Was her trying to destroy the country inevitable? Would I be forced to deal with her, and all the disaster she brought with her, again? Avoiding marrying her wasn’t enough? Was the past truly unchangeable no matter what I did? I’d tried to alter things, sometimes with superhuman effort, but was it all for naught?
The gods were indeed testing me, and right now, I didn’t know whether to rage or cry.
I might very well do both.
Fifty-four
Edwin
James did not resist as I pulled him out of the ballroom, to a balcony off to the side, where I quickly closed the doors. A silent signal that we needed privacy out here.
I had never seen him this rattled. Not even when a Wrath threatened our lives. He’d handled every emergency with aplomb and dogged determination. Even his nightmares paled in comparison now. He kept taking these short breaths, like he was on the verge of a panic attack, and his complexion was horrible, this waxy grey color. His grip on me was iron, near painful, and I could sense the fear in it. He seemed almost lost. Like a man waking from a nightmare only to find a different iteration of it right in his face. To him, seeing his former wife might very well mean just that.
“James? Breathe with me.” I put his free hand on my own chest, breathing deep and steady, hoping to guide him into calmer breaths.
After a moment, he followed my breathing, visibly calming. Not calm, though, not by a long shot. Still, he was no longer doing that panicked, shaky breathing.
A wounded noise tearing out of his throat, he released my hands to stalk to the stone balustrade and seize it with such strength I feared for its integrity.
“Why in Zinos’s name is she here?!”
The words rang with such force, such despair, my own heart ached in return. I could only intellectually empathize with all he had gone through. His recounting of the past, the notes I’d seen, the nightmares he suffered, they were my only guidance on how severe his first life had been. This was another moment where I saw a glimpse into his past—and all I saw was fear and pain.
It hurt, ridiculously so, to watch him and there not be a damn thing I could do to help him.
His voice rose, almost competing with the room filled with jabbering people only a door away from us. “How the hell is she here?”
“How did Victor get introduced to her is another question I have.” He should have been on a naval ship sailing south—granted, Valentina was from Ascor, on our southern border, but just sailing by a country didn’t mean you magically met a princess. “Did Victor ever meet her in your first life?”
“No. Not at all. By the time I was engaged to her, he’d been dead quite some time.”
His answer troubled me deeply. Of course things were bound to change in this life, with James actively doing what he could to offset disasters, but this? How could this possibly be a butterfly effect of his actions? Two people who had never met in a previous life were now engaged.
What else had changed? What other things had happened that I hadn’t traced, or foreseen, which had led to this? SurelyVictor being stripped of family, title, and money before being exiled wasn’t the direct reason for him to meet Valentina.
James stared out over the silent, moonlit garden and snarled, “What part of this is acceptable? How can events happen so out of order, or new ones come in that are so completely unexpected I can’t even predict them? Valentina shouldn’t be here for anotherfive years. She’s still a damn child right now!”
True, she was fifteen, if memory served. Too young to even legally marry. Ha, actually, that might be why Victor was only engaged to her. He was completely the type to elope in order to reclaim his power. Perhaps we should be thankful of her age?
Or I hoped that single barrier was enough to buy us time.
“Her being a child means they can’t marry. Not yet. We’ve got time to undo this, James.”
“We shouldn’t have to worry about this to begin with!” James banged his fist against the balustrade, his tone ugly. “Surely dealing with her isn’t a matter of fate!”
When he spiraled over things he couldn’t control, we needed to get him drunk and let him sleep it off. That I knew for sure. Damn shame we couldn’t yet. We still had a crowded ballroom behind us with only poor Helena and Royce inside to deal with everyone. I felt the itch between my shoulder blades to go back in there and start the ball.
It didn’t compare to my need to comfort James. Vuheia had warned me I must do a better job at protecting James, and I felt like this was one of those moments. I must ignore my usual responsibilities and focus only on him. He needed me the most; a failed ball was hardly important in comparison. I had my priorities.
I came in closer and hugged him from behind, my arms tight around his waist.
“We’ll get to the bottom of this,” I promised him. “I’ll set spies loose first thing.”
His hand covered mine in a tight grip and, for a long moment, he was silent. “What do you give the odds of this engagement going through?”
“Twenty percent at most.”
“Why?”
