It took all his effort to finally drop his arms when he sensed the danger crackling in the air around them, and sure enough, as his eyes snapped open, his soldiers had already lined up on either side of them as their frightened people—humans and Fae and a few shifters—crept closer.
“Enough!” Loche ordered when the soldiers shifted, their hands folding around hilts, their bows being removed from their usual spot on their backs, in response to the suffocating charge in the air and the crazed looks of some of his people.
“Stand down,” he snarled when a human broke from the line of people watching from another ship, a curved blade in his hand as he glared at Loche and Iviry.
“You left them! You left them to die,” the man spat, his gaze so filled with fear that its color seemed to drain before Loche’s eyes. “Is that what you stand for? Is that our new Havlands?”
Shouts of agreement rang out all around them, and Loche hissed, “Stand down!” once more.
His soldiers mumbled worriedly, the clangs of their swords echoing within the chaos. Loche noted Zaddock moving closer, his blonde girl also hovering in the corner of Loche’s eye, holding two kitchen knives behind her back as she kept her head up, facing the people approaching them.
“We left them because we had to,” Loche screamed over the ruckus. “We left them because many ofyouwould have died if we hadn’t! They were our friends! Do you think it was a choice we wanted to make?”
“It seemsyoumade that choice,” a Fae barked. “Ivirywanted to stay! We all saw it. Does that mean humans now rule Havlands? Do you have something on her?”
Loche took a step forward. Fucking?—
“Loche is right.” Iviry stepped up to his side, and if he hadn’t just kept his female together, kept her shaking body against his, he would have never believed she had nearly crumbled from pain a moment ago.
Her beautiful face was stern.
Her shoulders were down, and her back was straight.
Her leathers and the braid she’d kept in her hair made her look like a warrior princess as she gave him a quick look before speaking again. Loche should have appreciated the clearness of her eyes, but there was something…
“I wasn’t thinking.” There was a warning in Iviry’s voice—one that had even the Fae male hesitate in his strides. “It’s good that my fiancé did it for me.” She turned to Loche once more, and he didn’t like whatever the emotion was tightening the corners of her eyes.
“What just happened is why we need to stand together!” Iviry’s scream echoed across the ships and the sea surrounding them. “I don’t know everything. I will make mistakes. I will want to save friends when that means risking the lives of others. That’s why I need Loche. That’s why he needs me. We need to make the hard decisions for each other.”
Iviry’s hand slipped into his, but it wasn’t for support, or even affection.
She was putting on a show, perhaps one of the best Loche had ever seen, because it appeared as if he was the only one who noticed the slight tremble of her bottom lip, the slightly too-high pitch at the end of her sentences.
He wanted to stop her, because he could feel what she was about to say next. But when he looked up at the people and they all were listening, the uneasy atmosphere lightening with every foot the ship put between it and the now surrounded one behind them, he… he just couldn’t.
Iviry squeezed his hand at that moment, and he knew. The show wasn’t just for today. It was forever. It would go on until one or both of them were dead.
“We don’t have any time to lose.” It felt as if Iviry’s grip drained every drop of blood from his hand, but Loche only stepped closer to her.
They were in this together. Whatever he and Iviry were… it would always be together.
A shuddering breath escaped the Fae leader before her sharp voice traveled across the crowd again.
“I don’t know everything,” she repeated. “But what I do know is that we will all die if we don’t stand together. We will be picked off one by one—like the ship we left behind. There is no more time to waste!”
Her eyes darted sideways, catching his for the briefest of seconds, and somehow he knew what she was asking.
With a barely perceptible nod, Loche cleared his throat. “Iviry and I will marry tonight. There will hopefully be time for a more formal ceremony uniting our nations later, but we will lead the way for us all coming together.”
“It’s time for a new Havlands,” Iviry said, her lowered voice still carrying over the now silent people. “And that new Havlands is being born today.”
Loche jerked his head toward the council members standing behind Zaddock—he’d asked his friend toensure their safety for the rest of their travels—and commanded, “Dedrick, Venko, please get everything set up. We will host a meeting in our chambers—the ones on this ship will suffice—to agree on some new laws for our new world, and once that is done, we’ll give our vows to each other and our people on this deck. All before sundown. We’ve all seen that we have no more time.”
After he quieted it was as if the world around them took a joint breath—the silence stretching out wide over the vast ocean—but Loche and Iviry remained standing in their positions, gripping each other until he couldn’t feel his fingers anymore, until soft murmurs and people shuffling back to whatever position they were supposed to be in rang all around them.
“Loche…” Zaddock approached him, but as Iviry dropped his hand, her back still straight as she headed toward the stairs leading down to the chambers he’d just spoken of, Loche waved him away.
“Get everything in order,” Loche said as he kept his eyes on one of the strongest females he’d ever met, who took the saddest steps into the ship, as if she were heading to her execution. “I need to make sure my soon-to-be wife is all right.”
