Soren stood next to rose bushes that rivaled my mother’s.
“Princess Ashlyn is here, Your Highness,” the knight said.
Soren’s gaze remained fixated on the mountains.
I clasped my hands together waiting for him to turn around.
“You may leave us.” Soren slowly pivoted toward me when the knight bowed without protest.
“I am to have a chaperone,” I said.
“You can’t be alone with me?” Soren’s brow raised as he assessed my hair.
“I thought appearances were important here.” I wanted to call for the guard—to bring him back. But I only stood staring back at Soren, watching the sunlight illuminate the shades of blue in his eyes that I had barely seen before.
“They are.” He took my hand in his, lifting it to his lips. Slowly he kissed it. “But we can steal a single moment. No one will think badly of you for it.”
I tried to resist the urge to pull back from him.
He ran his fingers over my hair. “The color is different than I expected it.”
I held my breath, bracing for whatever he’d say next.
“It does bring out the color of your eyes,” he said.
My lungs ached when I forced myself to breathe. “I am pleased with how it turned out.”
“You don’t care to adhere to expectations, do you?” The way he said it was as if he were testing me.
I hated to be tested. “I don’t understand.” If he was going to hint at his truth, I would make him say it.
“I was fully prepared for it.” It seemed like he hadn’t been. He mentioned my brother once. Whatever informationwas relayed to him, he seemed to feel as if he knew truths about me and was quickly piecing them together.
“Agan must have written quite the letter,” I said.
“I was in Bailoc a few weeks ago with our emissary, negotiating trade. The first of any attempts between both sides since well before the war.”
Nothing in his invitation had stated any of this. The history between our kingdoms didn’t leave me expecting it either. “How is my brother?”
“He and his queen are well.” He sat on a nearby bench, watching me carefully as I sat beside him. “She is expecting a child in the coming months.”
The thought of my brother’s wife as a mother was chilling to me. Reina only spoke in cursed riddles. “What a wonderful surprise.”
“You truly knew nothing of it?”
“I haven’t spoken to him since well before the war.” There was no way to speak to him. And even if there was, I hadn’t cared to. “And my people?”
After the first war, just after my sister was born, a blight had spread through our lands, ravaging crops that grew in its path. The palace and its surrounding grounds had barely been affected, but I could still recall the scent of decay that found us when the winds were strongest.
“They are managing. The destruction hasn’t increased.” It was a relief to hear him say it wasn’t spreading. “The need for food throughout the outer villages is still dire.”
A bone-numbing chill clung to me. If they were trading again, I needed to know how far I was embedded in their plans. “Your newly established trade, is it dependent on us marrying?”
“It was set in motion far before we were,” he said.
I waited for the starlight to strike me.
It didn’t.
