"Then he's coming back," Morek said, looking at me and grinning, his whole face alight. "Does that mean that he's coming back?"
Elu forgive me, my heart leaped with joy despite my suspicion that bad news would follow the good. I allowed myself to feel relief and joy and to imagine Alar walking through that door, Alar on Veynathei's back, Alar's arms around me and all those lonely weeks without him undone.
Then I noticed that Codric had stopped reading.
He set the notepad down, looked at me, and his expression was so mournful that the joy curdled in my chest before he said the words I was dreading.
"The rest is for Kailin alone," he said.
The others went still for a moment.
"What's going on?" Shovia asked.
"I'm just doing what Alar is asking of me." Codric pushed away from the table and stood with the notepad in hand. "I'm sorry." He turned to me. "Come on. Let's get it over with."
I followed him down the short hall to my room with the dread pooling in my stomach cooling and hardening, becoming cement that made it difficult to walk, to breathe, and I wondered if this was the last time I was going to follow Codric so he could deliver devastating news to me, or whether this would become my new reality, and every letter from Alar would hit me worse than the previous one.
In my room, I walked over to my bed and sat on the edge like I had done the last time, and just as before, Codric took the chair from my desk and turned it to face me and unfolded the pages.
"'There is no way to say this that won't hurt you,'" Codric began reading. "'That's why I asked Codric to read the rest of this to you alone. I know how proud you are, and how you'd rather no one saw you bleed. I can at least give you this.'"
Codric swallowed hard, and I just became numb because I had to in order to survive what he was about to read to me.
"'I might be free of the crown, but that's the only thing I'm free of. When Arlen was restored, the whole tower of marriages my mother had built came tumbling down, and things became much more complicated. Catonia made a promise to Tarina to deliver them a prince and an alliance. When Arlen was made heir again, they could no longer deliver him to Cardilia, the crown princess of Tarina. As a future queen, she couldn't join him in Catonia, and we were in breach of agreement. A broken promise between crowns has to be compensated for lavishly and generously, or it makes an enemy, and Catonia cannot afford antagonizing an ally and turning Tarina into an enemy. The compensation the Queen of Tarina demanded was me, but not as a match for the crown princess. Now that she had leverage, she decided to use her less valuable asset to secure an alliance with Catonia, and demanded me for her younger daughter, Idrilia. The alliance keeps Tarina from turning against my father.'"
I stopped breathing.
"'My betrothal to Idrilia will be announced at the ball,'" Codric kept reading, and his voice was getting less steady the further he went. "'I have never met her, or if I have, I don't remember her. I don't even know what she looks like, and I don't care. I don't want her, and I never will. The marriage will be in name only.'"
Codric looked at me as if that was supposed to be good news.
It wasn't.
It only meant that Alar's life was going to be miserable.
Disappointed to see my lack of response, Codric lowered his gaze back to his notepad. "'There is one small mercy buried in all this that I cling to. Tarina shares a border with Elucia. If I can persuade them to let me live there rather than in Vedona, I will be nearer to you and Veynathei. Near enough, perhaps, for Veynathei to pick me up and ride to the Citadel, if Saphir and General Lesten would allow it.'"
My eyes were burning.
Perhaps this wasn't the end. Perhaps there was a way to salvage what little we could from this terrible situation.
Codric didn't lift his head to meet my eyes, though, and I had a feeling that the bad news wasn't over yet.
"'But perhaps I shouldn't. Perhaps I could just ride Veynathei from time to time because our bond demands it. You deserve better than stolen afternoons with a man who belongs to someone else, even if it's only on paper, a man turning up at your door when he can get away. And knowing you, you would let me, because you are generous and you love me, and you would waste your life waiting in the cracks of mine. You deserve so much more than such pitiful crumbs, even if you tell yourself that it's enough. It would not be enough, and I would hate myself for doing that to you, and one day you would look at what I had let you give up, and you would resent me for it, and you would be right to do so.'"
A sound came out of me that I didn't consciously emit.
"'You are the Hero of Elucia,'" Codric read on. "'You are going to be its head shaman one day. You are worth so much more than being the little secret of a married man's life, and I love you far too much to let you settle for this. It breaks my heart, but there is only one thing I can do for you. I'm letting you go. Don't wait for me. Find a man to love who can be wholly yours and whocan stand beside you at all times. Be happy, Kailin. I love you. That was always true and always will be. I will never stop loving you, and that's why I'm choosing not to be selfish and to let you go.'"
Codric sighed, folded the pages along the crease, and held them out to me.
I took them even though I couldn't read a word of the shorthand he used to decipher the letter, because I needed to hold on to something or I would start screaming.
I didn't feel grief. I felt rage.
"He chose." My voice came out shaking. "He just decided what's best for me, handed down the verdict, and never asked me what I wanted." I waved the pages in Codric's face. "Was there a question anywhere in that? Anywhere he gave a damn about what I wanted to choose?" I was on my feet, still waving the pages in the air as proof. "He doesn't get to do that. Everyone gets to dictate the new rules except for me. His mother, the council, Tarina, fate, and now him! Him most of all, deciding to be noble all over my head as if I'm a bird in a cage he can let loose when his conscience pricks him. I didn't ask to be set free. He doesn't get to play the saint while breaking my heart!"
"Kailin."
