At this, Luca squeezed her hand, careful of the knife wound, still healing. “His army did not attack.” Something flickered across his handsome face. “Taillefer did not make it, but I do have news from him—for later.”
The princess nodded. With Taillefer there was always more. Until there wasn’t. She didn’t know how to feel about that. “And the Sand and Sky?”
Koldo leaned in and grabbed her other hand. “It is what we make of it, now, my queen.”
The title dropped from Koldo’s lips in such a way that stole the breath from Amarande’s lungs. “Ardenia, Torrence”—Koldo nudged Luca with her elbow across Amarande’s body—“all of the Sand and Sky. But that is for later, too.”
And with that, the general stood, the salmon light of dusk catching the wisps in her dark braid. “Let us leave her to rest and have a go at a meal. The medikua will want to see her before nightfall.”
The rest did as they were told, Koldo’s direction as good as an order. “Medikua Aritza?” Amarande asked. “She’s returned?”
“A gift from Taillefer, if you can believe it,” Ula explained, adding, “though I stitched you up first.”
“Stop bragging,” Urtzi chided, snagging her hand. “It’s time for food.”
Osana laughed. “Your priorities are always intact, Urtzi.” She hung on the doorframe that led from the bedchamber to the parlor,Ferdinand hulking over her shoulder. It seemed he’d grown another inch since she’d first met him. “Rest well, Amarande.”
A thread of panic caught Amarande as they filed out. Luca still sat on the bed, and she scrabbled to trap his hand between both of hers. “Wait, you’re not leaving me, Luca? Are you? Take dinner with me. Rest with me. Stay with me. Please.” Then she added with a hint of a smile, “My king.”
Luca grinned, those eyes of his the color of sunrise on snow, as warm as the summer sunset behind. “Of course I’ll stay. I’ll stay until the end of time. As long as you need me, I’m here. Always, my queen.”
ASthe Sand and Sky found new footing, midnight came quietly to the Bellringe.
The moon was high and no longer weak, the clouds gone, the night ripe with silver energy. A platinum light slithered across the summer-dry landscape of King’s Crest and the Pyrenee mountains beyond, bathing everything it touched in glitter beneath a million stars.
Those stars had power too, as all in the Sand and Sky knew—the night sky marked by departed souls, looking down, watching over those below. As designed, the Bellringe’s chapel’s windows were especially good at capturing the glow from above, being so much closer to the sky than any other kingdom—even Ardenia.
Tonight, the windows shimmered a little more than usual.
For on the table beneath those great starborn windows lay the body of Crown Prince Renard.
Stinking of herbs and tinctures, shirtless, the gaping wound under his ribs sewn closed, skin puckering under the pull of sutures, Renard appeared just the same as when the medikua had left him days before, taking her bags and talents with her for the royal ship in the Port of Pyrenee.
Yet, in that gleaming moonlight, things were not the same at all.
No, that silver light beamed across his unshaven face… and the air charged, suddenly full with all the power of the stars and their peculiar magic.
And there, alone in the silence, the mostly-dead would-be king opened his eyes.
