“This is all my fault. I should never have allowed any of this to happen.”
“It wouldn’t have changed anything if you’d stayed. My father is the one who needs to stand up to Ilara, and he won’t.”
I shook my head. “You don’t understand. It’s not the king.” I took a deep breath, prepared to tell Sami everything I’d learned in my weeks away as quickly as possible, when he placed a hand on my arm.
“I already know.”
I released my breath. “What?”
“I already know that Prince Ceren is the one using the pearls. My father told me everything.”
“Wait, your father? What are you talking about?”
Sami stood and began to pace the tent. “When the emissary came to Varenia, he tried to warn my father about Prince Ceren. He told him Ceren was the one devaluing the pearls, giving us less for them not only so we would be forced to harvest more pearls just to make enough money to survive, but also because the king’s coffers were getting low.”
All this time, I’d wondered if I could trust Talin, and he had been trying to help the Varenians all along. “He wasn’t an emissary, Sami. He’s Ceren’s half brother, and he has as much claim to the crown as Ceren if the king dies before Ceren’s twenty-first birthday. The king is dying, and Ceren is afraid he will meet the same fate. He eats the pearls, Sami, to try to escape from whatever hold the mountain has over him.”
Sami’s brow wrinkled in confusion. “He eats the pearls? I don’t understand half of what you’re saying, Nor.”
“Just listen. He’s created a device that enables people to breathe underwater for extended periods of time. He’s planning to force all the Varenians to dive for him.”
He stared at me, horrified. “Are you sure?”
“I’ve seen it with my own eyes. He’s the one who cut off my family’s water supply, and he’s threatened to do it to all of Varenia. If your father doesn’t believe me, he’s going to find out for himself soon enough.”
“Gods, Nor. This is so much more horrible than I’d feared.”
“It gets worse. The last Varenian queen is dead.”
“What do you mean, dead? She’s still so young.”
She was, I realized. My mother’s age. “She was murdered years ago, most likely by Ceren. I don’t think there’s anything he won’t do to become king. And if he does, you need to make sure the Varenians are prepared. Talk to Elder Nemea. She’s on our side. If you can convince her, perhaps she can persuade the rest of the elders. Your father can’t refuse the will of the entire council.”
“I’ll try, but you know how my father is. He won’t listen to anyone.”
I took Sami’s hands in mine and squeezed them. “Then make him.”
“I swear to you, Nor, I will do everything I can.” He sat down again. “And what about you? If the king dies before Ceren’s birthday, what will happen?”
“I don’t know. I assume Talin will challenge him.”
“No, what will happen to you?”
I wiped my sweaty palms on my thighs. If Ceren won, he would marry me, I assumed, to strengthen his lineage. And if Talin won? What would become of me then?
“Don’t worry about me,” I said. “Just please take care of Zadie. And talk to the elders.”
“I will.” He studied me for a moment. “You look well, Nor. You look beautiful, actually.”
I met Sami’s warm brown eyes. I didn’t feel awkward around him the way I had after the ceremony. Instead, I felt the same brotherly love for him I’d always felt, before everything fell apart. “Thank you, Sami. I miss Varenia more than I can say, but I’ll be all right. Will you give my love to Zadie? Tell her that I’m healthy and happy.”
He eyed me skeptically, but he nodded. We both turned as the tent flap lifted and the kite seller ducked his head inside.
“What is it?” Sami asked.
“There are soldiers outside, and they’re looking for the girl.” He gestured toward me.
Sami’s eyes darted to mine. That greedy jewelry seller had probably told them where I was. “Stay in here,” I told him. “Don’t leave until the men are gone.”
“I love you, Nor. Be careful.”
“I love you, too,” I said, doing my best to keep my voice from breaking. As I walked to the flap, the kite seller pulled a red kite from the wall of the tent and handed it to me.
“They’ll wonder what you were doing in here,” he explained.
“I can’t pay for it. I’m sorry.”
“Consider it a gift.”
I touched his arm for a moment. “Thank you.”
I stepped out of the tent and blinked against the bright sunlight. Suddenly a man’s gloved hand closed around my arm and yanked me back into the aisle, where two other soldiers waited.
“What are you running from, girl?” Riv demanded, his putrid breath wafting into my face.
I struggled against his grip. “I wasn’t running from anyone. I came to buy a kite.”
“It looks like you forgot your escort in the process.”
I gritted my teeth and glared at him. “I don’t need an escort. And you have no right to touch me.”
Riv laughed at his friends. “Cheeky little bitch, isn’t she?”
The blade of Talin’s knife was against Riv’s throat before he could say another word. “You forget you’re speaking to a lady, and your future queen.”
Riv’s hand released me immediately, and I stumbled over to Ceren’s guards.
“Is everything all right, my lady?” Talin asked, his knife still pressed to Riv’s neck.
“I was just getting this for Prince Ceren,” I said, holding up the kite bearing the Ilarean crest. “Were you looking for me?”
Talin shot me a look as pointed as his blade, but he released Riv with a shove and took my arm. “Come with me,” he said, dragging me back down the aisle. When we reached an unmarked silk tent, he pulled me inside, waving his knife at a man selling what looked to be Varenian pearls to another man.
“You can’t come in here,” the merchant shrieked, but he cowered when he saw the Ilarean crest on Talin’s armor. The port was considered neutral territory, but the traders who came to the floating market weren’t supposed to trade the pearls to anyone but Ilareans.
“Leave now, and I won’t report you to King Xyrus. Selling Varenian pearls to a Galethian is illegal, as you well know,” Talin said.
The merchant nodded and gathered his wares before hurrying out on the Galethian’s heels.
When they were gone, Talin turned to me. “What were you thinking, running off into the market like that?”
I tried to come up with an excuse more plausible than a kite for a prince who lived inside a mountain, but there wasn’t one. “Please don’t ask me that, Talin.”
“How can I protect you if I don’t know if I can trust you?”
I stepped closer to Talin and carefully took his hand. “You can trust me. I swear it.”
“Can I? Then why did we really come to the market? Tell me the truth.”
“I—”
“The truth, Nor.”
I crossed my arms and sat down on a tufted pillow. “Sami trades illegally at the port sometimes with the Galethians. He knew the value of the pearls hadn’t gone down, that someone was deliberately cheating us. We thought it was your father, based on the rumors Sami heard. Before I left Varenia, I had hoped I might be able to talk to King Xyrus and convince him that if he didn’t back off, we were going to starve, and he would run out of pearls.”
“So why did you want to come to the market?”
“To meet with Sami. I was supposed to find him here. It was the only safe place we could think of.”
Talin came to sit next to me. “And what were you going to do when you met him here?”
“I was supposed to report eve
rything I’d learned to him.”
Talin’s eyebrows lifted. “So you are a spy.”
I snorted. “Hardly. The one time I followed Ceren down to the lake in the mountain, he caught me. I’ve never been so terrified in my life. And you caught me outside Ceren’s study the night before the trip to Lake Elwin.”
“I assume you’ve now spoken with Sami?” he asked.
I nodded. “He told me what you did, when you came to Varenia. I know you tried to warn Governor Kristos. Unfortunately, he has chosen not to heed your advice.”
“It’s worse than that,” Talin said. “Governor Kristos threatened to tell my brother that I was a traitor. He and Ceren have some kind of understanding, it seems. That’s why when I saw you in Ilara, I thought...”
“You thought Kristos had sent me to betray you to Ceren?”
“Possibly. I didn’t know. And then when you ran off today, after what happened yesterday... I was afraid you were going to leave. Not that I would blame you. It’s just... I at least wanted to say goodbye.”
There was so much sincerity in his voice and sadness in his eyes. “I’m sorry I worried you. I was afraid you’d try to stop me. And if Governor Kristos doesn’t do something, Ceren could turn all of the people I love into human extensions of his devices, including Zadie.” Tears welled in my eyes at the thought of her attached to one of Ceren’s hoses like some kind of animal. Just because a person could be underwater for so long didn’t mean they should. And how many months would it be before the oysters were gone? Not many, if Ceren made enough of his devices.
“Don’t give up,” Talin said fiercely. “I don’t believe that Kristos wants to surrender to Ceren. I believe he’s just afraid more people will suffer if he doesn’t.”
“He’s a coward.”
“He has every reason to be afraid,” he said. “The Varenians are poor, untrained, and tremendously outnumbered.”
I rolled my eyes at him. “Thank you. I feel so much better now.”
“I’m sorry.” He took a deep breath and released it. “Nor, if your governor believed he could win against Ceren, do you think he would feel differently?”
Governor Kristos had always been good to my family, and I believed he loved our people. Knowing what I did about Ceren, I realized Talin was right: Kristos did have a reason to be worried for them. But what kind of understanding could he have with Ceren that would make him take the prince’s word over his own son’s?
“I don’t know,” I said finally. “Maybe. But the Varenians don’t stand a chance against Ilara’s army.”
“Not alone, perhaps.”
“What do you mean?”
“There is reason to hope, but until we know if Governor Kristos is on our side...”
My breath caught. “Our?”
He glanced at the tent flap. Ceren’s soldiers would be out there, wondering what we were doing. “You said you saved my brother that day out of a sense of duty.”
“Yes.”
He reached for one of my hands. “Just promise me now that I’m not wrong, Nor. Tell me you don’t have feelings for my brother.”
I recoiled at the very idea. “For Thalos’s sake, Talin. First you think I would betray you to Ceren, and now you think I have feelings for someone who would use my people as tools for his own selfish aims? Honestly, the nonsense that comes out of your—”
He closed the space between us, cutting me off with his lips and stealing my thoughts along with my words.
After seeing Sami and Zadie kiss, I had imagined what it would be like to kiss someone I cared for. I had even let myself imagine kissing Talin. But I hadn’t anticipated the contrasts: the softness of his lips above his stubble-roughened chin; the heat of his mouth on my cool skin; the watery looseness of my limbs that flowed to a tight ache low in my belly.
I closed my eyes and pressed closer to him, running my hands over his muscular chest and shoulders, trailing my fingers up to the soft curls just above his collar. I breathed in his scent of sunlight and leather and tightened my grip on his hair, drawing him closer still.
He moaned softly before parting my lips with his tongue, deepening our kiss. For a moment, all my concerns about Varenia and Ceren, all my long-held fears and insecurities, were washed away on a tide of desire, until I was nothing but pure sensation and energy. I was hungry and full at the same time, a million miles away and yet rooted so firmly in my own body I could feel every nerve.
I was drowning; I could never get enough.
29
When Talin finally pulled away, it took a moment to remember where I was. He pressed his fingertips gently to my swollen lips. I kissed his fingers and brought my hand up to cup his cheek, then tucked his hair behind his ear. He shivered at the sensation, biting his lower lip, and I wondered what else I could do to make him shiver like that again.
“Nor,” he said, moving his fingers up to my cheek. The touch of his fingers against my scar startled me, and I pulled back on instinct.
“What’s the matter?” he asked, still holding me, his eyes searching mine.
I drew his hands away from my face gently. “The guards will be suspicious.”
He cleared his throat and rose to his feet, pulling me up with him. “Of course. I was being impulsive.”
I wanted to tell him that his emotions were what made him human, so unlike Ceren and his cool calculations about everything. But I was having trouble formulating coherent thoughts, let alone compliments, so I squeezed his hands instead.
When we emerged from the tent, the larger of Ceren’s two guards stepped forward. “We’re under strict orders to keep the lady in our sights at all times,” the lead guard said. “If you keep this up, we’ll be forced to tell Prince Ceren.”
“That won’t be necessary,” Talin said as he led me back through the market. He kept close to me on the ride back to the inn, and though Ebb looked at me questioningly that night when I went immediately to bed without telling her anything about our trip, she didn’t pry.
I rode beside Talin throughout the next two days, but Ceren’s guards kept closer to me than they had before the market. Talin told them I’d only run because I was afraid of the soldier who accosted me, and they seemed to accept his explanation, but we kept our conversations light. It was nice to hear more about his childhood, and telling him about mine helped take my mind off what we were returning to in New Castle.
The road was just up the bank from the river here, though we hadn’t crossed onto Ilarean soil yet. We stopped to water the horses, and when Ebb, Grig, and the guards disappeared to relieve themselves, I found myself briefly alone with Talin.
“What’s going to happen when we get back?” I asked as he helped me dismount. “Can Ceren marry me whenever he chooses?” I knew now that I would never stop comparing him to Talin, never stop wondering what might have been.
“There are no laws preventing him.”
“Why does he have to be so cruel? The way he treats his servants, how he does everything he can to make people as uncomfortable as possible, what he tried to do to the page...” I caught my lip in my teeth, unsure if I should continue. “What he did to your mother.”
He tensed at my words. “Who told you?”
“Lady Melina. Although I should have figured it out on my own. I just didn’t think anyone could be capable of doing something so horrible.”
“Neither did I,” he said, the pain of the memory etched in his features.
“Why didn’t you do something, if you knew?”
“I was fifteen and terrified. I suspected Ceren, but like you, I didn’t want to believe it. And he gave me the chance to leave New Castle by taking over command of the king’s guard, so I left. I figured it would be easier to plot my revenge from afar.”
I sucked in a breath. “Your revenge?”
He sighed. “How did you put it the other d
ay? It’s complicated?”
I couldn’t deny that. But Talin’s chance at the throne could be slipping through his fingers this very moment, and he didn’t seem very anxious about it. Maybe he really was plotting something against his brother. “Did you—did you know what was going to happen, that day at the lake?”
“I didn’t, but I wasn’t surprised someone would try to kill my brother.”
“You asked me to save him that day,” I said slowly. “Ever since, I’ve wondered—why?”
He ran his fingers through his hair. “Ceren is not a good person. I know that. But he’s still my brother.”
“But you may have to fight him for the crown.”
“That’s different than letting him drown. I don’t know why, it just is.”
I smiled gently. “You’re more Varenian than you know.” I followed him up the bank to a clearing where the horses could graze while we waited. “What is your relationship with Lady Melina? Were she and your mother close?”
He thought for a moment. “Yes, at first. Lady Melina was very kind to my mother when she first came. Xyrus was already as good as married to Ceren’s mother, and Melina believed Mother would become a mistress, like she was. She wanted to show my mother the ways of the castle, to be her mentor. Of course, what she knew of the castle was as someone less than a lady. She had never been treated as an equal by my grandfather while he was alive, and she was bitter and jaded even then. But my mother was still being treated as you are now, like a lady of the court, when Ceren’s mother died. And the next thing my mother knew, she was marrying my father.
“Lady Melina’s jealousy of my mother was so blatant that my father had to send her away from court. She was still permitted to attend major events, but she couldn’t be trusted to behave during meals and gatherings. She called my mother terrible names and even did things to sabotage her, like putting nails inside her shoes.”
“No,” I breathed, horrified.
“Oh, yes. She was ruthless.”
“But you’re friends now?”
Crown of Coral and Pearl Page 29
