Page 55 of The Shattered King

I laid my hand over his—the one that cradled my cheek. “Someone in the city told me Princess Eden was taken captive. She’s alive, too.” For now , but I didn’t want to put qualifiers on it. I didn’t want to cause him more pain.

Exhaling, he leaned his forehead against mine. Said nothing. It hurt too much to speculate what might become of her. What might become of Cansere, and us.

We stayed there like that, sharing the pained silence. I rolled my lips together, wishing I could take this hurt from him the way I could ease his physical pains. I unclasped my cloak and let it pool at my feet. “I haven’t finished,” I finally offered. “I can finish—”

“They had to have come from the sea. Forced their boats through the stormy waters. All our eyes looked north, not south.” He pulled back.

Both hands gripped the cot now. “Armies always strike at dawn, for the light. But the Sestans didn’t.

No one thought they’d come in the middle of winter.

Nicosia let us think we had time. We weren’t ready. ”

“I know.”

“We fought them through the tunnel.” He stared downward, toward my cloak. “We fought them the entire gods-damned time. If I had more training ... we would have been quicker. But we weren’t quick enough. We had to fight our way through it. That’s how I—”

He touched his thigh softly, then pressed his thumb into it. A soft, sad chuckle came up his throat. “I guess you took care of that, didn’t you?”

I blinked away tears. “I did.”

“I should have kept it,” he whispered. “To remember.” But he shook himself. “Ard pushed them back so we could get a head start. He hasn’t—”

“Renn.” I clasped his hands so tightly my knuckles threatened to split the skin over them. “Renn, Ard is dead.”

He jolted like I’d pressed a needle to the small of his back.

“I found him. I didn’t have time to ...” I sucked in a deep breath, smoothing emotion from my voice as much as I could. “I think they ... interrogated him. Not mindreaders, but other soldiers. I don’t think he told them, but he told me. With his last breath he told me where you were.”

“Oh, Ard,” Renn whispered, and a tear fell from the corner of his eye.

I wiped it away with my thumb. “I’m so sorry, Renn. He ... he was so loyal to you. His is a special place with the gods.”

“He did his duty ’til his last.” He laughed even as two more tears fell. “I had suspected ... Sten said we should expect the worst.” He pulled in a shaky breath. “Sten ... does he know?”

I leaned into the edge of the cot. “I haven’t had the chance to tell him. He brought me straight to you.”

Renn’s shoulders slackened. “I see.”

I told him about the refugees, the tent city, the stragglers within Rove, the pyre. How I found Kari and eventually Ard, then him.

“One blessing your mother’s sequestration gave me, I suppose,” I offered, voice creaking. “No one recognized me. I don’t think anyone would think to follow me here, and Sten ensured I arrived after dark.”

“After dark,” he repeated, searching for the window, seeing only the blanket there. “What day is it?”

It took me a moment to recall, myself. “The fourteenth of January.”

He wiped a hand down his face. “I haven’t been well.

So much of the journey here is a blur. But I’m glad .

.. I am so relieved to see you.” He reached out and touched my hair.

“I was so afraid I’d never see you again.

Even when you left for Fount, I feared you wouldn’t come back.

I sent you in the middle of Rolys’s god-damned winter. ”

A soft chuckle cracked up my throat.

He searched my face. “Your family?”

“They’re fine, Renn. They’re fine.” I clasped both my hands over his. “But yours ... Oh, Renn.”

His eyes shimmered, and a sad smile turned his lips. “I guess we’re the same, now.”

I hadn’t thought of it that way. Both parents and a sibling, dead in one foul stroke. “I wish we weren’t. I wish you didn’t have to suffer this.”

“It feels ... old, now,” he confessed.

“I suppose it’s only been, what, five days?

And yet it feels like five years. Ten, even.

We fell so effortlessly ... it’s haunted my every step, my every breath, my every nightmare.

” He shuddered. “But Eden ... They must treat her well. She is too ... too good not to be treated well. Even the cold heart of Adoel Nicosia will see that.”

I nodded, only because I wanted him to believe it, and I wanted to believe it, too.

He chuckled, new tears coming to his eyes. “Am I terrible, to be happy right now? To see you alive and well and here?”

My own eyes burned. “Ursa told me, after our parents died ... after she died ... that it isn’t a sin to be glad.

It isn’t wrong to take medicine when sick, and it isn’t wrong to find joy in mourning.

I am so, so remarkably glad I found you.

” I blinked a few times to keep my eyes dry.

“I had worried you were lost to me forever.”

There was no voice behind the words, only airy whispers.

He tugged gently on my hand, encouraging me to sit beside him on the cot. My toes just barely brushed the stone floor when I did.

He sighed. “Everything is different now. Every morning I’ll have to remind myself of that.

Everything is different. This isn’t something that will pass.

This is our new course.” He ran his thumb over my knuckles.

“And every time I’ve remembered they’re dead—” His voice hitched, and he took a moment to control it.

“Every time I thought, maybe you’ll win her, now.

Maybe, on this new path, she’ll see the man and not the crown. ”

He might as well have punched a hole through my chest. “Renn ... no .”

A sad smile pinched his mouth. “So you always say.”

I shook my head. “Don’t you see? You are still a Noblewight. This isn’t over yet. Sesta may parade itself through our borders, but this is your land, your people.”

He looked so tired. “I know.”

I searched his eyes, back and forth, back and forth. “You’re no longer a prince , Renn. Eden is gone, and unmarried besides.” Unmarried women couldn’t claim the throne in Cansere. “You’re a king . The king of Cansere.”

His expression softened. “I know.”

“Do you?” I protested. “Do you realize what that means, what lies ahead of you, what the future might—”

His gaze had grown so sad, so desperate, I could not finish my own sentence. My tongue grew thick and knotted in my mouth. I felt his sorrow stir within me, like my heart was a mirror to his.

“Nym,” he whispered. Pleaded. He lifted one hand and, so delicately I barely felt it, brushed a curl from my cheek. “I know I’ve asked so much of you. Taken so much. But please ... give me one day. One hour. One minute to be someone else before the kingdom dictates my future.”

His words, his voice, his touch made my very soul crack. My walls fell just as Rove Castle’s had, though in truth, he’d ruined their foundations some time ago.

My defenses gone, I surrendered mind, body, and soul.

I leaned toward him, and the room faded away.

The merest brushing of lips burned like a full summer sun.

His breath caught, but his mouth fluttered over mine, warm and soft, sending a shock through my jaw and neck sharp as a brand.

His scent of pinewood and honeysuckle danced through my senses, erasing the total of who I was.

I crystallized beneath his touch, beneath the soft press of him as he carefully, prudently, layered his lips over mine in a kiss so meek and perfect a bard would weep to sing of it.

We lingered there only a moment before I pulled away.

Our noses hovered a handbreadth apart. Every inch of me seemed to tremble, straddling the delicate, narrow space between reality and dream.

Sorrow and want softened his features. I felt it spiral through the air between us like an oncoming storm.

“I would shift the seas for you,” he whispered, tracing the shell of my ear. “I would let the gods shatter me every noon and midnight. I would worship you until my last breath.”

Tears brimmed my vision. “You owe me no promises.”

He shook his head. “I would give you every oath, Nym.”

My heart shattered into a thousand glass pieces, cracking and breaking the crystalline hold he had on me, making me human again. Fallible, capricious, impulsive.

I didn’t want to just survive anymore.

I closed the distance between us and pressed my mouth to his again, grasping at his shirt, his shoulders, to pull him closer.

I startled him for only a beat before he met my fervor with his own, leaning into me, coiling an arm around my waist. I tilted my head to take more of him, to taste his sweet and his sorrow.

I poured into him my aches, my brokenness, my hope.

Coaxed his lips apart, and the heat of him zapped through me, a loop of lightning from crown to soles and back again.

I breathed him in, claiming him, our closeness fueling the fervor but still not enough, not enough.

I released his shoulders and dug my fingers into his beautiful hair, thick and soft as silk, guiding him where I wanted him, tracing his mouth with my tongue, coaxing him to me until his own plunged with mine, dancing and dueling and desperate.

We battled with our want, bruising and tender, wild and gentle.

He was the widest sky and the deepest sea, and I wanted nothing more than to lose myself in him—

He wrenched away suddenly, turning bodily from me as a cough rang up his windpipe.

He covered his mouth with his elbow, but blood still hit the floor, drip, drip, drip .

He caught his breath just enough to curse before he coughed again, leaving me fumbling for a handkerchief.

I found a towel on a nearby crate and handed that to him instead, though by then his lungs had settled.

He breathed hard, a slight rasp as his chest moved.