There really wasn’t much in between.
As the narrow road wound before them, shifting from sleepy gray to a russet-pocked beige, Amarande snuggled into the warmth of Luca’s back, lifting her chin just enough to drop a kiss behind his ear. “There were times over the past few days when I was sure I’d reneged on my promise. That I wouldn’t see you again soon. Not ever…”
Her words trailed off.
“I knew I would see you. You never abandon your promises, Ama. To me, to your people, to the stars. You will find a way.”
Something heavy stuck in her throat. This—exactly this—was the manifestation of love Ula described in the Pyrenee tent that night, when Amarande’s despair squatted on her chest as she stared down the turn her life had taken with surrender to Renard.
Do you know how many times he told us you’d come for him? How much faith he had—has—in you? I could nearly pluck his love for you out of the air and slice it up for dinner, it was so solid. He loves you and you love him—true love, simple as that.
Amarande’s arms tightened around Luca’s body, her cheek nuzzled to the broad warmth of his back. His heartbeat thrummed against her ear, a torch carried not only for her but now for an entire people. He’d always had to share her with the people of Ardenia, and now she would share him with the people of Torrence. He was no longer hers alone.
Destinies mirrored—hers needed saving; his needed building.
And though she wished to somehow untwine her heart’s desires for him and her heart’s desires for her people, it would not be possible to tease them apart.
Not now. Not ever. Not with who they were.
Perhaps that was why love so often did not fit into the royal equation. But if they succeeded, they could change that.
Once it was full light, she couldn’t snuggle in like this. And so Amarande used the last moments she had. In subtle rotation, she pressed kisses anywhere she could reach. To his spine. His shoulder blade—one, and then the other. Up his neck. Again, behind the ear—one, two. She settled the curve of her throat over his shoulder, her chin coming to rest on his collarbone, parched lips at his ear.
“Luca, no matter what happens with my mother, with Inés, I love you. Please hear me when I say that if I fail, it wasn’t that I did not love you enough. I love you more than anything in this world, even if I didn’t say it until it was almost too late.”
He reached up and cupped her head with his hand, fingers laced in the fall of her hair. Her cheek pressed against the side of his neck, the brim of his hat shrugged away—stupid thing. Her lips met his jawbone, her chest pressed against his spine, her own heart pounding against the double layers of fabric wedged between their skin.
“You didn’t have to say it, Ama. I always knew. Even when I never thought I had a chance to say it back. I love you.”
“Masks up. The castle looms.” Koldo’s voice was low and direct and sent Amarande jerking back and away from Luca, as if they’d already been spotted.
Ula and Koldo pulled the linen tighter to their faces, obscuring their eyes, which had been left bare for faster negotiation of the rocks and roots along the hairpin trails. Luca shrugged up the handkerchief at his neck, covering his nose and mouth—his eyes his only discernible feature.
Amarande bent forward and pressed one more kiss to the nape of his neck and then set herself back, so that only the insides of her bound arms touched him, a manufactured sliver of space between her torso and the swoop-and-curve of his back.
Dawn had spread into true morning now, the sky a vibrant blue canvas for the red spires of the Itspi. Amarande craned her neck to peer over Luca’s shoulder at the first glimpse of her home. “It will be crawling with guards—new recruits for the king.”
“The princess is correct,” Koldo intoned. “The guards are novices, yes, but they have eyes. We will be spotted long before we reach the gates. I suspect Geneva has a rider prepared to greet us. From this moment forward, we must assume we are being watched.”
The hourglass was now turned, sand pouring through, marking the time between this moment and when that first mark must be made. Luca had worked with resistance leaders to create waves of fighters, who would follow them. But even the first wave would not arrive until at least two hours after they did.
Thus, they had to assume they were facing this alone. Any aid wouldcome late or not at all. At best, it would be to a triumphant victory. At worst, it would be a funeral march.
It was too much to ask, Amarande knew, for all of this to be hammered out in parley and negotiations. In verbal promises and then decrees, and the trial and imprisonment of her mother for the atrocities she’d committed as Warlord.
No. It started with blood. It would end with blood.
On the next hill, it became so much worse.
“Hold.” Koldo’s voice came crisply, sharply against the wind.
The party fell into line at the crest of an overlook, detailing not just the spires but the entirety of the rolling grounds of the Itspi. They were bathed in the unflinching sun of a new day, parched grasses and rocky grades stamped down with summer—and hundreds, perhaps thousands, of men and women in full garnet-and-gold regalia.
They stomped across the yard, grounds, arena. A cluster of them even ran drills in the meadow Luca and Amarande had long called theirs. These men and women lined the parapet of the wall ringing the Itspi, arrow quivers glittering in the sun. Pockets of them stood outside the entrance, far more in number and far more menacing than the green guards and closed gate Amarande met in the day before her brother’s introduction and coronation.
Stars.
“That… is a much larger number of guards than we encountered days ago.” Ula adjusted the linen about her face for a better look.
