The pass was so narrow, Hera’s belly almost touched the stone walls to the left and right, and her big head kept turning to glare at Evander as he urged her onward.
Sitting behind Evander, her arms wrapped around his body, Valenna swung between hope and dread. One minute, she was confident Cobblepine would have the powder and a pair of wyverns, guaranteeing a long and beautiful life with the man she loved. The next, she was spiraling into a well of despair so deep she thought she might drown in it.
She rested her chin on his shoulder. “What do you envision? If we could be together, what do you imagine it would be like?”
He gazed at her, contemplating, then said, “A little chaotic, I think. We’d have too many pets, and neither of us would do the dishes because we’d be too busy with the dracorium in our backyard. But it would be a beautiful chaos—the kind I imagine in happy homes.”
“What about children?”
“Whenever you’re ready.”
“Eventually, I’d like children. But for a while, I’d just want you.”
He smiled, and he looked hopeful. The happiest she’d ever seen him. And it filled her with terror.
“What do you picture?” he asked.
“Just that,” she said. “Except I’d like to live near the sea.”
“We can arrange that, I think.”
She squeezed him, kissed his neck, and she’d never felt so soldered to him. Iron melted into steel.
“What about our kingdoms?” she whispered.
“We stay out of the war,” he said. “We forget about our parents and stay hidden.”
“I can’t simply forget what my father did, can I? Should I?”
He considered this, then said tentatively, “It seems this magic does more harm to you than it’s ever done to him. Wouldn’t you be happier if you let go of your past and focused on the future?”
Her rage at her father was a deeply rooted tree, grown all around her heart, but she did not know how to dig it out. Valenna watched Raska dive after a goat perched on a ledge overhead. The old bird had followed them from Whyspenware, keeping her distance.
“We’re running away from that life,” Evander continued. “That’s why we left.”
This was ever Evander’s strategy, it seemed. When the water was too hot, he moved on to cooler pools. But that wasn’t why Valenna left Sennalaith. She left so she could hone her magic, a knife on a wheel, until she was ready to punish her father with it. She wasn’t running, just couching in wait.
It was odd how calmly Evander, so bent on avoiding trouble, shouldered the knowledge that a sudden, blinding stroke of death could take him at any moment.
But was it trouble he ran from? She’d seen him stride up to too many snarling dragons to suspect that kind of cowardice. Or any cowardice at all, really. No, it was something more complex that she couldn’t isolate.
“Raska is fading,” Evander continued, looking up at the sky. “But whenever she does a favor for my mother, my mother uses magic to revive her, but only enough to keep Raska desperate,always returning for more. I think Raska believes that taking me to Marwenna will earn her something more permanent, that lasts longer than a few weeks.”
“And your mother is a necromancer?”
Evander huffed. “She says that because the Ashkendoric people worship and revere death, and she has built herself up to be the death god’s emissary. But really, she has botanical powers, not unlike you.”
Valenna didn’t like that comparison one bit. “So how does she revive the dead? If she isn’t a real necromancer?”
Evander shrugged. “She has a magical tree or something. I don’t know.”
“Do you think Raska followed me from Largotia, hoping I would lead her to you?”
Again, Evander shrugged. His nonchalance irked her. “Raska is old, and she has old magic. She probably knew that we’d find our way to one another. If I return to Ashkendor, Marwenna will make me fight again, or execute me as a traitor. Both equally distasteful. I don’t fear my mother, but I’ve had my fill of war.
“I need you to understand something, Val. I would rather slit my own throat than return to Ashkendor.”
Valenna shuddered. “Don’t say that!”
