Elara whirled on him, and he winced. “I’m sor—”
“Why are you here right now?” she snapped, punching him in the shoulder. Behind her, Cherry had dismounted from her horse, but thankfully, she didn’t dare approach. “What are you doing outside Pearl Bay, let alone without the Queenshield? You don’t exactly blend in here.”
“You enlisted,” he groused. “I wanted to send you a gift.”
He opened his arms enough for her to see that what he had been carrying was a bag full of ripe mangoes. Her favorite fruit. She could only get them when they were in season and only when out-of-town vendors set up in Deadegg Square on market day. And he had risked his life just to send her an entire bag of them, freely available in the capital.
“Oh,” Elara said. “You complete ass.”
“You’re starting to sound like your sister,” Reeve said with a smile in his voice. Then he ran a hand through his hair, the smile dropping. “I really am sorry. I know that everyone is hurting nowmore than ever with the Summit going on. I should have sent someone else to buy them or something. This is a safe place for this community, and I invaded it, no matter my intentions. I’m sorry for putting you in this position.”
“Are things that bad? In the palace?”
His next smile was a brittle thing. “Let’s just say I was only thinking of how the walk to the market would clear my head. But I missed you.”
“I missed you, too.”
They met in a hug. Reeve’s arms around her, his heartbeat steady in her ears, was a comfort she hadn’t even realized she’d needed. He was her best friend, the one who knew all the parts of her that she hid even from herself, and he’d believed in her before anyone else. She started shaking, seconds away from crying over Valor’s rejection, and she could feel him shaking, too, as if he craved this simple affection.
And then she heard her name.
“Elara.”
She didn’t recognize the voice, deep and yet clearly female, but it formed her name again as if it were something to be honored. And then it spoke:
“Don’t cry, little one.”
Elara yanked back from Reeve to look around the square.
No one was paying attention to her. No one was close enough to have spoken to her, no one but Reeve, who was watching her in confusion. And yet she was sure that she’d heard…
Elara Vincent.A ball of light appeared before her, speaking in Queen Aveline’s voice. An astral call, though she was unable to seewhichrelative of Aveline’s was delivering the message.It has cometo my attention that you have arrived in Port Sol. Please come to Pearl Bay immediately. I will notify your superior officer.
As quickly as the light had appeared, it was gone. Elara could not channel someone else’s ancestor, so it had gone to collect its taste of life from Aveline. Aveline, who had already discovered she was in the capital. Aveline, who had somehow discovered she’d enlisted.
Aveline, who would probably kill her when they saw each other.
Now it was Elara’s turn to wince. “Can I have one of those mangoes? It might be the last thing I ever eat.…”
Reeve and Faron were not allowed to come with her, though not for lack of trying.
When Faron was pried from Elara’s side, she informed Aveline that she would be waiting right outside the audience chamber and glared until the twin doors closed. The queen weathered this without comment or expression, but Elara could tell that she was annoyed. She had spent her thirteenth year surviving the impossible with this woman. Under those conditions, it had been difficult for Elara to ignore that she felt about women the way Aveline felt about men or the way her sister felt about no one at all. Queen Aveline had been Elara’s first love, and though she was long over it now, she had spent enough time studying every line and angle of the queen’s face to be able to read her.
Those dark eyes traveled to meet hers, and Elara blurted, “How did you find out I’d enlisted?”
“I am the queen of this island,” said Aveline incredulously. “Did you think you could enlist in my army and I would not be notified?I expect this sort of behavior from Faron, but I was under the impression that you were more mature.”
Only five years ago, she would have given anything to hear those words. Now that she was eighteen, and Aveline was twenty-two, it felt like disappointing an older sister. “Your Majesty, this was always my dream. You had to have known that.”
The queen sighed, and it was a familiar kind of sigh. The kind of sigh made by those who had been exhausted for so long that it had become part of their personality. The kind of sigh that had only gotten deeper and longer over the years as tiredness built in San Irie’s young queen.
And even standing on the dais, her hands clasped before her, Aveline looked soyoung. Her smooth skin, the color of black milk tea, her big black eyes shaped like walnuts, her thick curly hair that fell down her back and framed her oval-shaped face—all of it gave her a childlike quality, but there was no color on her full lips, no jewelry decorating her round, pierced ears. She wore a diadem, a silver one that circled her broad forehead and disappeared into the shadows of her hair, but that was her only adornment. Elara could blink and see Aveline as a seventeen-year-old again. She seemed to be drowning under the weight of that crown.
“What’s going on?” Elara asked. “Faron alone can’t make you sigh like that.”
Aveline laughed, though it was more a puff of air. “If I may be frank—”
“Please.”
