Lightfall, p.36
Lightfall, page 36
“She may be of age, but she still has plenty of maturing to do. She can do that better in Valgard than here.”
Cyril arched a brow. “Do you think?”
“She’s learned and grown more in the past few months than the last several years before them,” Ashe admitted. “Talheim is her home, her future…she knows that. But she needs time away from that responsibility to become the woman she wants to be. And I’ve seen it happening in Valgard. I see the queen she’s growing into. Calling her back now won’t keep her safe, it will just create strife where there doesn’t need to be.”
Cyril clasped his hands under his chin and didn’t speak.
“She’ll come home when she’s ready, but you and I both know it doesn’t have to be right away,” Ashe added. “The threat of war has lifted. She gave so much to make this treaty possible…you should give her this in return. Let her stay with her friends a little while longer.”
The King brushed his fingers over the thick scroll, shaking his head. “It’s heavier than the truce I carried back from the war.”
Ashe remembered that brittle piece of parchment, how flimsy it seemed, able to be ripped apart with just a flirt of fingers—promising nothing but that the wells would be sealed and the fighting would cease. No friendship. No trade. No alliance at all. Simply a vow not to continue the bloodshed.
“If I hadn’t been so grief-stricken for my father and desperate to honor him by finishing what he started, we could’ve had this treaty twenty years ago, and Cistine could’ve given nothing at all to see it made,” Cyril murmured. “I could’ve handed her peace for her coming-of-age birthday, not a war she felt she needed to prevent herself.”
Ashe couldn’t find the words to tell him how in some strange way, that threat was the best thing that ever happened to the Princess.
After a long beat, Cyril went on, “But here we sit. And Talheim owes its safety to her. To both of you.” He looked up, his face soft. “Where will you go, Asheila?”
“Back to her.” A kernel of hope pulsed in her chest; Cistine had been so glad to see her at the gates that for the first time, forgiveness seemed possible. They might find a way back to being friends who trusted each other.
With a quiet sigh, Cyril pushed a different scroll across the desk toward her. “Then you can deliver this. And I hope you’ll do what you’ve always done best and watch over her. She’s going to need it.”
Grinning, Ashe snatched up the scroll. “On her behalf, thank you.”
“I won’t say I like it, especially given who she is—what she is. The treaty speaks nothing to that.” He glanced at it again. “But the girl I arranged to go to the coast for her birthday and the one whose name is on this signing…I don’t have to see her face to see the change.”
The door creaked open, and Ashe’s heart leaped into her throat; she whirled straight into Maleck’s embrace, her arms around his neck and his linked at her waist, his breath rushing out against the side of her neck. They said nothing; there was no need. His unfettered wrists, his swords strapped to his back, his hands fitted to her hips as they drew apart and looked at one another—it all said enough.
Cyril rose, clearing his throat. “You’d best be on your way. If I know Cistine, she’s already fretting herself senseless wondering what I’m going to say, nevermind waiting for a report on Mahasar.”
Maleck’s eyes glowed at the mention of the Princess, but he still took a moment to approach the desk and offer a hand. “Thank you for trusting enough to try.”
Cyril clasped that hand warmly. “And you. For not begrudging a kingdom that’s done you wrong in many ways.”
“It’s given me far more than it’s ever taken away.”
Cheeks hot, Ashe nudged Maleck out of the way and stuck out her hand as well. “If you need us, if you need her, just send word.”
Cyril brushed her hand aside, circling the desk to wrap his arms around her. “From the moment Rion found you following us on the tundra, I have wanted just one thing for you: to live free and be happy, Asheila.” He held her out from him, taking her chin in his hand. “I can only give you one. Now go find the other.”
He kissed her forehead and released her in every sense, but that no longer felt like free-falling through the dark. In fact, when she left the King’s chamber with Maleck at her side, Ashe was climbing hand-over-hand back toward the light.
In understanding silence, they gathered their meager belongings and left the estate, wending through streets where windows opened wide despite the chill, vendor stalls peddling again, the reek of Jad’s presence already lifting and no sign of Rion and the other Wardens anywhere. Ashe was grateful for that; there was nothing left to say to her former Commander. He’d banished her, stripped her rank, driven her out…but she was becoming something greater than he could ever fathom.
They’d nearly reached the pike wall when a shout echoed down the dusty path behind them. Surprise jerked Ashe in a full pivot as Rozalie jogged to join them. “Roz? I thought you left with Rion!”
Rozalie shook her head. “I don’t need the abuse. He and Viktor have all that time to feed each other’s fire about this treaty, and I’m certain they’ll be in foul moods. But I happen to think it’s the start of something wonderful, so I asked for a different assignment.”
Maleck cocked his head. “The northern forts?”
Rozalie grinned. “That’s right. Anything that happens, you can send for me. Valgard will have an ally at the border from now on…a Warden who will heed any call.”
Her throat too tight for words, Ashe hugged her friend.
“May we escort you?” Maleck offered. “The forts happen to be along the way.”
“I’d like that,” Rozalie smiled, falling into step with them. “I’m glad you’re going, Ashe, as much as I’ll miss you.”
Ashe cocked a brow. “Really?”
“I knew you weren’t long for Talheim the moment I found you in the mountains. It’s like you told me when you pulled me out of that brothel…life doesn’t begin where we were, it begins right now. At any moment, we can choose to be better than we were before.” She checked Ashe’s hip with hers. “I so admire a woman who can take her own advice.”
“Particularly when it’s wisdom,” Maleck chimed in with a smile.
“Oh, enough, you two,” Ashe snorted. “If you plump up my ego, the flight north will be impossible.”
Maleck frowned. “Flight?”
Rozalie opened her mouth, and Ashe pushed her ahead through the gate. “Don’t say anything. I want to see his face when he experiences it for himself.”
Rozalie all but skipped onward, laughing, Maleck wandering on her heels, utterly bemused. But when the pike wall shuttered shut at their backs, a note of melancholy rang through Ashe—a song of farewell.
She slowed, then halted and looked back at the reinforcement around Middleton, the sharp beams that kept enemies at bay…and kept the people inside from seeing the beautiful kingdom around them, its mountains and lakes, the vastness of it all.
Talheim was a fortified place, but it still had much to learn about looking outward. Ashe prayed that under its future queen, and even its present king, that would begin to change.
“Asheila,” Maleck called. “Are you ready?”
Smiling, she laced her fingers with his and walked away from Middleton, him on one side, Rozalie on the other, toward the horizon; toward the lake and Bresnyar, toward Valgard far away. Walked with her head high and shoulders back into the light, hand-in-hand with her selvenar.
It felt like going home.
CHAPTER FIFTY
“HOW ARE YOU, Cistine?” Thorne pressed a mug of orange-blossom tea into his selvenar’s hands, sitting in her broad bedroom windowsill beside her, the sleek wood warmed by yet another oddly-hot day. She accepted it quietly—as quiet as she was all night while they worked the cipher and compiled the final list of his father’s informants in the other courts—and leaned her temple on the glass.
“I thought Daria…Reema was my friend,” she said after a moment. “Helping her into Yager made me feel whole again, like I finally knew Salvotor didn’t destroy that part of me. But was that all just a lie?”
“You just spent an entire night helping me list his spies,” Thorne reminded her. “The day before, you accomplished the very thing you came to Valgard for. There is no doubt of your heart or your capabilities, whatever Reema did.”
Cistine tugged the compass pendant around her neck. “That treaty doesn’t even seem real yet.” Her eyes flicked to him. “I didn’t thank you, did I? For bringing Reema in front of the Chancellors. I only cared about sending her home and saving Maleck.”
Thorne shrugged. “Pride is important to the Courts. I suspected Jad flaunting our borders would be the last incentive they needed. It made things personal.”
She flashed him a smile so tired, yet so warm, it cracked his heart. “What would I do without you?”
He couldn’t bring himself to tell her he was wondering the same thing—what he would do once she was gone. “I know what you can do with me for now. Training?”
“Yes, please.” She set aside the teacup and hopped to her feet, dragging him up from the sill.
They were not the only ones in the training hall battling out the tension of the past day; Tatiana and Ariadne dueled with daggers and Aden and Pippet wrestled in their usual spot. Quill, sweaty and shirtless and resting between matches, by the look of him, swaggered up at Thorne and Cistine’s arrival, grinning. “Mira’s hovering around here somewhere. Looking for you, I think, Allet.”
Thorne’s stomach dropped when he caught sight of her tucked into an alcove. “Give me a moment.”
“I’ll keep her busy,” Quill winked. Cistine socked his arm, and he goaded her on with mock-blows, leaving Thorne to trudge off and join Mira.
“Aden told me about Reema,” she said in greeting. “What a ruckus.”
He mirrored her posture, arms crossed, propped against the wall. “At least that’s over now. With the treaty solved, there’s just the trial left to navigate.”
“Only that?” Teasing framed the words, but her tone was heavy.
Thorne glanced at her. “I’m sorry there’s been no luck finding the thief who ransacked your rooms yet. Quill and Tatiana are doing everything they can.”
“I know they are.” She shook her head. “The audacity of Salvotor…”
“It’s sickening, I know. Every time I think he’s showed his last hand, he pulls another card from his sleeve.”
“Well, the wonderful thing about sleeves is they only go so deep.” Mira shot him a wry look. “Sander says the sentence will be delivered the day after tomorrow, and if you ask me, the sooner the better. We’re all ready for whatever comes after.” She shifted to face him. “What do you think that means for you, Chancellor?”
He watched Cistine and Quill grapple, weight bearing down on his heart. “That remains to be seen.”
Mira followed his gaze, smiling softly. “She loves you. It takes a fool or a pack of very distracted Chancellors to miss it.”
Thorne leaned his temple against the column to his left. “Some days, that’s all that keeps me going. And others…others make me wish she’d fallen in love with Quill instead. Or Maleck. Anyone but me.”
“Why?”
He hated that he could never tell whether Mira was speaking to him from a place of profession or friendly interest. Perhaps they were inseparable to her. “I doubt the son of the man who abused her is a good match. Let alone what Talheim would consider proper for its princess.”
“Oh, yes. Because that girl currently pounding Quill into the dust is clearly concerned with what’s proper.”
A reluctant chuckle slid through Thorne’s teeth. “Fair point. But that doesn’t mean I’m good for her.”
“She no longer shies from your touch. Does that not tell you something of the man she thinks you are?”
Thorne shrugged, bending to rub at the deep pain in his calf. Mira watched him, lips tipped thoughtfully.
Pippet’s laughter blossomed between the pillars as she finally broke free of Aden’s lock on her arms, swiveled on heel, and swept his ankles. When he wavered with a bark of shock, she shoved him down on his haunches and sprang on top of him, foot braced to his chest. “Victory!”
A different chuckle boomed after her shout—deep and livelier than Thorne had ever heard it. A pair of hands clapped and a woman’s voice drawled above the laughter, “Oh, I could watch that all day.”
Thorne lurched up from the pillar, and the cabal stopped fighting, all turning as the pair of warriors swaggered in lockstep down the hall to join them. Pippet shrieked. “Maleck, you’re home!”
No sooner did she leap onto Maleck’s back, arms around his neck, than Cistine crashed into his front and hugged him with all her might. Then Quill was there, and Ariadne, and Tatiana and Aden, smothering him in a sea of gripping hands and embracing arms. Ashe stood back, fingers tapping her hips, her grin bright as a sunrise. Vision misty, Thorne nodded farewell to Mira and joined them, the clamor of voices all straining against his ears at once.
“I’ll kill those Talheimics if they laid a hand on you, Storfir…”
“Look at you, Maleck, stars, have you even been eating?”
“You’ve missed much, Allet—the trial is nearly over, Siralek’s fallen…”
“I grew a whole entire inch and you didn’t get to mark my doorpost like you always do!”
Chuckling, Maleck carefully extricated himself from the arms around him, pried Pippet off his back, and tucked through their midst to meet Thorne. He held his friend’s gaze—his wounded brother, the spine that held them all together—and relief blasted through him so fiercely he nearly buckled. “Welcome home, Darkwind.”
Tears glistened on Maleck’s lashes, and he said nothing when they embraced.
Cistine broke the moment’s silence after they pulled apart, voice soft. “Does this mean the treaty passed with Jad?”
Maleck’s gaze cut to Ashe, who stepped forward, took Cistine by the shoulders, and looked deep into her eyes. And then she delivered the words to save and damn it all.
“You did it, Princess. Your treaty stopped the war between Talheim and Mahasar.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
CISTINE HAD FINALLY succeeded—saving her kingdom and sparing her people a bloody, unjust war. Yet she sat on her bed instead of celebrating after she and Ashe stole a moment alone for apologies and a quick catching-up. Ashe’s parting token had been a kiss to Cistine’s hair, full of sorrow but also healing—and this letter pressed into her hand.
A letter from her father.
This was the moment she’d been anticipating and dreading; for the first time since summer’s warmth kissed her face on her balcony the night she hatched this plot, she had no reason to be in Valgard.
She drew in a steadying breath, then flinched at a knock at the door. Thorne stepped inside, looking faintly frantic and almost gleeful. “The cabal is mustering for supper. As soon as Ashe and Maleck finish washing off the journey—Logandir?”
The last word hushed, his eyes on the letter in her hands. She bit her lips together, staring down at it.
Thorne settled beside her. “What is that, Cistine?”
“A letter from my father.”
His hand brushed her back, light and testing. When she didn’t pull away, he rubbed slow circles along her spine. “Have you read it?”
“I’m afraid to,” she admitted.
“I can read it to you, if you’d prefer.”
She sucked in a damp breath. “I think we both know it’s better we don’t read each other’s letters.”
He chuckled. “Fair enough. If you prefer privacy…”
“Stay.” She snatched his wrist as he began to rise. “Just be with me.”
He settled back at once, pressing a kiss to her temple. “I’m here.”
That promise restored a portion of her bravery. She unrolled the scroll and smoothed it out on her knees, tears already gathering at the first glimpse of her father’s familiar handwriting.
My dearest Cistine,
May this letter find you well. Whatever Ashe says, I still worry for your wellbeing, especially where you are. But if you are reading this, it means there will be no war, and I can entertain the thought of your return to Talheim ~ knowing that not bloodshed, but peace awaits you here.
What I ought to say is if you’re reading this, then you succeeded. You, above us all, sneaking off to the North in search of an alliance that eluded your grandfather and me. While Rion would remind me it’s a father’s duty to punish such acts of rebellion~ particularly from his only heir~ I’m grateful. And, laugh at me if you wish, I’m envious of you. Pursuing that call. Embracing it with your whole heart while I’ve ignored it these past twenty years.
You have proven yourself a lady of wit and talent, a successor and future ruler I am proud of beyond what words can say. But you’ve also proven a competent and grown woman of age. And such a woman is capable of making her own choices.
I know you’re conflicted. You make friends like most people make breakfast~ quickly, heartily, and without much effort~ but I’m sure you feel you should come home now that the treaty’s signed. So you’re reading this hoping I will give a command that decides whether you come home or stay and celebrate with the friends you’ve won.
Well, consider it your punishment that I’m not going to make this simple for you. I’m telling you instead that you’re a girl of self-reliance, and you can’t run from this conflict in yourself. But I will give you a father’s advice that may help you choose.
Back in your grandfather’s day, the coming~ of~ age gift from the King to his son or daughter was a year of freedom to explore and travel as they wished, to learn their people and seek out their heart. Twenty years old is younger than it seems, and the crown heavier than it looks, so princes and princesses journeyed abroad to better discover the sort of ruler they wished to be.
