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“I did it because no one in this forest deserves saving. Except for you.”
Thirty-Six
The pies Myronkeeps sending for dinner are reminding me of the banquets my father sometimes took me to when I was a child. The only difference is that the events held by the nobility in Meer were colorful and crowded while here, I’m eating in solitude, wondering where the residing king wandered off to while I stuff my face with something so delicious it should be forbidden as a main course.
As a child, I had no problems sneaking under a table with a pastry I had snatched off the buffet and hiding away for the rest of the evening while the adults laughed and danced and made trades which would normally not cross the desk of a simple merchant like my father. But Ivan Milevishja had a way of convincing people to do business with him that I never fully grasped. It was also a way that eventually took him to the gallows—not without my portion of fault, of course. Had I not allowed myself to be tricked into confessing I’d seen him that day the King’s guards questioned me, he might have never been charged with treason, and King Erina might not have targeted me. Again, pirating the east-Eherea waters did create a pile of crimes that royally offended him and his court.
The last banquet my father took me to, the old Tavrasian King brought his son, and Erina hated crowds as much as I did back then. He told me when he caught me eating a marzipan croissant under the table as he joined me with a grimace.
“You don’t get these anywhere else,” he assures me, his light brown waves bouncing as he sits back on his heels, ducking his head so as not to hit it on the carved edge of the table where the white cloth falls back into place like a curtain to cut us off from the pompous world our fathers navigate.
Savoring the sweetness of almond and sugar, I take another bite, studying the intruder to my sanctuary with wary eyes. I know him from my father’s warehouse. The king sometimes brings him when he comes to appraise the goods my father acquired or traded for him. Erina usually is quiet then. But today, he’s chatty the way eleven-year-old boys rarely ever are.
“When I’m king, I’ll make sure everyone has access to marzipan croissants. Even merchant daughters.”
I refrain from telling him that it’s a condescending thing to say. Even I, at my eight years, know that. Instead, I smile at him, offering him half of the croissant.
Erina shakes his head. “Eat all of it. I can have them whenever I want.”
Again, he means well, but the way he says it, eyes slightly narrowed as he looks me over like I’m lesser, makes me internally cringe.
“Must be a beautiful life to be a prince.” I mean it more to distract him from the topic of the croissant but instantly regret it when he starts rambling.
“You can’t imagine the riches we live in. The palace has marble ceilings and crystal windows. We eat from golden plates.”
“You sleep in silken sheets and walk on clouds,” I continue for him, a grin on my face, and he returns it, catching onto what I’m doing.
Smart boy. Spoiled boy, too. But not unkind at heart.
“Something like that. You should come visit sometime. I’m sure my father could summon yours to the palace for business instead of making the trip to the warehouse.”
I don’t point out that I’ve wondered plenty of times why any king would make the effort to visit a merchant’s office rather than summoning them to the palace, but who am I to question what the King of Tavras does when apparently my father is his favorite merchant in all of the realm.
“I could show you around. Menia could tailor a dress for you, and we could walk the hallways like we’re the pair destined to ascend the throne one day.” A smile plays on his lips, his roundish cheeks forming dimples. He’s pretty for his age, not overly tall or stretched in awkward proportions like some boys his age. Like from a picture from fairytale books. Even his sepia and gold jacket looks like he stepped right off a miniature version of a throne, no matter if he’s hiding under a table with a merchant daughter.
“Wouldn’t that be considered treason?” I whisper, the fingers of my free hand half-covering my mouth.
The smile on Erina’s face slips. “For you, not me.”
He holds out the plum in his hand for me and waits until I pick it up before he slides out from under the table.
I take a last bite of peach pie as I chase the memory away with a swipe of my hand over my face.
That was a different life, one before I unwittingly betrayed my father. One before my mother took me away from Meer so we weren’t exposed to the Tavrasian nobility and their judgmental glances when we walked the streets. And then she died on me, leaving me alone in a world where young women are defined by their pedigree or by whom they marry—or are married to.
I got away the day I snuck onto the Wild Ray to escape what Tavras held in store for a parentless adolescent, and Ludelle’s mother saved me in more ways than one. She gave me a new home when she took me in rather than kicking me off the planks, allowed me to work for my keep, earn respect and rank among the crew, and finally, she didn’t stand in our way when Ludelle and I fell in love. Without them, I would have ended up on the streets, nothing more than a common whore—or worse.
Trying not to cringe at the image of selling myself on Tavrasian market corners, I take another bite of pie to remind myself I got away then, when I was alone and ready to sail to the ends of the world. I survived. And I’ll survive now when a couple of Fire Fairies are out for every living being in the Seeing Forest. I’m not even considering that the enemy is in our own home as well. And yes, I’ve come to call the grayscale palace the Crows inhabit a sort of home, though I’m not honest enough to admit part of it is that Myron is here. And Royad. I put him on the list immediately so I don’t need to consider what it means that the place where Myron is feels more like home than my father’s office did as a child. Because it doesn’t have any meaning. It. Doesn’t.
Instead of returning to my epiphany of how many dark moments my past has held, I focus on the distant sense of water in the open bathing room. The past days after the assassination attempt, I’ve spent mainly on figuring out how far my magical reach extends (a few feet at the most) and if the sacred chamber would open for me again if I asked in a non-life-threatening situation (no). I’m not relying on it enough to wait until one of us is dying again to summon it, preparing to draw a string of liquid from the basin in the normal bathing room instead.
The power in my veins hums slightly at the exercise I keep repeating every other hour just to flex it like a muscle to be trained rather than an abstract ability I have no clue how to maintain control over—not that I’ve ever had control. From the cracked-open door, a trickle of liquid weaves through the air a few inches above the ground like my power is too weak to keep it properly afloat.
Finishing the pie, I lean back in the armchair and close my eyes as I tug harder until a warm touch brushes against the back of my palm.
“Not what I expected but so much better,” I mutter as Myron’s scent of wind and pine drifts into my nose. I don’t bother opening my eyes, for I know there is little I could do to fend him off if he chose to attack me. So, I’d rather not see death coming if it’s him delivering it. But if he’s here to kiss me… I’d rather that be a surprise as well since he hasn’t made any attempt at following up on the mind-blowing night we shared. Neither have I, other than the heated gazes we share over dinner and the way my body refuses to calm when he winds a proprietary arm around my waist whenever we enter a room of Crows together. He picked up that habit at the speech he gave after the assassination attack—the speech where he threatened half of his people with a slow and painful death if they ever dared attack him in his own home again—or me, for that matter. Given the expressions of utter horror on some of the Crows’ feathered faces when we entered the throne room together that day after the attack, it was easy to judge who belonged to which faction.
The guards who’d been dazed and dragged off by the rebels leaped into action at Myron’s command, arresting some of the traitors and taking them to the dungeons. Myron has spent too many hours down there since, and I try not to ask what he did whenever he returns to his room, that beautiful mouth drawn into a tight line and eyes narrowed as if, in his mind, he’s still interrogating one of those low-lives.
