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“Am I interrupting something?” Numair asks, leaning on the doorframe with no intention of leaving.

“No,” I blurt out.

“Yes,” Valdus says at the same time, and cocks an eyebrow at me.

“While you decide which one it is, I’ll be in the kitchen,” Numair says. “I come bearing gifts.”

As soon as Numair disappears through the door, I untangle myself from Valdus’s arms.

“Since when did you become the reasonable one?” he asks.

I chuckle, picking up my swords from the ground and strapping them to my belt. “Probably around the same time you’ve made it clear there could never be anything between us.”

Valdus catches my hand before I can walk back into the kitchen.

“I couldn’t have been more stupid,” he says, drawing circles on the back of my hand, unfurling all the desire I tucked deep down.

He pulls a folded piece of paper out of his trousers. With no crinkle or tear on it, it’s the drawing I once made.

“I couldn’t think of a world where someone like you could have found anything about me anywhere close to attractive, and I reacted poorly.” I bite my lip, desperately searching for anything smart to say, but when his icy fingers free it from my teeth, any sane thought leaves my mind. Valdus’s gravelly voice is the only thing that still matters. “I was battling against the way you’ve made feel every time we’ve found ourselves in the same room, but that doesn’t excuse the things I’ve said.”

I slide the drawing back into the pocket of his trousers. “I might know very little of this desert, but I know this. No matter how many bad things my father attributes to you, you are not a ruthless king, but a kind one.”

Valdus pulls me in for another kiss of liquid heat, and for a moment I forget about everything else. When he pulls away, I have trouble catching my breath.

“Just so you know,” he says, “this is what you’ll be missing while we go talk to Numair and his pressing matters.”

I open my mouth to answer, but Valdus disappears through the door, and I’m left scrambling for a clear thought. When I walk into the kitchen, Numair is unwrapping an apple pie, and Valdus walks down the stairs still buttoning a fresh shirt the color of coal black.

“Who baked this?” I ask.

“Ain’t telling you. You won’t eat it.”

I pick the dish up and sniff it. “It’s not you, is it?”

“I’m touched by the trust you put in me, Rebel Princess.”

“Mylena?” Valdus asks, filling three cups with tea.

Numair nods.

“Why?” I ask. “She made it clear she didn’t appreciate my presence.”

“You leave tomorrow, and she would hate it if you would still be on bad terms when you die.” I throw Numair a dark glare, and he lifts his hands in the air. “Her words, not mine.”

As Numair and Valdus launch themselves into a deep discussion over the upcoming trip, my stomach twists with worry and fear, and even if I wanted to please Mylena, I can’t force myself to swallow more than a few bites.

When stars dot the sky and Priya and Izod show up on our doorstep, I know there is no going back. For better or worse, tomorrow we leave The Broken Sands forever.

37

Idrop the backpack on the table with a thump. Numair, Priya, and Izod are yet to wake up, and it’s only me and Valdus in the kitchen, packing pouches with food inside our bags. Stuffing another one deep inside my backpack, my fingers brush something cold and I take out a revolver. A simple gun, it has a symbol of a rising sun carved into the stone grip of polished black onyx and white wisps swirling through it like drifting smoke.

“I thought we agreed I wouldn’t be using one of these.”

“If anything happens, I want you to have everything and anything at your disposal,” Valdus says. “It’s loaded.” He wraps his fingers over mine, the grip of the revolver a blazing contrast to the cold of his metal skin. “If you pull that trigger, I want you to be sure there is no other way.”

I nod and drop the holstered gun back into the backpack just as Numair walks down the stairs from the room that was once Inara’s. Priya and Izod follow soon after, each one still yawning. With a few words of courage exchanged, we leave the house with our futures hidden behind scarves of faded colors.