“You’re never going to trust me again, are you?”
“No.”
I nod and raise a finger. First place. The best.
“You must be very smart,” she says with a bit of awe.
“Not very.” I point to my left eye.
She laughs. “You’re lucky to have such a gift, Athan.”
I like when she says my name. I feel like she’s really seeing me. Maybe that’s why I hear myself say, “No, I’m not lucky.” She throws a questioning look, and now I’m stuck. The real answer would take an hour-long explanation and wind up in places we can’t go. Places where she’d realize I’m not a friend at all. So I shrug. “If I were ordinary and forgettable, then I could do whatever I wanted. But like this … well, other people get ideas for you. Expectations, you know?”
She looks at me a long moment, puzzling, like she’s trying to figure me out, then she nods and studies her map again. I’d like to see what’s inside her head. A clue about what she thinks of all this would be nice. But just as quick she’s marching ahead, pushing branches out of the way while I try to avoid them on the return swing.
We’ve gone for a good ways and the earth rises sharply, the forest dense and the trail thin. Sweat begins to tickle the back of my neck.
“You’re sure you know where you’re going?” I ask.
“It’s an old hunting route. Reni and I used to explore here, but I’ve never gone the whole way.”
“And you’re sure you can get us back? Because that’s usually Cyar’s job.”
She smiles. “If you give me some of your food at the top, I’ll take his place.”
“Fair enough. You’re actually quite good at this, Princess. We could use you in the army.” A branch flings with impressive force and grazes my face. “Great aim, too.”
Her laughter echoes in the silent woods. It’s a fun game, making her laugh. It always sounds like an accident, like she meant to keep it in but couldn’t resist the opportunity, and that makes me feel funnier than I am.
Up we go, higher into the splendid wild. Pine and fir and sprawling chestnuts tower around us. When we reach the open slopes, the sun is bright but the air chillier. A strong wind stings my face, fills my ears. It’s like being in an airplane, but without the metal and glass to protect. Sea swells of air tugging and pushing.
Long strands of dark hair escape from the Princess’s braid, brushing her face while she tells her stories. “They say there are wild horses in these mountains,” she shares, pointing out at the peaks that stretch north. “Descendants of Prince Efan’s stallion, the one he rode when he won his battle for the North.”
“You should get one for yourself,” I say. “Royal horses.”
“I wish! But they’re impossible to catch. If they sense danger, they’ll run for days. They’ll run until their hooves and nostrils bleed. In the olden days, they say men would capture them and ride them into battle because they’d never stop. Loyal even to death.” A sliver of sadness appears on her face, and she turns from me.
“What’s wrong?”
For a moment, it’s only the wind in my ears and on my face. That steady rush.
Then she says, “Nothing. They might not even exist. But I saw something this summer that makes me think they do.”
I wait.
Her velvet eyes meet mine again. “I think my brother might have a horse with that blood in him. Loyal to death.”
I don’t understand, but I don’t press any further. She’s filled with something sad and strong. It’s a wholly different experience seeing her here—perched on a rock, overlooking the view, no gown, only mud on her boots. I like how the mountains bring her alive. Opening her up, even the sorrow. How I suddenly feel I have a chance at touching her skin to know she’s real as me. I remember the curves of her body beneath my hands during our dance, the heat, and find myself staring at her.
“Should we keep climbing?” she asks.
“Oh, right. Let’s go.”
I sound stupid, even to my own ears.
She shifts from foot to foot, aware of my stare. “I must look awful right now.” Her forehead is smudged with sweat and dust.
I try to think of a compliment, but I’ve never done this before. What’s too forward? What’s proper? She looks terribly pretty even like this, but saying it now feels wrong and not saying it feels even worse. I still don’t know what she thinks of me.
“Not as bad as me.” I grin, pointing again at my bruise.
The dark eyes falter with disappointment, and then I feel disappointed, too.
“Come on.” I nod up the trail. “We must be nearly there.”
AURELIA
The open-face ridge appears just as I think my legs will fail me. I’ve made a good show of keeping up with Athan, but this is farther than I’ve ever hiked and my lungs ache like stones in my chest. Far below is the palace, surrounded by the rolling valley, and in the distance, the spiraled roofs of Hathene, the city cream-coloured against the green. I pause to admire it. An excuse to take in a few more greedy breaths.
Athan hops onto a nearby rock, balancing on one foot. He’s been doing these silly things the entire way up—hanging off branches, scaling outcrops. I consider pushing him off the rock when he’s not looking, but motion him closer instead. “I’ve remembered something very important.”
He tips forward, still balancing. “Which is?”
“First to the top of the ridge wins.”
Before his genius mind can comprehend the challenge, I sprint across the hard ground. The wind-roughed summit glitters ahead in the sun.
He races after me, but I crest the rise first.
“That was cheating,” he complains, hands on his knees.
I grin, equally exhausted. “That was quick thinking.”
We plunk down in a spot sheltered from the wind, stretching out our legs and retrieving lunch from our bags. Mine’s rather meagre, and Athan dangles his fresh bread and meat in front of me.
“Do you want to get down from here later?” I ask.
“No,” he says with a smile, but he surrenders some to me anyway.
While we eat, he tells me about flying in an aeroplane, what it’s like to explore the cloudy realms above. I close my eyes and imagine the feeling. He makes it sound very lovely, like the plane is alive and a friend, the world a much better place at 15,000 feet. After a while, I pull some paper and a pencil from my bag, and, to my surprise, he produces a sketchbook.
He gives me a sly look. “You don’t think the Safire enjoy art?”
“I suppose you have the creativity for it,” I say, “if your lies are any indication.”
But it’s a good feeling that spreads inside me, the sense we’ve found common ground at last.
We work in silence. He understands the quiet, the peace, and his hand moves without pausing, eyes focused on the paper. I outline the palace below. When we share our pages at the end, my heart does a little trip. It’s me. He’s drawn me—my face turned towards Hathene, hair tossed in the breeze. He hardly glanced my way once.
“You don’t like it?” he asks hesitantly, trying to cover it with his book.
“No one’s ever made a sketch of me before,” I say.
“Really? You don’t make your servants do that in their spare time or something?”
I reach over and snatch it from him with a grin. “You have such a terrible impression of us. But did you do this from memory?”
He shrugs. “Everything in my life moves quickly, there and gone. I’ve learned to remember well.”
“But not directions,” I tease.
“I remember what I want to remember,” he says honestly, and there’s a tingle of warmth on my nose.
I hide it by studying the way his lines are soft and shadowed, more an impression. “You draw like my father did.”
“Your father was an artist?”
“Yes. He died when I was young, but I remember watching him paint. He’d sit in the garden for hours.”
&nbs
p; “You’re more like him than your mother, then?”
It’s yet another bold question, but I’m not even surprised by it this time. There’s a sense of refuge high up in this secret place, away from the world and its usual patterns. “I’m not sure,” I admit. “I know him mostly through the stories told by others, things I think I remember about him. But then I never know if I’m making those memories up. If I just want them to be true.” I pick at the charcoal pencil. “And my mother’s an equal mystery. She’s from Resya, you know. She never talks of her life before she came here, since she can’t, really. You know how it is these days. And … Well, sometimes I feel torn between the two. My mother and father. I want to honour them both equally and I’m not sure I know how. Does that make sense?”
His grey eyes watch me. “You might be surprised.”
I don’t mention the protesters who question my mother’s loyalties, who hate her and long for the days of my father. I don’t mention this, because Athan’s uniform is the source of their contention, and I don’t want to go there. “Tell me about your family,” I say, deflecting the attention away. “You said you have a brother?”
“Oh God, I have two.”
I laugh at the face he makes. “And your father’s a farmer?”
He erases a smudge from the portrait. “Yes.”
“What does he think of you off round the world in uniform?”
“He’s very proud. It’s a more noble life than that of a farmer, don’t you agree, Princess?” He grins. He has a way of saying things with such candor, so effortlessly, and yet his eyes tell a different story. That shadow that looks older than it should on seventeen years.
“And what does your mother think?” I ask.
His eraser stops, but it seems a logical question. I wait. I need to see the full picture of him.
“I don’t know. She … she’s dead.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t—”
He waves it off, eyes on the rocks at our feet. “How could you have known?” He waits a moment, then says, “And I don’t know what she thought. She never expressed herself well.”
This, I believe.
“It’s been ten years for me,” I say. “It still feels like yesterday sometimes. How long for you?”
“Two months.”
I bring a hand to my mouth. “Stars! I should never have brought it up.”
“No, it’s fine. It doesn’t matter.” But he looks scattered, and now I know why. It’s too fresh. It’s still raw inside him. “I should be the one apologizing,” he says. “The other night, that girl—your friend—she sang one of my mother’s favourite songs. I couldn’t bear it. It was as if someone chose it just for me, and I had to leave. It was rude of me.”
Something guilty lurches in my stomach. I don’t want to accidentally hurt this boy I hardly know. He already has a dark bruise left behind from yesterday, the weariness of a life already lived, and this unintentional wound from the song feels even deeper.
I want to take it away.
I want him to trust me.
“My father was murdered,” I say, the first time I’ve ever spoken the words aloud, certain he won’t judge. He looks up sharply, and I add, “But it’s a secret. I didn’t even know until this spring.”
His eyes flick over me, like he’s seeing for the first time. “That’s terrible. Why?”
It’s another logical question, one I should have seen coming, but the words still fumble off my tongue. “I … I don’t know. They never found who did it. I suppose if the kingdom knew that, the fear would spread.” That’s close enough to the truth.
Athan frowns. “No one was brought to justice?”
“No.”
“Then you should tell someone. Let the world know. It’s not right what happened.”
His certainty catches me off guard. Also the awareness that he won’t just accept my reasoning. He’s too stubborn and Safire for that, so I raise my chin. “It’s not right to frighten an entire kingdom and chase revenge your whole life,” I tell him. “What happened was my father’s fate.”
He leans back on his hands. “Well, that’s an interesting perspective.”
“You don’t agree with me.”
“I think it’s quite a luxury to be able to sit around and wait for fate.”
I face him on the rock, arms crossed. “I’m not saying it was easy losing my father.”
He faces me, too. “But what about everyone else’s father? And mother? You don’t care about them since they never had a chance to begin with? Since at least you have a fancy horse and a glass of wine?”
I recoil, unsure how we ended up here and what fire I’ve lit in him. I’m the one who needs sympathy, not him. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying it’s not much of a life, lounging around with power but doing nothing.”
A bitter laugh escapes me. “And what you’re doing—running across the world with a gun—is better?”
“Yes, because I know what guns can accomplish. My home was built with bullets. I’m doing what’s in my power, and while it will never be the same as yours, at least it’s something.”
I think of the protesters and realize they have something infuriatingly in common with the General’s bold men. I point a finger. “And that’s exactly what’s wrong with you Safire. You think anyone has the right to rule and change the world, but that’s not the way it is.”
“Why not?”
“Because there’s an order to things! God put leaders in place, kings who know how to rule and guide properly. It’s how it’s always been and—”
I realize he’s laughing at me. He’s laughing at me like I’ve just told a marvelous joke.
“My God, you actually believe all this, don’t you?” he exclaims.
I turn from him, furious now. I could slap him for being so cruel, right at the moment when I thought to trust him. I want to yell at him and say, “People like you are the ones who took my father! People like you who are rotten enough to think you know better!” I want to yell at him until my voice is hoarse, not because it’s him, but because I can. Because he has no idea what the truth is, and what I’m fighting for, and how miserably afraid I am of what might happen if Seath isn’t defeated. If the protesters keep growing in numbers, and if they discover some way to connect Mother to the trouble in the South.
I have to think about all of these things, and all he has to do is follow a damn order.
It’s not fair.
He waves at the palace. “Tell me, Princess, how does someone born inside there ever learn to rule? I’m genuinely curious. What brilliant thing is your brother going to teach the world when he sits on that throne? What does he know that no one else does?”
I sit silently. I hate that I have no answer.
“That’s not how leaders are made,” Athan finishes. “You go through something horrible, you prove yourself, and then you’re a leader. Those are the ones who change the world.”
“Stars!” I stand up suddenly, just so I can stare down at him. It’s vainly cathartic. “You think we can’t rule? Who are you to talk? Look at your arrogant general! Controlling you with his orders, starting wars wherever he wishes. Did you hear nothing my brother said the other day, or do you refuse to even think of it? At least our monarchies are peaceful!”
“Peaceful?” He laughs unkindly, glaring up at me. “Really? Is that why all those grateful people in Thurn are revolting?”
I glare back to him. “What are you implying?”
“What do you think? You have no idea what goes on there! You can’t own people, Princess. You can’t force loyalty and expect them to thank you for it. No one will take that forever. Believe me, eventually it has to end. They’re going to do something about it.”
“Then go fight for the damn Nahir!” I snap. “You’d suit their revolution.”
It takes a breath, but the fierce fire in his eyes slowly fades. He stares at me, and stares at me, then gives up and settles against the rock, arms cross
ed on his knees, looking more like a dejected boy than a soldier.
I think I’ve won, but strange guilt snakes inside me. Carefully, I sit down again as if too much noise might annoy him further. There’s only the sound of crickets in the thin grass. I realize he makes no sense to me. At times, he’s easy as a cat in the sun, and at other times, so boiling with hidden passion that I’m left startled and bewildered. I saw it in the hangar. I see it now. I want to peer inside his mad little Safire head and find out what’s there. But I can’t.
We sit like that, not speaking, for a long while.
Then he gets up and goes to the ledge of the rock face, dragging his boot over the edge, stretching his arms wide. The air is turning golden, the sun lowering, and he looks over his shoulder and says, “If I were you, I wouldn’t leave here either.”
He sounds apologetic. Wistful.
I want to tell him he’s right and he’s wrong, but I just nod.
When he comes to gather his things, he looks at his watch. “We should head back. Wouldn’t want to be stuck here in the dark.” He gives a cautious smile. “Wolves and all.”
Warmth returns between us, comforting.
There’s a sharp drop from where we’ve been sitting back onto the ridge. It was easy to climb in my hurry, but more precarious-looking now. Athan navigates down, then reaches up a hand.
“Thank you.” I’m glad for an excuse to touch his skin again.
“You’re welcome, Princess.”
“Ali,” I say, and he smiles.
20
ATHAN
Daylight’s almost gone by the time we’re snaking through the palace gardens, just as we did earlier, our faces tinged by sun and dirty from head to toe. Aurelia still looks like perfection—windswept and warm. She was silent for most of the hike down, distracted by quiet thoughts, and I really shouldn’t have said what I said at the top. I think she’s forgiven me, but it’s hard to tell. I suspect she’s very good at playing diplomatic. When she means to, anyway.
Cleverly, she sneaks us in through the kitchens. We’re greeted by the curious faces of servants holding crates and hoisting vegetables, and we step through the chaos, then weave down the narrow halls and up a flight of stairs. We must be in the clear.
Dark of the West (Glass Alliance) Page 20