“Stay here,” Sebastian murmured to Ciana before pressing his heels to his horse’s flank.
He saw why Quentin had stopped.
Three armored guards stood beside a stone building, their horses tied to a post.
Sebastian raised a hand in the air in greeting. He forced his conversation with Ciana to the back of his mind, the mask of the perfectly mannered Armature slipping into place.
“We come on behalf of the Queen of Onita,” he called. “And we seek an audience with the King of Vatha.”
Here goes nothing, he thought.
Chapter 35
The falls were dizzyingly beautiful.
Cool water misted Mariah’s face. The river they’d followed deep into the Everheim Mountains—the one that had started as nothing more than a small creek—poured over the cliff above them. It was fed by a great, sparkling lake, one ringed on all sides by the towering mountains.
In those mountains, built straight into the Everheim’s themselves, was Eyarfell. The capital of Leuxrith.
“We are almost there.” Their guide, who’d introduced himself as Filip, gestured up. The goat-creature he rode—which they called abrusi, Signe had explained—stamped its foot impatiently.
Mariah’s gaze traced up the steep cliff. She could see the outline of buildings and could almost hear the people walking through the cliff-side roads. A stone bridge cleaved into the side of the mountain and arched through the air, leading to another nearby peak dotted with even more buildings.
She’d thought the palace in Onita—herpalace—had been a feat of construction the way it was built into the low, coastal Attlehon Mountains.
It was nothing compared to this place. This city that touched the clouds, made to be one with the regal Everheim Mountains.
“Your Majesty?”
Mariah dropped her attention back to Filip, warmth blooming across her cheeks when she realized everyone’s attention was on her. Waiting.
How quickly her grief had made her forget her station when she didn’t feel the need to wield it.
“Sorry.” She nodded toward the steep path. “Up the mountains, then?”
Filip smiled warmly. “Yes. Up the mountains.” He turned his mount, thebrusi’scloven feet solid against the stone, and they started up the path.
Kodie bumped his head into her shoulder, nickering softly. She chuckled, reaching under his neck to scratch his jaw. “I know, boy,” she murmured. “I know it’s steep. But you can’t let those goats show you up.”
Her horse tossed his head again, as if he understood. As if he was agreeing with her. And maybe she imagined it, but she was sure his steps grew surer, tail swishing through the air.
She felt the heaviness of Andrian’s gaze before she turned to meet it.
He’d been quiet ever since the Leuxrithians had met them on the path to lead them into the city. Quiet during this entire journey, really. It was like he was retreating into himself, raising up all those carefully crafted walls again.
Mariah wanted more than anything to reach out to him. To ask him what was wrong; to beg him to talk to her; to tell him that no matter what he had to say they would figure it out, together.
But before any of those flowing thoughts could form into a question, Andrian was turning away, striding up the hill after their Leuxrithian companions.
Which left Mariah with Kodie, a breathless Matheo at her side.
Swallowing down her mild frustration at Andrian’s self-destructive tendencies, she turned to the younger Armature, his cheeks flushed with exertion.
“Matheo,” she said with a laugh, “you train nearly every day, and we’ve been on the road for a week. You cannot possibly be that out of shape.”
He shrugged, wiping the back of his hand across his sweaty brow. “It’s all thisclimbing,” he said. “I was not built for this.”
Mariah chuckled. “Fair.” She glanced up again at the falls. “At least it’s beautiful.”
