“Why don’t you want to be king?” I asked. “Why don’t you tell people like Garyth who you really are?”
Aiden’s jaw tightened. “I’m not fit to be king. The things I’ve done... the lives I’ve destroyed. No one would want to put a crown on my head if they knew.”
I frowned. He’d killed a few Shadow-Wolves and stolen from the High Treasurer. He ran a smuggling business and flouted the law. But I’d seen nothing that measured close to the number of my father’s crimes.
“Why?” I whispered
When he didn’t answer, I pushed closer to him, wrapping my arms around him and laying my cheek over his heartbeat. “I haven’t run from any of your other scars, Aiden. Tell me this one.”
He sighed, a long, slow breath I felt empty from his chest. “I fought in Pravara, during the rebellion,” he said in a distant voice.
I continued to breathe steadily and forced my muscles to stay relaxed. But my heart twisted with bitterness.
“I was young and wanted to help the people there who were clearly suffering under the weight of Weylin’s taxes and unfair treatment. Parents could barely afford to feed their children with Weylin taking most of their crops and earnings for himself.” He swallowed hard. “The farmers started fighting back, refusing to give up their harvests and chasing tax collectors out of town. The conflict escalated on each side, with the Pravarans begging the People’s Council to fight for them via the law. But... well... I’m sure you know how that went.”
I certainly did.
All this time, I had been on one side of that rebellion while Aiden had been on the other. Except I’d done little but stand by while the world as I knew it dissolved into chaos.
“I was so angry,” Aiden whispered. “Which made me impulsive. I started teaching them to fight like Nikella had taught me. I hunted down weapons along with other like-minded rebels. We were going to make a true battle of it. But then Dracles came.”
Pain shook his voice. “He descended on us with over five thousand soldiers, armed and trained. Five thousand against a few thousand farmers—most of whom had never even held a sword. It was a massacre. And I—” His voice broke, and he swallowed again. “I was held for questioning, then thrown in a prison wagon bound for Calimber. Too young and healthy to waste,” he finished in a scathing tone.
I was sure there were more details he was leaving out, but now I understood. Why he didn’t want to involve more people than he had to. Why he’d been imprisoned in the mine. And further still, why he hated Father.
His report of the end of the rebellion confirmed what I’d heard. Father had left nothing to chance, spilling every drop of rebel blood he could find. Yet, the most dangerous rebel of all had escaped his fate.
A notion that yielded only gratitude in my traitorous heart.
Aiden lifted my gaze with a finger under my chin. “I owe it to my kingdom, to my people, to my soul to see Rellmira restored. That is why I must do what I’ve planned. And in a week, it will all be over and decided, one way or another.”
My mind stilled.A week, one way or another.Gods, that was so soon. Sooner than Father’s ultimatum.
Aiden continued, “But for the first time, I have hope. Hope that my heart might not be too scarred for a certain beautiful thief to consider stealing the rest of the pieces she hasn’t already taken.”
My eyes burned and blurred, and I let out a choked laugh. “It’s not really stealing if you’re handing that thief the key.”
“I suppose not,” Aiden said with a smile that warmed my soul. “But she was always good at stealing those, too.”
I melded my lips to his, trying to banish every fear and loss I felt at his words, at the idea of having to let him go in seven days.One way or another.
He kissed me back like he would never have enough. Like we had more than today, more than a week. Our limbs tangled together and remained that way until we finally fell asleep at dawn.
I never answered him because I couldn’t. My heart whispered words that I didn’t dare release.
Because we were doomed. We always had been.
We slept for several hours until the heat of midday turned the tent stifling. With soft touches and stolen looks, we dressed and packed up the tent. Twice, I caught him humming a soothing tune deep in his throat. The sound made me smile.
We ate breakfast atThe Twisted Tailand returned the bartender’s tent and bedroll. Aiden paid him extra to get it laundered.
All too soon, we were back on our stolen, well-rested horse, headed for Aquinon with a stream of other travelers.
Aiden walked part of the way so he could show me how to sit properly and use my knees to guide the horse. He said it would be easier with a saddle, but he hadn’t had the time to grab one.
I frowned at the shimmering green fields rolling toward the distant sea. “That stuff that Nikella threw on the ground and set on fire. What was it?”
Aiden took a moment to answer. He’d grown more and more reticent as we neared Aquinon. “Something of her own invention. She needed to test it.”
