan, and I stand to defend him, to defend them both from my brother’s buffoonery, but Ronantakes my hand, holding me down. “No more battlefields for you,” continues Seth. “You can’t complain about that.”
“The war isn’t over,” Taran whispers angrily, trying not to create a scene. “If you could stop your gloating for five minutes, we might be able to begin making plans for what comes next.”
“What comes next? What comes next is you give Felix a share of the gold profits to fuck off or even more to join your side, then you crush Adria when she comes back in the spring with the forces you’ve raised in the interim. Hell, you can bring the fight to her if you want by then, if I’m still here to lead the charge.”
A vein throbs on Taran’s temple. “To lead the charge. Toleadthe charge? You have never led any charge in your damn life! You arenota hero.” His voice echoes in the silence, the conversation at the table lulling at just the wrong moment. “You are the laziest, most selfish, most detestable person I haveeverhad the displeasure of meeting, and if his majesty has any sense, now that you’re no longer needed, he’ll put you on the first boat home.”
Oh, thank the gods. It’s such a relief hearing Taran stand his ground against Seth’s bullshit. He’s terribly embarrassed by his outburst, excusing himself from the table to get another drink, but I give him a nod of encouragement as he goes.
Seth is unaffected by Taran’s criticism or seemingly anything at all. Even Ronan seems content to let him have his moment.
But Ronan is troubled aboutsomething, and I can tell from the way he looks around the table that it’s all the unfamiliar faces in the room. He knows them well, of course, but Cyrus’s deception has forced him to bring in the next tier down of advisors, and it’s making him nervous at such a critical juncture.
“No Quinn?” I ask during another lull.
“She refused,” says Ronan, his shoulders shrugging.
“I’ll talk to her.” I excuse myself—I’m not needed to discuss naval strategy anyway.
I pass the torch in the hall—thetorch—and it reaches out for me. Something tingles in the back of my mind as I try to walk away from it, urging me back to it.
It wants me to take it.
I’ve passed it several times since we brought it here, and although it has always given me a comforting acknowledgment, it has never reached out like this to me before. Not since the first time, when I found it.
We don’t know what it is, not really, or how it works, but something in me trusts it, maybe because it seems so much like Ronan, and I trust him implicitly. For all I know, it’s truly the goddess Vayla reaching out to me, although why she chose this particular stick, I can’t really fathom.
The Codex doesn’t have any guidance on the matter that I can recall, no sections that explain what to do when the gods try to speak with you through very old sticks or any other type of inanimate object, but it does state that you should heed the word of the gods no matter the message or the messenger.
Who am I to deny their message?
I take the torch from the holder, tugging on it a little with my shadows to keep myself from burning my hand. It snaps back, annoyed with me for challenging it, but then it roars back to life in approval when I walk away with it.
The guards Ronan has sent with me are watching, so I don’t speak to it, but I send it feelings of acknowledgment, figuring it might be able to sense my moods as Ronan can.
It flickers, either in response or perhaps just from the wind.
Quinn’s chambers were once up in the eastern wing of the palace near Ronan’s, but a guard informs me they’ve been moved to the ground floor. I knock at the door, and she shouts out, “Go away, Ronan.”
“It’s Sylvie.”
There’s a long pause in which I think she’s going to tell me to go away too, but then she says, “Let her in.”
A servant greets me, leading me into an open living area. The new chambers are spacious, if a little empty, like a scaled-down version of Ronan’s if the bedchambers, dressing areas, and seating had all been condensed into one large room.
Quinn waits for me on a divan by the fireplace. A cool night breeze is blowing in through an open window, but it’s warm by the fire.
“Wine? You’ll have to serve yourself,” says Quinn, gesturing to a bottle on the table. “We’re out of the good stuff. You’ll have to drink some of our swill.”
