She turned. He caught her arm. The bruise on her heart seemed to bloom, both deepening and healing all at once.
“Something changed,” he said.
She extricated her arm from him. “We’ll talk about it later. Clean up, try to eat something. We have to go.”
“WHY THE SWITCH?”Damion asked in her ear as they flew north. “Prince getting too familiar?”
“None of your business,” she said. “Are you holding up all right?” She nodded down to the bundle swinging below Gur’s belly. The rope was secured around Damion’s waist. It seemed the safest way to transport it.
“This is nothing,” he said, giving the rope a tug. “I’m more worried that we are yet again delayed.”
“This isn’t a delay,” she said. “It’s necessary.”
“That’s what you said the last time, and how many times have you almost died since then?”
“That seems to be a form of employment for a Rae,” she said.
Below, white frothy lines etched the gray steel of the ocean. The air grew cooler as they traveled. Far behind them, the rocky jut of the peninsula—the southern finger of the Eastern Cliffs—proved a welcome site. Anqa, with Honey and Kaelan, flew ahead and above, joined by some drafting gulls. None of the birds came close to Gur though.
“Do you really think Eris will help us?” he asked.
“Eris will help anyone for a price,” she said.
“Don’t give it all up,” Damion said. “We’ll need something to trade for supplies, and bribes.”
“I still have the ichor-gold glove. We can sell that if we need to,” she said. “And Honey has the panchress.”
Damion lapsed into a heavy silence, which she guessed meant he was placated.
“What did he do to you, coz?” he asked after a time. “What did that Elf wench mean about the heart-place?”
She chewed on her answer, not sure she wanted to talk about it, not with him, not with anyone.
But since Damion had pledged his life to her, she felt she owed it to him.
“Right before Kaelan died,”—the wind tore at her words, forcing her to raise her voice, though it was hard enough to speak at all—“he gave me a piece of his heart.”
She could hear the sneer in his voice even though she couldn’t see his face. “A piece of his heart?”
“Not literally, of course,” she said. “Some energy of his heart’s essence, I suppose. I don’t exactly know how it works. And neither does Kaelan. He didn’t mean to. He didn’t know what he was doing. Apparently, giving away their hearts in this manner is expected of Elven Princes. Supposedly, it strengthens them, so long as the place they choose remains unharmed. It's also a part of their Ascension rite. A Prince cannot become King if he hasn’t given away pieces of his heart.”
“So youstillhave it? A piece of Kaelan’s heart?”
“Yes.”
“What does that feel like?”
She touched her chest reflexively. The bruise was fading. “I can’t feel it as much now as I did.”
“So when he died, that’s why you were so...”
“Yes. That’s why. It was as if... I had died too.”
“And is that going to happen again?”
“We’ll see what Eris has to stay about it,” she replied.
“But I thought he was in love with the nymph.”
