Page 46

L achlan and Agatha had not been in the hall when we emerged, and I thanked the bloody Gods.

My wine-hued gown was wrinkled from lying in a heap on the floor all night.

My hair was wild and loose down my back, and the severing draught in my pocket bumped against my thigh as I hurried along beside Theodore.

We reached the stairs that led down into the entry hall. “I should walk behind you.” Theodore stopped hard, affronted. “I’m worried enough about the empress seeing me trail you, never mind me walking at your side. I have a feeling about her… I think she knows who I am.”

His brow quirked. “Why would you think that?”

“I’ll tell you everything when the ritual is over.” I gestured toward the stairs. “After you.”

With the Great Gods’ statues looming overhead, and a deprecating look on his face, he started down the stairs.

I kept ten paces behind. The sounds of the palace rose up around us.

There were bustling servants and trooping soldiers and courtiers draped in jewels and finery.

They moved about the hall in lovely bunches that reminded me of spring bouquets.

Theodore reached the bottom of the stairs and lingered, looking up at me with scintillant eyes.

I shook my head at him. “This defeats the purpose.”

“I don’t want you behind me,” he said, in a low and too-fond voice. “I want you at my side.” Some kingly defiance straightened his spine. It told me he would not be bent by rules that displeased him. He would not be ordered to give me up by a council that he himself had appointed.

I blew out a resigned breath and his gaze fell longingly to my lips.

“You’re very beautiful.” His voice was a quiet rumble.

“You’re very foolish.” I glanced around us, remembering Lachlan’s warning to be discreet, then tried to smooth the deep creases in my skirt. “I look like I’ve been scooped up from the wildlands.”

He nodded his agreement. “Even so.” He tucked my hand into the crook of his arm.

“It’s best to keep you like this, I think,” he said, as he led us toward the door to the garden.

His gaze smoldered as it skipped over my hair, my mouth, the scoop of my neckline.

“If I am made a fool by you like this, I’d be incapacitated to see you dressed as you should be. ”

His attention forced a smile to my lips. “And how should I be dressed?”

“In a crown.” He held the door open and looked down at me. “Made with stones the color of honey to match your eyes.”

My heart quickened, even as I realized I did not want to be a queen. I did not want the neck-breaking weight of a crown—not as my father’s heir, nor my mother’s. I wanted to tuck far away from councils and wars and frivolity for something still and quiet and safe.

But perhaps, in another place and time, at Theodore’s side, I could bear it.

A cool mist swirled over the garden, dampening the bright blooms. It turned the paver stones slick beneath my slippers.

A short path led us to a run of wooden stairs that dropped straight to the socked-in beach.

Lachlan and Agatha stood away from the waves, speaking closely with Eftan.

The chancellor looked particularly dour this morning, his hands clasped behind his back in balled-up fists.

When he saw me on Theodore’s arm, his mood somehow darkened further, but Agatha’s eyes lit up.

She rushed to my side and took my hand, tugging me closer to the water.

A small group of robed Obelian women huddled off to the side, preparing for their ceremony.

“I’m so sorry.” Agatha held my hand tight.

“I tore into Lachlan for barging in on you two like that. I’ll never forgive him for suggesting the council vote on your severance.

” She stared out at the cresting waves, her look sober and dark.

“You can’t let Lachlan decide for you. You have to make your own choice. ”

I watched the water too. I could feel it breathe and pulse, a mirror of my own body’s rhythms. I guessed it was a mirror to Eusia’s too, wherever her split, decrepit carcass might be.

“I understand Lachlan’s frustrations,” I said.

“And the weight all this has put on him. Please, don’t let it topple what you two are trying to rebuild. ”

She let go of my hand and scoffed. “It’s already toppled.

” Her gaze was vacuous as she peered at him across the sand.

“No. That gives the impression that it can be rebuilt yet again. It’s a heap of ash that sits between us, I think.

” A gust tousled her curls, and she brushed them back with a sad smile on her lips.

“We were a long time apart. We used to be complementary shapes, but now we don’t quite fit. ”

An indescribable sorrow overtook me. “But you still love him?”

“Yes. I love him.” She swiped quickly at her cheek, at the tear she’d let slip her guard. She looped her arm through mine and squeezed. “That’s the worst of it.”

“Then keep trying.” I wasn’t sure if it was sound advice or not, but I wanted her to have what I couldn’t. “Perhaps you’re trying to make things look the way they used to, but you are different people now. You need time to relearn, to explore what you have each become.”

Agatha looked at me with teary, blinking eyes. “All right.” She gave me a grateful half smile and I could see a prickling of hope in her look. “That’s enough of that.”

I peeked over my shoulder to see if the ceremony was to begin, but the Obelians still rifled through an array of small wooden boxes.

My breath hitched when I realized one of the women among them was Princess Halla.

She and the two others, her ladies-in-waiting, wore identical robes in a light, fleshy pink.

Halla’s pale hair hung straight and unadorned, slipping around her shoulders in the breeze.

Her angular cheeks were without any rouge, and her lips lacked their usual petal-pink coloring too.

When she turned, I stifled a jolt. From her neck to her hem hung a deep red sash the precise color of blood.

The effect was so stark, so jarring, that I had to fight to smooth my features.

I could only think of the empress’s story of the night the Nels had been slain.

Sliced open from nape to groin, bowels spilling to the rug, no doubt by one of King Nemea’s men.

All so that he might snatch some jewels.

It had the mark of him—of his contemptible, craven scheming.

I leaned toward Agatha. “Where is the empress?”

She gave me a troubled look. “She told Lachlan she refused to speak to or be around the king until he apologized for slighting her daughter last night.”

“Fucking Gods.”

One of the ladies took a tapered crystal stake from a wooden box.

It was smooth, flawlessly clear, and its point was terrifyingly sharp.

Upon inspecting it, Princess Halla turned to face the small group of us that had gathered on the beach.

When her eyes landed on me, they went wide.

“Lady Imogen, what a surprise to see you here.”

I dipped into a curtsy as her blue gaze darted over my rumpled dress, then up to my unsecured, waving hair. I wore no jewels save the spinel on my finger, no color on my face. I looked like I’d risen directly from a fitful sleep.

Halla sent her attention over the beach once more and said, quietly, sternly, “I’d like a word.”

I squeezed Agatha’s hand from nerves. “Of course, Your Highness.”

The princess started down the beach in a stroll, her arms clasped before her, head bowed.

The sand and the water and the sky were all a melding shade of cloudy gray.

I couldn’t walk much farther, and stopped just as the bond in my stomach began to twist with discomfort.

“Your Highness, what would you like to speak of?”

She stopped and spun. “Do you know what the ritual I’m about to perform is for?”

“I was told it was for a blessing.” I kept my voice even. My face still. “For your forthcoming wedding. And the war.”

“Yes, that’s correct,” she said, in her lilting way. “I expect you can understand why I would want such a thing.”

My brow creased. “Of course.”

Halla stepped closer, her white hair pulled back from the breeze, her death-pale face pinched. “Then you will not interfere. I have been tasked with a job here, and I believe that your presence, and the… ample time you spend with the king, will prevent me from accomplishing it.”

I held her stare, unable to determine if that job was simply to make an heir, or if it was something more sinister, but both prospects made my insides churn. “What is the job you are here to do?”

Her brows lowered. Her soft words came clipped. “That question is out of line—”

I spoke on undeterred. “I know you have lost favor with your mother, Halla. You have done something to make her pass you over as her heir. I expect you want desperately to find her favor again, but I do not trust her, and by proxy I do not trust you. I need to know if you intend to hurt Theodore or his kingdom to get back in her good graces.”

I waited for fury, for her to rail over my defamation, but she only looked at me with welling tears. Her silence stretched.

“Answer me truthfully,” I said over my thundering heart.

“I have no intention of hurting him.” She blinked her tears away and looked out at the roiling gray waves. “I just need to give my mother a grandchild.”

There was no comfort in knowing that I would leave both Theodore and Halla to do their duty in providing their people an heir.

I should aspire to it as well. To carry on a line, a kingdom, but I could find no purpose in it.

No fulfillment or joy. I could not fathom such a thing in a world where I had no safety, no home.

I could not fathom carrying on Nemea’s line.

The prospect smarted like a beating switch.