“Get up, you stupid drunk,” Bellanca snaps. “Wine never helped anyone do anything but piss.”
The sharp clatter of pottery smashing against stone reaches our ears. Griffin and I look at each other and cringe. Carver roars a curse. Bellanca screeches, loud and high-pitched. There’s the sound of a scuffle.
Carver bellows in pain. “You burned me, you crazy Harpy!”
“Well, don’t touch me! You burned yourself!”
“Control your hair!” Carver shouts. “Or I’ll cut it all off!”
“Don’t you dare come near me with that sword!” Bellanca shrieks back.
Griffin and I gape at each other. Then we take off as one, racing up the rest of the steps.
They’re adults. They can sort themselves out—hopefully without killing one another in the process.
CHAPTER 7
A light meal in my stomach and fresh from a much-needed bath, I kick off my sandals as I walk across the bedroom toward Griffin. I lay my hands on his shoulders and squeeze once, tentatively. When he doesn’t pull away, I start to massage the tense muscles in his upper back.
His hair is still damp from his own bath, and the gleaming black strands curl softly around his neck and ears. He sits on a simple stool in front of the writing desk in our room—the one we’ve adopted in Castle Tarva—probably having left the larger, more comfortable chair for me. There are discarded drafts of letters all around him.
“I sent it,” he says, not looking at me. There are splotches of dried ink on both his hands. He can’t seem to take his eyes off the rejected scrolls.
I smooth my fingers up into his hair and try to work some of the tension out of his nape and the back of his head. After I ate, or rather forced myself to swallow a few bites, I saw him release the dove. I continued on to the bathhouse, the weight in my chest so heavy I thought I might sink. He’d wanted to write and send the message alone, and Griffin doesn’t shirk his responsibilities, no matter how hard or devastating they might be.
The smiles we managed to share earlier in the evening seem a hundred years gone, replaced by a bleakness in both of us that I don’t know how to dispel.
I press my thumbs into the thick muscles near the top of his spine and work them in slow circles before sweeping them gradually up his neck again. “They wouldn’t have wanted you to delay.”
He lifts both hands to his face and scrubs, his fingers rasping over the day’s worth of stubble. “I should have told them in person.”
“The dove will get there faster.”
“I have to go home,” he says dully. “I have to face my parents.”
My stomach churns with guilt. “They’re with Egeria. We know Sinta is safe with them, and in good hands. And they’re safe in Castle Sinta, with the realm at peace and the Ipotane protecting the border. I don’t think we should leave Tarva City for now. It’s too soon, and nothing is really established here.”
Griffin leans into my massage, groaning softly. I press harder as I move down his back, working the muscles around and below his shoulder blades. Knots roll under my fingers. Some give. Others don’t, stubbornly staying rock-hard and balled with tension.
“The Ipotane are protecting a border that no longer exists,” he says. “We need to find Lycheron and try to convince him to patrol the Fisan border instead. We also need to get the bulk of our army here. The soldiers are useless in Sinta when we’re in Tarva, and war is to the east.”
“So first to Castle Sinta and then to Lycheron?” I ask.
Griffin grunts what appears to be ayes.
Unfortunately, there’s a good chance that won’t be as easy as it sounds. “Lycheron will probably try to get out of the bargain if we change it.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of,” Griffin says with a sigh.
“And what about Tarva?” I ask. “We won’t be gone long, but we’ll need Beta Team’s help to bring that many soldiers back. And Lycheron responds to force. It can only be a good thing to show up with our most trusted men and an entire army behind us. Things aren’t unstable here, but I can’t help thinking that all of us leaving at once might not be a good idea.”
“So we don’t all go,” Griffin says. “We’ll leave Jocasta and Kaia here as our presence in Tarva. Jocasta is always asking for more responsibility, and I think we’ve all been underestimating Kaia, despite her youth. They’ve both shown me recently that they can handle more than I ever thought they could. Taking them back to Castle Sinta now would be a…disservice to them at this point. And frankly not fair.”
What a good idea. I barely have to think about it. Trusting Jocasta and Kaia implicitly helps. “I agree with everything you just said.”
“They can set projects into motion, similar to the improvements we’ve been implementing in Sinta. They’ll protect our interests here in Tarva and work on opening up the border to the west. We’ll leave Lystra with them. She can either make herself useful or stay out of their way. Either way, with no magic, I don’t think Lystra is a threat to them.”
No. Griffin’s sisters are far more fierce.
