Page 62 of Four Ruined Realms (The Broken Blades #2)

Royo

The Northern Pass, Khitan

Day breaks over the snowy horizon, and Aeri is still asleep on my chest. She passed out not long after we got into this sleigh, dead tired from traveling so much. We didn’t get a lot of sleep at the traveler’s inn or the night under the stars. I’m tired, too, but I’ve also never been more awake.

Okay, she’s not exhausted just because we’ve been traveling. I’ve never felt the kind of bottomless hunger for someone the way I do for her. And I’ve never felt needed the way she needs me.

Aeri looks so sweet in sleep, her breathing soft, but I know what she looks like when she wants me a second and a third time in a night. When she arches back in pleasure. When she clings to me like a vine, shaking and moaning.

Sora glances over at her and then at me. She smiles to herself.

“What?” I ask.

“Oh, nothing.” She grins, shrugging her shoulders. I guess everybody can tell.

I can’t help it—my face breaks into a smile. Sora raises her eyebrows. I don’t think she’s seen me smile more than once since we met. It feels weird on my face, too, but I’m getting used to it.

“You both deserve to be happy,” Sora says.

“Do we?”

Aeri does. But I don’t know if I deserve this—from how good it feels to have her asleep on me to the crackling energy inside my chest. Do I deserve for the sky to seem brighter, the food tastier, the ale colder? I’ve hurt, and I’ve maimed, and I’ve killed for coin. I failed the one girl who relied on me and her father who was kind to me. I think most people would say I don’t deserve shit.

Fear beats in my temples, and my past screams that this won’t last. That I’m only kidding myself. I don’t deserve no one good. I will fuck up again and lose this, lose her forever, because in the end, I don’t deserve to be happy. And then it will be like Lora all over again, and I’ll wish that I’d never met Aeri. I’ll regret our time together because of the lifetime of hurt that follows.

My palms get clammy, and I rub them on my pants. I haven’t been scared like this in my life.

Sora looks at me, tilting her head thoughtfully. “Maybe ‘deserve’ is the wrong word, because that makes it seem like love is a reward. And it’s not.”

“It isn’t?”

“We don’t deserve love any more than we deserve air. It’s just something we need.”

My throat feels dry, and it’s not the cold air from the sleigh. I swallow hard. “But what if it stops?”

She shrugs. “I don’t know. I’ve never stopped.”

That’s right. She had a lover she lost a while ago. She don’t talk about them much, but Seok killed them.

“How do you do it?” I ask.

“Do what?”

“Live. What makes you keep going without them?”

She stares into my eyes, and her expression changes, hardens. “Vengeance. Settling the score is what I have left. I can’t and won’t stop until I get it.”

Sora is real pretty, but something about her face puts a blade of fear deep in my spine.

Ten Hells, these broads are terrifying. And we’re supposed to meet a queen who makes King Joon run for cover.

I glance down at Aeri, wondering how she’s Baejkin. How she can be related to a man who hunted people for fun or a king who said he’d torture the people we love if we don’t bring him the ring? How is she related to her uncle, who was hurting little girls and who they thought murdered her? Did they all start off like Aeri—sweet, loving, and caring? Or is she different from them?

I settle on her being different. She’s gotta be. But who was the bird thing calling the Son of Vengeance? Me? What does that even mean? So much was going on that I didn’t even think to ask.

Aeri wakes up as I’m staring at her. She smiles brightly, still unnaturally happy the second she opens her eyes.

“Good morning, Royo,” she says. “Ugh, sorry I drooled on you. That’s so unattractive.”

She scrunches her face as she wipes at my jacket. I couldn’t care less.

She looks around. “We’re almost there, aren’t we?”

I nod. The snow is changing over to freezing rain as we come closer to Quu.

“Sora, are you sure this is going to work?” she asks. “I mean…telling the queen about the king’s plan to get her on board?”

Sora stares ahead. “It has to. Especially with war coming.” Then she looks at Aeri. “But remember what I said about the crown and who is fit to rule.”

Aeri looks down, fiddling with the hem of her jacket. Her nervous habit. But what’s she nervous about?

“We’re going to bathe and change, right?” she asks. “Before we see the queen?”

Sora leans forward and says something in Khitanese to the woman driving. I still don’t really get who this Gambria woman is or how she’s involved in all this, but Sora nods and sits back. “Yes, we’ll stop at a traveler’s inn before we go to the palace.”

“She wants to change her outfit?” Euyn asks over his shoulder.

“And is that foolish?” Sora replies. “It’s a royal reception. You should as well.”

He turns to face forward, his shoulders stiff.

I don’t know what happened with the three of them while we were getting the egg. I don’t get why they failed—it doesn’t seem like Mikail could fail. But something’s different with Euyn. And most of all with Sora.

I can’t shake the feeling that none of us should be trusting Mikail. He didn’t betray us before, but that doesn’t mean he won’t now.

Oligarch Mountain lies in the distance, looming like a beacon of hope…or a cirena of death. I just wish I knew which one.