My eyes shot open to bleary, amber light. I did not move. I couldn’t. My body still seemed to bob atop waves, but now it hurt with such vibrant pain that I couldn’t even moan.
I rolled my head over a cool pillow. Sleep still clung like spiderwebs, but I could just make out the large room. A few ornate lanterns swayed from the ceiling, casting their light through the dark space. Everything was gilded. The walls, the intricate vines carved into the bedposts, the settee. I squinted at the figure on the far side of the room. The broad yet trim shape. The dark hair and darker gaze.
I blinked, and the king of Varya came into focus. A black lock of hair hung over his creased brow. He rifled through a box of small glass vials and as I watched him, the memories came. The strange pain in my middle that had brought me to my knees in the gravel yard of Nemea’s mountain. The slow, excruciating slice of a sword through my leg. Theodore clinging to me as we rode down the mountain atop a stolen horse. The jostling had tugged me in and out of consciousness, but I remembered the warmth of his power pouring through my bleeding thigh, the soft roll of his voice at my ear telling me to stay upright, to keep my hold on the pommel.
The bed lurched, swayed, and I realized… we were on the ship. I was on the sea. I could feel it in my body, through my pain, through the pitch and wood.
“We made it,” I rasped. Then, in the next breath, “I’m gonna be sick.”
Agatha was at my side in a rush, holding an empty washbasin below my chin. I heaved into it, coughing, then shuddered at how it flared my pain. Theodore moved himself and the box of medicines closer. The nauseating twist in my stomach eased.
“It’s the blood bond that’s making you ill,” Agatha said warily, as she ran a hand through my knotted hair. “It takes some time to settle.”
I held my throbbing head. “How much time?”
“Two days.” Lachlan and Agatha answered at the same time. Lachlan sat at the far end of the table Theodore stood beside, sharpening a dagger with a whetstone. I could see him properly now. He was wiry but imposing, with wide shoulders, light brown skin, and brown-gold hair, cropped close. There was an upward curve to the corners of his mouth and a mischievous light in his eyes.
Irritation pinched Agatha’s features. “Had you told me that you had performed a sacred blood bond with the king of Varyabeforewalking into a horde of armed guards, I could have told you that you’d be sick. I could have told you that you’d need to keep close to one another until the bond settles. But instead, you told me nothing and nearly got yourself killed.”
“Agatha,” I groaned. “A lesson learned. The next time I frantically bind myself to a king and flee my home, I’ll make sure to run all the details past you first. That’s assuming that next time this happens, you’re not in the middle of a liaison.”
Lachlan snorted, and Agatha shot him a look that should have set him aflame. “Don’t worry,” she bit out, more to Lachlan than me, “it won’t happen again.” She swept away from the edge of the bed with the washbasin, her cheeks flushed bright. Guilt lanced through me, and I noted the strain between them. I wondered what had transpired in the short amount of time they’d been reunited.
I tried to sit up, to find a quiet way to ask Agatha what was wrong, but only managed to wince in discomfort.
“Don’t move.” Theodore’s order was low and chagrined. “You’ll make your leg bleed. It’s not properly healed yet.”
I met his icy gaze across the room and stilled. There had been a kindness to him, an attentiveness, while we’d made our way down the mountain. He’d kept a hand at my back and warmed me. He’d looked at me with something like compassion when I’d beenscared. Now it was all gone. He possessed all the heat and civility of a marble statue.
A heavy rolling sound, like thunder, filled the cabin. “What is that?”
“Cannons,” Lachlan said, attention on his dagger. “They’re readying them in the very likely event that Nemea sends his ships after us. You know, since his captain was murdered, and his ward was stolen away in the night.”
His harsh hazel gaze and the derogation in his tone made it more than clear: Lachlan did not think highly of me.
“If I didn’t know better,” he went on, metal ringing with each swipe of his blade, “I’d think you were trying to take advantage of Theo. He’s always been susceptible to a damsel in distress.”
Agatha flopped down onto the settee, where she cradled her forehead in her hand. “Shut up, Lach.”
Theodore gave him an annihilating scowl, but Lachlan only raised his brows placatingly. The whetstone gave another scrape.
“Take advantage of him?” It was almost comical, to picture someone so implacable and intimidating as the king of Varya being victimized.
Lachlan looked at me like I was simple. “To make yourself queen.”
“Queen?” I blinked. “What do you… I don’t understand.”
Theodore’s deep voice was quiet, filled with a soft sort of tension. “Marriages are not performed as blood bonds on Seraf, Lach. She didn’t know.”
“Marriages!” My gaze bounced between all three of them. “We’re married?”
Theodore rubbed at his eye.
“That’s fine,” said Lachlan, clearly annoyed. “Butyoudid. And you agreed. So now, in the eyes of the Great Gods, you’ve taken a fugitive wife, right before you’re supposed to meet your fiancée.”
“Yourwhat?” My glare shot to Theodore. A surge of inexplicable possessiveness raced through me like venom. Color sat high on his cheeks. His full mouth was a hard, flat line. I could hardly understand my emotions—the irrational, spitting jealousy, the impulse to defend him to Lachlan. “I gave His Majesty my word that I’d have our blood bond severed. I trek to the Mage Seer the moment I land on Varian soil.”
The air seemed to thin. Slowly, Agatha raised her head from her hand. Lachlan set his dagger to the table with a deafeningclack.
