I should have known better than to keep them displayed here.
Better yet, I should have ensured they were destroyed with the rest of his things rather than clinging to his memory like a child.
I squeezed my eyes shut to fight the image of our last encounter over a year ago. Sitting with a history book propped in his lap on the chair beside the bookshelf. His big smile framed by years-earned laugh lines. His graying hair slicked into a low bun. A salute as I passed him on my way to my own chamber.
I should have said something. I should have told him what his guidance meant to me. I should have thanked him for his imparted wisdom.
But I couldn’t, because I didn’t know how.
The only person who had treated me with the decency my own fucking family should have… was gone.
Eviscerated.
Fuck. My chest throbbed in a way I couldn’t describe. I hadn’t been this close to needing a breathing technique from the Isles in years. I deserved whatever this tormented feeling was.
“Raithe?” Rahzlyn’s soft fingers touched my cheek. My eyes shot open to stare at her in my arms. “It’s okay to be sad.” Her lips quivered. “We can be sad together.”
I fixated on the swarming emotions in her eyes. Something in my chest cracked at her raspy, broken words.
Hector died not knowing what he meant to me because Iwasa messed-up prick. Somehow Maryn knew what Hector meant tome. Everyone knew before I realized it myself, nearly a year later and stars-damned too late.
“Where is our lovely princess this morning?” Maryn questioned the council room.
I schooled my features into neutrality despite my irritation.
“Sleeping,” Felaf confirmed beside me. It was the only reason she’d left her post in response to Maryn’s summons.
Maryn gestured toward the sunlight filtering into the otherwise somber room. “Still? It’s been days. What a lazy creature, hardly fit for a queen.”
It had been one week, to be exact, and I could still feel Rahzlyn in my arms. One week since I set her in bed, eased her under her covers, and she’d looked up at me with bleary, beautiful eyes. “Thank you,” she’d said, clinging to me before drifting off to sleep.
Thank you.
She repeated that sentiment every night after I helped calm her enough to sleep. I didn’t deserve her gratitude. There was no logical explanation for why I did it, other than it felt right. I liked being someone’s support: a strength someone needed. Someone she needed. She’d been on my mind every waking hour since then.
I told myself that my preoccupation with her was simply the result of the mystery surrounding her past, as warned by her grandmother in her dying moments. And I had a sneaking suspicion that Basil’s gifted Sight was a fraction of it.
“Now that we’re all convened, will someone finally care to explain how mere civilians managed to best two guardians?” Maryn prompted into her teacup.
We’d lied, naturally, claiming we were attacked on the return to Antares from Pipirima. If we’d said an explosion occurred, Pipirima’s baron would launch an investigation that would reveal no such attack occurred.
“They were waiting for us,” I said before Felaf could. She wasn’t nearly as bad a liar as Alekko was, but her resentment of deception would give her away. “We believe they weren’t mere civilians. Likely, apostates who knew of Novah’s identity and hunted down her grandparents. All so they could do exactly what Helene did to Cyrene’s family: prevent them from being sacrificed, and therefore prevent more power to Scorpio.”
“We should have waited to post Novah’s charts before retrieving her grandparents,” Gregorios boldly stated.
“Yes, well, you claimed her to be a nomad. And Novah claimed them to bedead, if I recall.” Maryn twisted her cup in a circular motion. “For someone who did not know them, she’s been quite affected by their deaths.”
“Family is family,” Gregorios offered.
Maryn sneered at this. “The barons are distressed to hear of yet another attack, even if this one is more unusual than their historic targets. They have solicited additional soldiers from the Martial Isles for their personal security. Word will soon reach the rest of the queendom and then the entire realm. We must put them at ease.”
Alekko rested his elbows on the table. “Respectfully, Queen Regent, securing more soldiers from the Martial Isles means fewer numbers for my fleet, who are the ones tirelessly hunting down the apostai in partnership with Vesperah’s city guards.”
“Then so be it. The barons must be appeased.”
It wasn’t lost on this room that her desire to keep the barons content stemmed from their ability to instate a different regent with one of her advisors at any given moment.
Vesperah glanced at me. I shook my head. Once I got the answers I needed from the man that Felaf and I imprisoned in the city under Vesperah’s watch, I would let Rahzlyn see him for herself. His presence, for now, needed to remain a secret from everyone—especially Maryn.
