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“You’re being unusually quiet,” Velichkov remarked, nudging me with his elbow. I’d discovered there was a quiet thoughtfulness to him that had surprised me, although it really shouldn’t have. Mat could be the same, and as we’d passed through Temar, it had become evident that its people adored their first prince. Valeri’s name had always been spoken with reverence.
Not that I’d tell him that.
“I’m trying not to trip over this fucking tent you call a cloak,” I said instead, widening my arms to prove how large it was. “Is that your devious plot, heir? Trick me into breaking my neck so you can rescue Mathias from my far-from-innocent attentions?”
“It’s weird,” he said with an irritated sigh. “You calling him that when you know perfectly well what Nathanael’s name is.”
“I like weird,” I countered.
“It’s annoying,” clarified Valeri.
“Iespeciallylike annoying,” I said.
“You don’t fucking say.”
“What I’m not saying,” I said, “is thank you. At the river...you’ve saved my life several times too many now.” I glared at my boots and the grasses that flattened beneath them as we walked. “It’s becoming embarrassing.”
“You’ve never thanked me, either,” Starling pointed out from my left, injecting herself into the conversation in the kind of nosy, attention-attracting way I liked to practice.
“I can’t speak for the little healer,” murmured Velichkov, “but I consider us more than even, Aratorre.” As she began to mutter under her breath that he certainlydidn’tspeak for her, he added, “even if I was required to pull your incorrigible and irritating ass out of the fire ten times over.”
“Only ten?” I asked. “And second question, much less important...why?”
“For putting a smile on Nat’s face,” he said quietly, and that eliminated all of my flippancy. “For accepting him and his whole self, even when I wouldn’t, and letting him be...him. For that, Aratorre, I’ll get you your fucking crown back even if it means burning to death under this God-damned sun.”
I thought about that for a long moment.
“Damn it, Velichkov,” I said. “Now I have to be nice to you.”
*
Chapter Thirty-Five
Parvan’s eyes snapped open, his body lurching instinctively into action only to reach the end of the chain attached to his wrists and be yanked back down. He made a strangled kind of noise, his hands shooting to his bruised throat where a handful of hours earlier someone had had their boot pressed down on it.
“Are you alright?” I asked.
Parvan glanced around, taking in me, the identical chains that secured us both to the floor, and the open-air, barred wagon we’d been travelling south in since he’d been knocked out.
“What…happened?” His voice was hoarse, a crackly, raspy quality to it that reminded me of my sister Mila.
I tried for a grin. “We succeeded in diverting the recruits from the border. They’re too busy escorting us to their king for them to die horrifically in unnecessary inter-continental conflict, so I call that a win.”
Grey, unimpressed eyes stared back at me before flickering around to study more of our surroundings. The sun had dropped below the hills about an hour ago, taking some but not all of the Quarehian heat with it, although the bars of our portable prison cell were still warm against my back. A dozen southern soldiers closely ringed the wagon, with scores more in front and behind, and there were always several pairs of curious or hostile eyes on us at any given time. Martinez wasn’t taking any chances.
I’d half-expected my guard to query the likelihood ofusdying horrifically, but he was far too composed and dull for that.
“A win?” he asked instead, wincing as he dropped his head and felt at the wound on the back of his head. I’d seen the sticky mass of blood knotted in his hair as he lay unconscious, but the chains and shackles that bound our hands and ankles had been purposefully fastened too short to allow us to reach each other.
“You did your job,” I said softly, sensing he needed to hear it. “You protected me.”
But Parvan swallowed, still staring at the men surrounding us and not looking comforted at all. “Apparently not very well, if you’re here.”
“It’s just that…” I began awkwardly, raising my bound hands in surrender when he turned that exasperated look on me again that made me feel about two inches tall. “What was I supposed to do? Let themkill you?”
“If it got you away, Your Highness, yes!”
I snorted. If he thought I’d buy my own freedom at the cost of another’s life, he still had a lot to learn about his new charge.
