Even Varex still rode as often as possible, though he was stuck in the carriage when Fernila was traveling with him, because of course she couldn’t just ride a horse.
“What if it rains?” Rin asked, eyes twinkling. “Wouldn’t a sodden prince be beneath the realm’s dignity?”
Tor swore at him, which only made Rin laugh, and Tor couldn’t help but grin in response, though he pointed out, “That’s what I have a cloak for.”
If he were being truly ostentatious, that was what he had his magic for. There was nothing like using your power to protect yourself from theweatherto make you appear extravagant and puffed up in your own conceit. (And magic liked to be grounded, to be attached to a floor or wall or a person who was standing on the ground and so on, so it was actually quite a challenge to use a free-standing shield to protect yourself from the rain.)
“What if you bring the Princess back?” Rin wanted to know. “She’d need a coach, wouldn’t she?”
“Shut your mouth,” Tor said with a huff of disgust.
Rin was still grinning like a fool, and Tor didn’t seriously try to convince him to leave the carriage behind. It probablywasthe responsible choice. As long as Rin didn’t actually try to make him ride in it, it would be fine.
Varex came to see Tor off—or possibly just to make sure he really left.
“It will all be for the best,” Varex told him, clasping his arm, his blue-eyed gaze intent with an earnestness that Tor didn’t ever display himself. “You’ll see.”
Tor huffed a breath. “Just because you came out of the womb two minutes sooner than I did doesn’t actually make you smarter than I am, you know.”
Varex’s face fell into that disappointed look with which Tor had become so familiar. But Tor refused to feel guilty.Varexwas the one who was trying to marry him off like he was a prize stud. Seriously, what made him more qualified than Tor to know what was going to make him happy?
And if Varex was simply the King doing what he believed needed to be done for the Realms, then Tor didn’t have a relationship with him which necessitated any guilt.
Tor hoisted himself into Monster’s saddle and looked down at his brother—a rare occurrence.
“Safe travels, Tor.”
It almost sounded normal—the normal from before the coronation, before the wedding, when things had been good.
“Try to misbehave a little while I’m gone,” Tor suggested with a wink. “We’ve got to keep people on their toes.”
Varex actually rolled his eyes, and Tor’s stomach unclenched a little, and he smiled more genuinely. The man might be an obnoxious jerk a lot of the time, but he was still Tor’s brother.
And then they were off, way more of a cavalcade than Tor usually took with him when he traveled, unless he was, say,moving the army, which he didn’t get to do anymore because he was no longer in charge of it. He was now simply the High Prince of the United Realms, and he was utterly determined to prevent his brother and Fernila from questioning his ability to follow orders.
Of course, that didn’t mean he couldn’t get creative about how he was executing those orders.
Rin laughed when Tor said his first stop was visiting his sister. “Of course it is.”
This was far from the first time that Rin had come along with Tor to see Ada, and he was thus well aware that the capital city of Scala in Lotar was… kind of in the opposite direction of Glomar in Vayrin, where Princess Terila was no doubt being beautiful and obnoxious at this very moment.
Fortunately, Varex hadn’t thought to put any time restrictions on his orders, and that meant Tor wasn’t doing anything technically wrong.
It would take about five days to get to Scala at their measured pace. Tor wasn’t dawdling, but he sure wasn’t pushing the horses when his ultimate destination was one he had no interest in.
Nexa was a well-fortified city, and it would always be home, but something in Tor relaxed a little once they made it out into the surrounding area and they began to see rolling fields and trees and wide-open space.
The last chill of winter was still in the air in the mornings, but spring was upon them, and Tor could see evidence of green and growth everywhere. The sounds of nature and the peaceful villages and towns were always reassuring, a reminder that the peace in the United Realms had been holding for over twenty-five years.
It was why, after several days of travel through Alossa, they passed into Lotar without fanfare. Varex had married Ada off to King Stronex’s heir, and relations remained happy and peaceful, as they had since the peace accords.
Tor might not agree with everything that his father and mother had done, but he knew that they’d worked ceaselessly for this peace, for an end to the fighting and vying for power that had escalated to all-out war.
Tor had been almost ten when the final disastrous battle had occurred. His father had died, but his mother had finally secured the surrender of those rulers who had been holding out against the idea of a unified realm—or who had wanted to take over their entire island and wipe out every other ruler.
Fernila’s father, King Nostex, had fought hard against submitting to anyone, just like King Forex of Tond, and Sovereign Gornexi’s parents in Bessar, but they’d all eventually admitted it was the only way for their realms to prosper. Tor’s mother had labored ceaselessly to ensure that the peace would last—which was how Nostex’s daughter had wound up married to the High King.
Tor still thought arranged marriages were foolish and unreasonable, and he definitely didn’t want to bet the fate of the United Realms on them. Even if Varex’s was somehowhappy (he still didn’t understand it), how could his brother fail to see that didn’t meaneveryone’s would automatically be as happy? That sometimes, people couldn’t just “try harder” and get along?
