My chest cracks open. “Then keep me at your side.”
Tears build in his eyes.
“Very well,mi amor.”
I kiss him. It contains every wild emotion. It isn’t until our lips part that I realize just how fearful I am, too.
Luckily, just as the words are heavy on my tongue, someone comes to the tent, and Teo pries himself away from my side.
I exhale, grateful for the sensation to fade.
Murmured voices flit through the tent, and I close my eyes tight.
Moments later, Teo returns. He holds me close.
“They confirmed that Rholker is there.” The silence is short, but it stretches across time and space. “And so is Mikal.”
I suck in a breath, and the world around me slants on its side. I wasn’t expecting that.
“The scouts saw him?”
Teo nods. “As have the two slaves the assassins snatched.”
Mrath works quickly.
Teo pulls me close but I feel like I’m going to burst out of my skin. “I can’t sleep. We should leave now,” I say, trying to move. He holds me down.
“No. Sleep, my star. I can’t keep you from the battlefield, but I see how tired you are. Rest while you can.”
As we lay there, with our mission just on the horizon, Teo’s hand wrapped around my midsection, I think of what Endu told me about gods and goddesses.
Ashra. Spare me and my family this day.
I repeat the words begging her, and then begging Grutabela, and Endu. It isn’t until I sit on the brink of sleep that a strange, disembodied presence sinks next to me.
One that brings much-needed peace.
Chapter 41
Serendibite
TEO
Every nerve in my body feels like it’s going to combust. We march in an hour, but I’m lying awake in my bed.
Estela is nestled into my shoulder, sleeping soundly.
I have been here, alternating between watching her rest and reading a scroll titledA History of Giantsto see if there are any other morsels of information about Rholker or his family I could use if he tries to negotiate. The man has been motivated by being underestimated, and I had felt so confident when I started scanning the words. Now, each sentence floats away from me in the whirlpool of my thoughts.
I remove my crystal spectacles, rubbing my eyes. My mind races harder.
Once, I stood on the precipice of a dark future with too many men, and too few women and children. My people weredying out, and I had accepted that was the end of everything. I spent so many years believing and repeating to myself that I just needed to survive until death.
I could pass my crown onto some other person, perhapsVann or a mated couple. They could die out or slink off to some elven town and simply… fade away.
We had paid for our sins in extinction. Millions dead, a war that ravaged the lands, not to mention the preference to not mingle outside of our species. Maybe we deserved to end.
And yet, here I am, looking down at my mate. In her womb, my child is growing.
