Caris gave her an odd look. “Maricol is our home. The stars take our ashes when we die. Where else would we go?”
“Where else indeed.” Aaralyn smiled slightly, looking both ancient and young but, above all, wholly something else in that moment. “Eimarille’s road was always meant to cross yours.”
“I’d rather it didn’t.” But that confrontation was barreling toward Caris like a steam train with no switch light to stop it.
“I’ve given you a long road to walk, but it must be walked.” Aaralyn lifted her hand and reached across the worktable for Caris, fingers brushing across her forehead with a searing touch that had her jerking back, turning her head aside. “Trust your heart, for it will never betray you.”
When she looked back, Aaralyn was gone, and Caris wasn’t quite certain if it hadn’t been a fever dream brought about by the summer heat.
She swallowed, rubbing at her forehead, and tensed when the door opened again. Only this time, it wasn’t a star god sweeping in with no apologies, but Nathaniel, who she was always glad to see. Nathaniel frowned at her as he nudged the door shut behind him with his foot. “What’s wrong?”
Caris shook her head, wondering if she looked as rattled as she felt. “Nothing. I could use some tea.”
“Well then. Let’s pour you some.”
She drank it plain and hot, needing the bitterness to clear her mind. Nathaniel drank with her, a quiet presence that she leaned against, her shoulder pressed to his arm. If she concentrated, she could hear the sound of his clockwork metal heart and the faint song from the clarion crystals that helped power it. She thought about Aaralyn’s words and everything stretching out beyond her on a road that got harder and harder to walk with every dawn she woke up to.
“We’re sending a diplomatic envoy to Oeiras to open talks with the Tovan Isles to ally with us and join the war effort. We need their ship-cities to break through the blockade in the Gulf of Helia guarding the way to New Haven,” Caris said quietly.
Nathaniel stiffened beside her. “Should you be telling me this?”
She turned her head to look at him, the clarion crystal shard hanging around her neck with the ring he’d given her warm against her skin. “You would never betray me.”
“Not of my own free will.”
They’d carved it back out of him when it mattered, and he’d never embodied the chains ofrionetkasince. But there was always that fear, she knew, that theKlovod’s control could return. “We are not married, but I would have you go to Oeiras on my behalf and plead our country’s case.”
Nathaniel carefully set his teacup down on the worktable, freeing his hand so he could turn to face her and gently touch her cheek. “I am a living risk to everything you are fighting for, my darling.”
She curled her fingers around his wrist, thinking of Aaralyn’s words and all the times Nathaniel had held her and shored her up and helped to carry her forward. “If we take no risks, then we won’t win.”
Caris knew from Vanya that the Tovanians had uncoveredrionetkasin Port Avi. Whether dead or alive, none would be able to articulate what it was like to be so changed. Nathaniel would encompass all the horrors that Eimarille represented and be a warning as well as a plea.
“Do you not want me here?” Nathaniel asked, voice quiet, almost small.
Caris blinked back the sudden tears that came to her eyes. “I want you with me always.”
But there was a war being fought and a throne to be won and a country to ensure itstayeda country. None of it a road she had ever wanted to walk, but walk it she must.
And Nathaniel understood that, judging by the slow nod he gave her, a bittersweet smile coming to his lips. “If that is your will, then I will do as my queen commands.”
She knew no one would be pleased with her orders, but Caris didn’t care. Nathaniel would be her voice, out there in the Gulf of Helia, and if it kept him off the land and out of reach of Eimarille and theKlovodand their deadly schemes, so much the better.
“I love you,” she said, meaning it with all she was worth.
“And I you.”
He kissed her softly, tea a bitter taste on both their tongues. Caris would always want him like this, even if she wanted nothing more in terms of touch. And no matter where Nathaniel went, Caris would know where he stood on a spelled-ink map, could follow and find him anywhere.
His heart would always belong to her, and she vowed never to break it.
Ten
EIMARILLE
Eimarille watched as the small airship descended into the royal hangar, the ground crew assisting with the anchoring. The royal guard that had escorted her to the airfield outside the city walls of New Haven had closed off one of the main piers and the city gates for her passage. Being at war changed her routine, but New Haven was far from the front lines stretched across the eastern provinces of Ashion.
The broadsheets being sold from street corners that morning all reported on the latest news coming out of Solaria and E’ridia—that the two countries were joining the war effort on behalf of Ashion but with crippled support. The reason for it all walked down the gangplank some ten minutes later, dressed for travel rather than the Daijal court, her long black hair simply braided back and face bare of any of the rouge Eimarille wore. It smeared a little over Terilyn’s lips when Eimarille kissed her, but neither woman cared, either about the stains or their audience.
