Aya bit her lip, her gaze flitting toward her boots before finding his face again. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “Lorna believed it had something to do with gods-given power, so…perhaps. But if that were the case, I imagine she would have said something.”
“Yes, because my mother was renowned for her forthcoming nature,” Will scoffed. He stepped out of the safety of Aya’s hold, his body demanding he move. He resumed his pacing, his fingers drumming on the side of his leg as he considered the possibility.
“The godsblood in you has been diluted for centuries,” Aya reasoned. “That could very well mean there’s not enough of it—”
“But it’s possible,” Will interrupted as he cut back toward her. “Right?”
Aya closed her eyes for a brief moment, her shoulders rising and falling with her breath. “Yes,” she whispered. “It could be possible.”
Will stilled, some of that anger and fear and frustration with the world fading as he took her in.
It could be possible, and she loathed it. And yet…
She’d come to him anyway.
He moved to her, his hands sliding over the curves of her waist as he pulled her against him.
“I made you a promise,” she explained, as if she could hear every thought in his head.
She had. And she’d kept it, knowing exactly what he’d ask of her.
Will cupped her cheek as he kissed her softly, pouring every ounce of gratitude and devotion into the gentle caress of his lips against hers.
“I cannot ask this of you,” Aya whispered when they separated.
“You’re not asking,” Will reasoned. “And I made you a promise, too, remember? No matter how far the fall.”
Aya’s mouth set in a firm line, her fingers trailing across a stitch in his leathers. Something hardened in her gaze, a light flickering in her irises, bright and defiant and lovely.
“And if I refuse?”
There she was—headstrong and stubborn andhis.
He took the vehemence head on, held it in his hands and in his heart, because now he saw it for what it was. If Callias’s hope manifested as a gentle spring breeze, Aya’s was a burst of hoarfrost. It was how she protected the things closest to her.
The things she loved.
“Then, Aya love, we’re at an impasse,” he breathed, leaning in to press his lips to hers once more. “Because I refuse to let you go through this alone.”
He could feel her frustration in the grip she kept on his fighting leathers and the nip of her teeth against his lip. It was a relief to have it shared with him instead of watching her tuck it away.
“We still don’t know if it’s possible,” she reminded him as she pulled away.
“But it’s an option. One we should tell them.”
Aya’s jaw twitched, another argument surely behind her lips, but a knock at the door interrupted them.
Mathias Denier poked his head into the room, his signature smirk fixed on his face as he took in their position.
“Sorry to interrupt,” he said airily, “but we have visitors.” He opened the door wider to beckon them back into the hall. “The Trahir King has arrived. And he’s brought what looks like his entire damned country with him.”
64
Josie’s first thought at seeing the Mala Mountains again was that though Viviane had been a talented artist, her paintings had not done them justice.
Her second was that it didn’t hurt, when the memory of Vi’s paintings floated across her mind. Finally.
Josie stood in a hallway of the palace—the new Quarter for the Dyminara, an attendant had explained—and gazed out the windows at the towering peaks that surrounded them. She hadn’t gotten to admire them like this the last time she’d been in Dunmeaden, not with the chaos that had been unfolding when their ship arrived in the harbor.
