A knock at the door made her bright mood falter.
Alasa stood, but before she had time to open the door, Kassandr Rurik strolled through it.
“Once again, you fail to catch me unclothed,” muttered Saga in Íseldurian.
“One day perhaps I will be lucky,” he quipped back in Zagadkian.
As Saga caught sight of him, her heart did leaps and kicks. He’d scrubbed the soot from his face and had recently shaved, his arm now bandaged and in a sling. Yet as the man swaggered into her chambers, she caught the brightness in his eyes and knew that his beast still lingered near the surface.
Once, this would have instilled fear in her heart. Now she felt a strange wave of fondness.
“I have brought the daymeal for us to enjoy over today’s Zagadkian lesson.” Saga’s gaze dropped to the tray held in his good hand.
“Must we?” she protested, though she lost the battle against her smile.
“We must,” he agreed, sliding the tray onto the table before collapsing into the chair with a pained breath.
Alasa secured the last of Saga’s braids into a crown, then dipped into a curtsy and slipped from the room. And then they were alone.
Saga planted herself in the chair across from Kassandr, her heart riotous inside her chest. The exhilaration of seeing him whole and hale on the battlefield had burned away, leaving in its wake something softer and quieter—perhaps a little delicate. Now that they’d succeeded against their common enemy, Saga was not quite certain where they stood.
If Kassandr felt the same uncertainty, he did not show it in the least. Saga followed his lead, tucking into the daymeal. As it turned out, the meal consisted of salted cod and stale bread, yet somehow it tasted like feast fare. The Urkans were gone. Zagadka was safe.
For now.
Kassandr spoke casually of what he’d been so busy with over the past days—that he and his Druzhina had done their best in identifying as many Zagadkian remains as they could so the families could claim the bodies and proceed with funeral rites. The Urkans wereafforded no such luxury. Their weapons and armor were collected by fortune hunters prowling the grounds. Their corpses were being stacked with wood and hay into makeshift pyres that would soon burn day and night.
As he spoke, she couldn’t keep her gaze from snagging on his cleft chin. She’d thought she’d never see that chin again, and now she couldn’t look away. Zagadkian rolled off his tongue as he gestured dramatically with a piece of stale bread. As she watched him, tingling warmth spread throughout her body, and Saga vaguely wondered if she’d caught a fever during her journey across the river.
Kassandr’s voice grew muted as Saga became lost in her thoughts. The man before her was more clever than she’d ever imagined, and she now saw each of their interactions in a new light. It was glaringly obvious that his Zagadkian lessons had been for more than just teaching her the language. He’d coaxed information from her, then used her intel to organize the Zagadkian defenses. And Saga was suddenly struck with the realization—Kassandr Rurik had believed in her even when she herself had not.
You, Saga, are a queen without her crown,he’d told her all those weeks ago. At last, she truly felt it.
“Thank you,” she blurted. Her cheeks heated as she realized she’d interrupted him. Kassandr raised a brow, those green eyes glinting in amusement and making her insides grow even more flustered. “Thank you for—” Saga shook her head, words beyond her current grasp.
“For being so handsome?” The corners of his mouth curled up. “Is my pleasure.”
The strangeness swirling inside her body coalesced into irritation at once.
“No? For…my clever wit? Or perhaps my patience when teaching such a slow student.”
“Your arrogance is unmatched,” she muttered, tearing another strip from her salted meat.
Kassandr leaned back. “But I cannot forget that you, Winterwing, have called mestriking.”
Saga’s sharp reply was interrupted by the door swinging open. Yuri Rovgolod sauntered inside.
“Does no one wait to be let in?” Saga grumbled, but she quickly stood. “Rov, your nose—” She hissed in sympathy as she examined the new bump in Rov’s nose, bracketed by twin black eyes.
“Sword hilt on battlefield,” replied Rov in a nasal voice. “I will add to collection of many ways it has broken.”
“Broken nose is no match for the pain of my arm,” muttered Kassandr, unimpressed. “Where does your sympathy for me hide, Winterwing?”
“We have no time for sympathy, Kassandr,” said Rov. “Your father calls for a meeting in the courtyard, since council chambers are now ashes.”
At the thought of meeting outdoors, her panic throbbed to life. Yet somewhere between rushing across the courtyard with buckets of sand and riding a winged horse to the lands beyond the river, Saga had gotten used to the low-level thrum of fear. Standing under open skies would probably always make her heart take off at a gallop and her breaths come more shallow. But new confidence brimmed within her.
The eyes were afraid, but the hands were doing.
