Slowly, Talin moved one hand up to cup the back of my neck, the rough calluses of his palms sending chills down my spine.
“Do you remember the first time we saw each other?” he said softly. “In Governor Kristos’s house?”
I grinned. “How could I forget?”
He dragged his lips along my collarbone. “You were beautiful, of course. I knew to expect that when I came to Varenia.”
“I was soaking wet and dripping water all over the governor’s floor,” I reminded him.
He smiled. “That only added to your charm. But it wasn’t your beauty that stole my breath.”
“No?” I managed, feeling a bit breathless myself.
He pulled his mouth away to look at me. “It was the way you’d spoken to Sami.”
I laughed. “So you heard all of that, did you?”
“I heard all of it, yes.”
“You must have thought me the rudest, most improper girl in the world.”
“Rude, improper, and brave,” he said. “There was so much conviction in your words. I didn’t know what you were talking about, but I could tell that whatever it was, you were willing to confront the governor over it.”
I shook my head. “My mother would have killed me if she saw.”
“Your mother valued you for all the wrong reasons.”
I blushed, grateful for his words but finding it difficult to believe them.
Talin continued, his hands taking mine. “And then over the course of the meal, as everything began to fall into place for me, I saw how much you had wanted to protect Zadie.”
“Of course I did. She’s my sister.”
He leaned back a bit more. “And Ceren is my brother. And I wish I had even half as much certainty about what to do next as you do. You always know what’s right.”
“But I don’t,” I said. “Not anymore. I’m as unsure as you are. But if you think your mother is wrong—”
“I don’t,” he said, cutting me off. “Ceren can’t be king, Nor. He’s too dangerous. I just...”
Talin loved his brother, and he hated him. He felt guilty for not being kinder and for not stopping Ceren when he became too cruel. He couldn’t win in this scenario. But he didn’t need me to say that. He already knew.
“Get some rest,” I said instead, helping him out of his tunic. “Everything will be clearer in the morning.”
He sighed as he lay back on the pillows. I nestled in beside him, absorbing the warmth from his body. “That’s what I tell myself every night. And every morning I wake up just as confused as I was the night before.”
“There must be something you’re sure of,” I said, smoothing his hair back from his temples. In the candlelight, his skin glowed, my bronze sculpture come to life.
He looked up at me, his eyebrows furrowed. “I want to be,” he whispered.
Talin was going to do what his mother thought was best, and Zadie was right: I couldn’t expect him to choose between us. But that didn’t mean I couldn’t make a choice of my own.
I leaned over him, my hair forming a curtain around us, and kissed him softly. “I love you,” I said. “Whatever happens in the days to come, don’t ever doubt that.”
* * *
Zoi arrived the next day. She came with the other two thousand troops Talin had promised, riding a white pony who looked like a miniature version of her mother’s horse.
Zoi looked like her mother, too. She was small for her age, with her mother’s olive skin and her father’s lighter hair. Her face lit up when she saw Talin, who picked her up and spun her around as soon as she dismounted. It was such a purely happy moment that I felt my heart swell at the sight.
“It’s like they were never apart, isn’t it?” Talia stood beside me, watching the siblings’ reunion. “For the past four years, this is all I have wanted.”
“I’m very happy for you. For Talin and Zoi, too.”
She nodded. “Thank you. My son has grown into a fine young man since I was left for dead by my stepson. I don’t know that I could have improved him had I been there.”
“You should be proud,” I said, glancing at her from the corner of my eye. “Without a solid foundation, a house isn’t strong enough to withstand a storm.”
She was silent for a moment, watching Talin lift Zoi onto Xander’s back, then mount behind her. The child was fearless on the massive stallion. Or perhaps it was simply that she trusted her brother.
“You’re not like the Varenian girls I grew up with,” she said finally.
“I’m not like the girls I grew up with, either.”
She laughed throatily. “No, I imagine you’re not. I can see why my son likes you. He was never interested in the young ladies at court, though they were trying to catch his eye from the time he was twelve. He knew he could never trust their motives. But you were engaged to his brother, and still you risked everything to be with him.”
“Talin was one of very few people I could trust in New Castle.”
She turned toward me. “But you didn’t know that when you first got there. And something tells me you don’t just like him for his handsome face.”
“Maybe I’m good at reading people,” I said. “Or maybe, after I was scarred, the people around me stopped pretending to be anything other than what they were. I wasn’t someone worthy of impressing anymore in Varenia.”
Talia reached toward my face, and I flinched back. She ran her fingers over my scar anyway. “Talin told me it was from a blood coral. That you can heal from any wound.”
For a moment, I was angry that Talin had told her my most privately guarded secret, but I reminded myself that Ceren wouldn’t be what he was if it weren’t for my blood. I nodded. “Yes. As can Ceren.”
“Is there any way to undo the magic?” she asked.
“Not that I’ve found. But Adriel, the woman who came with us from Galeth, is trying to help me find a way.”
She arched a brow. “She’s a witch?”
“A healer.”
Zoi was running toward her mother, and Talia bent down to scoop her up in her arms without hesitation. She held the child tightly to her chest, kissed the top of her head, and set her gently back on her feet.
“Zoi, I’d like you to meet your brother’s friend, Nor.”
“She’s more than a friend,” Talin said with a glance at his mother.
But Zoi was staring at her brother, her voice full of awe when she spoke. “Are you going to marry her?”
Talin looked at me, something I couldn’t read passing over his features, before turning back to Zoi. “Aren’t you a bit young to be talking about marriage?” he said, avoiding the question and ruffling Zoi’s hair. “Nor came on a Galethian warhorse.”
Zoi reached for my free hand, fearless. “Does she perform tricks?”
I wondered what Roan would say if someone asked him if Duster performed tricks. Probably nothing kind. “Titania is very well trained,” I said. “Would you like to meet her?”
Before Zoi could respond, Talia took the child’s outstretched hand. “That sounds delightful, but this little girl needs to take her nap.” She turned to Talin. “And I need your help in the war tent, if that’s all right.”
Zoi’s lower lip began to tremble, but it stopped when her nursemaid appeared and scooped her up. Talin kissed Zoi goodbye and turned to me.
“Come find me later?” I asked.
He nodded and kissed my cheek before following his mother. I watched him go, oddly unsettled by his response to Zoi’s question. I knew I had made it clear I couldn’t make any promises yet, but his certainty about us had been a reassurance I now realized I’d taken for granted.
Shaking my head to clear it, I headed back toward my tent. Adriel was on her pallet, reading the spell book. We’d passed it around the camp at night on the road, hoping someone might be able
to decipher the most confusing passages, but it had proved futile.
“Find anything useful?” I asked, sitting down next to her.
She stretched and yawned, as languorous as Fox after a nap. “Possibly? There’s a page that seems to be talking about a blood bond, but the ink is smeared and I’m not quite sure I’m reading it correctly.”
She passed me the book and pointed to the verse she was referring to. “It either says, ‘Bonds of blood will not be broken, ’less the blood spell...’” She chewed on her lip for a moment. “That could say ‘spill,’ though.”
“What’s the rest of the line?” I asked, squinting at the slanted writing.
“I’m not sure. Something about ‘twice is spoken.’”
“It must be ‘spell,’ then. You can’t speak a spill.” I handed the book back to her. “But we don’t know what the blood spell is, do we?”
“There are a dozen blood spells in this book,” Adriel said. “I’ve only done a very simple one, a long time ago, and I wouldn’t do it again.”
“What was it?” I leaned in, morbidly curious.
“It was a love spell, where the lovers cut their hands and tied them together with a cloth. I said the spell, and when the cloth was removed, they were supposed to be bound on a deeper level.”
“And did it work?”
She wrinkled her nose. “I suppose so. When the man believed his wife was having an affair, he nearly killed her.”
I shrank back in horror.
“Like I said, messy.”
I looked down at the book again. “Can a spell like that be undone?”
“Sometimes. In that case, I could have torn the fabric apart and recited another spell, and that should have undone it. But there’s never a guarantee a spell can be broken.”
The thought of being tied to Ceren like this forever was untenable. “Well, this one has to be.”
“Even if I do manage to break the spell,” Adriel replied, “it won’t stop him from wielding the bloodstones. He doesn’t need your blood to do that.”
“No, but as long as he has my healing abilities, he’s going to be extremely difficult to stop. And besides, I want the link between us severed as soon as possible. I don’t want to be in his head anymore, and I certainly don’t want him in mine.”
Adriel sighed. “It sounds like Talia’s plan is to overtake Old Castle tomorrow, then attack New Castle, regardless of what you and I accomplish with this book.”
“You should have left with Roan’s soldiers when you had the chance,” I said, angry with myself for endangering another person I cared about. “Now you’re stuck here with me.”
“I could have left, Nor. I chose not to. Despite Roan’s misgivings about Talia—which, by the way, I happen to share—I wasn’t going to leave without a solution to your blood spell problem. Besides, the thought of another seven days in the saddle was horrifying. And Shiloh promised to check on Foxglove for me, so there was no rush to get home.”
I smiled, relieved that this friendship, at least, wasn’t complicated.
The tent flap stirred, and a second later Zadie’s head appeared. “There you are,” she said to me. “We were looking everywhere.”
Sami entered after her. “Any word from Queen Talia?”
“I wasn’t invited to the strategy meeting. Where were you two?”
“Ebb took us with her to see Grig and Osius. They weren’t invited to the strategy meeting, either.”
“How can that be?” I asked. “Osius is the only one who has seen Old Castle.”
“He reported back and was dismissed,” Sami said. “Ebb was going to see if she could speak to Grig in private. Osius seemed reluctant to talk about it with us.”
“He’s a soldier,” I ventured. “We’re not.”
“Fair enough, but we have as much stake in this as the rest of them. More, if you ask me. And if they’re planning an assault on New Castle that could potentially endanger our parents, I think we have a right to know.”
Zadie placed a calming hand on his shoulder. “I happen to agree with Sami. I don’t like that we’re being kept in the dark.”
I nodded. “I’ll talk to Talin later.”
The tent flap rustled again, admitting Grig and Ebb this time.
“I only have a few minutes,” Grig panted. “Osius needs me, but I want to tell you what he saw at Old Castle.”
“It’s about the Varenians,” Ebb added.
“Some of them are being held at Old Castle. Those who weren’t fit to work in the mines.”
Hope sparked in my chest. “My parents?”
“Not among them, from what Osius could see. It was mostly elders and children, about twenty of them. They were in the armory, making jewelry out of the bloodstones. Some of them appeared to be wearing the bloodstones themselves.”
The spark sputtered out. “Ceren must be using the gems to control the Varenians. Which means he could be doing the same to those in the mines.”
Ebb nodded. “It wouldn’t surprise me. Rescuing them is going to be even more difficult than we thought.”
“How is Talia planning to protect the Varenian prisoners when she takes New Castle?” I asked. “What if they get caught in the cross fire?”
“That’s what I wanted to tell you,” Grig said. “Talia seems to thinks the Varenians will come to her side and fight.”
“Women and children? The elderly?” I shook my head. “That can’t be true.”
“I’ve seen her troops, Nor. It’s not just able-bodied men. I saw some boys and girls who couldn’t be over thirteen. It’s the only way she can get the sheer numbers she needs to fight Ceren.”
I remembered Shale’s words, how the woman king would make no exceptions. “We have to talk to Talin. If that’s true, he wouldn’t stand for it.”
Grig sighed. “Listen, Talin is a good man, the best I’ve ever known. And I know he doesn’t condone his mother’s methods. But he’s spent the past four years trying to get her back, and I don’t think he’s going to go against her now. She keeps him so close it’s difficult to even talk to him.”
“Grig?” Osius lifted the tent flap. “You need to come quickly. It’s time.”
“For what?” I asked.
Osius’s steady gaze met mine. “To launch our attack on Old Castle.”
24
They launched their attack in the hour before dawn and took Old Castle by late afternoon. Talin came back from the battlefield that night battered and bruised but with a tired smile on his face. When he finally made it back to his tent, I helped him with the buckles on his armor and filled the washbasin with water from the ewer, soaked a cloth, and brought it to him.
“Let me,” I said as I started to clean the dirt and gore off his face. He closed his eyes and sighed wearily, as if he hadn’t taken a proper breath all day.
“What happened?” I asked.
“Ceren’s troops were waiting, as we knew they would be. It was a matter of numbers, and we had more. But that’s only because he’s got the majority of his troops surrounding New Castle.”
I finished cleaning his face and went to rinse out the cloth. “Can I ask you something?”
“Of course. But I can’t guarantee a coherent answer. I’m exhausted.”
I wrung out the cloth and handed it back to him. “Grig said there are children in your mother’s army.”
His eyes met mine briefly before darting away. “No one under the age of twelve.”
“Twelve!” I couldn’t keep the horror from my voice. I hadn’t wanted to believe it was true.
“I know,” he said as he collapsed on his pallet. “But Ceren has far more men at his disposal. We couldn’t have won if we only sent in our adult males.”
“And the Varenians?” I asked, trying to quell my growing sense of unease.
“We save
d most of them. I’m afraid we lost a dozen or so in the skirmish.”
My stomach sank as I shrank back against the tent wall. “A dozen Varenians?” Many of my people had turned against me and the people I loved, but in that moment, I couldn’t imagine a single one of them whose loss I could bear.
“It’s nothing compared to the hundreds of Ilareans we killed, Nor. Most of them weren’t even aware of what they were doing. And we lost far more of our troops, too. This is war. People die. I’m not sure what you expected.”
His coldness was like a punch in the gut. “Talin.”
He pulled off his tunic and threw it on the floor. “If you came to make me feel bad about myself, you shouldn’t have bothered. I don’t need any help with that.”
All of the adrenaline and thrill of victory had clearly run its course, and Talin’s guilt was physically evident in the slump of his shoulders and the frown tugging at his lips. My heart ached for him, but I couldn’t pretend that I agreed with any of this.
“There has to be another way,” I said quietly. “A peaceful way.”
His eyes flashed in the candlelight. “War is the opposite of peace, Nor. Diplomacy isn’t going to work with my brother. You of all people should understand that.”
“Was he there? On the battlefield?”
“Yes.”
“Did you talk to him?”
His eyebrows rose, and I immediately felt foolish. “What do you think happens on a battlefield, Nor?”
“I’m sorry. I’m clearly making things worse. I’ll go.”
I was nearly at the flap when he grabbed my elbow. His voice was thick when he spoke. “Wait, please. Today was difficult, Nor. It’s only going to get harder from here. I need to know that I have your support. I can’t go into battle knowing you don’t believe in me.”
I placed my hand over his. “I believe in you, Talin. I always will. But this war... I’m just not sure I believe it’s the only option. Do you know why your mother wants the throne so badly?”
His brow furrowed in confusion. “What do you mean? You know how Ilarean succession works.”
Kingdom of Sea and Stone Page 21
