Page 8

CHAPTER 8

L aena was too exhausted and sore to overthink the fact that she was back in Callum Farrow’s guest chamber, seated by his fire as the palace physician administered treatment. Though the way the captain loomed over the proceedings, it was as if he suspected the physician of sending the assassin.

The physician was a man Laena didn’t know. Physician Gale, who’d served her family since her birth, must have retired. She would not have minded seeing the man again. But his replacement was businesslike and gentle, his movements deft as he examined her injuries. He administered cool cloths to her head and neck as well as ointment to her healing cut.

“No intense exertions for the next few days,” he said. “A precaution only, you’re perfectly fine. But do watch that cut for signs of infection.”

Laena nodded, too tired to ask whether ‘intense exertions’ included traveling to far-flung lands. She would be on a ship. How intense could it possibly be?

The food arrived as the physician took his leave. A servant wheeled in an overflowing cart. Laena didn’t know the servant either, which was something of a surprise. She’d always made a point to know everyone, by face at the very least. Many stayed in the palace throughout their careers. It seemed Kat had replaced much of the palace staff. Or perhaps Declan had.

It would be like them—to ensure loyalty by hiring new workers. Laena hoped they had at least arranged new employment for the others, if that was the case; it was hardly their fault they’d worked here when Laena had been heir to the throne.

Captain Farrow shooed the servant away, inspecting the tray of food with a glare she would have expected him to reserve for the most heinous of lawbreakers. Then again, judging by the looks he’d leveled at Kat and Declan back in the queen’s sitting room, the man had a whole library of such looks to choose from.

“Any assassins hiding in the pudding?” Laena started to rise from her chair. If she went much longer without eating, especially with the scent of freshly baked bread and savory meat overwhelming her senses, she’d be forced to shove the man bodily out of the way. Though she doubted she was capable of budging him, even if she threw her entire body weight at him.

Farrow grunted as he wheeled the cart over to her, motioning for her to remain seated. “One can never be too certain.”

By the mages, she couldn’t tell whether or not the man was making a joke. But when he pushed the food closer, she found she didn’t much care. They’d brought heaping platters of tenderly roasted meat and crisped vegetables shining with oil, mashed potatoes and cheeses and every kind of sauce she could imagine. There was fruit she hadn’t beheld in five years—tangy citrus from the southern islands and the reddest grapes she’d ever seen—as well as a dish of ruby-red apples. The bread alone made her want to weep.

On the corner of the cart was a small plate set with four chocolate cookies. Rolled into balls, they required no baking, only a night spent in the icebox. She’d learned to make them herself as a child, before she’d understood how much it cost to import chocolate from overseas. Her mother had always reserved them for special occasions.

The guards, physicians, and servants might be new. But someone in the kitchen remembered Laena’s favorite. The thought brought stinging tears to her eyes, which she blinked away before they could fall and embarrass her.

“They brought the dinner quickly,” she commented, grabbing for a piece of bread. She was tired and shaky after the drama of the day, and the long journey. No call for tears, especially where Callum Farrow could see. “They must be frightened of you.”

Or they wanted to get a better look at him. Who could blame them?

He splayed one hand across his chest, eyebrows lifting as if in surprise. “Of me? But why?”

Now she knew he was making a joke. “No one told me you were funny.”

“I’m not. I’m frightening.” He knelt beside her chair, brow creased as he inspected her bruises once again. It was all too easy to remember how he’d looked without his shirt, and she found her gaze drifting toward his chest. Chastising herself, she took the opportunity to study his face instead: the rugged cut of his jaw, the crooked tilt of his nose that suggested he’d endured at least one break. Perhaps more. A scar traced up from the corner of his eyebrow to his hairline, light enough that she would not have noticed it at a greater distance.

And those eyes, the ice-chip blue contrasted against the black of his hair. She’d never before seen such a combination.

“I take it you don’t trust my sister’s physician?” Laena had meant for the words to sound light and airy; instead, they sounded shaky, at least to her own ears. While she knew the palace physician was trustworthy, it was telling that Captain Farrow, a stranger to Etra, had already seen enough to make him suspicious of both the food and the quality of the medical care.

A foreign captain was taking more interest in protecting her than her own family. It shouldn’t sting, not anymore, but Kat was all she had left. She had reason to wish they would one day mend the rift between them and live as sisters again. Perhaps they’d never been particularly close, yet Laena couldn’t help wishing for it. If it was a fool’s hope, then it was better than not hoping at all.

Farrow lifted his hand, moving her hair aside, and carefully ran his fingers over the bump on the back of her head. His touch was gentle, and she found herself longing to lean into it. “After that display in her lacy little parlor?” he said. “I don’t trust her, or anyone she employs.”

His attention lingered on the cut, long enough that she thought he might ask about it. Instead, his gaze dropped briefly to her lips—so briefly that she might have imagined it—before he wrenched it away and stood, making his way to the other chair.

Laena swallowed, missing the feel of his fingers in her hair. She took a large bite of bread to cover her discomfort. “Mages, I missed palace bread. Nothing I bake is ever this good.” When he didn’t respond, she finished her bite and began heaping food onto a plate. “It’s all right. The physician. Kat wouldn’t hurt me.”

His eyes flashed, like a storm brewing on a distant horizon. “She wouldn’t help much, either.”

Laena shrugged. No use denying it. Though truly, he had no reason to defend her. Part of her felt as if she ought to dress him down, to make it clear that she was capable of fighting her own battles. She had defeated that assassin herself—not to mention a shadow monster, though she could hardly tell him about that part. In comparison, her sister was an easy opponent.

At least, she ought to be .

“You came here alone,” Farrow said.

As opposed to what? She couldn’t read him, wasn’t sure what he meant to imply. Laena slathered butter onto a second slice of bread. “As you see, Captain Farrow.”

He waved away the title with a flick of his hand. “Everyone calls me Callum.”

“Even your soldiers?”

“That would be inappropriate.”

“So not everyone.”

She could hear herself teasing him and couldn’t stop herself from doing it. This man was the captain of the Aglyean King’s Guard. He was famed for his ruthlessness, his cunning ability to hunt down any foe, and yet she found herself wishing she could lighten his burden, smooth out the crease between his eyes. Perhaps even make him smile.

The man before her somehow fulfilled that reputation and also defied it.

And why shouldn’t he? People were not the same as their reputations. She should know that better than anyone. Still, it was difficult to reconcile the man before her with the killer she’d heard of.

She couldn’t help but be all too aware of the intimacy of their situation. Them sitting together in his chamber, the bed not six feet away, the memory of his bare chest seared into her mind.

“Everyone who is not a soldier calls me Callum,” he amended. The corner of his mouth hooked upward, ever so slightly, and it was suddenly all too easy to imagine that mouth pressed to hers. And pressed… elsewhere. “Are you a soldier, my lady?”

She raised an eyebrow, grasping for her equanimity. “No. And I’m not a lady, either.”

He did not acknowledge the reminder. She wondered if he even accepted it. While it was true that she had never been formally stripped of her titles, and that she was still officially an Etran princess, she was now a commoner in every way that mattered.

Callum leaned an elbow on the arm of the chair, watching her intently. “And did you expect such a reception from your own sister when you decided to return here?”

How was she supposed to respond to that question? Yes, actually I’m used to the disdain of my family and the people I was once responsible for? In fact, I came here to enjoy a helping of hostility, with a side of almost dying.

What had she expected, truly? That Kat would welcome her arrival with open arms, thrilled to see her accepting the role of emissary after all? That she’d throw a ball in Laena’s honor, receive her like some long-lost princess returned to the loving bosom of her family once more?

Perhaps not. But she’d expected a guest room, at the very least. Kat had been the one to come to her after all, not the other way around.

Still. It was not an appropriate question, and he damn well knew it. Callum could act as rough and tumble as he liked, but he’d grown up in his own palace, and he’d been chosen to lead this delegation. He knew how to speak properly, or King Hawk would not have sent him.

She regarded him coolly. “Do you interrogate all members of foreign royal families you meet, or am I receiving special treatment?”

“It might surprise you to learn that I meet very few foreign royal families. This is merely how I make conversation.”

“With those manners, it doesn’t surprise me at all that you meet very few royals.”

“If your family is any indication of the norm, then I count it a very great blessing.”

Oh, her family was anything but the norm. Laena looked at her hands. It should be gratifying, to see him reading Kat’s abhorrent behavior so thoroughly. That someone on the outside found it unacceptable. After so many years on her own, and the hatred of the villagers chipping away at what was left of her confidence, it surprised her more deeply than she would have expected.

“I was prepared for a cold reception,” she said. She might as well answer the question. “But I admit I did not expect it would be this cold.”

“You expected a cold reception, yet you journeyed here anyway. Why?”

It was easy to imagine him questioning a suspected magic user, rather than the sister of a foreign queen. She might put him off with a deflection or a lie, but he would learn the truth when she joined the traveling party at dawn. “I am to be the emissary to Aglye.”

The subtle stiffening of his posture was the only indication of his surprise. “Ah.” He paused, jaw ticking with an unspoken question. He looked into the fire while she stuffed another bite into her mouth, stifling a moan at the way the roast practically melted on her tongue. She’d save the precious dolloped cookies for last.

He cleared his throat. “What about your… you are free to be away from your own lands? For so long?”

Ah. He wanted to ask her about Ben. She could practically feel it in the air, the famed stablehand’s existence hanging between them like a wall, even if he did not know her lover’s name. Although he was rough in every way, the words did not leave his mouth.

Best to let him believe Ben was still in her life.

“I am,” she said.

He pressed a fingertip to his bottom lip. “Forgive my surprise. It’s only that…”

“That judging by my sister’s response to the fact that I was almost murdered, it’s surprising she would trust me with such a task?”

He inclined his head, ever so slightly.

Laena sighed. “I lost a negotiation.”

It didn’t answer his question, but he didn’t press. He hadn’t filled his glass again, though his gaze often strayed toward the bottle he’d left on the sideboard.

When she finished eating, she let her hands fall into her lap. She wanted to ask the obvious question, for no one had returned to escort her to a new room. Somehow, though, she didn’t think he would object to her staying.

It was embarrassing, truth be told. She would not have allowed such treatment for any guest, let alone the leader of an important delegation. Kat should have rushed to prepare her a room, to serve her dinner there.

But Laena could not find it in herself to regret her sister’s actions. Not when it allowed her a chance to speak with him. Merely because she was curious, of course. Interested in who he really was.

“You know,” she said, “nothing about your reputation suggests you’d be like this.”

Callum regarded her, head cocked to the side, as if he could not begin to guess what she meant. “What, handsome? Rough around the edges but in a charming sort of way?”

He was those things, and they did surprise her. Or at least the charm surprised her.

“No,” she replied. “ Nice .”

He blinked. “Nice?”

She nodded. “Nice.”

He stared at her, lips parted, like he wasn’t sure if he should take it as a joke. “I don’t suspect any heart-tithers would say the same.”

And with that, he dowsed the entire conversation with a bucket of chilly water. Not the welcome frost of her own growing power, but the tugging sensation of a tide beneath beautiful waters, lurking and ready to pull her under.

He might be handsome, and he might be charming—enough that she’d certainly been flirting with him—but it would be a mistake to forget who Callum Farrow was. A scourge upon magic users, the demon in the dark who hunted them down and dragged them from their homes.

Heart-tithers, yes. But she would be a fool to imagine he wouldn’t apply the same tactics on anyone he found practicing magic.

The warmth that had been building in Laena’s stomach went cold. “You are that harsh toward magic users, then?”

He stared at her, as if confused. “Naturally.”

“You would kill them all, given the chance.” It wasn’t a question.

He sat forward in his chair, eyes intent on hers. “Whatever my reputation may tell you, I’m no executioner.” His voice was soft but intense. “I arrest those who break the law. I don’t murder them where they stand. If you’d seen some of the things I’ve seen, my lady, you might well praise that restraint.”

She wasn’t a lady, hadn’t been one for a very long time.

“Forgive my confusion,” he went on, “but is magic not illegal in Etra as well as in Aglye?”

It was. He knew that it was. If she kept talking to him, she would reveal her own secret. Her own shame, her own fear.

Laena stood. “If no one is going to escort me to my own room, then I shall have to sleep in this one. You may take the chair.”

With that, she stomped to the bed, leaving him to stare after her in open-mouthed confusion.