He barely spared her a look. “No, you’ve done more than enough. I must help Melia now.” His fingers were entwined with Melia’s as the surgeon took a scalpel out of his bag. “I’ll find you later.”
And she had no heart to tell him there would be no later.
She walked out of the villa and back towards the palace light-headed, her ears buzzing. The final image of Amron—dirty, distraught, beautiful—was etched on the insides of her eyelids, refusing to be washed away by her tears. The square was almost empty now but for the guards and casualties. The rest had slunk away to their dens. Tomorrow, they would wake up bruised and hungover, with a nagging sense of shame they’d try to forget as soon as possible. They’d be good citizens, cheering the Seragian carevna and Amril, accepting the transition of power when itinevitably happened in three days’ time. Their lust for blood had been sated, the sacrifices to the gods made. Abia would wipe this stain off her white cloak and continue to live in peace and prosperity.
Somewhere in the palace, Darin slipped in and out of consciousness, dreaming feverish dreams of the northern forests and the feral goddess who ruled them, but he was alive. He’d be there when the princes needed him, as would Queen Orsiana. The Seragian emperor would find the royal family united, and the treaty would hold.
It was, in all measurable ways, a victory.
And yet, it tasted like ash in her mouth. Amron had chosen Melia because she needed him more, because it was the right thing to do. Liana fought to suppress the tears that filled her eyes as she headed towards to the Northern gate. She was done with Abia, done with history, done with the kingdom. She’d given all she had to give, and it wasn’t enough to get her what she wanted the most.
She walked through the familiar streets, now filled with trash and rubble and people hurrying home, and bid a silent goodbye. It had been her home, after all, and it wasn’t its fault that it had demanded so much. She’d chosen to tie her life to Amron, she’d chosen to challenge the gods. The city was just a high stake in that game.
The massive Northern gate was closed, but a few guards stood there, watching over the restless city.
“Let me out, please,” she said.
They lifted their torches to get a look at her, a tired woman in a bloodstained uniform of the king’s guard, and found no objection to her plea. They unlocked the small door, and she stepped out of Abia for the last time.
It really didn’t matter where she went next, so she chose a nice tree by the road and sat down, her face turned towards the east.When the first light of dawn appeared above the mountains, and the thick, white fog rolling down the slope materialized into a white stag, Liana gripped the silver medallion containing the last remaining proof Amron had ever loved her, and closed her eyes.
• • •
They had goneto Myrit soon after the war, back when Liana’s curiosity still got the upper hand over her disgust, and she’d allowed Amron to drag her to court.
The court was a smaller affair then, mostly political: The lords who’d survived the war gathered around the young king and his regent, vying for scraps of power. Yet, Myrit was a proud city filled with ambitious people, and even though it had suffered greatly, rebuilding it quickly was a matter of stubborn defiance. After all, for those who were not overly preoccupied with human suffering, war offered opportunities of renewal and growth.
And so Liana found herself in the former palace of the Lords of Leven—now the royal residence—polished to its former glory, all colorful marble, scented woods, and intricate tapestries laid in a maze around blooming gardens and murmuring fountains. The war had made people a little reckless, a little wanton; faced with their own mortality, they lusted after every pleasure life could offer them. They were all young, too, the new generation, the fighting generation, the winners, rushing headlong into the future so that they wouldn’t have to look behind them and see the carnage, the ghosts, the grief.
Amron shone at court. After years of blood and grime, of chainmail and leather, of sleeping in tents or worse, he was back in his element, in silk and velvet, in marble halls, under blazing chandeliers. Touched by glory, gilded by victory, all eyes on him.
Liana struggled to keep up. Her share of glory was by no means insignificant—she was revered, her courage praised, her beautyadmired. But she was a novelty, a fragment that didn’t fit in, and that showed soon enough. She had no house, no family, no connections in the intricate network of people who ruled the kingdom, except for the old Gospodar Echton, who treated her with absent-minded cordiality. She showed no talent for politics, she had no wish to use the fact she had a direct approach to the most powerful man in the kingdom for her own advancement. She was a nobody; she was no lord, no lady, no wife, no princess. The regent’s paramour, the wild northern warrior girl: She was an anomaly they couldn’t, or wouldn’t, wrap their heads around. The men mostly tried to bed her: They found her stunning even though she was outside the court’s fair—frail—pale aesthetics. But the real reason behind their advances was to challenge Amron’s power, to find his weak spot. The women mostly despised her.
The women—ah, the women! There were few of them around during the war, this class of women: thoroughbred, powerful in their own right, privileged. No place for silk and sighs and poisonous whispers on the battlefield. But as soon as the fighting was over, they crawled out of the woodwork in their brilliant gowns and dazzling jewels, ready to climb the new ladder of power that was being built in the halls, corridors, and bedchambers of Myrit.
They flocked around Amron. Liana watched their smiles, their covert touches, their relentless flirting. She’d never been entirely free of jealousy, but there was amusement in it too, a game she and Amron played, entirely comfortable after years of sharing everything. To sometimes bring in someone new for a night or two, when they both felt intrigued enough.
It was a dangerous game at court because sex was a currency there, a stepping stone to power. Therefore, no one important. A lady-in-waiting whose skin was smooth as satin and who’d never kissed a woman before, a dark-eyed guard Liana devoured whileAmron sat in the shadows. Rare, short-lived treats.
Isetta should have been as insignificant as the rest of them, a younger sister of a minor lord, pretty with her black hair and blue eyes and fresh face, but nowhere near as beautiful as Liana. She was besotted with Amron—all the women were—and they danced and drank and laughed together, and Liana was warming up to the idea of her pale limbs and cherry-tinted mouth in their bed, when something happened. A disruption, an anomaly.
Instead of batting her eyelashes at Amron or accidentally brushing his ear with her lips as she whispered sweet nonsense, she talked to them. About nothing serious at first: Abian poets at his grandfather’s court, the Seragian ivory chests in the royal collection, the silk patterns the weavers of Myrit imported from the south. Friendly chat, but it left Liana painfully out of her depth. She had no formal education, no courtly upbringing. She knew how to track man or beast through the thickest woods, how to dress a wound or choose the fastest horse at a glance, how to train a hound or kill a man without making a sound. But this was a different world now, and those skills, admirable as they had been, were useless. She lacked refinement and, at twenty-seven, she was acutely aware she could never catch up with the people whose courtly manners were their second nature.
When Isetta pulled a lute out of some corner and Amron wrapped his arms around her to teach her an old folk ballad, the wave of jealousy that hit Liana was so strong she got up and left, afraid she would make a scene.
She took a long walk to cool down, but it brought her no relief. Then she shut herself in the bedroom and sat there, steaming in agony, replaying the moment when Amron’s fingers slid around Isetta’s wrist over and over again in her head.
“No,” she said later that night, when Amron came to bed. Alone, thankfully.
“What?”
“Not Isetta. I don’t want her.”
“Fine. As you wish.” He made no attempt to change her mind as he removed his clothes. He only said, “I thought you liked her.”
“I did.” For once, she refused to be distracted by his body, by the linen slipping over his pale skin and hard muscles. She felt querulous. “But you liked her even more.”
He paused to shoot her a confused glance. “What do you mean?”
