“How long?” she demanded.
He rolled his shoulder and sniffed. “A few more weeks.”
“It was a year, wasn’t it?”
“Nine months.”
Valenna grimaced.
“You asked.”
“Why Allagesh? Why not stay in Cobblepine?”
“Ach …”
Valenna had heard him make this sound before, a guttural noise in the back of his throat, distinct to Ashkendor. She’d always assumed he had a cold.
“… they kicked me out of Cobblepine.”
Valenna furrowed her brow. “Why?”
Evander’s face softened. “You’re so darling when you’re puzzled.”
“Stop that.”
“What?”
“Distracting me. Why did they kick you out of Cobblepine?”
“Because I had a hydra eating them out of bushel and larder, and my magic confused their dragons.”
She looked dubious. “And it had nothing to do with the fact that you can be aloof and unsociable?”
“I’m not unsociable. I love spending time”—he tapped her nose with his finger—“with you.”
“That doesn’t count.”
“I don’t see why not.”
Valenna cast him a look of fond exasperation. “So, when are you going to claim your rightful throne?”
“Oh, never. I refused to take a vow promising I would rape and murder my enemies, and so I abdicated by proxy. Also, my religious beliefs made me very unpopular.”
Valenna knew of Evander’s unusual religious beliefs because she shared them. Monotheism was rare—Ashkendor preferred the hedonism and brutality of their blood-soaked pantheon; Sennalaith preferred their aloof goddesses of honor, wisdom, and war, who exacted a thin self-righteousness and conditional morality from their subjects.
A society can never rise above its gods, and neither can a person. Valenna and Evander wanted a deity better than themselves to worship, instead of some sadistic demigod laughing as hissubjects lopped off one another’s heads for his amusement or a goddess sending men into battle in the name of some abstract concept.
“So there it is,” Evander said, standing and moving across the garden in the warping light of the trees. “And all this means that your father killed my father …”
“And your mother killed mine,” she added. “A legacy of blood.”
Evander looked down at her with an expression of surprise, and she gazed into his eyes—so familiar, so gentle. Impossible to think of him as Evandaine, the warrior son of a queen of death. He was just Evander—her Evander. She’d wrestled dragons with him; held open a snarling hydra’s jaws while he lay between its teeth; tended his broken head.
But could she go to Cobblepine with him? Bare her side to the sword for him? She would be walking practically to her father’s front door.
“Look, Val,” Evander said with practiced placidity. She knew him, and this is what he did when he was about to say something logical and unpleasant. “The sanctuary is on the border of Sennalaith. In the mountains. You’ll be able to stare out over the horizon and see your father’s kingdom.”
Valenna held onto the stump like it might buck her off. “If my father finds me and discovers who you are, he’ll use you against me. He’ll do something horrific and unthinkable to you, and I’ll be helpless to resist him.”
