“Liana.” He shot her a look of tired tenderness. “He’s my nephew and he needs my help.”
Family had always been a raw spot for him. To Liana, abandoned by both her parents, his loyalty to the people who shared his blood but didn’t always treat him well seemed like madness. Her circle of people was a single dot: Amron. His circleof people comprised half the kingdom.
“You help him all the time. You won the war for him, you put him on the throne, and it’s still not enough. The fighting never stops.”
“That’s not true, and even if it were, what do you expect me to do? Abandon him? Pretend the problems of the kingdom are none of my business?”
Liana hated the kingdom; she’d gladly see it burn to ashes and crumble into the sea. The kingdom had no decency, no reason, no limits. It was a blind voracious mass that swallowed people and spat out their bones.
They ran in circles, Amron and Liana, fighting about the same things time and again. She had no words to tell him that she was terrified of letting him out of her sight, that out there he was alone under the vast, malevolent sky.
“I’ll try to deal with it quickly.” He closed the bag and got up. “I’ll be back before the autumn rains. Or you can go to Myrit and meet me there.”
She hated Myrit, she hated the court. It was filed with people she despised: the bootlickers, the climbers, the back-stabbers. She could never get used to the falsehood of that world, she couldn’t understand its rules.
“I’ll try,” she said, blinking quickly. Tears had treacherously welled up in her eyes, and now they broke the barrier of her lashes and slid down her cheeks.
“Oh Liana, my love, don’t.”
He approached her: It was a trick, because he knew well she had never been immune to him, and all her resentment would melt at the first touch. Still, she sank willingly into his arms, into the familiar armor of his embrace. The passing of time narrowed to his heartbeat.
“We should go to bed,” he said. “I must rise before dawn.”
“If you think I’ll let you sleep tonight, you’re mistaken.” Sheslid her hands under his shirt, the hot skin of his back smooth under her fingers. That part was simple, even when everything else was complicated. Her desire for him had always been raw and immediate, unchanged by time. It was a fluke, a lucky match that smoothed out the rough patches and gilded the good ones.
He carried her to bed, where she guilted him into doing the most wonderful things to her.
Later, after they’d burned away the better part of the night, he said, “Forgive me before I go, even if you think me a fool.”
“I’ll forgive you if you promise me to come back,” she said.
He ran his fingers down her arm, leaving a trail of goosebumps. “I’ll deal with whatever waits for me up north and come back to you.”
And Liana had known it was the truth. No matter how much she’d hated it, he was good at what he did. He was a fixer and a solver, and he always knew what to do.
• • •
But now, Lianadidn’t know what to do.
She hadn’t seen herself as a particularly stupid person, but kneeling in a shadowy doorway in an alley, trembling with dread, she cursed herself for being a blind idiot. She’d followed the woman out of the palace, and even though Melia’s companion tried to be careful, Liana knew Abia too well to be confused by her meandering. She also knew the house the woman eventually entered: It belonged to Roderi of Elmar. The treachery ran deep, all the way to the Defender of the South, the Scourge of Seragia, the border hero. Melia’s father.
Liana remembered that the Elmarrans had changed sides and turned against the kingdom, but her meager recollection of the events in Abia didn’t include them stirring the conflict. The conversation she’d heard in the garden, the proof that thewoman was indeed from Elmar, sent by their lord, changed everything she thought she knew. Elmarrans were responsible for the slaughter in Abia.
The bloody tide of war was rushing towards the festive, careless city, and Liana had nothing but her two hands to stop it. She was out of her depth.
There was a pattern to it, though. Amron had always been the one who planned ahead, perennially worrying about outcomes. He would’ve seen the trouble looming in the past, he would’ve understood the futile enormity of her task. He would have warned her.
But of course, he did warn her.Don’t fight the gods, he’d written. And yet, she had to go and do the exact opposite, because that was what she’d always been doing. Rushing into things without thinking, stirring trouble wherever she went.
All she had been able to think about was getting Amron back. It had never occurred to her that there might be other people around him. People whose destinies she knew, people who would die horrible deaths in the pointless, disastrous war that was brewing right now, before her very eyes.
Telani had accused her of not caring about other people, but that wasn’t true anymore, not since her father walked into that little attic room. The pain and yearning she’d felt, the worry she’d seen in his eyes, changed everything. She wanted more time with her father.
If Abia rose against the Seragians, Darin would die. That much she remembered.
No, he would die in any case, because that was how the events in Abia had played out. It was a done thing, it was history.
Except, it wasn’t. It was happening now, all around her. She and Amron had changed something already, running away from Amril’s party, fighting the Seragians. And now she knew those weren’t really Seragians, but Elmarrans. The black heart oftreason beat inside the palace. Surely, that meant something?
