It was time to put words to what Amarande had been dancing around since telling him of his true identity aboard theGatzal.“Then we join our kingdoms—I no longer need to marry to become queen but that doesn’t mean I don’t want to be with you. If we marry, Ardenia and Torrence become one.”
Again, Taillefer came to mind before Amarande could shut him out. His cool blue eyes and sad expression and weary questions and conclusions about her heart.
Ah, so you do plan to marry him.
Yes. Yes, always yes. Always to Luca and always yes.
Amarande burst out of her breathless thoughts to see blatant worry crowding Luca’s handsome features. Right there with his love for her. Plain as day.
“Ama,” Luca started and she nearly balked at the hesitation in his tone, the downturn of his eyes, the careful measure and cadence of the endearing name he’d used for a decade or more, “I want nothing more than to be yours. But, given what has just occurred between Basilica and Pyrenee, I highly doubt the Sand and Sky would approve.”
The queen’s heart stopped.
Luca’s eyes met hers, golden and smoldering and brave. The pad of his thumb brushed the top of her hand, the one Ferdinand had injured, the sutures resisting. Somehow, that tiny bite of pain kicked her heart back into motion. Amarande’s mind whirred ahead of the renewed beat.
Yes, she’d called it right in the meadow. Maybe winningwasconstantly feeling as though you’re a breath from losing it all, because you were. She’d gotten the chance to hold her power without marriage,now she wanted it—andhewanted it, a vicious relief, indeed—and it was an impossibility.
Now. Ever. As long as their heads held the crowns. Maybe.
Amarande’s stubbornness reared, fighting back against an enemy neither of them could truly gauge. Not yet. “Perhaps they will not need to approve—we are rebuilding the Sand and Sky, all of us.”Yes, yes, they were.“We don’t know the language yet in the compact. We could write our way around it. Set the tone and the precedent to allow it.”
It was a solid argument. One she would make to every pinched face within the conclave tent. Yet Luca sighed so deeply she felt the curve of his body shift.
“They will demand approval.”
He said it like a swipe of the executioner’s blade.
“And theymayin time,” she shot back—though the hardness in her vow wasn’t for Luca.
“Yes,” he agreed, grave even as her heart gave a flutter, “but that time is not now when everything is solid as the waters that run through the Divide in the dead of summer.” As in, not solid at all. No, not a leg to stand on in those restless waves. “If they didn’t want to have a meeting in Ardenia, they certainly won’t approve of our kingdoms joining, even if they don’t believe we won’t murder each other in a power grab.”
Luca was trying to make her grin. It almost worked. Amarande met his eyes. “I hope no one believes that.”
“I don’t think they do.” Luca’s dimples winked at her in the shape of the smile he was trying to coax. “I would callthata once-in-a-lifetime event, but I did attend the most recent royal wedding before it, and I would say the continent does not have a good track record of happy marriage ceremonies at the moment.”
This was such an understatement Amarande actually broke—coughing out a laugh that only served to drive unfallen tears down her cheeks in a rush. Luca caught them with his thumbs and cupped her damp face in his hands. The molten gold of his eyes was alive in the firelight as he held her as gently as any flower. “We could make a happy one, Ama.”
“We could.”
Luca drew her face to his, his lips warm and soft, and forever hers. They stayed like that until their hearts calmed, and then he laid back,capturing her in the crook of his arm. He pressed another long kiss against the top of her head and whispered into her hair an oath of affirmation.
“Ama, my heart is with you wherever I am. It wasourpromise to stay together. And I plan on that. I want that. I don’t yet know how we will do it, but we will.”
Amarande fell asleep in the firelight believing him.
CHAPTER 17
THEnewly crowned king of Torrence awoke to the distinct metallic call of Basilican steel pulling clear of its sheath.
Luca sat straight up, skin in an instant chill at the wrongness in the air as he blinked into the heavy black of night. Amarande was not there—he’d carried the queen to her tent after she’d fallen asleep because he did not want to worry her Ardenian guards. Or, if he were being honest, endure another round of salacious jeers from his people. Yet, in that moment, Luca wished he’d kept her in his tent, simply so he’d have eyes upon her because something was most definitely not right.
Catching the attention of Beltza, who stood at his bedside, ears alert, Luca pressed a finger to his lips—quiet—and soundlessly grabbed his own sword. Together, black wolf and Otsakumea moved like the darkness itself that still clung to the Torrentian sky.
Agitated whispers came from outside his tent, along with the ring of another drawn blade. The tenor was low enough that Luca did not immediately recognize either voice—all he knew was that they were male. Blind to any other information, Luca clutched his sword in a close-body block and leveled himself with the seam of the flap. As still as stone, he peeked through the slit, Beltza brushing at his knees, her golden eyes pasted to the night beyond.
The men were astride the entrance, the angle and darkness obscuring anything but their shadows. “Do you not understand the definition of ‘urgent’? I must speak with him now.”
The whisper was that of a young man—not Tala, then.
