“About Caris’ offer?” Soren pressed his lips together, refusing to look at her. Delani drummed her fingers against the stone. “She thinks you’re her brother.”
He grimaced. “I am aware.”
“I think she’s right.”
Soren jerked, staring at Delani, but the governor wasn’t looking at him. Her head was tipped back, one good eye on the stars that burned clarion crystal bright high above in the clear night sky. “Why?”
“Besides the obvious physical similarities?”
“I’m sure if you looked hard enough, you could find someone else who has the same eyes as she does.”
“You’re the right age to be the lost prince. You look like her more than you do Eimarille, though I’m sure if the three of you ever stood in the same room, an argument could be made for family.”
“I’m not Ashionen. I’m notRourke. I’m a warden.”
“Yes, we made you that way. And as Ksenia has seen fit to remind me, we can’t unmake you.”
He’d spent years and years in and out of the laboratories buried beneath the fort, taking potions and being injected with chemicals, learning to tolerate poisons and toxins bit by bit until they couldn’t kill him. He’d trained in weapons and alchemy, learning the science to keep records on the poison fields, all while being taught how to fight against revenants and survive a horde. He had scars from a life lived on the road, guarding his assigned borders, existing in places few others trekked, the rest of society preferring the safety found behind city walls to the wide-open spaces of Maricol.
He was a warden. He didn’t know how to be anything else.
And yet.
“You don’t need to unmake me,” he said quietly.
“I wouldn’t even if we had the ability to do so.” Delani tipped her head back down, turning to face him full-on so she could see him with her good eye. “You haven’t earned a banishment.”
Others had, over the centuries. Wardens who’d used their skills to torment the living, dealt with by their brethren accordingly, had lost the right to be a warden when they’d lost their lives at the end of a judgment issued by whoever held the rank of governor.
Only one warden in recent memory had been banished, though for a time, everyone had assumed Olet was dead. But with the knowledge thatrionetkaswere warden-made—that it was one of their own’s work destabilizing governments on Eimarille’s orders—it meant they could not ignore the fallout. Not forever. And Olet had a kill order out on him now for the crimes he had committed as theKlovod.
Wardens were meant to be neutral, to favor no country above another. Even though they’d pulled out of Daijal and Urova, Soren knew he wasn’t the only one who regretted the unmanned poison fields. Most citizens weren’t responsible for their rulers’ decisions, but they suffered from it just the same.
“You want to leave. You want a border again,” Delanie said.
Soren licked his dry lips. “I do.”
“You guarded Solaria for all the years you’ve been an active warden. After everything that happened there, I can’t send you back.”
His heart sank, that sliver of hope he’d been clinging to slipping away. “Then where would you send me?”
He knew before she even spoke, steeling himself for a road away from where his heart lay. “Ashion.”
“As a warden or as a prince?” The question came out tight, the words like poison in his mouth.
Delani leaned her weight against the wall, never looking away from his face. “There are no records of where you came from. Whether you were royalty or not, if you becoming a prince could help stop this war, would you do it?”
“Ashion isn’t my country.”
“Our duty is to all of Maricol’s countries.”
“Caris wants me to be her heir. To put Ashion first above all others. That’s not our way.”
“Let it be, for now. If Ashion falls, we’ll have Daijal at our shore, and for all our expertise in the poison fields, we are not soldiers. We do not have the capacity to stand against an army.”
“And what about after, if they win? If everyone knows or believes I’m this person? How does that reflect on us wardens?”
“Badly,” Delani said with an honesty that ached. “The missing records won’t help our arguments that we governors and archivists didn’t know what you were when you were delivered as a tithe. But you can help set things right.”
