by Beth Alvarez
“In honesty, friend, I don’t think you will find any members of the Collective. Not you and not anyone else.” Stal paced across the room and rubbed his hands together. “If they wish to be hidden, you would sooner find a viper in the trees.”
“I know,” Rune murmured. “But you try telling Vicamros his plan is useless. He feels like his hands are tied in this.”
“In many ways, he’s right.” Sera climbed on the bed, straddled Rune’s middle and ran her hands over his back. “So many bruises! Did the mages beat you with sticks after you fell?”
He ignored the question. “Right now, Cam’s just filling his time and hoping for a miracle.” One violet eye opened, its slit center narrowing as it fell on Firal. “He’s not the only one.”
Firal fought back a shudder.
“So, ignoring Vicamros and his defensive strategy, what are our options?” Stal paused beside the table and tilted a half-emptied bottle of whiskey with one fingertip.
“Realistically?” Rune shifted to make himself more comfortable and grimaced when Sera probed a particularly sore spot in his back. “There’s only one option. Always has been. We kill her, simple as that.”
“Easy to say,” Firal muttered. “Less easy to do.”
Rune lifted his head and glared. “I told you what I needed. I told Kytenia. If you’d been a shade faster, that escapade in the throne room would have turned out different.”
Sera slapped one of his bruises, yielding an angry grunt. “How dare you speak to her that way? The situation she’s in is not her fault.”
“Maybe not, but she could have handled it a lot better.” He winced and settled back into the pillows.
Firal couldn’t deny that. Had she allowed herself time to listen to him before issuing orders in the first place, everything would have gone better.
“That doesn’t answer my question,” Stal said. “I asked for options. Saying to kill her without saying how isn’t helpful.”
Rune scoffed. “With a dagger, with a guillotine, with poison, does it matter? The problem isn’t killing her, the problem is getting close enough to do it. I asked them for enough mages to lend me power to stand up against her, but it’s probably best that didn’t happen.”
“How can you say that?” Firal cried. “Better that the entire island is in her grasp now?”
“Better that we didn’t try,” he replied dryly. “Even if there had been enough mages nearby, it’s the same problem I have with Rhyllyn. Pulling power from others slows me down. Pulling from that many would be even slower. How many would die before I could do anything?”
Stal muttered something under his breath. Firal didn’t understand it, but Sera gave him a dirty look.
“So you think it’s hopeless, then.” Firal blinked hard to keep from crying. After everything, he made it sound as if he was eager to wash his hands of it and be done. She didn’t expect him to be happy, but she had expected more compassion. He’d been the one to seek her in her room, comfort her and tell her not to give up. How terrible he was at following his own advice.
“Nothing is hopeless,” Sera said, jabbing a fist into another bruise and earning another grunt. “It never is.”
“But you have to admit our chances of success are slim,” Rune muttered.
Stal shrugged. “Be that as it may, we have to think of something. I doubt even the barrier over the Royal City would hold that witch at bay for long.”
“I’m finding a lot of people asking me to do something and not offering much help.” Rune squirmed beneath Sera in effort to reposition himself. Unable to move, he reached back and pinched one of her thighs.
She squealed, grabbed a fistful of his hair and yanked his head back. Rune hissed and Sera cackled. “Oh, what’s the matter? I thought you liked it rough.”
Flushing, Firal turned away.
“We will have one more opportunity to speak before Vicamros sends you south.” Stal made his way back toward the door, wearied. “Now that you know, I trust we will both spend the night thinking of how we will address the situation. I will be in our rooms when you are done tending him, Sera.”
Firal strode after him. “Archmage?”
Stal raised a brow. “You are more than welcome to call me by name. You are a queen, are you not?”
Was she a queen? She no longer knew. “Thank you. Before you go, I just wanted to ask if... if there was anything I could do to help. With the Collective, or with anything, really.”
He smiled, a broad, warm expression that made his entire being seem instantly softer. “You are a kind spirit, Queen Firal. You’ve already aided me, and I thank you for the healing. I am sure I will need your assistance again before all this is resolved, but right now, I’m too tired to think. We will have plenty of opportunities to speak after I rest.”
She tried to smile back, but a low, gratified groan behind her made her grimace instead.
Amused, Stal tilted his head. “Does it bother you that much?” He lowered his voice.
Firal pitched hers to match. “Doesn’t it bother you? The way they act together?”
Stal glanced to the bed, where Sera held a pillow over Rune’s head in effort to smother him. He writhed beneath her, unable to escape. “Why would it?”
Firal frowned and rubbed her arms. She didn’t know how to answer that.
“We cannot understand because we’ve never faced war the way they have.” Stal rested a hand on her shoulder. “I am an aristocrat and a mage, as are you. We’ve been sheltered from the hardships they’ve faced. When you cower in pits of mud together, uncertain whether or not you will survive, it creates a closeness no one else can understand. But if your question is whether or not I doubt my wife’s fidelity, I don’t. And neither should you.”
Fire lit her cheeks and Firal turned away. “I didn’t mean to imply anything ill. I like Sera, I wouldn’t think she—”
“I didn’t mean Sera,” he said with a chuckle. “You need not apologize to me.”
The heat in her face grew further and Firal ducked her head. All things considered, it wasn’t appropriate for her to think anything of Rune. Their connection was long severed.
“You tend to your duties. Sera will link with you to give you access to your Gift. So long as she doesn’t try to use hers, and you don’t try to pull power through her instead of the stone, the child will be perfectly safe. I am going upstairs to see how I can help the mages,” Stal said, lifting his voice so his wife could hear.
“Be careful,” Sera called back. She’d settled back to work, apparently giving up the attempt to kill her patient. Instead she punished him by digging her thumbs deep into his back, making him grimace and claw at the pillow now beneath his face.
Firal sighed. “I’ll tend to him. You should go with your husband. I’m sure he’ll need your help.”
Sera studied her for a moment, then shrugged and slid off the bed. “You’re probably right. We can’t leave any of them alone or they blow holes in the walls the moment you turn away.” She rested her fingertips on her belly as she moved toward the door.
Rune exhaled in evident relief and Firal pursed her lips.
Sera touched Firal’s arm and offered a slight smile. “I will see that no one bothers him tonight,” she offered in low tones. “He will need his rest before they embark on this journey. Try not to rile him too much, or he’ll stay up drinking instead.”
“I will not,” Rune snapped.
Sera shot him a glare and pulled Firal into the hallway, out of earshot. “I mean that. He won’t admit to it, but everyone knows it’s one of his vices. He tries to drown his feelings. It never works.”
“I don’t mean to be here long enough to disrupt things,” Firal murmured, looking back toward Rune’s bed. The knowledge she’d never be comfortable near him again was both painful and troubling. Everything seemed to crawl under her skin and nettle her raw. She couldn’t feel at ease around him, yet something kept him returning to her thoughts, and not all of them were bitter. How would s
he be able to let go after this war was over?
Sera followed her gaze. “It was a mistake.”
Startled, Firal frowned. “What?”
“Bedding him.” Sera nodded toward Rune.
Firal’s ears grew hot. Her own embarrassment would burn her alive before the day was out.
“I heard you talking to Stal. And I’ve seen the way you look at me. You don’t need to think anything of the way we are.”
“I wasn’t going to say anything,” Firal murmured.
“I didn’t expect you would.” Sera chuckled. “He was respectful. Kind. I think he cared. But he didn’t love me. He could have, in time, but what is a learned love compared to a soul that burns like your own?”
The words settled on Firal’s shoulders like a burden.
Sera turned and nodded down the hall with a smile. Her husband stood some distance away, conversing with a maidservant. “Now Stal, there is a man who understands me. We share the same fire, the same sense of duty. We connected the moment we met.”
Firal snorted. “When we met, Rune tried to scare me away. I thought he meant to kill me.”
“I’ve heard.” Chuckling again, Sera leaned close to share a conspiratorial whisper. “He doesn’t think he ever deserved you. With me, he saw himself as my equal. But you?” She shook her head. “To hear him talk, one would think you hung every star in the sky.” She patted Firal’s arm and swayed down the hallway to join her husband’s conversation.
Gulping against the rising lump in her throat, Firal slid back into the room and padded toward the bed. As she walked, a gentle push of energy came Firal’s direction. Sera was a powerful mage, then. Firal could only offer her power to someone she could see. She snared the offering before it could escape and tried to focus on the task ahead.
Rune lifted his head at her approach and reached for his shirt.
“Leave it off,” she murmured as she settled on the edge of the bed.
Reluctant, he let it go and eased himself back into the pillows.
“Now let me see what you’ve done.” She ran her hands over his shoulders and back. She tried to ignore the rough ridges of the scars, pale against his bronze flesh, and focused instead on probing for deeper injury with her Gift.
Firal wasn’t afforded many opportunities to use her abilities in Ilmenhith’s palace. She didn’t like to think she’d forget anything, but it certainly didn’t come as easy as it used to.
Aside from the visible bruises on his shoulder blades and the too-tight muscles in his back, he seemed the picture of health. She withdrew her energy and settled her hands on his shoulders as she let go of the link. Sera’s presence faded from her senses. Firal was grateful for the privacy.
He flinched and tensed beneath her hands, and his breath grew sharp.
“You should relax.” She worked her thumbs into the knots in his muscles and her fingertips traveled over the scars to seek pressure points. The ridges and hollows made her queasy. She fought to ignore the churn of her stomach. As grand as the life he’d built appeared to be, it had not been without suffering.
Instead of relaxing, Rune pulled away. “It’s not that easy.”
“I can’t do anything about that spasm if you won’t lay down.” She clasped her hands in her lap.
He shook his head, paced away and turned his shirt over in his hands. “Since you’ve been here, since we met again, you’ve acted like you expect everything to be all right. That I’d answer your summons and be happy about it. Eager to please you, even. The last time I saw you, I was condemned. Sentenced to death. When I needed you, you walked away.”
His words turned her stomach to ice. The lump grew in her throat again. She worried her hands.
“Now you need me.” Rune halted halfway across the room and shifted on his feet as if he couldn’t decide whether or not he should turn to face her. He didn’t. “You pretend everything between us is fine. But those feelings don’t go away, Firal. And I can’t lay face down in a pile of pillows and let you touch me when not that long ago, I was sure you wanted a rope around my neck.”
“I never wanted that, Rune.” For all the times he’d opened up to her since their arrival in the Triad, she’d never repaid the favor. The words threatened to choke her. “All I wanted was for you to come home.”
He made a quiet sound of amusement in his throat and pulled his shirt on overhead. “Little late for that to make any difference. It’s not what you want now.”
“What I want now is to have our daughter back in my arms.” Her voice quavered. “I’ve done all I can to make that happen, and I’ve failed at every turn. I told you before, if you can return her to me, I’ll give you anything in my power to give. All you have to do is tell me what you want.”
“The things I want are always what I can’t have,” Rune said, giving her a wry look. “I suppose I’ve never learned my lesson.”
Firal stared back, almost daring him to ask. When she’d offered herself to him in Ilmenhith, it had been with a measure of disgust. She’d thought ill of him, shaped him to a conjured idea of a villain who never existed.
Now she was no longer sure how she felt. He made her heart flutter, but he also made her sick. As a married woman, she shouldn’t so much as entertain the idea. But he had been her husband too, and for the first time, she wondered what that meant. Would returning to him be wrong? Or was it her marriage to Vahn while Rune still lived that would be called adultery? She closed her eyes to chase away the thought.
Rune jerked the ties on his shirt tight and paced to the window. “I make no promises on what will happen. Vicamros wants me to move with the army of mages headed for the southern continent tomorrow, but he still doesn’t have a plan beyond finding as many stragglers as possible and sending them here. My skills would be of more use here, but I doubt he’d let me stay.”
Her heart sank and her face fell. “So you mean to do nothing?”
“On the contrary, I mean to end this. But I need to speak to Rhyllyn first, to see if my ideas have merit, and he won’t know until he’s able to expand the mage-barrier. Until that happens, I will go where my king sends me.”
“And what of your queen?” she challenged.
Rune raised one dark brow. “You were never my ruler.”
“But you’ve made it clear you’re going to Elenhiise,” she said. “You’re still doing what I’ve asked.”
“Make no mistake,” he replied, turning back to the window and lifting his chin. The soft luminescence of his violet eyes gleamed on the glass and she realized he was using it as a mirror. She saw no others in his room. “I’m going, but not because you asked, and not because of Vicamros.”
Firal slid from the side of the bed and inched closer. “Then why?”
He squared his shoulders and lifted his chin as he smoothed the fitted cuffs of his sleeves. “Do you honestly believe for a second that my father wanted you on the throne instead of me? My whole life, he’d groomed me to take his place. I meant what I said when you had me arrested. The crown is mine. If taking it back means reclaiming Elenhiise as well, then so be it.”
Hurt and anger flooded her heart. Before she could speak a word, the door flew open.
“My queen,” Ordin panted, bowing his head and shoulders and holding the door to keep from collapsing for lack of breath. “King Vahnil has just arrived.”
15
Turning Points
Exhausted hardly covered how Vahn felt. Everyone’s insistence he rest seemed like sound advice now, a whole day too late.
Though everything had gone smoothly since Edagan’s group of mages connected with those Councilor Parthanus gathered to return to the Royal City, their noisy company offered little time for sleep. His body burned with fatigue. His head ached and his thoughts were so muddled, he wasn’t sure how much longer he could stay on his feet.
Then the door creaked open, and he forgot his weariness and all the pains that went with it.
Firal ran, but Vahn met her halfway. He swept
her into his arms and twirled her around, hugged her close and buried his face in her thick black hair.
“You’re safe,” she gasped.
Vahn wasn’t sure he could agree. “When they told me you were here, I hardly believed it. I didn’t imagine anything could be so easy, after everything we’ve been through.” Tangling his hands in her curls, he tilted her head to look at her eyes. “Let me see you. Brant’s roots, I can’t believe how beautiful you are.”
Firal glowed. She nestled her cheek into his palm and hugged him tight. “I was starting to fear I’d never see you again.” Her voice cracked and she swiped at her eyes with her fingertips. “What are you doing here? What’s happened?”
The question chased his smile away. Vahn sobered and tucked a stray curl behind the delicate point of her ear. “I was told you’d been kidnapped. I didn’t believe it, but when we sent a messenger here and she returned saying you were in the palace, I didn’t believe that, either. I couldn’t imagine you being so close within my reach.”
She cocked her head. “A messenger? Where? When?”
He closed his eyes and forced a smile. “I’m sorry. Forgive me, I’m so tired. Sit down, I’ll explain everything.”
Firal took him by the hands, led him to the bed and helped him settle on its edge. The quarters Vicamros had offered him were luxurious, befitting of a visiting king, and the plush bed only made the call of sleep that much louder. She knelt before him to help him out of his boots.
There was so much to tell her, he hardly knew what to say. “Lulu is home. She’s safe. She’s with my mother in the palace in Ilmenhith.”
Firal sat back so hard Vahn thought she might swoon with relief. He leaned forward to lay a hand on her shoulder and steady her.
“Envesi is there too. Right now, she says she means the kingdom no harm. She only wishes to have control of the temple.”
“No harm?” She scoffed, her evident relief replaced with anger in the blink of an eye. “She tried to kill me! She stood right in front of the throne and tried to burn me out of existence!”
