Nothing Syrus could have asked for would have infuriated the queen more than that one condition. Any fool could see that. Thank goodness his husband was smart enough to ask for protection for them.
“Fine,” she snapped, and her patience was at an end. “I am beyond grateful to my nephew and my youngest son for saving your life, Syrus.” She purposely didn’t mention Eiri’s name, of course, but he was past caring about that, if he ever had cared to begin with. “Go rest now. There are many preparations to be made, and you need to be seen by a healer. Court is adjourned.”
They quickly left before she could change her mind.
Chapter 29
Syrus
The four ofthem retreated to Xan’s room, leaving the chaos of his mother’s throne room behind them. Syrus had to rely on Eiri and Ellis to help him through the maze of corridors leading back to his cousin’s room, leaning heavily on them with each step. Standing on his own before his mother, even for just those few minutes, had sapped what meager amount of strength he’d been able to recover. The poison had ravaged his body, and it would take time to recover.
Time seemed to be something they had, though, for the first time since they signed the marriage contracts. Syrus stole glances at his little brother as they walked, but even once they were safely in Xan’s room, Ellis didn’t meet his eyes.
“Let me get the wards up,” Xan said before anyone could speak. His room, with its wards and protections, felt like the safest place to be right now. Syrus had nearly died in his room, after all, and that would be the first place anyone would look to find him. He wouldn’t feel safe in that room again until Kien was caught, and perhaps not even then.
Eiri helped him onto a small couch in Xan’s front room,getting him settled and then immediately crawling in beside him.
“Are you okay?” he murmured to Eiri. He’d felt his husband stumble as they retreated and knew he had to be just as exhausted as Syrus. Probably more, if he truly was in magical burnout.
“I could sleep for about a week,” Eiri admitted. He laid his head on Syrus’ shoulder, for once not hesitating to touch him, and when Syrus carefully wrapped his arm around Eiri’s shoulders, Eiri just curled in closer.
“Me too. After we sort all this out, though. I have questions.”
“So do I.” Xan finished whatever magic he was working and rejoined them, perching on a chair to the left of the couch Eiri and Syrus sat on. Ellis had chosen the one to the right of them, furthest from the door, all of them facing an unlit fireplace.
“Before we do anything, I wanted to thank you for believing me,” Eiri said to Xan and Ellis. “I’d like to believe we were becoming friends before all of this happened, but Syrus is your family. I would have understood if you had listened to what everyone was saying. Kien certainly did his best to make me look guilty.”
Eiri kept his voice impressively even, but Syrus knew that betrayal had cut him down to the bone.
“Weareyour friends,” Xan said firmly. “Besides, like we said before: if you were going to kill Syrus, it’d be daggers at dawn, not poison. Anyone who spent any time with the two of you would have known that you were innocent, anyway.”
“How do you figure?” Syrus raised an eyebrow at his cousin, who just shot him a tired smirk.
“All that fighting just made it obvious there was something more behind it than just some old grudges. I think you two havebeen attracted to each other for far longer than either of you wanted to admit.”
“He’s not entirely wrong,” Eiri admitted, and Syrus silently agreed. Maybe it’d been true since the day he’d met Eiri all those years ago, even if he’d been too blinded by his mother’s indoctrination to know it.
“I don’t think Kien acted alone,” Ellis said, the first words he’d spoken since leaving the throne room. His baby brother was still pale, dark eyes distant and haunted, but he appeared to be attempting to hold himself together for them.
“There aren’t any other Canjiri in the city, as far as I know.” Eiri glanced at him for confirmation and Syrus nodded. No Canjiri would be foolish enough to live among Vaetreans. Unlike Nevarre and even Gavarria, the Canjiri weren’t welcome in this country.
“There aren’t,” Ellis confirmed. “I think he was working with someone from Vaetreas.”
At first glance, the idea of a Canjiri ambassador working with anyone in Vaetreas was absurd, but the more Syrus thought about it, the more sense it made.
“He wouldn’t have been able to disappear so completely without help,” he said slowly, putting the pieces together even as he spoke. “With the city on alert like it is, there’s no way he wouldn’t stand out and be seen. Even if word hasn’t reached everyone that he’s the one who tried to kill me, he’d be arrested on sight just for his association with Eiri.”
“Why would anyone here work with him, though? I don’t even know if his plan had always been to kill me, or if he decided he had to when he realized he couldn’t make me do what he wanted.” Eiri sighed heavily. “That doesn’t seem like enough cause to justify a plot like this.”
Ellis winced in sympathy. “It does if you take the full marriage contract into account. Without you here, Vaetreaswould lose access to the mines on Canjir, along with the rights to anything found within those mines. A lot of people stand to make a lot of money because of this marriage.”
“Wouldn’t killing me have ruined all of that, then?”
“We’re past the annulment point,” Syrus said as realization struck and everything finally started making more sense. When they’d first forced him into this, he’d looked up how long he had to annul the marriage, not that he’d ever believed his mother would allow it.
“If you were to die now, all the provisions of the contract would still be valid,” Ellis confirmed. “Syrus, and therefore the queen, would still own the mining rights even if Eiri were to die now.”
“And Kien must have realized he’d never be able to control you,” Xan said. “I still don’t see why he would work with anyone from Vaetreas, though. What was in it for him?”
