“I’m sorry.” Soren swallowed tightly, not knowing what else to say. “I was in the Wastelands for months.”
Vanya held Raiah close as he approached, expression shuttered, the gold circlet on his head far more elaborate than the usual one he wore. The ranking medallion was missing as well, though Soren supposed if it was for the heir, Raiah was too small to wear it. She might also try to eat it.
“I thought you wouldn’t come,” Vanya said.
Soren carefully deposited his satchel on the nearest table, knowing better than to leave it on the ground where Raiah could get at it. She’d been crawling the last time he was here, and she looked to be of age for walking now.
“I read the news in a broadsheet at the watchtower when I was picking up border reports. I came here instead of heading for the Warden’s Island.”
He was expected back there to deliver the reports for record-keeping, but for once, Soren was being selfish. He’d give his report late, but the governor would get it eventually. Delani might not appreciate the delay, but there’d been nothing that constituted an emergency in his area of the Wastelands or in Rixham.
Vanya needed him more right now.
Once Soren had divested himself of his baggage and the folios, if not his weapons, he went to Vanya’s side. Lifting a gloved hand, he touched the taller man’s cheek, fingertips skimming over the shadows beneath those dark eyes.
“I’m sorry,” he said again.
Wardens understood death better than anyone. He’d grown up in a tithe group that was whittled down by alchemy. He went into the poison fields where threats from revenants, wild beasts, and spores were an undying and never-ending threat. He walked in the footsteps of the dead, and grief was a distant emotion Soren sometimes didn’t know how to carry.
Vanya carried his in his eyes, in the rigidness of his muscles, in the way his jaw stayed tight when Soren brushed his fingers over it. Vanya kept his grief locked up like a tomb of old, hidden from everyone. Soren only hoped Solaria wouldn’t lose another city how it’d lost Rixham in the past.
Vanya’s gaze never left Soren’s face. “You have your duty.”
“Yes.” But he’d still come anyway, and that said something Soren didn’t want to dwell on for long. It didn’t change where they stood with each other. It couldn’t.
Vanya lifted Raiah higher in one arm before snagging Soren’s wrist so he could turn his head and kiss Soren’s palm. His lips were cool and dry, a little chapped from the winter air outside. Familiar, when Soren knew they shouldn’t be.
“Stay.”
Soren pressed his fingers over the shape of Vanya’s face, careful to angle his body away from Raiah’s curious, grasping hands so she couldn’t get at his poison sword. “As long as I can.”
A warden wasn’t supposed to want, but Soren did. He blamed Vanya for that on the days he didn’t blame the star gods for his lot in life and the road he walked.
But the vow that hung around his neck wasn’t any easier to keep, not when it’d been given by a prince and would be paid by an emperor.
IfVanya survived.
Soren eventually pulled his hand free, crossing his arms over his chest. “The broadsheets said it was poison. Quiet killer?”
Perhaps it was too blunt of a question, judging by the way Vanya swallowed, but Soren couldn’t take the words back. “Quiet killer and a knife through the heart while they were in Oeiras for treaty talks with the Tovan Isles. The assassins weren’t willing to take any chances the poison would be enough.”
“A Blade?”
“There were no eyewitnesses, so we can’t be sure.” Vanya pried one of Raiah’s hands off Soren’s vest. “No House has claimed victory.”
“But you have your suspicions.”
“My parents were targeted. I and Raiah were not.”
“You think it’s the House of Kimathi?”
“Nicca’s family hasn’t set foot in Calhames since her death and have sent no representatives to be present for the Conclaves of Houses. At most, they allow their senator to be present when the Senate is in session, but their hatred for my House is not hidden.”
Soren glanced at Raiah, who was trying her best to get her chubby little fingers around the leather strap slung across his shoulder that held his pauldron and poison sword in place. He prudently took a step back.
“I need to use one of your telegraph machines,” Soren said.
“A telephone might be quicker if you have need to speak with the wardens’ governor.”
