I had spent the last two days preparing for the embraces, the ribbing, and the questions I would have to answer with half-truths. The skill of saying nothing while seeming to say a great deal was an art that every prince had to learn, and I had always been good at it, perhaps not as good as Arlen, but better than the other three.
We passed numerous guards on our way to the royal family wing, more than I had ever seen stationed inside the palace, and as the chamberlain stopped at the tall doors of my parents' receiving room, the guards stationed there bowed to me and opened them.
I walked in expecting my brothers, but only my parents, two footmen, and a maid were there.
The chamber was lavish yet intimate, decorated with the tapestries my mother favored and furnished with velvet-upholstered furniture in our house colors.
A table had been laid with a festive banquet that was far too much food for three people.
My mother was on her feet as soon as the doors had opened.
"Alaranthus." She crossed the room faster than I had seen her move in years, and then her arms were around me, and she was holding me with surprising strength for her slight frame.She pressed her face to my shoulder, and when she drew back to look at me, there were tears on her cheeks.
I went cold.
My mother didn't cry. I had seen her bury her own father with dry eyes and a steady voice, and I had seen her stare down ambassadors and outmaneuver council factions. She'd absorbed news that would have flattened other women without so much as a tremor in her hands.
But she was crying now, holding my face between her palms as if confirming I was solid, and the fear that had ridden with me for ten days bloomed into something close to terror.
"Let me look at you," she said. "Oh, you're all muscle. Not an ounce of fat on you. Was there a shortage of food in those mountains?"
"Mother." I caught her hands. "What's going on?"
Behind her, my father rose from his chair, and as I focused my attention on him, the cold in my chest became painful.
The King of Catonia, Head of the Council of the Elurian Federation, had always carried himself as though he'd emerged regal from his mother's womb. It was an effortless quality that made other men seem provisional in his presence. The man rising from the chair looked somehow diminished, muted. His face was ashen, the skin gone slack and gray beneath eyes that had sunk into shadow, and the way he moved suggested that it pained him.
He'd aged a decade in the five months I'd been gone.
My mother hadn't been lying about his illness.
Was he dying?
"Father." My voice was unsteady. I crossed to him and bowed, and when I straightened and he gripped my forearm, it was not with the same strength I remembered. "I came as fast as the road allowed."
"I know, and I appreciate the haste." He studied my face with those shadowed eyes. "You look well, despite your mother's fussing. Elucia agreed with you."
"It did."
For a moment none of us spoke. The untouched banquet gleamed by the windows, absurd in its abundance, and my mother's hand found my father's other arm, and the three of us stood in a small, tight knot in the middle of that overly warm room.
"Tell me what's going on," I said. "You have gone to great lengths to evade my questions and give me half answers. I'm going out of my mind with worry. Please tell me now. Whatever it is, I would rather know than keep imagining worse."
My mother glanced at the doors, where two footmen still stood at attention, and at the maid waiting by the table to serve.
"Leave us," she said. "See that we are not disturbed."
They went without a sound, the doors closing behind them with the soft click of well-oiled hinges.
My mother took my hand and drew me toward the table, and my father followed, lowering himself into the chair across from me with marked effort. My mother poured us wine, and my father wrapped both hands around his glass without raising it.
"There was another assassination attempt, Alar," my father said. His eyes came up to meet mine, and the pain in them stopped my breath. "This time, they very nearly succeeded."
24
KAILIN
"Whether being one of a kind is a blessing or a curse is a decision, not a fact. I made mine long ago. There is no one like me on Aurorys, and no one like Moki, and we are both perfectly content."
