He barked a laugh. “You can’t say you’re surprised. I assume the guards you sent to monitor me reported how much I drank yesterday.”
Only when they were alone did the King allow him to talk like this. Like they were equals. Even if they were not. Even if history might one day see them as such.
No. That wasn’t going to happen. Definitely not now that the King was finally going to renounce him as the Crown.
“An impressive amount, I’m told,” the King admitted.
Toran drank only enough to send him into a dreamless sleep. Eight mugs of ale usually did the trick. Though he might have gone over eight last night. It was getting harder and harder to sink into oblivion. Harder and harder to keep her face from overtaking his mind.
The King ran a hand down the arm of his chair. “But how did you know I was having you watched?”
Toran fought the urge to roll his eyes. “My skills don’t vanish when I’m inebriated.”
He expected the King to chastise him, but the older man only considered him longer. “I instructed them not to dress in uniform.”
“They could have hidden themselves in another room and I still would have found them out from the way their eyes never left my back.”
The gold clasps on the King’s coat caught the light from the lanterns over their heads, reflecting it into Toran’s eyes and reigniting the pain in his head. He pressed his knuckles to his temples.
King Harkett continued to watch him but said nothing more. Toran shifted his gaze to the rows of bottles secured behind the glass. The Kave rum was calling to him.
“When Kohen’s mother died, I acted like nothing happened.” The King’s voice was low, as if he were speaking to the grave. “As the King, I was expected to keep going. To run the country because all those people out there needed me. I never once thought about the people inside the castle who might need me.” The King wound his hands over and under one another. “I never thought about what I might need.”
The King shuddered, and the sight felt achingly familiar to Toran. Such pain would always roil and jerk.
“Kohen looked to me for comfort, and when I didn’t provide, he looked to me for guidance. He was so young, and because of me, he kept all his pain inside. I failed him,” the King admitted. “And I’m sorry it took so long for me to realize I’d done the same thing to you.”
Toran’s nostrils filled with snot. He tilted his chin so it dripped down the back of his throat. He couldn’t let himself feel her loss.
He looked up. Took in the books and the family heirlooms. He looked higher. Above the bookshelves and the liquor cabinet to the walls that circled high, all the way to the spiral ceiling overhead. Upthere, every piece of exposed stone was covered with a painting of Orlonea’s past rulers. In every painting, another person stood just off the king or queen’s left shoulder. Their Crown.
Every single Crown looked proud as hell to be standing there. Just as he used to be. Before Aeos. Before he’d gotten his legion killed. And beforeher.
Lifting his middle finger to the whole lot of paintings, Toran pulled his feet off the desk. “Why did you call me here?”
The King sighed, then straightened. “I have a mission for you.”
He stiffened, the plush fabric beneath him molding to the new position. He couldn’t have heard the King correctly. “A mission?”
“Yes.”
The last time he’d heard the King say those words had been in this very office. That time it had been a mission to Aeos, a southern nation of grandiose wealth and trade—and Orlonea’s greatest enemy. Because despite the many similarities between the two countries, there was one major difference: Aeos wanted the Witch alive.
“And you think I’m fit for this mission? For any mission?”
“Absolutely not.” The King stood from his chair, shifting from casual ruler to overbearing father figure. “But I do think you are the best fit for this mission—”
He couldn’t believe that. He wasn’t the best—fit or otherwise—for anything anymore.
“—despite what happened on your last mission,” King Harkett continued, as if he could read Toran’s mind, “and what you came home to afterward.”
Toran flinched.
His lungs constricted.
Almost a year had passed since he, Quint, and the other four members of Orlonea’s First Legion had trekked down to Aeos in search of the Witch. There had been rumors that Aeos was harboring her, intent on using her magic for their gain. But Orlonea’s king considered the Witch too dangerous to let live—rightly so, in Toran’s opinion. Sixguards had gone to Aeos to hunt the source of the rumors, traversing the Disputed Land—the tension-filled hundred acres of shared border with Aeos—then sneaking into the country’s capital.
Only Toran and Quint had survived.
