We left them hungry. We left them to fend for themselves in the elements, in the mountains and the frozen north during our harsh winters. All King Aurelian offered them was food and shelter. It’s all it took to win them to his side.
The harvest is coming. There’s something we can do to undermine Adria and Seth’s plan, I realize.
“Do you know where I can find him?” I ask Quinn during the applause.
“Him? Whomever do you mean?” She bounces her eyebrows at me in the most ridiculous way I’ve ever seen.
I push on her shoulder, or rather, I attempt to. She’s like a wall of stone. “It’s not like that. It’s important.”
She shakes her head, absolutely not believing me. “He’ll be in the palace market square. They’ve got it closed down for some street theatre today.”
I slip away before the next performer starts, but not before Quinn grabs my arm. “I’m rooting for you.”
I shrug her off, but I can’t help but smile a little. I’m excited to see him again, to talk to him, even if it isn’t about what I really want to talk to him about.
I can’t manage that. Not yet. But as soon as Larus is back, as soon as I’m certain we’ll be able to stop what’s coming without anyone getting hurt or hanged, I’ll return to him.
I find him in the market square in a special tent with royal banners. The play is a comedy about Kerensa and Sai interfering in the love lives of mortals, and the part I see of it as I pass through the crowd is actually really funny. So it surprises me to see him looking so glum. He’s usually better at masking his true feelings.
When he sees me approach, he lights up, quite literally. His skin takes on that faint glow it has from time to time, that radiating warmth that I’m drawn to. He exits the tent, coming to meet me in one of the side alleys with Taran trailing behind at a short distance.
He's cut his hair since I saw him last. It takes everything in me not to touch it. Not to touch him. “Would you do something for me?” I ask, straining to keep my voice level.
He mirrors my neutral expression, and for a moment, I feel our lie—the lie that we can keep things neutral between us at all—echoed in our feelings. “Of course,” he says. “Name it.”
“Would you double the grain shipments to Kalla? Whatever extra you were planning to send, would you send twice that? And some extra guards with it as well. Say it’s in celebration of the harvest festival or something.”
I don’t know what Seth and Adria do to sabotage the grain, but I figure there’s only so much they can manage while they’re organizing everything else. If Ronan can overwhelm them with shipments, some of them have to make it there. And if the people are full on the king’s bread, maybe they’ll find it harder to lift a sword against him.
“I’m sure we can find a way to do that, especially with the harvest coming so soon. Do you think they’re being attacked on the road?”
“Sometimes. We were, on the way here.”
Barely contained rage flashes in his eyes. “Did they hurt you?”
“Not badly,” I say. “Just a scratch on my throat.”
He looks at my neck then. It’s been weeks since the fight on the road, and he and Zara have both healed me since then, but he can’t stop himself from checking anyway. His fingers hover above my skin, but he doesn’t press down. I can feel how badly he wants to touch me, and I want him to so badly the desire echoes between us. When we regain our composure, he withdraws his hand, and he asks, “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I didn’t trust you then.” There’s something implicit underneath that—I do trust you now.I hope he hears it.
“If that’s all you need, I’ll go ask Cyrus—”
“Can you do it, Ronan?” His name on my lips fills us both with desire.Fuck,I can’t take this much longer. “Can you see to it yourself?”
He nods, understanding my meaning. “I will.”
As I leave him, the last feeling that’s shared between us is the desire for me to stay.
Larus finally arrives a week later, more than two weeks after we were expecting him. I meet him in the palace dining hall the afternoon he returns, thankfully without Felix.
There are deep shadows beneath Larus’s eyes now—either his trip or his return voyage must have taken a lot out of him. But he looks a bit softer around the belly than he did when he left us a few weeks ago. I hope his mother fed him well at least.
“Sylvie,” he says, pulling me into a hug. Gods, it’s such a relief to have him back. With Larus back, it feels like everything will be alright. “I leave for a month, and I come back to find you’re a hero. Both of you champions. Your parents would have been proud.”
Maybe the people they were before the war would have been proud. The people they became though? They were probably rolling in their graves seeing us on the stage with Ronan.
But somehow it doesn’t matter as much to me now. I loved my parents, but they aren’t the ones who raised me. They chose their war over me time and time again. Larus is the one who stayed. He’s the only one whose opinion I care about.
