Wardens still patrolled around the capital and trekked far into the poison fields no one fought in any longer, hunting down revenants. They had a long, hideous task ahead of them, with fewer wardens to take up the much-needed duty. Despite the need for wardens, there was one who could no longer guard a border, and no amount of cajoling could convince him to take up his birthright.
Blaine and Honovi found themselves stepping into yet another spat between Soren and Meleri when they arrived back at the palace. The two paused in the doorway to the private office Caris had claimed. It was really more a large receiving room, but it gave her room to pace when she got antsy, and it had a nice view of the rear gardens.
“We keep having the same argument, and my answer is never going to change,” Soren snapped in the trade tongue, arms crossed over his chest as he glared at Meleri. “I won’t take the Rourke name. It was struck from the royal genealogies once already. Leave it lost.”
Meleri frowned, her wan face bearing more wrinkles than Blaine remembered. “You are still Caris’ heir?—”
“Not anymore. She’s promised to name Lisandro heir.”
Meleri turned her head to stare at where Caris was still dutifully signing her name over every piece of paper Lore put before her. “I thought we were going to discuss that?”
“There’s no discussion to be had,” Caris replied tiredly. “We can’t banish Lisandro without making him an enemy down the road. Neither can we allow him to be adopted by a different bloodline for fear of them grooming him to hate us.”
“He may very well hate us anyway once he is old enough to understand the truth.”
Caris passed a signed paper back to Lore and sighed down at the next, which was placed in front of her. “What would you have me do, Meleri? I won’t kill him.”
Blaine saw the way Meleri flinched at the flatly given statement. He would never regret a child’s life, but he could admit that things would be easier politically if Lisandro had not survived the palace siege.
They’d found Eimarille’s son in the safe rooms built beneath the palace, cradled in the arms of his nursemaid, who had nowhere to run. Escaping through the catacombs was impossible, and unlike his mother, who had been spirited away during the Inferno, there had been no one left to see him to safety.
Lisandro would grow up a political prisoner of his mother’s name and ambitions. Giving him another name would not stop him from being a Rourke. Caris was living proof of that. Having Caris adopt him rather than another bloodline was the only way forward for two fractured countries.
In the end, Eimarille got what she wanted after all, whether anyone liked it or not. Lisandro would be Caris’ heir, and somehow, she and the others would have to learn to love the boy. He would be king one day, and Blaine could only hope the boy wouldn’t take after his mother in all the ways that mattered.
“I would never lay the parent’s guilt at the feet of a child,” Meleri said.
Caris lifted her gaze from the paper, bruises beneath her eyes from too little sleep. “Good. Because the Infernal War was Eimarille’s design and hers alone. She turned the living into revenants, tore people’s hearts out and replaced them with clockwork metal ones, and sabotaged every government on Maricol. That is a legacy Lisandro will have to face, but I won’t let anyone blame him for it.”
Blaine winced at the faint catch he heard in Caris’ voice when she spoke of clockwork metal hearts. He knew, like everyone else in that room, how deeply she still grieved for Nathaniel. TheKlovodwho’d caused so much horror had survived Soren’s rage during the battle and was being held in the makeshift jail, guarded round the clock by wardens who were also magicians. He would have a trial, eventually, and be found guilty no doubt, then executed for his crimes. It still wouldn’t be enough punishment for what he’d done.
“Start him learning from you now. My father did so with me,” Honovi said.
“Vanya plans to do the same with Raiah,” Soren offered.
Blaine crossed the room to stand by Caris’ desk, eyeing the official documents she was signing. “A pity you can’t use a press to run these through and stamp your name.”
Caris smiled up at him. “Your mechanical prosthetic would come in handy right now.”
“Alas, I can’t forge your signature.” Lore laid the last document in front of her to sign, and once her signature was inked on it, Caris shoved her chair back and stood. The sound her spine made as she stretched made Blaine wince. “That sounds terrible.”
“It feels terrible.”
He couldn’t be sure she wasn’t talking about the rank she now held, but Blaine wasn’t going to ask. “They’re right, you know. Showing Lisandro how to govern from a young age will allow you to mold him into the kind of king you would like him to be.”
“He hates me,” Caris said quietly. “I don’t blame him.”
She had denied any and all mind magic to be used on the boy to meddle with his memories or emotions. Blaine had been fiercely pleased with her defense of Lisandro in that way, even if, perhaps, it might have made caring for him easier.
“In ten years, Lisandro will have lived his life with you in it, which will be longer than he’ll have lived it with Eimarille. I know what it’s like to reach that kind of milestone.” Blaine glanced back at where Honovi stood, his husband staring back with only affection in his eyes. “I had a family and a clan that loved me after I lost my parents and bloodline. You can be that for Lisandro, and you will be enough. Love him, no matter how much it hurts.”
Caris tipped her head back and blinked rapidly. Blaine politely didn’t watch her try to hold back her tears. When she had her emotions back under control, she held out her hands to him, and Blaine took them in his own flesh and metal ones.
“I will miss you when you return to E’ridia,” Caris said, voice surprisingly steady. She was learning already how to hide herself, and it made Blaine ache, but he couldn’t take her grief or her pain away.
“We won’t stay gone forever.”
“Besides, we have a few more months before we depart. Our borders are not closed to your country,” Honovi said.
