Kingdom Blades (A Pattern of Shadow & Light 4)

by McPhail, Melissa

  “That reconciliation has been long in coming.”

  He angled her a smile. “Just so, Your Grace.”

  Alyneri fingered the collection of purplish fruit and noted the damask design woven into the linen. “Your path has circled so many times…circles within circles.”

  “Yet somehow always back to you.”

  Alyneri looked up at his words. Trell was regarding her so intently that she smilingly dropped her gaze again. “I hadn’t thought of it that way.”

  “I have, Your Grace. Many times.” He gave her a significant look. “And now we’re bound, and I need never leave you again.” For we remain here, together, always. Into this sentiment he layered intensity of feeling and something more…a touch, as of a kiss, yet whispering all along her core.

  Alyneri’s breath caught. Heat flamed along the path of his ephemeral kiss. Her eyes widened as she stared at him. “Where did you learn that?”

  “Náiir.” Trell started crawling towards her wearing a devious smile. “His lessons on the more arcane uses for bindings have proven very informative.” He rose up to take her by the shoulders.

  Alyneri fell back beneath him, laughing. The figs were quickly scattered.

  Much later, they lay together beneath a bright moon. Alyneri gazed along the line of Trell’s bare arm, partially pinned beneath her head, and studied the round scars that marred his flesh. In the starlight, they held a sort of sheen, smoother than the rest of his skin.

  She and Trell had spoken of many things since his rescue from Darroyhan, since she’d nearly killed herself saving him. They’d shared dreams and fears; they’d spent hours speaking of the Mage and his game, and just as many reminiscing of Dannym…but of the secret trials of his imprisonment, not a word had Trell spoken. These truths he’d bound into a place of silence, saying only that those wounds were his alone to mend.

  Alyneri knew he’d been tortured; more telling than the scars upon his flesh, she’d seen the evidence of it in his life pattern. Some traumas found their way so deeply into a man’s structure that his pattern forever retained their impression, even after his body had been Healed.

  Yet whatever scars Trell carried on his soul from his months spent in captivity seemed but surface wounds upon his character. Alyneri had witnessed nothing in him to indicate the damage had penetrated any deeper than a few shiny circles in his flesh.

  He must’ve perceived where her thoughts had gone, for he hugged her body closer and murmured in her ear, “None of that matters now.”

  Alyneri thought of the many invisible scars that threaded through her own soul and marveled that he could say such a thing so easily and honestly. She traced her finger from the scar on Trell’s palm to the one on his forearm and asked him softly, “How can you be so free of something so traumatic?”

  “What would be the point of keeping it?”

  She paused in her tracing. Then she turned in his arms to look at him. “There is no point, is there? But we do keep such memories sometimes, even as painful as they are. They can become as treasures held close, thorny crowns we bear as if to prove some righteous point, while at the same time declaring our desire not to bear them at all.”

  Trell trailed his fingers along her cheek, thoughtfully, his grey eyes mercuric in the moonlight, lips barely parted, as if sharing his deepest secrets with her on a whisper of departing breath. “In truth, Alyneri, the worst of it remains a blur…those early days pinned to the wall of Veirnan hal’Jaitar’s malice.” He was regarding her so nakedly, his mind so open to her, Alyneri knew an intensity of connection deeper than anything they’d yet shared.

  “In times like that, pain becomes a kind of friend.” Trell propped his head in one hand and traced his other contemplatively along her collarbone. “It reminds you that you’re still alive; it focuses your energies on remaining so. Pain shows you what you love and brings an acute gratitude for what you have…and for no longer having it, upon its departure.”

  Admiring of his courage, Alyneri kissed him tenderly.

  Trell gave her a fleeting smile and rolled onto his back again. “I think what was done to Sebastian is far worse than anything I endured.”

  Alyneri trailed a finger down the line of his chest. “What do you mean?”

  Trell glanced briefly at her. “When he and I met in the Kutsamak, I could tell that he struggled against another’s will. His mind had been overtaken. But all of the torments I experienced…while they were painful, and at times terrifying, I still knew myself while enduring them. It would’ve been far, far worse to lose me the way Sebastian had, to be so overcome by another’s will that you couldn’t act upon your own.” He gave an explosive exhale. “Even when I didn’t know my name, I still knew who I was. I’m so amazed by my brother’s strength. His situation would’ve ruined me.”

  Alyneri gazed wonderingly upon him. Trell must’ve noted the change in her expression, or else the quiet of her thoughts, for he smiled and rose up to press her down beneath him. “Whatever that thought was, Your Grace…you should think it more often.” He stroked his thumb gently along her lower lip, his eyes desirous. Then he brought his lips to hers and showed her what else Náiir had been teaching him.

  ***

  An hour before dawn, they made their way back to the sa’reyth. As much as Trell felt Alyneri’s anxiety radiating across their binding, as much as he wanted to stay forever by her side, he couldn’t deny the excitement drumming a distant yet palpable beat when he thought of returning to the game.

  This respite had been valuable, necessary for both of them, and he’d made the most of his time—taken advantage of the drachwyr’s wisdom and Vaile’s benevolence as best he could—but he’d never expected it to last even as long as it had.

  Gaining his rooms, Trell packed what things he imagined he might need, wishing he had a better idea of where he was headed or what the Mage was expecting from him. At the last, he belted on his sword and donned his cloak, feeling as though the moment heralded both a beginning and an end.

  Then he looked to Alyneri. She was leaning against an armoire, hugging herself and watching him with a faint furrow between her brows.

  Vaile called her ‘fierce kitten.’ Trell could see this trait in Alyneri—perhaps he’d always seen it in her. Vaile had merely shaved off the fur of Northern propriety, which had never clung well to Alyneri to begin with, to reveal the lean creature beneath. Alyneri didn’t share Vaile’s predatory manner, yet he knew her to have a strength equal to the zanthyr’s, in her own way.

  A smile teased at a corner of Alyneri’s mouth. “What is that look?”

  Trell walked over and slipped his hands around her waist. “It’s love, Your Grace.”

  She arched a brow at him. “It seemed a little hungry for love.”

  Trell grinned and pulled her hips more firmly against his. “Love finds infinite forms of expression.”

  Alyneri leaned into his embrace and laid her head against his shoulder, and they stood in silence, letting the beat of their hearts and the resonance of their thoughts speak their feelings. After a lengthy span that yet felt too short, Alyneri sighed and tightened her arms around him. “We knew this day would come, but I’m not ready for you to leave again.”

  He rested his cheek against her head. “And I don’t want to leave.”

  “Yes, you do. You’re very nearly eager, if you ask me.”

  Trell chuckled. “Well…I don’t want to leave you.” She felt different in his arms than she had before their parting in the Kutsamak; lean muscle now sculpted her frame in ways he found very alluring. It was a wondrous pleasure envisioning her without her silk dress, or the garb she wore for their sparring matches—nearly as enticing as actually observing her thusly.

  “Promise me…” She drew back to look at him. Her brown eyes were large and lovely…and concerned. She conveyed so well her thoughts with just the faintest tightening of her gaze, he hardly needed the binding to know them. “Promise me you’ll be careful. You have immortal friends
, but they can’t follow you everywhere, and if you’re too reckless and brave—”

  He chuckled. “Have you ever known me to be reckless?”

  Her gaze sharpened upon him. “I grew up watching you, Prince Trell val Lorian. I know all of your exploits—venturing out to sea stacks, free-climbing hundreds of feet up the Calgaryn cliffs, chasing Ean across nearly vertical palace roofs—” She broke off and frowned at him. “Why are you smiling like that?”

  Trell caressed her check with his thumb. “Because I remember all of those adventures.”

  The furrow between her brows deepened. “Trell…” she exhaled a sigh, “I’ll grant you go into situations with more forethought than Ean, but you are every bit as reckless with your life as your brother is.”

  Trell regarded her quietly. “You’d rather I was afraid?” When she merely gazed at him, he wrapped his arms around her again and said as he pressed a kiss to her hair, “If our every parting is to bear the shadows of our last, Alyneri, the scars of those months apart will never fade.”

  She fell silent at this, and then she murmured, “I wish sometimes that you weren’t so perceptive.”

  He pressed a smile against her head. “It’s a great relief to me to know that you’re here at the sa’reyth, safe. It would be harder out there, having you with me.”

  She drew away slightly to better look at him. “Why?”

  He brushed his fingers slowly across her hair, his mind suddenly a whirlwind of shadowy memories. “Taliah tried to break me, Alyneri.” Amazing how easily he could confess it now, how distant those months seemed, as unimportant as shells crushed on a path behind him. “Many times she came close, but because the game fell only between the two of us, I prevailed. Yet I know now that I would’ve fallen to her quickly if she’d held you in kind.”

  He caught his finger beneath Alyneri’s chin to hold her gaze. “The idea of Taliah working her craft upon you…I couldn’t have borne it. I couldn’t even think of you in those weeks, because you weaken me.”

  “I weaken you?” She looked dismayed and tried to pull away from him.

  But he bound her with his arms and pressed his forehead against hers. “Because I love you so deeply that I would rather die than see harm come to you. But you strengthen me, too. Of course you do.” He ran his hand across her shoulder and recalled the many miraculous things she’d accomplished on his behalf, and how true she’d been to him.

  “That’s what it means to be human, I think,” he offered upon a quiet exhale. “To share such a profound yet terrifying connection with someone that they become your strength and your weakness. That they balance your assumed invincibility and temper your deepest moments of inadequacy with the certainty of love.”

  Alyneri caught her breath. Then she hugged him fiercely.

  “Trell, it is time.” Náiir poked his head through the parting of drapes, whereupon his eyes crinkled. “‘Oh Love,’” he pressed a hand to his heart and lifted his gaze to the ceiling, “‘why visiteth thy arrow upon my heated breast? For what sins must I endure thy tormenting caress?’”

  Alyneri dabbed at her eyes and turned to smile at Náiir. “That is one of my favorite passages in the Kandori Book of Princes, when Dastan is lamenting the loss of Elaria.”

  Náiir winked at her. “And well it is that you should know this epic poem, Princess of Kandori.”

  Trell reluctantly released Alyneri and took up his pack. “I know a few Kandori stories myself.”

  “Indeed, Trell of the Tides?” Náiir stepped politely back from the parting of drapes to let them pass.

  Trell angled Náiir a wry look as the three of them headed off together. “Some of those stories concern you, I suspect.”

  Náiir beamed. “Oh, then you must tell them to me someday! I very much enjoy hearing stories of myself.”

  “You’re the only one who does,” Jaya remarked as they happened by where she was setting out her morning tea.

  Náiir turned a look over his shoulder. “Envy is an unbecoming color on an immortal, Jaya.”

  “So is narcissism,” she murmured sweetly back to him.

  Náiir shook his head and sighed as they continued on through the connected tents. “All appreciation of life stems first from an appreciation of ourselves, Trell of the Tides. My sister is somehow unable to grasp this fundamental truth. The finding of self-love…it is the greatest of endeavors.”

  “Self-love doesn’t sire nine Kandori princedoms,” noted a passing Mithaiya, who appeared to be on her way to join Jaya.

  “One merely begins with self,” Náiir cast Mithaiya a look of aggravation, “and expands outwards to embrace the love of others, reaching greater appreciation through each new concentric circle of life.”

  “It seems very sensible to me,” Trell remarked equitably.

  “Indeed, so I also feel, Trell of the Tides. Would that my sisters shared our opinion.” Náiir pushed aside the final drapery, and they emerged into the dawn.

  Trell turned to Alyneri. She met his gaze with hers veiled in silence; he knew what courage she’d had to summon to let him go without complaint or tears.

  He took her shoulders. “I think you should go with Fynn.”

  She blinked at him.

  “On this mission of his and Carian’s. Who knows? Maybe some of your quality will rub off on them. You can keep me apprised of their activities,” and he tapped his temple meaningfully.

  Alyneri gazed at him for a moment more. Then she nodded.

  Trell leaned and captured her mouth in a fervent kiss. He willed into it everything he hadn’t been able to say, and he placed within the shared space of their binding his promise, his honest hope, to be able to say all of it one day—every day—for the rest of their lives.

  When he released Alyneri, her eyes were glassy, but she smiled bravely, hugged her chest with her arms, and nodded him on.

  Trell turned and headed off. Out of necessity, he focused his attention on the path ahead.

  Náiir walked with him towards the picketed horses and Balaji and Rhakar. Seeing the two drachwyr standing by the horses reminded Trell uncannily of his first departure from the sa’reyth, when he’d set out upon another mysterious path into a similar unknown with a task to accomplish for the Mage.

  Balaji gave him a smile as he neared. “Ah, Trell of the Tides, a good morning to you!”

  “And to you, Balaji.” Trell shifted his pack onto his shoulder and his gaze to the other drachwyr. “Rhakar.”

  The Shadow of the Light nodded in reply.

  Náiir clapped a hand on Trell’s arm. “This is where I leave you, Trell of the Tides. Fair winds, fair skies, and the Lady’s blessing upon your path until we meet again.”

  For a moment as he looked back to Náiir, Trell saw not the luminous dawn but a stone room in a dark tower on a night of storms—and Náiir’s eyes, staring into his.

  ‘…Oh, my friend, this nightmare is almost behind you…’

  Trell took the drachwyr into a rough embrace. “Thank you,” he murmured at his ear. “Thank you.”

  As they separated again, Náiir met his gaze with a grave sobriety. “You are brother-bound to the Mage and by extension to us, Trell of the Tides. We would brave the darkness of Shadow in search of you.” Then he nodded to all and departed.

  Trell watched him go, feeling such ineffable gratitude that he could barely breathe for the space it occupied in his chest.

  “Thus we find ourselves at a junction we’ve crossed before, my friend.” Balaji’s meaningful tone drew Trell’s gaze back to him. Balaji looked him over with his typical enigmatic smile. “When last we met at this crossroads, you asked me about pieces and Players.”

  Returning Balaji’s gaze quietly, Trell marveled that he’d ever thought to suspect the Mage’s motives, for the larger pattern seemed so clear to him now. “You said then that a piece becomes a Player by finding out what game he’s playing in.”

  Mystery’s enticing light danced in Balaji’s eyes. “I did indeed.”


  “Well…” Trell blew out a decisive breath, “I’ve found my way onto the field.” He looked between Balaji and Rhakar. “What now?”

  “Another fair question.” Balaji grinned at him. “Pieces jump at the Players’ commands without understanding the purpose behind their actions. Players need no orders to decide which way they will proceed, merely a view of the playing field and a weather eye upon the goal.” His gaze implied Trell fit decidedly into the latter category.

  Trell looked between the two drachwyr bemusedly. “You’re really not going to tell me anything more about this mission?”

  “The Mage has determined it’s time for you to take the field again, Trell val Lorian,” Rhakar said. “Now you know as much as either of us.”

  Balaji handed him Gendaia’s reins. “The Lady’s blessing upon you, my friend.”

  Rhakar had his own horse’s reins in hand, and without another word, he led away.

  They’d just reached the trail and were about to mount the horses when a new shadow appeared out of the dawn—Vaile, dressed for sparring. Trell found an unexpected relief in this; Alyneri would at least have somewhere to focus her attention instead of dwelling on their separation.

  Vaile’s hand captured his arm and her emerald eyes his gaze. “Take care with your life, Trell of the Tides. She-sidthe has big plans for you both.”

  Trell nodded to her. “I will do my best, my lady.”

  Vaile hugged him, hard and long, evoking a memory of the kiss she’d given him at Darroyhan. He could almost still feel its flutter in his core.

  As she withdrew, the zanthyr cupped his cheek with her palm, but her expression was serious and stern. “This war is not merely one of men and nations; it’s a symptom of the realm’s unbalance. If left unchecked, it will spread like a cancer until it has infected the entire world. We didn’t save you so you could go back and fight this war, Trell of the Tides. We saved you so you could end it.”