AllFreeNovel
Share Us
The Queen scoffed. “Don’t be dramatic.”
His lips pursed, but he bobbed his chin in something akin to a nod. He ran a hand over his cheeks, scratching the dark red stubble growing in.
“I’ve been told my parents died, or that they abandoned me to live out their years in comfort in some Elder castle. Perhaps I was the price they paid. Either way, they’re gone now,” he said. “I don’t remember them. But I remember an orphanage in Corranport.”
Erida winced. Corranport was a port city, a smudge on the map. Ascal if Ascal had no palace or gardens or well-to-do citizens. If most of the criminals in the world lived in Adira, the rest lived in Corranport. She knew the difficulty of growing up in such a place, and she saw what it had made him. The hard edge of a hard life, and a seed of mistrust planted so deep no man could uproot it.
“Everything stank of piss and fish,” Taristan muttered, his face souring with memory.
“Ascal is not much better,” Erida offered, trying to be helpful.
Instead he scowled. “Funny, I don’t remember your palace smelling as foul as a dock orphanage.”
She could only lower her eyes. “True.”
Thankfully, the misstep didn’t seem to push him away. If anything, he sank deeper, eyes sliding out of focus. The candlelight played in his hair; a gleam of gold against scarlet. A few strandsfell across his eyes, and to Erida’s pleasure, he did not brush them away. The light softened his features, even as the shadows pooled in the harsh planes of his cheekbones.
“I didn’t want to fish, didn’t want to sail, didn’t want to trade. Barely learned to read,” he said. “Most of us ended up begging or thieving. I was better at the latter.”
Erida kept her jaw tight, her mouth shut, watching as he spoke. She found she could not imagine Taristan of Old Cor begging anyone for anything.
“But I couldn’t stay. My feet were always moving, as if something were pulling me along.” Taristan swallowed, pushing down something Erida could not see. “I know now, it’s in the blood.”
“Corblood,” she said, almost reaching for his hand, his fingers braced against the table. They were bare but for the red still crusted under his nails.
He looked at her sidelong, those black eyes of his cutting as any knife. “A blessing or a curse, depending on who you might ask.”
“Well there’s only two of you left,” Erida muttered, shrugging. “Corayne might call it a curse.”
A corner of his mouth lifted. “She might be right.”
His fingers drummed against the wood, the crescents of his nails like red moons.
“I was twelve when I ended up in a Treckish war camp. They put a sword in my hand and food in my belly and told me to fight.” His eyes flashed, still black as jet. “I was best at that.”
Judging by the release in his shoulders, his memories of Trec were far better than most he had. Erida balked at the thought. The Treckish war camps were home to soldiers no better than wolves,loping the countryside to defend borders and hunt bandits. Most of the men there were mercenaries, Erida knew, though once they had been slaves no better than human shields.At least that foul practice is long ended,she thought with a scowl.
“I saw a war camp once,” she said, remembering the grim sight. Nothing but mud and stupid, leering men who had not bathed in a decade. All of them corded with muscle and bad tempers, as unyielding as the steel Trec built their kingdom upon. “At my northern border.”
Taristan raised an eyebrow. “And?”
“Prince Oscovko was with them.” She wrinkled her nose in distaste. “He enjoys it, apparently.”
He half smiled. “Another disappointed suitor?”
Erida nodded, laughing. “He said they were defending the Gates of Trec from Jydi raiders. But I think the only thing he fought was gravity.” She shook her head at the memory of the boorish prince, bloody and drink-stained. “Oscovko was wine-blind. I don’t think he even knew who I was for the hour we spoke.”
“I’m surprised you didn’t marry him and kill him the moment your child came of age. Take his crown and his country,” Taristan said, his voice low, without a hint of humor.
Erida tipped her head. “I’d rather give my children the realm entire.”
The words echoed in her head, and in the tent, reverberating between the two of them. Like always, the mention of children, of a royal line sprung from their divided trees, unsettled them both. Erida leaned into the discomfort. She’d long since learned it wasthe only way to hurdle her fears. And while children were absolutely necessary to their reign, she still feared the concept, as any sensible person would.
Taristan reacted as he always did, retreating into himself. In fact, it was the only time Erida ever saw him do such a thing.Is he afraid too?she wondered.Or simply disinterested?
A man like him survived life seeing each step as it came, not the long path of the journey.I cannot afford to think like that.
“I can’t believe you survived a war camp,” she said, steering the conversation back to something safe. If a child growing up in a war camp could be considered safe at all. “You fought Jydi raiders?”
