“I never said I had given up my kingdom.” Rowan tilted his head back to gaze appreciatively at the ceiling and the crystal lanterns. “Only that I needed to leave for a time in order to see that my dreams were too small. Now that I have begun to gather my army, Erath is only the beginning. Next, I will reclaim my homeland of Andar, then I will turn to Vidor. They are a martial people who study the art of war from their cradle, and my goal will be to bring them peace. Once I control their armies, I will turn to Thalassa, and Fren. Those two kingdoms have been on the brink of war for centuries, always skirmishing and wasting their efforts on petty disagreements. With their ships under my command, I will bring the full might of my will to bear on Caelan once more, and the entire continent will be united under one sovereign.” His gaze was far away, as though he spoke of little more than a walk in the country.
“And after that, the world?” Zara asked dryly, hoping she did not betray her dismay. Was he a madman, to believe he could do so much, or merely a born conqueror, driven by an endless lust to possess and destroy?
“Perhaps,” he answered, either failing to perceive her sarcasm or simply ignoring it.
“But why tell me your plan?” she asked, gripping the torch tighter to conceal the shaking of her hands. “What if I choose not to join you? What if I choose to walk away? Then I will know all your secrets and you will have to plot some other way to take over the world.”
He seemed blissfully unaware that she was unable to leave, which meant that Athven had not told him all the consequences of joining her bond. Rowan’s continued ignorance was the one power Zara still had, and she did not intend to enlighten him.
“It does not matter what you know, or where you go,” he said softly. “You cannot stop me. No one can. But even if you could, I am not afraid, because you will choose me in the end.”
“How can you be so certain?” Zara scoffed. “I don’t even like you, and I most assuredly do not like your goals for the future. And even if I put aside my moral concerns with your apparent thirst for blood and conquest, being bonded to you sounds like an appalling violation of my privacy. It is bad enough sharing my head with Athven, and she is not a man.”
“Blood and conquest?” Rowan protested. “Did I not say that my goal was to bring peace? It is not violence I desire, but an end to it.” He smiled beatifically. “And I cannot think that a bond between us would be as terrible as you say. I have much to offer, and I would never trouble you, either in body or in mind, without your consent. It isn’t as if we would be married, after all, unless you wished it.”
“If I wished it?” Zara snorted. “You have plans for world domination. I’m sure you have something loftier in mind for an empress than a… what did you call me again? Oh, yes—an abandoned, homeless treasure hunter.”
“Zara, Zara…” Rowan sighed, then smiled as though she had given him the world. “You really are the most delightful woman I have ever had occasion to meet. As a prince, I have met many, I assure you, and you make them all seem utterly insipid and colorless.”
“I’m sure that’s what you tell all the princesses,” Zara scoffed, flipping her braid and walking away from him, feeling uncomfortable with his insincerities. How could it be that she would rather hear Alexei call her a thief than listen to Rowan say she was beautiful?
“Not all,” Rowan acknowledged slyly, “and I have certainly never offered to marry any of them.”
“You didn’t offer to marry me,” she pointed out acidly, before hastily adding, “and don’t. I beg you. Men who offer to marry me for nothing but my enchanted castle make me feel cheap. It will only make me despise you more.”
“But Zara,” he said, following her across the room, “why should you despise me? I can offer you safety. Wealth. Freedom. The world. Everything you have ever wanted, and more. And I ask so little of you in return. I want only to spend time here, learning what Athven has to teach me. Once I have gained what I desire, I would depart, if you wished, and trouble you no more.”
“So you would take what you want and then leave me as you found me?” she queried. “How benevolent.”
“I would gain what I need to fulfill my dream,” he corrected, “and you would be a part of it. Should you realize that the bond did not chafe overmuch, you could accompany me as we sweep across the continent. You would have your choice of palaces once the battle is won, and servants to heed your every whim.”
Zara laughed. What a bizarre picture.
“Or,” he continued, “a house of your own, far from the mad bustle of life, and no need to spend one more night on a cold and lonely road, far from home, in search of another treasure that will disappear as soon as you set eyes on it.”
Her eyes shot to his. Had he broken the truce? Had he been using his uncomfortable gift to pry her secrets from her mind without her knowledge?
“I had no need to use magic for that, Zara.” He made her name sound like a caress. “You clearly despised the vision of riches I spun for your consideration, so it seemed logical to assume that your desires lay elsewhere.”
“You know nothing of my desires.” She suppressed all of the other words that clamored to be said. Demanded to be said. Because he had come so very close. The dream he proposed would once have tempted her beyond what small sense of dignity she still possessed. But not anymore. Now it was lacking something valuable beyond words.
“Don’t I?” He moved closer. “Then tell me. Tell me what you most want. Tell me how I can move you to take pity on me, for I, like you, have been rejected. I have no home. No people. Not even any family. Only what I make for myself. Would you deny me the right to follow the path that my natural-born gifts have set me upon? Deny me the chance to make a home and a family for myself, when, in doing so, I might build something of benefit to all the world?”
“No,” she answered, but it was difficult to get the word past her lips. They felt heavy. Slow. “I would deny no one a home. But you do not want a home. You want control. You don’t want a family, you want subjects. People who exist only to show you respect and do your bidding.”
“Perhaps I do hope to control the fate of kingdoms,” he allowed, “but only in order to make them safe. Why can you not see that I wish to set people free from worry so that they might choose the course of their lives? And if I must set myself above them as a benevolent ruler, if that is the only way to preserve the peace that permits those choices, what is there in that to object to?”
“And what if they would choose not to be under your rule?” she asked pointedly. “What if they have no desire to be your subjects at all, but prefer the life that they have?”
“A life under constant threat, petty little kingdoms with their petty little problems always on the brink of disaster? Why should they object to peace? What matters to the average man or woman is that they are safe, not the means by which they were made so.”
Zara could only stare at him. Did he genuinely believe what he was saying? “I believe it matters greatly to the ones who pay the price for it,” she snapped. “You say you desire to rule for the benefit of everyone, but did you plan to ask them? Did you consider finding out what they wanted? What of the people you send to their deaths in your plans for conquest? What of the innocents who fall because they got in the way of those plans?”
“There are no innocents,” Rowan said softly, “but what of them? For the world to change, we must change with it. There is no progress without sacrifice. And someone must make the difficult decisions that lead ultimately to peace.”
“There are ways to achieve peace that do not begin with bloodshed! Do you care nothing for those you propose to sacrifice?”
“Those of us who would rule cannot afford to be sentimental about those in our charge, or we fail in our responsibilities.”
Zara snorted. “How nobly spoken. It seems you have not thought very clearly about your grand ideals. You speak one moment of the well-being of those you would rule, and the next dismiss them as an acceptable sacrifice. Recall t
hat if you sacrifice too many, you have no one to rule over. Without subjects, you will have no one to grant you the power you crave.”
“If I crave power, it is only for the benefit of those who must give it up,” Rowan responded, shaking his head. “Power must often be taken, rather than granted, because those who possess it do not understand how to use it effectively. How does it profit anyone if I continue to throw myself into the breach again and again for those who will never thank me, only strip me of everything I have worked for the moment they dislike my actions?”
“And yet you still need them, don’t you?” Zara insisted. “You are lying to yourself when you claim it is only for their benefit. You need them, because without people to rule, without minds and lives to bend to your will, what are you but just another man? Can you ever be happy or complete without someone you can control?”
He went silent, his eyes glittering. “Why should I try? If ruling is what I was born to do, why should I not strive to do it? The masses need someone to guide and direct them, so why should it not be me?”
“The masses rejected you once,” Zara pointed out. “And you decided for yourself that ruling was what you were meant to do. You need people, because you must have someone beneath you. You may be powerful, and grasp nuances of magic that I will never understand, but I do not envy you. What will happen when this road runs to its end and there is no one for you to command? No one to admire or defer to you? What do you have when you are alone that no one can take from you?”
This time Rowan stared at her as though he saw a stranger. His eyes were on hers, but his thoughts were far away, and his mask changed. If this, at last, was the true face of the former prince of Andar, it was both sad and terrifying.
“I have pain,” he said, his voice a rasping growl that bore no resemblance to his former honeyed tones. “I have the agony of being rejected, not for what I had done but for what I am.” He tilted his head, blue eyes wide, mouth quivering. “You look at me and you see only a bloodthirsty conqueror, but I did not choose to be this. I did not set out to be a monster. But that is what they named me, and so what choice do I have? If they will have a monster, what am I to do but give them one? When they taught me to use my natural-born gifts for myself, they did not understand that I had the power to be the most terrifying creature this world has ever known.” Rowan lifted his hands and turned them over, gazing at his own palms as though he could read his future in their lines. “But I do have that power. And I will use it. Because that is what they wanted. That is what they saw when they looked at me. Never the boy who wanted to be seen and accepted for more than just his face and his title. Never the child who felt he had to earn his father’s praise. Just a beast, who could never understand why he was wrong, only that he was hated.”
“Are you finished?” Zara asked politely.
Rowan blinked and confusion entered his eyes.
“That was very dramatic, thank you. But I think a great deal of it was a lie.”
A smile curved the corner of the prince’s mouth. “And why do you think that?”
“Because I am not an idiot, and neither are you.” She glared at him. “I don’t believe you do any of this out of pain. I’m not even sure you’ve ever stooped to such a pure emotion as hatred. Perhaps you do feel rejected. Perhaps you even believe that you are shunned more for who you are than what you’ve done, or that your choices have been limited by your birth. But those are not your reasons.” She took a step closer. “I think you do this because you love it. Because it makes you feel alive. You thrive on testing yourself against the world, aiming for bigger and bigger prizes to find out if you can win. Failing only drives you to try for a greater conquest the next time.”
Zara was rewarded by an expression of surprise that vanished so quickly, she felt sure it had been real.
“That’s a fascinating theory,” Rowan said blandly. “I suppose I should give it more thought, but then, I’ve never believed that the question of why mattered very much. I know what I am capable of. All I need in any given moment is the how.”
“So just now you are trying to figure out how you can get what you want from me without giving up anything of yourself.”
He laughed, freely and honestly. “Yes, of course. Aren’t you?”
“I’m trying to figure out how to get rid of you,” she answered, just as honestly.
“But if you get rid of me, eventually, you will only be alone again. Accept my offer and you need never be alone. Not unless you wish it.”
“Being alone is no longer the worst thing I can imagine.”
“And what is the worst?”
“Having no one to love.” Zara felt a strange lightening in her heart as she said the words and knew they were true. “Whether I am alone or not, as long as I have someone to love, there is no reason to despair.”
“Love,” Rowan repeated mockingly. “A useless emotion, if those you love do not return it.”
“No,” Zara said firmly. “Love does not have to be returned. My father left me because he is weak and frightened, but I choose to love him anyway. I love my friends, who could have abandoned me and did not. I choose to love Silvay, who is quiet and practical and kind. Wilder, who is an unpredictable ball of energy without judgment or restraint. Gulver, who sees what others don’t and gives without expectation of return. Malichai, who has a heart bigger than his body and who lives so enormously that he cannot be overlooked. I love them all. And I would do anything to keep them safe.”
Rowan was watching her curiously, rather like he’d discovered a previously unknown sort of bug. “You did not mention Alexei.”
Zara felt her face freeze and blessed the torchlight that would not show the color rising in her cheeks.
“Only because I do not know what to say.” She shrugged, hoping to appear flippant. “He has saved my life, but he has also belittled and angered and irritated me beyond all reason.”
“Then you do not love him.”
“I did not say that.”
She did not know what she felt for Alexei. Could not have said even in the privacy of her own head. But she did know what she had to do. Dread weighed heavily on her heart at the prospect, but it could not outweigh her determination. For the first time, possibly in her entire life, Zara knew exactly what path to take and what would lie at its end.
It was a heavy burden to bear alone, but she dared not trust anyone with her plan. Her friends would try to stop her if they knew, and unless Rowan was no more than a delusional madman, the fate of the entire world might well depend on her success.
Chapter 14
When Zara led Rowan into the kitchen at the end of the day, it felt like a betrayal, admitting him so blithely into the heart of the strange family they had built. But she couldn’t leave him anywhere else, and besides, Porfiry was already there, crouched in a corner like a brooding spider.
“Smells delicious,” she told Malichai, smiling more cheerfully than her feelings at that moment warranted.
“I’ve made bread!” he announced proudly, “and after dinner I’ll be opening a bottle of something I found in the larder.” He frowned. “We’ll have to hope it’s wine and not some sort of Erathi medicine.”
“It couldn’t be medicine,” Wilder protested, sprawled before the fire, drawing on the floor with charcoal again. “That’s what Gulver is for.”
“And fortunate we are to have him, too.” Zara winked at the healer before reaching down to muss Wilder’s shaggy brown mop of hair.
Gulver blushed and smiled at Zara.
“There you are!” Silvay came in and sat next to Gulver on the bench, her face a study in bland curiosity. “I hope you all enjoyed your stroll.”
“It was delightful,” Rowan announced, “as was the company. I am so looking forward to spending the next three days getting to know you all. But where is my old friend, Alexei?”
“Sulking somewhere, I imagine,” Silvay answered. “He did not approve of Athven’s choice to trust you. Neither di
d I, for that matter. But since you don’t care what I or anyone else thinks, welcome. May the food give you wind and the wine make you bilious.”
Wilder giggled. “Who needs wine? Porfiry’s face is sour enough to do that.”
“Be nice,” Silvay admonished. “He can’t help his face. He could probably help his expression, but it’s hardly polite to point it out.”
Something wasn’t quite right. Silvay was behaving entirely unlike herself, and the rest of the group was being too cheerful. They were hiding something.
Well, Zara was hiding something too. If she joined their efforts, perhaps they would overlook her distraction and consider it awkwardness.
“Thank you for keeping him out of trouble.” Zara gestured to Porfiry. “I was rather afraid Alexei might throw him down a few flights of stairs while I wasn’t looking.”
“I could have fixed him afterwards,” Gulver offered, his eyes on the table.
Zara blinked. Was Gulver sanctioning violence?
“You never would have known anything happened. I’m quite as good with broken bones as with burns.”
“Are you saying you did? Or that you could?” She asked only in the spirit of curiosity. Nothing more.
“Secrets, Miss Zara.” Malichai tapped the side of his head. “If you didn’t see it, it never happened.”
“A crew of hardened reprobates, the lot of you,” Zara announced sternly. “We’d better eat before you disillusion me any further.”
“Will the horseman be joining us?” Rowan asked politely.
“Not likely so long as you’re here,” Malichai answered bluntly. “And you know he lived here for years. No finding him if he doesn’t want to be found.”
“I’m sure Athven would disagree.” Rowan’s face was bland, but his eyes were sharp.
“You want to go looking for him when he’s in a snit? Go ahead.” Malichai lifted his hands as if disclaiming responsibility. “But I don’t recommend it. Terrible temper that man has, and you’ve already bad blood between you. Now that you’re on his land, I think you’ll find he’s more to say for himself than before.”
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