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“I was made an orphan when I was five years old,” Auberon—Caelan—said, pure misery on his face. “I watched my childhood home burn with my parents trapped inside, and I ran with nothing but the clothes on my back and that emerald dagger in my hands. For years, I wandered from town to town, resorting to begging and stealing to put food in my belly.” His voice shook with anger, but there was an undercurrent of something else—shame, Riona realized as he looked away, his shoulders slumping.
“I didn’t intend to fall for you, and I would give anything to take it back,” he continued softly. “Whatever we could have been—it is impossible. It iswrong. I am no one, and you are a woman with the blood of kings in your veins. You deserve so much more than a spy with little more than a handful of coins to his name. You deserve the Empire’s throne. That is why you must marry Drystan.”
Riona gaped at him. “Drystan doesn’t deserve a wife who is so clearly in love with someone else. Believe me, I know how it feels to love someone who is wholly devoted to another, and I would not wish that pain upon anyone.” When he opened his mouth to argue, she added, “Nor could I put you through the agony of watching the woman you love marry and have children with another man.”
“I’ll take jobs well away from Torch,” he responded immediately, his voice full of desperation. “I’ll not bother you again, and given time, you and Drystan will find happiness together. He is an honorable man, and he would love you. He would make a good hus—”
“Please, Auberon. Caelan,” she said quietly. “Please don’t finish that sentence.”
He crossed the aisle and took her hands in his. “You could be the ruler of the greatest empire in the history of the world, Riona. You could have everything you’ve ever wanted at your fingertips. Give Drystan a chance, and you will come to love him. You could be happy with him.”
“None of us would be happy if he and I married.”
Caelan gripped her hands tighter, his patience reaching its end. “Do not be a fool, Riona. You ended a decades-long war today, hours after nearly bleeding to death. How much good would you do for both our peoples as Erduria’s Empress? You would throw that away for a man who can give you nothing? I won’t allow you to do that.”
“You won’tallow it?” Riona repeated, anger sweeping over her. The blood magic pulsing in her chest flared in response, igniting every nerve ending. She fought to stay on her feet as a wave of agony overcame her. “Then why did you ask me to meet you in the theater last night? Why did you confess your feelings for me?”
“Because knowing that I could only ever have that one night with you was better than not having one at all,” he said, the words coming out in a rush. “I was selfish, and I was weak, and I was thoughtless. And I am sorry for hurting you, but I am trying to repent for what I’ve done. Marry Drystan and forget me. Serve your people and mine from Erduria’s throne.”
Riona shook her head, struggling to keep her thoughts intact as daggers of pain shot through the wound in her chest. The heat had been a steady throb all day, but now, combined with the emotional toll the last several days had taken on her, it was all she could do not to fall to her knees. Valerian had told her she needed to rest, and now she was paying the price for her refusal.
Sorrow and shock and betrayal and anger warred within her, tangling into a knot of emotions that made her heart feel like it was fracturing in her chest. She was exhausted and heartbroken, weak from the attempt on her life and weary from the stress of the past several months. In Beltharos, she had been forced into marriage with a stranger and made the puppet of a bloodthirsty tyrant, and she had faced execution for daring to defy Nicholas Comyn. She had fallen in love and given Percival up so he could marry the woman he loved, and returned to her home only to learn that her uncle was already preparing to cast her out once again. She had been held hostage and threatened with death for entering the eudorite mines. She had been stabbed in the chest for trying to find Cathal’s murderer. She had learned that her uncle had orchestrated the attack on her mother’s ship.
This was what finally broke her.
She had always known that Auberon would do anything for his country. That he would be ruthless in manipulating the court into accepting the peace treaty. And yet, over the weeks they spent together, something had changed. He could have forced her uncle to accept a betrothal a half-dozen times, but he hadn’t. He could have demanded it as repayment for rescuing her from the mines, but he’d held his tongue. He had become her ally, and then the person she had trusted more than anyone in this wretched city.
She had given up the man she loved for his own good, and now, the man to whom she had given her heart was doing the same to her.
“Aramati,” Caelan begged. “Please. Marry Drystan and sail to Erduria with us.”
“No,” Riona responded, the word flat and final. “I have been played for a fool too many times—first by Nicholas, then by my uncle, and now by you. I am tired of people using me as a pawn. I amtired,” she said, her voice breaking on the word, “of people breaking my heart.”
“Riona—”
“Once the treaty is signed, you and Drystan will sail for Erduria alone. You will never set foot on Rivosi land again. And the next time I see you, I will bury a dagger in your heart.”
He stumbled backward, startled by her fury. Agony flashes across his face before he quickly smoothed it under a mask of perfect calm. It transformed him; his beautiful eyes turned cold and dispassionate, and his lips pressed into a thin, tight line. Just like that, he shifted into the distant prince she’d met so many weeks ago, every trace of softness, of warmth, gone.
Caelan grabbed the emerald-hilted dagger from the sheath at Riona’s hip and pressed it into her hand, his fingers lacing through hers as he lifted the blade to the fine brocade of his doublet, directly over his heart. “Remember what I taught you,” he whispered, holding her gaze. “Angled like this so it slips through the ribs.”
Riona stared at their hands, curled around the handle of the blade. If she wanted to, she could kill him. But when she looked up into his face, she saw the man who had been waiting for her in the theater the night before, playing the song his mother had loved. An orphan who had carved out a place in his court. A spy who claimed to be heartless, but who had been willing to give her life so she would survive.
A man who, even now, she could not kill.
Riona lowered the blade and offered it to Caelan hilt-first. “Take it. It’s all you have to remember your parents.”
“Keep it,aramati.” A faint, remorseful smile tugged at his lips. “It saved your life, and that makes it the most valuable gift I can bestow.”
With that, he turned and walked out of the chapel.
* * *
The second the doors swung shut, all the strength left Riona’s body. She collapsed onto the nearest pew and buried her face in her hands, a tempest of emotions swirling within her. Fury and sorrow. Pain and heartbreak. It was all too much.
She sat there for what felt like an eternity, until everything within her went numb. Only the pulsing, relentless heat of the blood magic remained. With shaking hands, she pulled out the emerald-hilted dagger and examined it with new eyes. Suddenly, she recalled something he had said to her after their first meeting in the theater, both of them soaked to the bone after a storm had struck the city:
We are both children of war, my lady. We must help each other when we can.
