“Hadrian.”
She quirked her lips. “Lark is better.”
The woman was impossible. I released a breath and let my head fall back to the post behind me.
Evera stood and dusted her skirts. The absence of her warmth in my arms was tangible and left me with a sense of longing.
“Aureus requires a man to accompany me on deliveries. You can come by the shop in the morning.” She offered me a hand.
Raising a brow at her gesture, I took her hand. With my other, I pushed off the post and stood. Evera’s gaze fell to thecut at the inside of my arm; I’d forgotten about it. “You’re wounded.”
“Are you worried about me?”
“Hardly.” She looked up at me through her lashes.Gods, she is stunning.
The way she countered me and quipped with teasing venom only made me want her all the more. A stir of desire pushed me to drop her hand and cast my eyes aside lest I look at her a moment longer and the state of my need become apparent to her. Heat flushed my cheeks.
“I should get him back to the inn,” I said, turning my focus to the sleeping boy.
“Maerel will be pleased.”
I huffed at Evera’s sarcasm and knelt before Calix, hefting him back over my shoulder. The snort of Evera’s mare drew my attention.
“I will return Sorrel to the pasture,” Evera said, grabbing the mare’s lead.
Catching sight of Evera’s wrap abandoned and forgotten amid the hay on the floor, I set my jaw and crouched down to pick it up, the boy’s weight making the simple task more difficult. When I stood, I offered it to her, and our eyes held.
For a moment, I wondered if she would ask me to wrap her wrist back up for her. I wouldn’t. She could hide her mark if she wanted to. It was her right. But I would not conceal the very thing that bound us.
Taking the wrap, she turned from me, leading her mare at her side. With one last glance over her shoulder, she stilled, uncertainty tugging faintly at her brows. “Goodnight, Neirin.”
“Goodnight.”Goodnight, Evera.
When I was with her, it wassoeasy to distance myself from the outside forces that weighed on me. Even as I held one of the Queen’s messengers over my shoulder, the impending threatsfelt less daunting, somehow. As if there were a possible outcome where not only Harlan’s safety was secured, but where I could, perhaps, find happiness for myself. With her, with Evera.
But no. I hardened my expression and hefted the limp weight of the unconscious boy higher. The Queen would never let me have happiness. She would not allow me to escape her grasp. I huffed a breath, clearing my mind. There was no use worrying over it. It would do nothing but rile my monster.
23
EVERA
“Isn’the just the cutest, Evera!”Farren cooed over her new nephew. It was still early, but the sun had risen in a clear blue sky, bringing with it, warmth, the promise of spring, and a hum of excitement and eagerness to start the day. The day’s promise was clear on the faces of the townsfolk as they shopped among the market stalls in front of our family’s shop.
My waking, however, had not come with the rise of the sun but by the jarring of my reoccurring nightmare some few hours before dawn. I’d hoped working in the garden might rid my mind of the shadows that had haunted my sleep, of the faceless man who’d loomed over me, of Mother’s scream. And in a sense, it had, if only because the task kept me occupied. Though, as always, the feeling of unease remained. Deeper thoughts would creep back when a breeze caught and rose the hairs on the back of my neck. Then my mind would wander to the cause of the nightmares and why Aureus always shielded his expression when I brought them up, cast his eyes aside, and dismissed them.
Renna made a hushing sound, drawing me back from my dark musings. She gently cupped a hand over her infant’s ear. “You’ll wake him,” she chided her younger sister.
Her son, born just before the last snow, slept soundly, secured against his mother’s chest in a cloth sling. From the east, the sun glowed golden on the boy’s face, lighting his fine blond hair and pouting lips.
“He’s adorable,” I said. “And it looks like he’s a good sleeper.”Despite the noise from the market, the child hardly stirred, even as two boys ran by chasing after a small dog, its tail wagging and tongue lolling. For midweek, the market was busy. The effects, no doubt, of the festival’s end brought a steady trickle of travelers through town as they made their way back to their homes in the south.
“Oh, he is,” Renna said, pride dancing in her eyes. A silly thing to be proud of, but she was a new mother, and she was positively glowing with the effects of it.
“Don’t you want one too?” Farren gushed, her eyes dreamy as she braced herself against the outside railing of our shop’s garden fence. “Gods, I do.”
I leaned back against the stone wall of the shop in the corner of the fence’s enclosure, eyes on the sleeping bundle. “It’s not something I’ve thought much about.”It was a half-truth. Children were something I’d thought of often when I was younger. Back when I imagined a life for myself. Before I grew older and came to learn that my life would be decided for me, including whether and when I bore children and who to.
“You could be carrying one now.” Farren’s remark was spoken without consideration, as every other word out of her mouth seemed to be. It wasn’t that she was intentionally loose-lipped, only that her rambling often came before thoughtfulness.
