CHAPTER NINE
NYSSA PULLED ON a new dress when she rose from the tub— one of her warmer navy wool ones. She, somehow, still had some of the mud in her hair from the day before and had to scrub it out. The others had left her on her own in the treehouse. Bala had told them the Honest would be arriving soon, and she could use some help getting their goods together.
Nyssa's stomach was in knots. Not just at the notion that she would be separated from her brother by the afternoon, probably on a boat going downriver to a new realm she'd never been to before. But also at the notion of who she would be with by the afternoon and what exactly he expected of her.
Everything had moved so quickly.
She was still trying to grasp the reality of it all. She made a mental note to ask Bala for more of the potion to take with her as she wasn't sure how loud the Noctuans were at the Umber. She wanted to take precautions anyway. The last thing she wanted was to break down as she had two nights before and let on to Lex that she couldn't use her powers. She already had to hide the fact that she couldn't converse with her eagle, which in itself was hard enough.
Seeing the look on Lex's face when she found out was not at the top of Nyssa’s priorities.
And then there was Nadir.
Her heart ached at the thought of seeing him again. She hoped he did not expect her to be the same bantering Princess she'd been those two nights. Two nights that had been freedom in a life she sometimes thought a dream. As much as she wanted to find herself in his arms again, that was not the reason she was here. That was not the reason she was in exile and fighting in a war that had abruptly been pushed on her less than two weeks prior. A task that made her knees weak whenever she thought about it.
She wasn't even sure she wanted to allow herself to feel happiness yet. Not when...
She shook the thought from her mind and forced herself into the present.
The noise of people chatting sounded in her ears below. Nyssa stepped onto the balcony, drying her hair in a cloth as she peered down at the throng of people now bustling in the clearing.
The Honest had arrived.
She continued squeezing the excess water from her hair and looked around for her brother or Bala. But what she saw by the edge of the trees made a lump grow in her throat, and she couldn’t move.
Nadir.
NadirfuckingStorn.
Commander of the Honest army. Fastest blade in Haerland. Defender of the Honest.
The forbidden man she'd found herself wrapped up with at Magnice, falling over her own feet for every word on his tongue and his actual tongue.
Nadir was hugging Bala, his head buried in her neck. He pulled back a moment later, and his hands pressed to her cheeks. Bala reached up to wipe a tear from Nadir’s face, and together they smiled at each other for a brief second before hugging once more.
The sight of him brought back the memory of their meeting at Magnice, how he'd been so adamant that he could not swoon her, and yet his being himself had done that on its own.
She remembered standing over by the buffet with Bala, attempting to sober herself up and stop the dizzying she’d felt after her brother had spun her on the dance floor.
“I hope that’s water in your cup and not more wine,” Bala had said to her.
Nyssa’s lips twisted in an almost perturbed manner, glaring at her friend for calling her out. “It is. Unfortunately,” she muttered.
Bala huffed amusedly and then handed Nyssa a piece of sweet bread pastry. “Eat the bread,” Bala demanded.
“Someone’s bossy,” Nyssa mumbled, but she took the bread anyway. The moment the sweet honey and flaky crust met her tongue, she sighed into the taste of it, eyes closing. The audible moan that came from her throat, she didn’t expect, and Bala was smirking at her when she opened her eyes.
“I’m not enjoying this,” Nyssa said with a full mouth. “At all.” She had to lean her hand against the table to steady herself from the pleasure of such bread in her mouth.
“Yeah, you are,” Bala bantered back. “You love bread.”
“I really do,” Nyssa agreed as the room continued to spin around her.
Bala glanced past Nyssa’s shoulder then, and Nyssa watched as the mockery on her features darkened. “Speaking of enjoyment…” Her voice trailed, and Nyssa turned just in time to see the one she’d been told to avoid coming up beside them.
They’d been staring at each other the entire night, and she’d wondered if he was ever going to converse with her or if he was a good enough man to heed her sister’s warning.
Nadir’s springing brown and blonde dreads were pulled back very loosely into a high bun at the back of his head. The long triangular set of his chin never wavered from her direction. The scruff he’d adorned on his face earlier in the day was now absent, leaving the stern of his jaw and acute of his sharp cheekbones exposed to the elements as he sauntered up to them.
