Cynthia took the paper without reading it, tucked it into the front of her dress, and fluffed her hair. “I’ll get this to him and let you know if I hear anything in return. Enzo said I’d be rewarded if I helped Turia.”
She stood there, fiddling with the embroidery on her dress. I cleared my throat. “You can leave now.”
Her head reared back. “How would it look to sneak into the Hálendian king’s chambers and then leave right away? I should stay for…a while, at least.”
Chiara seized one of Sennor’s shirts off the pile like she’d use it as a weapon. I marched to the door, yanking it open. “Out,” I barked. “Now.”
Cynthia spun with a huff, her dress flaring around her impressively, and swished back into the hallway.
I shut the door and pressed my forehead against it. What would Janiis do to the rest of the visiting Turians? They were trapped on the wrong side of border—they’d be powerful bargaining chips.
My shoulders dropped and my arms went lax at my sides. Chiara was back to meticulously hanging Sennor’s shirts in the wardrobe. At least she wasn’t snapping them anymore.
“Please,” I whispered. “Please go. Find Luc, get out of Riiga.”
She paused, turned back to the bag, took out a bundle, then held it out to me. “Your nightclothes.”
I squeezed my eyes shut and shoved my hands in my pockets to keep from batting the clothing from her hands. “A mage my father couldn’t defeat, a king your father couldn’t defeat, and Koranth.” I finally took the bundle, but held on to her hands. “Please. I can’t protect you like this.”
She swallowed but stood firm. “I want to hear what Aleksa says. If there’s a chance to escape with my father, I won’t leave him behind. This could be our only chance.” Her voice hitched. “His only chance.”
I set my jaw. “Fine.” I marched toward the door.
“Where are you going?” she called out.
“To find Aleksa—”
Another short knock, and Aleksa slipped into the room. I stumbled back to keep from running her over. The tray she held tipped precariously, but she straightened it.
She glared at me, but then again, her usual expression was some form of a glare. The fake beard didn’t help. I had a bad feeling she already had a plan—one I wouldn’t like.
“Chiara and I can sneak into the dungeon tomorrow morning,” she said. “My friend will create a distraction when they take trays to feed the prisoners. We’ll get in, hide until the others leave, get Chiara’s father, and take him out of the palace through the kitchens.”
I folded my arms, trying not to think of everything that could go wrong, trying to think of something better. “How do you propose to break out of the dungeon?”
She held up two long straight pins. “I’ve picked that lock before.”
I didn’t want to know the story behind that—at least, not at the moment.
“We can trust most of the servants,” she continued. “Janiis thinks himself so powerful he doesn’t need to worry about the loyalty of the lowest. The advisor—Koranth—he’s the one to watch.”
I shook my head. “We have to watch Redalia, too—she’s a mage.”
Aleksa blinked three times. “Glaciers.”
My lips tilted up. Glaciers, indeed. “And what about me? I sit back while you both go into the one place I’d rather you avoid?”
She pursed her lips. “You are the distraction. Go on a noisy tour of the palace that draws the eye of the king and his advisor—and bride—leaving the servant hallways free for us to sneak him out.”
I pressed my eyes closed. “There are so many holes in that plan, I can’t even begin—”
“Tomorrow morning is our only chance,” Aleksa interrupted. “Then it’s the party tomorrow night, the wedding, and the attack. We cannot be here when they attack. If we were discovered…”
She didn’t have to finish. She’d be killed. Chiara and I would be tortured, used as collateral.
I wiped my hand down my face. The Medallion lay on my chest, the constant warning buzzing, but no more than usual for this cursed place. “I could be the one to sneak in and get Marko. You should both leave tonight.” I knew they’d refuse, but I had to try one more time.
Chiara shook her head. “We’re doing this. Tomorrow. I won’t leave without my father. I wouldn’t before, but now that Koranth and the mage are here, I definitely won’t.” She looked up at me, her hands clasped tight in front of her, and I knew I’d give in, I’d do anything she asked.
“Distraction? I can be a distraction.” I didn’t bother to ask how I’d get out of the palace once Janiis found his resident king-prisoner missing—it was clearly low on the priority list.
Chiara threw her arms around Aleksa. For one painful moment, I wished she’d jumped into my arms instead. Her eyes locked on mine. For her, I’d make it work. We’d free her father, then I’d find a way to stay in Riiga and defeat Redalia and Koranth.
Chiara
Aleksa muttered something about how much her face itched and went into the other room, but I hardly noticed. I don’t think Ren did, either.
Something was different in the way he looked at me.
I reached for Sennor’s clothes again, anything to break Ren’s stare that held me captive. The shirts really were unforgivably wrinkled.
When the door clicked shut behind Aleksa, Ren started pacing again. Pounding steps, one hand on his sword, the other rubbing his forehead.
I’d never seen anyone panic like that before. And yet, in those brief moments, I’d seen through his layers—the charm and bravado he protected himself with. The real Ren.
I’d folded and refolded the same set of trousers twice, so I tucked them away and went back for another shirt. But I’d lost track of Ren’s pacing. He barreled into me, catching me before we both fell. We stood like that for a moment, his hands on my shoulders.
We’d been crammed in a cave all night, yet now, impossibly, even with space between us, we were closer than ever.
“We can do this,” I said, trying to reassure him. “We’ll all get out, including my father, and then you and Jenna and an army can come back for Koranth and the mage.”
His hands tightened on my shoulders. “There’s so much that could go wrong. We’re penned in here, between the sea and the cliffs. I won’t let her hurt you. I won’t.”
“I know.” I tilted my head. “Why are you so desperate to protect me?” I was friends with his sister, and maybe Enzo had asked him to bring me home safely, but I was nothing to him. Of no importance to any kingdom or decision.
I wasn’t like Jenna or Cynthia or even Mari. I didn’t fill a room when I entered, hadn’t mastered any particularly useful talent, didn’t face life with excessive passion. I was…quiet.
We’d been getting closer. Become friends. Would he tell me why he cared? And did I want to know, when the answer would be something like duty or responsibility?
Ren dropped his hands. Swallowed. “I…I couldn’t protect my parents. Jenna almost died, and your brother…”
My brows furrowed and I set aside the shirt crushed in my hand. He’d mentioned that last night, too. “Wasn’t your mother traveling when she passed? You were very young, weren’t you?”
“Five. I was five.” He stared at some point behind my shoulder. “But I was also the future king. I had magic. It was my responsibility to take care of my family and kingdom. She asked me to come with her and Jenna. I told her I didn’t want to go.” He swallowed hard and met my gaze, and his dark blue eyes had never been deeper. “When my father told me my mother wasn’t coming back, it…” He sucked in a shaky breath. “That was the moment everything fell apart. I’ve been trying to put it back together ever since.”
“And your father,” I said slowly, carefully. Wary of treading too hard in this tender space. “You were aw
ay. Not anywhere near him when the mage attacked.”
His eyes dropped closed. “I should have known. Shouldn’t have taken the Medallion with me. But I was so eager to prove myself, I didn’t see anything beyond my own advancement.”
He was both so right and so wrong. His pain—the pain of a five-year-old losing his mother, of a young king desperate to make the right choice, lay etched in every line of his face.
I wrapped my arms around him, pulling him close to me. He stiffened. Maybe I shouldn’t have—
His long arms enveloped me, holding me tight. I squeezed my eyes shut and tucked my chin down, holding him up, letting him hold me up. Just being there, present, for a moment.
It had been weeks since anyone had hugged me. I imagined that as king, and without Jenna, it had been even longer for Ren.
I didn’t want the hug to ever end, but eventually Ren sighed, and his strong arms fell away. I stepped back and swallowed. “Their deaths are not your fault,” I said. “If something happens to me, that’s on me. I understand that. You need to understand too—my choices aren’t on your shoulders.”
The barest beginning of a smirk tipped up one side of his mouth. “What if I want them to be?”
I wasn’t exactly sure what he meant, or if he meant anything at all. “At home, no one ever let me make decisions. It took them two days to notice I was missing.” I looked down to the pile of wrinkled shirts still waiting to be hung. “I like making my own choices. Taking my own risks. Please don’t take that from me.”
We stood close—close enough to almost touch. Did he lean toward me, just a little? “I’m sorry,” he whispered. His hand flexed at his side. “Your choices are what have gotten us here.” He lifted one shoulder. “I’m just the pretty face and the muscle.”
I rolled my eyes and used every modicum of decorum I had not to lean into him. “Yes, leaving you in a ballroom full of drooling women—and Koranth—was not fun.”
His blue eyes brightened. “Did you…Were you worried about me?” I wrinkled my nose and he laughed. “For the record, Miss Hallen wears too many masks for me to ever trust her.” He leaned the tiniest bit closer and lowered his voice. “I want someone I can trust.”
You can trust me was on the tip of my tongue, but I caught the words and held them back. Even though we no longer touched, the heat emanating from his body crackled in the space between us, weaving threads that pulled me toward him. His hand reached up slowly, almost brushing against my arm, hovering over my shoulder but still a breath away from contact. His eyes dipped to my lips, and my eyes immediately followed to his mouth.
I swallowed, my heartbeat pounding in my ears. Was he about to…Should I…Did I want him to?
And then his hand was gone. He took two steps back, glanced at my lips again, and took another big step back. He set his hands on his hips, then moved them to his sides, then behind his back. “I guess I’d better turn in for the night,” he said, then winced.
I swallowed hard and nodded, trying to shake whatever threads still connected us. I grabbed his nightclothes, which had been set to the side, and held them out in an awkward, crumpled bundle. “Here,” I said, my voice too high and too fast.
Ren licked his lips and leaned to take the bundle from me, as though he didn’t want to get too close. He’d just been inches away from kissing me—or at least that’s what I’d thought—and now he wouldn’t come within arm’s reach?
“Thank you,” he said, frowning at the clothes. He sighed. “Sennor’s clothes pinch in all the wrong places.”
My eyes dropped to his chest and I couldn’t help but agree—Ren and Sennor were in entirely different leagues.
“I—I, um,” he stuttered. He wasn’t moving away. His fingers rested against mine, just the bundle of cloth separating us.
“Have you still not eaten?” Aleksa’s voice came from the other room. Ren and I jumped apart. “Best hurry. We’ll need all the rest we can get.” She bustled into the room, tossing the rest of Sennor’s clothes into the wardrobe in a heap.
We moved to the tray—a small pot of stew with potatoes, peas, onions, and smoked meat. Ren kept his eyes down, avoiding mine. Had I misread what had happened?
Ren made me and Aleksa take the bed for the night. I protested—our disguise wouldn’t hold up if we were sleeping there while our king took the sofa in the other room. He shrugged and said there was no way he’d let us sleep between him and the door, so it was either the sofa or he was joining us in the bed.
Not that I slept much, despite the arrangement.
Whatever that moment between Ren and me had been circled around in my head. My father was impossibly close. Koranth, too. Along with another mage. And the impending attack on Turia.
I fell asleep clutching Jenna’s book.
When I woke, a lit candle flickered on a table, and Aleksa was gone. There were no windows to gauge what time it was, and for a moment, I thought maybe she and Ren had gone ahead without me.
I rubbed the grit from my eyes, grabbed my cap from the bedside table, refreshed my smeared eyebrows, and padded over the cold floor to the door separating the bedchamber from the sitting room. I listened at the door. Was Ren awake? I heard shuffling, so I opened the door and went in.
“Ren, have you seen—” The words caught in my throat, because Ren stood there, very much awake, and very much without his shirt on. My mind shut off. Blank.
His head snapped up, eyes wide, a shirt in his hands. “Uh, good morning,” he said, voice rough from sleep. I clutched my cap to my chest like covering me up would somehow cover him up.
It took me a minute to look away from the expanse of his chest, from the lines and definition of a lifetime of sword work. “Do you…Aleksa?” I squeaked, unable to form a whole sentence.
“Food. She went to get food from the kitchens.” Ren jammed his tunic over his head and tugged it down, but it was one of Sennor’s and pulled across his chest. He muttered something under his breath.
Then he winced and grabbed his chest. Where the Medallion lay.
He ran at me, pushing me back into the bedchamber as a knock came at the hall door.
The door didn’t open. Aleksa would have let herself in right away. Ren pushed me toward the bed, hand going for his sword. But it wasn’t there. He looked at me, horrified. He’d left it in the other room.
After another knock, the door clicked open, slowly, softly.
“King Atháren,” a woman’s low, melodic voice called from the sitting room. It should have been a pleasing voice—the tone and pitch were just right, but something about it made every muscle in me tense.
Ren muttered a word I’d never heard before, one that was all harsh consonants and guttural vowels, then pointed under the bed. “Do not come out—no matter what!” he hissed so quietly I barely heard him.
Footsteps approached. Heeled boots.
As his servant, I had every right to be here. But I muttered a curse of my own and slipped under the bed, scooting back until I was scrunched against the cold wall. Dust lifted into the air, settling around me as the woman entered the room.
“King Atháren, there you are.”
I could barely see Ren’s boots—he’d moved to the washstand—but they turned toward the woman. The hem of her elaborate dress—grapes on a vine embroidered with gold thread—swished against the stone floor. A sheer overlay shimmered against a deep red underdress, the quality of both the finest I’d ever seen.
“My lady,” Ren said, his voice betraying no trace of the panic that had been on his face moments ago. He didn’t ask why she was there. Or who she was.
She approached the bed, each step deliberate yet soft. She walked almost like Jenna. But where Jenna was a warrior, this woman was a predator.
“My young king, how fortunate you arrived in Riiga in time for my wedding.” She sat on the bed and crossed one leg
over the other. Her wedding? Janiis’s betrothed was sitting on Ren’s bed? A mage was within arm’s reach?
No, no. We were so close to finding my father. I willed Ren not to do anything rash. Screamed at my nose not to itch. Prayed Redalia wasn’t here to end our heist. Or us.
Ren walked to where I could no longer see his boots, maintaining distance between him and the future queen. “Fortunate, indeed,” he said. His voice sounded odd. Flat.
Redalia stood and stalked toward him ever so slowly. “You remind me of someone, you know.”
“Do I?” Ren asked, his voice pitching higher. His boots came into view as he backed away from her.
“You do,” she said. They circled each other, step for step, Redalia tightening the gap. “He was a great king as well. He and I would have been powerful together.” She’d gotten within a few feet of Ren. His legs were pressed up against the bed. My stomach clenched and I squinted, wanting to shut my eyes and ears to whatever was playing out, yet unable to. “You and I would be powerful as well,” she purred. She took a step closer so her skirts brushed his boots.
This was the woman who’d killed Ren’s father. Why wasn’t he— Oh no. Sennor and Cynthia had both told tales of visits from Koranth’s watchdog, that the people had been different after.
I couldn’t let her get into Ren’s head. I wanted to curse as I analyzed my options. But what could I do?
“You are about to wed a more powerful man than I will ever be,” Ren said, though his voice sounded funny, like he was fighting his own words.
Redalia laughed, and I bit the inside of my cheek. “I like to keep my options open. That’s why”—she stepped closer—“you have until dawn tomorrow to consider my offer. Come willingly, and you’ll be rewarded. If you don’t, well, I have ways to get what I want.”
“That hardly seems like a choice,” Ren said, breathing hard.
She backed toward the door, her skirts swirling around her ankles. “A willing servant is always more fun.”
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