Page 56 of The Shattered King

“I’m sorry,” I whispered, and touched his ear, dowsing and soothing all the cracks and breaks I’d missed, cajoling them into place, carefully tying each one. I slipped back into the present. “I’m sorry.”

“Gods, Nym.” He wiped his mouth roughly.

“Don’t be. I should be the one apologizing.

” He cursed again, and the coarseness of his disappointment flattered me.

He’d been in Sten’s care a few days, so there was already a pitcher and a washbasin down here, along with a few other necessities.

I poured him a glass of water. He accepted it with silent thanks and took a mouthful, sloshing it around before spitting it into the fire.

The flames hissed and crackled in protest. He drank the rest.

I sat by him again, smoothing back his hair.

Our intimacy and his closeness warmed me, but on its edges formed beads of frost—worry for the uncarved path ahead of us, for everything we’d known had turned upside down.

And, however I hated to admit it, in remembrance of Ford and how he, particularly, had hurt me.

It would be only a matter of time before the turmoil of Rove reached the rest of the country.

Reached Fount. He would need to gather the lords and their armies, find a new place to headquarter until he could take the capital back—

His hand settled on my thigh, and I thought, yes, all of that and so much more would need to happen.

But it didn’t have to happen tonight. Tonight, I could just be with him, be beside him, because Renn Reshua Noblewight had already claimed my heart—what was left to protect but an empty box with broken chains where it once lay?

Let me have him now, I pleaded to the heavens, and I’ll pay the price tomorrow. Just let me have him now.

“Does Sten have a room for you?” he asked.

I leaned into him. “I don’t know. I came straight down here.”

A heartbeat, then another. “You could stay here, with me.”

Heat built in my core. Frost chilled those edges.

“Just to sleep,” he promised, drawing circles on my knee. “I would never ask more.”

I licked the inside of my lips, still tasting him there. “Never?”

Soft laughter vibrated in his chest. It felt so strange, seeing him in common clothing. Like the gods had gifted me a little sliver of that bonfire daydream, where he was only a farmer’s son. Where he was possible.

I stepped away to change—to shuck off the blood-spattered dress I wore beneath my homespun. The very same dress, I realized, that I’d worn my first day in Rove. The day I met Renn. I left the other soaking in a bucket with the hope that I could somehow salvage it.

The cot was just wide enough for the two of us, and I lay down beside him, curled against his side with the small fire at my back, my brow tucked against his jaw. I rested my open hand on his chest, finding comfort in the rise and fall of it. He set his hand atop mine, holding it there.

Turning his head, he pressed a kiss to my hair. “I love you, Nym.”

It was the third time he’d told me. This time, I believed it.

Shifting, I pressed myself flush to his side, touching my lips to his shoulder in a promise I dared not speak aloud.

There was something about the newness of everything that made it hard to sleep—the new bed, the new walls, the new body beside me.

The knowledge that this wasn’t our forever, not yet, and that so many unknowns lurked on the horizon.

So though I lay comfortably beside the man of my heart, I caught sleep only in snippets, a little here, a little there.

I heard Sten’s weight on the stairs at one point; he came halfway down, paused, then climbed back up.

I dreamed of Fount, awoke. Dreamed of my old room in Rove Castle, awoke.

Took in the shapes of Renn’s profile, memorized his breathing, listened to his heartbeats.

His hand still on mine, I dowsed into him, standing amidst the broken colors of his lumis, wondering if there was a better way to hold him together, to make those horizons a little easier for him, and for us.

I walked around the structures I had made, studying them closely.

Changed directions and circled around the piles of rubble I still hadn’t made sense of, even after seven months.

I picked up a lost piece of him, a navy blue fragment of glass the length of my thumb, edged with violet, and held it in my hand.

Circled the lumis once, twice, three times, never quite sure where it might fit.

Despite all my efforts, all the webbing and links, it still looked so disorganized, like the delicate ornaments were in the process of falling apart, not coming together.

It reminded me of bees.

I thought back to the hive—not the one that had died, but the one still holding on to life, trying desperately to function without a queen, while the attendants continued to probe at their dead ruler, as though enough effort might bring her back to life.

Much like how I probed this lumis. Again and again, day after day, taping and tying things together without ever truly fixing them.

I pulled my hand away, snapping back into reality. Sat up on the cot, half my thoughts still within Renn. Was that it, then? But how could I ... yes, maybe that would work. Maybe it would be enough—

He shifted, hand coming around my arm. “Am I keeping you awake?” he murmured.

I turned to him. “Renn. I think ... I think I know how to help you.”

Sleep lifted from his eyes. He watched me, the blue of his irises intense. Slowly, he sat up. “What?”

“That is ... I don’t think I can cure you, but maybe I can remake you.

Into whatever it is you’re supposed to be.

” I searched his face, not wanting to overstep.

“You’re different, Renn. Your lumis is different from every other lumis I’ve seen.

More broken, and yet more beautiful, like you were meant to be something more.

Something I can’t comprehend. All my fixes are temporary .

.. they don’t hold. It’s why you keep relapsing.

But I have an idea. I think ... I think you need a new queen. ”

His lip quirked up. “Are you proposing to me?”

A dry laugh escaped me. “I mean like bees. Like a hive.”

“You told me I was more like a chandelier.”

I shook my head. “It’s ... it’s hard to explain. I think I know how to do it. But ...”

He tucked an errant curl behind my ear. “But what?”

I let out a long breath. “But it might ... hurt.”

His mask fell in place so I might not peer beyond it.

“I don’t think it will kill you,” I went on.

“The way you were when we first met ... your lumis was in pieces. Only pieces, and yet still you lived. Even then, there was something different about you. Anyone else ... You shouldn’t have lived, Renn.

Whatever hurt you ... you shouldn’t have lived, and yet you did.

What I want to do, I don’t think it will kill you.

I’ll know. The death lines will tell me, and I’ll stop before anything like that happens.

But it will take me a while, and it might hurt. ”

He considered this. Peered into the dying fire, then at me.

My breath caught as he leaned forward, the need for sleep evaporating as his lips touched mine, soft and meek and tenuous.

His touch sent shivers down my throat and built heat in my chest. Too soon he pulled back, looking at me like some long-lost treasure.

“I trust you, Nym,” he whispered. “It would not be suffering if done by your hands. But we should tell Sten.”

I searched his face, and when I saw no hesitance there, I nodded, then slipped away to rouse the loyal guard, careful not to alert his slumbering mother. Unsure, he came down to the basement to speak to Renn himself.

“If she can do it,” Renn explained, “she should do it now. There’s so much more ahead of us. I can’t”—his voice caught—“I can’t be a weak king.”

Sten accepted this in his usual stoic way, but before heading upstairs to guard the door, he said, “Try not to scream.”

“Oh gods,” I whispered.

Renn fished through his few belongings to find a clean handkerchief, which he knotted into a gag. “Just in case.”

I shivered. “That’s not funny.”

“I wasn’t trying to be.” He lay back down on the cot. “Come. Might as well be comfortable.”

“ If anyone can ”—Ursa made herself known—“ it’s you, Nym. ”

I climbed onto the cot beside him. Renn turned to face me, looping one of his legs with mine. I settled in, strengthened by his closeness. Touched him under his jaw with both hands, as though I might pull him down to kiss me again.

Instead, I let my gaze unfocus and stepped into his lumis.

And tore down the whole of it.