I stared at the warm, shining stone, and anger burst through me like a flint strike. I’d certainly not been fool enough to think that our severance would have been a clean, painless excision, but neither did I think Theodore would have been this naïve.
He should have let me go completely. No ring, no binding gown. They were promises that he could never keep.
The healer watched me staring at the ring, and her brows rose expectantly. “Do you feel well? Is there anything else you need? Some nepenthe for any lingering pain, perhaps.”
I slipped the ring quickly onto my finger. “No.” I strode out into the hall. I’d change once I made it to my ship.
The entry hall was being decorated for a wedding. Deep blue Obelian flags hung beside Varian ones. They lined the black marble banisters and hung above lintels. It looked like a fucking garden had been planted at the base of each of the curving stairs. Vines wove through their balusters and curled around the ankles of the Great Gods’ statues. Servants darted beneath them with baskets of tapers and bundles of flowers in their arms.
Just as those vines seemed to wind through the palace with abandon, so too did a black, plaguing anger begin to creep through me.
I nearly strode past the palace’s front doors myself, perfectly capable of arranging my own carriage, when my gaze caught on Eftan. He and a woman in a servant’s uniform stood at the base of the far stairs, looking over papers and taking stock of the state of the entry hall.
When he saw me, his round face puckered. He strode toward me with short, quick steps, his widened gaze skipping over my visage, over the gown I wore, and finally, it stopped at Theodore’s ring on my finger. His thin lips curled back. “The king is a fool.”
I sucked in a tedious breath. “Hello, Chancellor.”
“You beguiled him. You tainted him.” He took me by the arm and, short man though he was, began to haul me toward the palace doors. “You have pushed this kingdom toward utter ruin, and he dresses you up like a play bride for it. Leave. Leave now, before he sees you.” I ripped my arm from his hold and nearly threw him off his balance. “He marries the princess in four days,” he spat, “and you cannot return. Not as his mistress, not as his—” He gave a violent gasp, face going from red to a deepening purple.
I cocked my head at how easily the lure had slipped from me, at how quickly my power obeyed my barest desire. It was different now, without Theodore’s bond strung through my middle. “DearEftan,” I crooned, as the man pawed at his throat. “I’ve come to you for a carriage. So that I may leave and never return. Will you help me?”
He gave a frantic nod.
A slow smile curved my lips. “How good of you.”
I turned on my heel for the doors and released the lure, listening eagerly for the echo of his desperate inhale as it bounced off the marble.
The afternoon was warm and clear. Damp, flower-scented air pushed through the cracks of the carriage door. I’d grown so used to the scent and how it mingled with the sea that I hardly noticed it anymore, but I pulled in a heavy breath now as the carriage jostled me over the blue cobblestone road that led toward Panos Port.
My mind churned like the surface of the sea, with black and lashing thoughts. They kept leading me back to Nemea, to his empty gray eyes and unyielding cruelty. To his cold, dry mountain, far, far from the sea. I’d never thought I’d return. I’d done all I could to avoid it. But of all the people in the archipelago who might know where Eusia was, it was him.
Before the carriage lurched to a stop, I slipped the ring Theodore had given me onto the chain around my neck and huffed a breath thinking about the future I could fund with my collection of engagement jewels. My hair had been washed while I’d been asleep. It smelled of sweet flowers and orange, and I plaited it down my back in a long braid. When I was done my hands had stopped shaking.
As I adjusted on the bench, something sharp poked my thigh. I searched the seat beside me, ran a hand over my dress. I froze atthe square of folded paper that I felt in its pocket. A letter. Sealed in green wax, pressed with Theodore’s sigil—a hand wrapped in vines.
My shaking returned as I tore through it. I pressed the paper over my lap to keep it still enough to read.
Immy,
I begin uncertain what to write you. I am overcome by the empty space you have left behind. Please know, I had no intention of leaving you. I was ordered to do so by my council. They said I have forgotten my duty, that I have brought war upon us with my lack of control. Eftan refused to let me give you the binding gown and ring until I threatened to have him permanently removed from the palace.
All this to say, I am adrift.
I am bereft, but I think my purpose is growing clearer than it ever has been. My duty, my desire—they have become one entity. They are both unquestionably tied to you. The absence of you has shown me that, if you will let me, I will happily carve myself open again and pour you back inside me. I cannot see how yet. I don’t know the way. But if you will have me again at the end of all this—even if you won’t—I am yours.
For now, I must do terrible, punishing things to keep my people and you safe. Come back to me and absolve me of them.
Yours unendingly,
Theo
I smoothed a hand over the creased paper, my heart weighty and pained in my chest. “Gods, Theo.” He would completely forgo his duty to his kingdom if I ever returned to him. He would let me utterly ruin him. And yet, if I were honest, that was precisely what I wanted. Eyes burning, I refolded the paper and tucked it beneath my stays, above my breast.
Terrible, punishing things.
The driver pulled us to a stop beside another palace carriage, this one large and drenched in carved golden vines. I choked on a breath. My carriage door swung open, and the footman reached in a hand.
I shook my head. “Is that the king’s carriage you parked us beside?” If he saw me with his ring, in his gown, his scant resolve—and mine—would disintegrate.
