Heat flares through me, orange light glowing on the table between us. “Careful,” I growl.
Hilduin looks like she wants to spring out of the corner and leave us to it, but Val is entirely nonplussed.
“You came to have drinks with friends. Sit. Drink,” he says, a challenge in his eyes.
I could pull rank on him here, humiliate him for his insolence, but then I’d lose any goodwill I’ve earned with the guards, and he knows it.
Still grumbling, I sit back down.
Hilduin pours me another mug of ale.
We drink.
As hard as I try, I can’t hold onto my anger. The three of us sitting around a table drinking together in silence while everyone’s nerves are tight as bowstrings would be comical if it wasn’t my fault.
As it is, it just starts to make me feel an ass. And more than a little ridiculous.
Val said it himself—they’re my friends. They’re not out to get me or hoping for my failure. There are plenty of others in the reach who are, but not these two. I’ve got to save my ire for those most deserving.
“I’m sorry,” I sigh, filling Hilduin’s mug, then Val’s, then my own from the pitcher on the table. “I—”
“You’ve got a lot going on, I know,” Hilduin says. “You’ve broken my bones in fights, Xandril, it’ll take more than a tantrum to hurt me.”
Shame floods me, and not even drowning myself in ale will soothe that. Tantrum is exactly the right word for how I’ve been behaving.
“You’re doing what no one else can or will,” Val says.
“I’m doingnothing. Nothing I’ve done has made any difference. Every day the reach is closer to its end, and I can’t stop it. I think…I may have been too late. The damage is done. I don’t know if there’s any hope of mending it.”
Hilduin snorts, quickly trying to hide her derision in a drink of ale.
“Something to say, Captain?” I ask, a warning in my tone. Friends or no, there is such a thing as speakingtoofreely.
Hilduin’s expression turns contrite, but before she’s able to recant, Val holds his arm out to stop her.
“When’s the last time you spoke to your bride?” he asks.
My whole body goes rigid. I’ve no doubt he knows the answer, but that’s not why he’s asking. He’s needling me. I may have been avoiding my bride, but that doesn’t mean thatValenar has been. I don’t think for a second he’s done anything inappropriate, but that doesn’t stop a shot of jealousy from streaking through me, a possessive growl building low in my chest.
“What does she have to do with anything?”
My friends exchange a look, seeming to have a silent conversation between them. They’re able to say too much without words, and it makes me shift in my seat. Have they been colluding behind my back? Strategizing how to handle me like they would an invading army?
“You’re an intelligent demon,” Val finally says, unbothered by the rising heat making my body glow. “I’m sure you can figure it out.”
Gripping the edge of the table is the only thing that keeps me from getting carried away. My claws dig into the surface, and the splintering wood helps channel some of my anger. There’s not another demon in the realm who could take that tone with me and get away with it. And Val knows it.
“Just talk to her,” Hilduin pleads, doing what she can to ease the tension before Val and I work things out in our usual way. “Spend some time with her. She may not be from our realm, but she’s not without a heart.”
“Or a brain,” Val adds with a half-grin.
“Mm,” I grumble, incredulous. “You’re saying a human has the answers to saving Emerald Reach?”
“We’resaying,” Val emphasizes, the humor in his voice fading, “you can’t do this without her. And the sooner you stop fighting it, the better chance we all have.”
My gait is unsteady as I head up to the royal bedchambers. Too many ales and too many hours lost to recounting old war stories and reminiscing about simpler times. It was a nice distraction, but that’s all it was. Time I couldn’t afford to waste, spent on selfish frivolity.
No wonder the throne still rejects me.
