“Get out!” Yudai exclaimed. “Get out and don’t ever come back!”
Blindly, Tatsu reached for his pack and slung it over one shoulder. As he made his way to the door and his bow and quiver, scarcely able to breathe, every footstep seemed to echo loud enough to bring the whole tower down.
“You’re a coward,” Yudai said behind him, and the venom in the words curled Tatsu’s toes. “You’re a coward just like he was, and I never want to see you again.”
Oh, he’d wanted this to go differently. In Tatsu’s mind, he’d left with the good memories stretched out between them, a bit of extra strength for both of them to turn to when the nights grew cold. But he’d been a fool to think that Yudai would accept anything less than his all, and he should’ve known better. His fingers wrapped around his bow, though the familiar grip felt suddenly foreign.
The tension in his core was threatening to overwhelm him entirely.
He pushed at the door, pausing halfway out the opening to turn back and take one last look at Yudai. His face was contorted in fury, but still, he was one of the most effortlessly beautiful people that Tatsu had ever seen. He would haunt every one of Tatsu’s thoughts, both waking and in dreams.
“I love you,” Tatsu said, unplanned and horribly timed.
If there had been any vulnerability in Yudai’s blood, that was all he needed to swallow it down. His voice was the unflinching demand of a king. “Get out. Don’t you ever come back here.”
Tatsu did as commanded.
He made it down to the first floor of the castle with its white walls and burst through the double doors leading to the courtyard before everything caught up with him. He stumbled, throwing a hand out to catch himself on the wall and misjudging the distance. His knees hit the dirt with a pang that reverberated up through his hips, but it was nothing compared to what was happening inside. He felt like he was being ripped apart, piece by piece, torn and flayed until there was nothing left.
A moment later, his stomach seized, and he vomited into the weeds, choking on the hot sting of tears and the bite of bile. His vision went red and wavered dangerously, and it was only through controlling his breathing and casting all his focus on his lungs that he kept his body from pitching forward entirely. Each lungful was a knife to his core, and he was the one holding the weapon—he’d done this to himself.
He’d just succeeded in breaking his own heart.
An awful keening noise broke free of his throat and he slapped a hand over his mouth. He was only lucky that it was early enough in the day for the courtyard to be deserted. An audience for the lowest moment of his life would have been too much to bear. Tatsu stayed there without knowing how much time had passed until the jelly feeling of his legs was under control enough to walk with. Then he pushed himself up to his feet and pressed his palm to his forehead. There was no hope of fully steadying himself, not with the unabating ache in his chest.
As he fumbled his way out of the courtyard and into the streets of Yuse, he knew he had to look a fright but couldn’t find it in himself to care. By the time the sun was high in the sky, he’d left the narrow streets and close-set buildings behind him, moving through the scattered farms that trailed off from the city. Walking along the road was easier than moving near the mountains, and he made better time than they had sneaking in through the woods and shadow.
Each thud of his boots, an echo of the desperate hammering of his heart, left everything he loved further behind.
Twenty-Four
Using the roads, it took a week to get back to the comfort of his woods, even with giving the Weeping Forest a wide berth. Beneath the canopy of leaves once again, the sweet smell of wet soil surrounded him, a cocoon of memories stirred free by the chirping of the birds and the rustling of the branches. Tatsu had to stop an hour into the trees to try and compose himself, but the effort produced little success. The hollowness inside might as well have been a physical wound for how much it hurt, a renewed throb with each step towards the cottage.
He’d thought that he’d feel better once the cabin came into view, but he felt worse. He stood outside the weathered wooden walls and stared at the remnants of his life before. Nothing felt like it had before everything had changed and his emotions had surged into being, the time when his biggest problem was the time-softened longing for his father to be alive again. Standing outside the house, Tatsu was conflicted, and the clarity he’d hoped to rediscover was nowhere to be found.
He pushed the front door open, pleased to see that at least a full season of rain had washed his front stoop clean.
The cottage was just as he’d left it, with the addition of cobwebs draped across the corners and ceiling. Tatsu spent some time clearing them out and putting all the things back into place, though the table he’d destroyed before leaving was a lost cause. Then he sat down on the straw mattress, his head in his hands, questioning why he ever thought returning to his old life would feel the same way—it felt so much worse, the sour backwash of all the things he’d run away from.
He slept for a long time.
During the night and the next morning, he woke intermittently, overcome with fear that the queen’s guards were on his doorstep. When they didn’t arrive, the anxiety in his stomach refused to fade away, and instead solidified into a constant nervousness. If the guards weren’t going to show the next day, it would be the one after that, and so on. Tatsu would be a fool to think that the Queen of Chayd would allow a traitor to slip back into her country without facing punishment. He kept his mother’s journal on hand at all times, just in case they arrived to haul him back to Aughwor.
In the meantime, he waited restlessly.
He hunted for what food he could find in the winter chill. The temperature was nothing compared to the bite of snow on the mountains, but still a shock after spending so much time in the desert sun. There were still enough stragglers of game in the woods that he never went hungry, and he found several berry caches to supplement the days protein ran low. Fear of the guards’ arrival kept him from ever going too far away from the cottage in case they found him in the woods and overtook him there instead.
Often, he would stand in the trees and stare up at the leaf cover thinking of Yudai. On those days, the ache in his breast would grow too strong to ignore, and he hid beneath the blankets in his bed trying to force the thoughts away.
Day by day, the soldiers failed to arrive, and the rest of Tatsu’s warring emotions became stronger than his fear.
It was two weeks before he was brave enough to return to Dradela.
Weaving through the traders set up at the edge of town felt both familiar and oddly foreign, memories of a life he had long since left behind. Tatsu made it to two guards posted at the sandstone archway into town, his breath catching, but other than a sideways glance, neither soldier moved to stop him. Trying to push his misgivings away, Tatsu walked quickly along the well-trodden paths through the city until he came to the storefront that he wanted. The building had the same white-washed brick as all the others, and aside from the faded red awning providing shade for the entrance, nothing about it stood out from any other. Tatsu paused outside the door, drawing long, slow breaths to calm himself. He’d have to move forward, discomfort or no, so he pushed through the swinging doors that didn’t completely fit the arch of the entrance.
He was alone in the shop for a moment before anyone walked out from the back stocking alcove. The man, broad-shouldered and bearded, his coarse hair peppered with gray, looked up with practiced disinterest and then did a double-take as his hands stilled.
“Well,” he said and leaned against the wall. A slight smile tugged at his mouth. “I have to say, it took you a lot longer than I figured to finally show up here.”
“Hello, Drel,” Tatsu said.
Drel set the wooden box he’d been holding onto the countertop. “It’s been a long time, Tatsu.”
“I wasn’t sure if I would make it here,” Tatsu said. “The guards—”
“—a
re under orders to keep their hands off you.”
When Tatsu nearly stumbled backward in surprise, the hint of smile on Drel’s face expanded into a full grin.
“Didn’t know that, huh? You’ve made a very powerful friend who seems keen to watch out for you—this order came straight from the queen.”
Yudai and the favors he’d threatened. Knowing that Yudai had used some of his demands to protect the man who’d deserted him left a bitter taste on the back of his tongue, but Tatsu hadn’t come to find out why the guards hadn’t yet arrived on his doorstep. He shook his head, frowning.
Before Tatsu could say anything, Drel continued, “The protection extends to Alesh and her sister too.”
“Of course it does,” Tatsu mumbled, wishing that the realization hadn’t caused a bloom of fond warmth flowing through his veins. “How do you know this?”
“I pay attention,” Drel said with a shrug, “and I have my sources. But you didn’t come to hear about that, and you’ve got some explaining to do. Why didn’t you come sooner? I’ve been waiting for you for years.”
“Hesch—”
“My father would have been furious that you took his death as an excuse to hide yourself away from everyone.”
Tatsu winced, feeling like a young child being scolded. “For a long time, I thought you’d be angry. It was Alesh that brought that fate on Hesch.”
“I’ve never blamed Alesh,” Drel said. “She came a few months after the accident to apologize, crying her eyes out. We’ve kept in touch since then.”
“She never told me.”
“For a while there, she made it seem like you wanted nothing to do with her.”
Tatsu sighed and rubbed his hands over his face. The visit wasn’t supposed to dredge up most of the things he was ashamed of.
“You didn’t come here to talk about Alesh,” Drel said.
“No. I came here to ask about my father.”
Drel sat down in one of the low-backed chairs and gestured for Tatsu to do the same. “What do you want to know?”
“Did you know my mother?”
“No,” Drel replied, “but my father spoke of her sometimes: the lovely Runonian mage who had stolen your father’s heart.”
Lovely and terrible, though Tatsu wondered when the last trait had truly come to life.
“He loved her,” Tatsu said.
“I think they both did, in different ways.”
“And how did the queen know about me?”
Drel sat back, looking strangely satisfied, as if this was the line of questioning he’d been prepared for years to answer. “When your mother sent you here from Runon, she put you in a basket and gave you to one of the last trade carts allowed in the country that was readying to return home.”
“How did she know that I would be delivered to my father?”
“I don’t believe she did. The trade cart arrived at the palace with a baby of half Chaydese descent, and the trader took you straight to the old king. I think you stayed in the palace with one of the cooks who had recently given birth until they figured out what to do with you.”
Tatsu squeezed his eyes closed, opening and closing his hands resting on his lap. “And then?”
“My father got wind of the situation and put the pieces together. He went to the king to appeal for your release.”
“Hesch.” Tatsu breathed out a nostalgic sigh for the man who’d always been kind to him. “I was released to my father’s care?”
“By the time that happened, there were quite a few people who had heard of the whole thing. It’d caused quite a stir in court, as you can imagine. And all the attention—”
“My father would have hated it,” Tatsu said. “That’s why he kept me away in the woods.”
Drel frowned and leaned in closer. “He was grieving, Tatsu. I don’t know all the specifics of his relationship with your mother, because he always kept that to himself. But I imagine that he felt like he’d lost everything before you arrived. Runon had begun to shut its borders, and he had little hope of getting back in and no hope of a mage of the crown ever getting out.”
When Tatsu didn’t answer, Drel cocked his head a bit to the side, the salt and peppered hair of his beard dragging across his lapel. “Do you have any experience with a heartbreak like that?”
The question seemed too innocently poised to be coincidental, so Tatsu leveled Drel with a steady stare, hoping that his face shut down any further line of questioning on the subject.
“My father never spoke Runonian,” he said.
“No, he never learned.”
“Do you?”
The inquiry seemed to catch Drel by surprise. “Some, yes. I needed it when we went into the markets before we were all removed.”
“Can you read it?”
“Enough,” Drel said.
Tatsu pulled his mother’s journal out, holding it between both hands and running his thumbs lightly over the cover. “Then I’d like to ask you to help me with something, if you’d be willing.”
Four days after Tatsu visited Drel, Alesh and Ral showed up on his doorstep. The knock threatened to stop his heart completely as he convinced himself that Yudai’s favor had run out and the queen had sent her guards for him, but after he opened the door, he was met only with Alesh’s disapproving frown.
“Tatsu, what are you doing here?” she asked without preamble. “When Drel told me that you’d stopped by, I thought he was lying. You should be in Runon with Yudai.”
“Are my whereabouts a public topic?” Tatsu asked. Ral, a few paces away from the front stoop, caught an early spring butterfly between her hands and caged her fingers around its wings.
“He just told me when I went to say goodbye,” Alesh scoffed. “People have better things to do than sit around and talk about you.”
Tatsu let her in by opening the door wider, the action reminiscent to her initial arrival that had sparked the undoing of everything he’d thought he’d known.
“What do you mean, saying goodbye?”
She reached the middle of the cottage and turned to face him, arms held out to either side in a shrug that never quite materialized. “We’re leaving, Ral and me.”
“Where are you going?” Tatsu asked.
“Joesar. Jotin offered us a place should we ever need it, and we can’t stay in Chayd.”
“The queen is under orders to leave you alone.”
“And that high profile status has made it impossible for me to work,” she said. When his face twisted into a grimace, she sighed and fiddled with the end of her braid. “I know you don’t like it, but I can’t do anything else here, and now even that option is gone. Joesar is a fresh start for both of us.”
“And Ral?” Tatsu asked, glancing over his shoulder at her.
Ral smiled and spread her fingers wide, palms up towards the sky. “Learn things.”
“Remember the fortune teller in Moswar?” Alesh asked. “She’s like Ral. Maybe she could help teach her. And Jotin’s sister is an alchemist—I can apprentice under her and work in ways that aren’t breaking the law.”
Then she shook her head. “But this isn’t about me. I know what I’m doing. Why are you here, Tatsu? Why did you leave?”
“It’s difficult to explain,” he said.
“Bullshit. You’re running again.”
“I’m doing this to help him!” Tatsu cried. “Leaving was the only thing I could do to make sure he kept his crown. My presence in the capital was only causing problems.”
“That’s how life works! You fought for him and then you stopped when it really mattered.”
Tatsu fell silent, glaring at the floor with growing frustration, and when Alesh spoke again, her voice was gentler. “Tatsu, he needs you.”
“He needs to be able to hold his title more than he needs me.”
“But Tatsu did,” Ral added from the far side of the cottage where she’d sat on one of the still-standing chairs.
“Did what?” Tatsu asked.
&nb
sp; “Yudai’s title,” Alesh said. “You did that—you were the one who gave that to him. You changed his future and you changed Runon’s, don’t you see? It was all because of the actions you took.”
Instead of feeling good, Tatsu’s stomach felt heavier. “I’m nobody. I’m the child who was abandoned by my mother because I had no use.”
“Maybe you don’t have magic,” Alesh told him, “but that doesn’t make you useless. Look at what you did. Yudai is a king now.”
The resulting quiet crept like a dark shadow over Tatsu’s heart.
“Tatsu,” Ral began.
“I made my choice, and so did he,” Tatsu said and ran a hand through his hair. “He never wants to see me again.”
“You don’t honestly believe that, do you?” Alesh asked.
“It doesn’t matter,” Tatsu said wearily. “That’s what it is. And you should go to Joesar.”
Alesh’s features softened. “Will you be all right on your own?”
“I always have been, haven’t I?”
She pursed her lips but didn’t push the subject.
“Come and see us sometime,” she said.
It was a promise that Tatsu wouldn’t have trouble keeping. “I will. And be safe on your way to Moswar.”
Ral stood from the chair and gave him a tight hug, squeezing her arms around his waist with gusto. When she pulled away, Alesh surprised him by hugging him as well.
“Go back to him,” she said, stepping back.
“Goodbye,” was all Tatsu said, and he watched their retreat from the front porch until they’d disappeared completely in the darkening brush of the woods.
He began to meet with Drel on a weekly basis to translate his mother’s journal, and after the first few times, his nerves calmed upon entering the city. Whatever strings Yudai had pulled to keep Tatsu out of prison were still there, and though Tatsu knew the queen had to be seething at allowing him to retain his freedom, there was nothing she could do. She’d kidnapped Yudai to use for her own gain as a magical slave, and now he was sitting on Runon’s throne. Her actions would have been just cause for retaliation, and she probably feared the angry, vengeful young king enough to honor his demands.
The Mage Heir Page 30
