“I am not going to lie here doing nothing!” Robin felt her voice rising. The extra effort burned painfully in her left lung, but she did not hold back. She was not sure why Ian was suddenly angry, but she welcomed the show of emotion so that she could respond in kind. “Silverreign is six days away!”
Ian walked away from her, all of the six steps it took him to reach the opposite wall of the cabin. “It does not matter.” He turned back to face her and removed the hand from the back of his neck, swinging his arm out wide. “It will not make a difference.”
“If we can learn more about what Gareth is trying to do with these experiments, it can.” Robin wanted to show Ian that she was already making a plan. “I know this new information isterrifying, but we can find a way to fight them or disarm them. Maybe Aden knows something that can help us.”
“No!” Ian shook his head in small, frantic movements as he walked back toward her.
“Understood,” Robin said, lifting her good hand. “We will not ask Aden about it.”
“No,” Ian said again, standing at the side of her bed and looming over her. “You do not understand, Robin. The Majis ships will arrive in a matter of days, and we havenothing!”
“Nothing?” Robin repeated, her anger rising again. “What do you mean we have nothing? I have a plan for this, Ian. I have been planning for the real Return for years. This new information does not negate that. It just might change the plan.”
“What part of everything that happened yesterday,” Ian said, interrupting her, “makes you think we can go back in six days, or nine days, or whenever Gareth decides to launch his grand plan?”
“This has nothing to do with what happened yesterday,” Robin said, cursing her inability to sit up. After her previous painful failed attempts, her body had finally realized she should remain in a horizontal position. For now.
Ian leaned over her, his voice deadly calm. “You nearly died yesterday.”
“This is not the first time I have nearly died,” Robin said. She knew this was about something deeper than just his concern for her, but she could not make sense of the seething anger behind his words. “And I am quite confident that it will not be the last time, either.”
“We went in vastly outnumbered. We had a strategy. We had a plan.” Ian spoke with his hands as well as with his voice. “I had a foolish hope.” He pointed to himself, and his gaze fell to the floor. His eyes wandered for a few moments, as though he was listening to the words he had just said for the first time. Heturned his back to her. “I had a foolish hope.” He turned away from her, walking back to the far wall.
“Ian,” Robin said, filling his name with as much comfort as she could. “What are you truly thinking right now? I do not understand this anger—it is unlike you.”
“You do not know me,” Ian said, still facing the far wall.
“I am beginning to, again,” Robin replied. “And I very much like what I have seen.” The words were hard to admit out loud, but she hoped that in sharing her thoughts honestly, he would feel safe enough to do the same.
He said nothing.
So she continued. “You are still someone who always does what he believes is right. You do not bend or twist yourself to fit anyone else’s expectations.”
Ian turned his head over his shoulder, almost looking back at her. “Did I not bend myself to my father’s will when he sent you back to Lockwood?”
“Only you can answer that,” Robin said. “Perhaps I did not understand it then, but what I see now is a boy who believed his father was right, even when he desired otherwise.”
Ian turned back around at that. “So I followed his judgment. I believed the decision was good. That is what I have always done. But what has that gotten me? Thirty-eight seasons of loneliness?”
Robin felt a pain in her heart, but this one had nothing to do with the magical wound in her side. He had been counting the seasons since she left. “I was lonely, too,” she whispered.
He looked up at her, his eyes covered in shadow while his head still hung low.
“I want to know you.” He felt so far away despite the small size of the room. “I want to know who you are now.”
He shrugged. “There is nothing to know. I have spent my life making the right decisions, choosing the harder option if itbenefits those around me. And I have nothing to show for it. I cannot keep those I love the most from getting hurt.”
“Ian,” Robin said, finally feeling as though she understood what had driven his earlier anger. “It is not your responsibility to save the whole of Iseldis.”
“Is it not?” Ian laughed as he lifted his head. The sound was dry, short, and hollow.
“No one expects that from you,” Robin pushed back.
“I am the crown prince of Iseldis, Robin.” Ian finally stepped back toward her, his voice growing louder as he moved. “That is all I have ever been. My father is injured. My people are threatened by the whims of a cruel and manipulative man who grows more powerful every day. Itismy responsibility to save Iseldis. That is the only thing I have ever lived for. That is all I have.” He sat back on the stool by her bedside. “Yesterday, I also had a foolish hope. Today, even that is gone.”
Robin lifted her right hand, stretching it as far across her body toward him as she could reach.
He looked from her hand to her eyes.
