“Don’t speak like that.”
“You know I only speak the truth.”
Caris curled close, resting her ear over his clockwork metal heart. “Just this once, lie to me?”
Nathaniel closed his eyes, tightening his hold on her at the ache in her voice she didn’t try to hide. “Is that what you truly want?”
She was quiet for a time, the only sound between them the rustle of the leaves above from the passing breeze. A few petals fell from the flowers blooming overhead, drifting slowly down to the ground. “No.”
Caris was pragmatic in a way that he loved. She’d never shied away from a difficult engineering project and seemed to face the war and all its many agonies with the same resolute determination. But he knew how much taking up the crown and claiming a bloodline when she’d lived her life as someone else weighed on her. He knew, too, if her road had been different—if Eimarille’s desire for power had been less—they’d be married by now, because there was no life he’d ever live without her.
“I want to grow old with you,” Nathaniel confessed. “I want children with you, however we may have them.”
“I want that, too.”
“I just don’t ever want to hurt you.”
Caris sighed softly, shifting on the bench so she could rest her head on his shoulder once again. “You never could of your own free will.”
Nathaniel swallowed. “Promise me, no matter what, you’ll do what you must.”
Because the world was bigger than just the two of them as cogs, and as much as he wanted to be selfish and have her to himself, he knew she was learning to put the world first, as any good queen must. He respected her for that—loved her for it, even—because it spoke of the type of person she was in the face of everything.
Caris let go of his hand so she could press her palm over his clockwork metal heart and the scars that held it in place. When she spoke, her voice was steady enough. “I promise.”
It was all he could ask for.
Twelve
SOREN
Soren peered over the top of the parapet at the shimmer of moonlight on the Celestine Lake’s black waters. The pier in the distance was marked by lit lanterns interspersed along its length. Gas lamps that had been destroyed during the attack last summer had been replaced, as had the pier that acted as the main dock for the Warden’s Island. Submersibles had sunk the steamboat used to ferry wardens and tithes across the poisonous waters. The wardens didn’t have a functioning dry dock to begin a rebuild, but the Tovan Isles had sent a replacement at the tail end of winter, along with their yearly tithe quota.
The new steamboat was anchored on the opposite shore, manned by a full crew of wardens and automatons. Soren had wanted to board that steamboat every day since its arrival, but he hadn’t stepped foot off the Warden’s Island since his return, bound by Delani’s order to remain. Presently, he’d found no way off the island save one. Caris’ offer was a chance for Soren to leave the place that had made him into the man he was to become someone he’d left by the wayside in some other life.
All he had to do was give up everything he was.
“You’re not on wall duty this month,” Delani said from behind him, drawing Soren out of his thoughts.
“I wanted to clear my head. Am I allowed to do that?”
Delani came to stand next to him, resting her hands against the stone wall. The breeze blowing down the Eastern Spine was cool but not freezing, a hint of summer yet to come. “You aren’t a prisoner.”
“You haven’t let me off the island in months.”
“I have my reasons.”
“Yes, one in particular won’t leave me alone.”
Caris had tried to meet with him every day for the past week, politely persistent in a way he’d never known royalty to be. She was doggedly determined to change his mind, believing he was the answer to whatever prayers she’d given up to the star gods. He didn’t know how to tell her that he didn’t—couldn’t—want what she was offering but that some part of him wanted to take the way out just to see someplace that wasn’t here.
He missed the Southern Plains and the desert.
He missed Vanya.
“You haven’t been by to speak with me,” Delani said after a long moment where the only sound between them was that of a passing automaton below on the outside of the fort’s wall.
“I needed to think.”
