Cub threw up his hands. “No, just looking for an explanation.”
“There is none,” she said hotly. “Nothing he could say would make this right.”
“Agreed,” he said.
“So I caught the first transport. Rickety old cargo ship I wasn’t sure was going to make it.”
He was silent for so long, she thought he wasn’t going to respond at all. Finally he said quietly, “Why here?”
“Why not? The big celebration is here. It will distract me.”
He was silent again for a moment before saying, “Yes, a huge celebration. A great deal of it in honor of your father.”
She stiffened, opened her mouth for a sharp retort, then stopped. For it was true, and she knew it.
“And my mother,” she finally said. “Perhaps I came in tribute to her.”
“Perhaps?”
For a moment, she wanted to pound on him as she had her father. She doubted Cub would be so obliging as to simply take it, however. And in the end he would make her think, make her work out in her mind exactly what she was so fumed about.
Cub always made her think.
Why had she come here? Was it truly just the lure of a big gathering, of revelry and merrymaking? The chance to get caught up in it all and forget the shattering of her entire life? But Cub was right—this celebration was as much tribute to her father as it was to the banishment of the Coalition. Back in the beginning, they had even considered calling it “Dax Days.” A fact that had, according to the queen, sparked endless teasing.
While having a drunken bacchanal named after me might once have seemed the pinnacle of achievement, I find myself a little less appreciative these days.
Her father’s voice, speaking words she had then been too young to understand, rang in her head. But later she had understood, had regretted she had been born too late to know the rakish, bold skypirate he’d been. But she had adored him nonetheless, even if she wished her mother hadn’t tamed him quite so well.
She’d said as much to her one day. And her mother had laughed. “If you can’t tell the difference between a man who’s tamed and one who’s curbing himself out of love, then you have much yet to learn, my sweet. Your father is far from tamed. And he will ever be so. And I would have him no other way.”
Her mother’s explanation had never left her, and had only fired her adoration even higher.
And, she thought bitterly, had set her up for the pain and fierce anger she was feeling now, that the man she had so worshipped had betrayed her. Had been betraying her since before she could even walk.
So why had she come? Here, where indeed the celebration was as much about that man as anything else?
Because Arellia was Trios’s closest ally, surely. Trios was her home, and the hold it had on her was unbreakable, as it was with all who lived there. But being half-Arellian herself made her curious. She wanted to know the world of her mother and godmother.
She almost had herself convinced, would have managed it, except that Cub stayed so silent. He simply let her go through the process—another thing he’d learned from his father, he’d once told her. People might surrender to a superior argument, but they would fight for an idea they had reached themselves.
He was going to be a great king, she thought. He was already so wise.
Wiser than you, she told herself with an inward grimace.
“I can’t go back, Cub.”
“No. You’re too angry. And,” he added with some emphasis, “with right. This is, I think, indefensible. But even if it weren’t, I am ever and always with you. As you have been with me.”
And it was then that she realized she had come here not because the first available departure was coming here, but because Cub was here. He was who she always turned to when she was in an uproar.
This was what she had needed, she thought. This unconditional support, this complete understanding. No one knew her better than Cub. She doubted anyone ever would.
She settled back in, leaning against him as she watched the glowing embers of the fire. It could go a bit longer she thought, and still be hot enough to catch and flame when stirred, and fuel added. For a moment she could simply be here, far from the chaos her life had suddenly become.
“Do you suppose,” she asked after a moment, “that we work so well because of who we are?”
“We’re the only ones who truly understand what it is to be the children of heroes,” he said.
Right now that wasn’t a word she would apply to her father, but she didn’t say so. Cub knew.
“I’ve never doubted their courage and valor.”
“Except your father’s when it came to facing his daughter’s future. How does it feel, to know the greatest flashbow warrior of all time loves you so much his courage fails him?” Cub asked.
She hadn’t thought of it that way. She hadn’t been calm enough until now. The idea of her father’s courage ever failing seemed ridiculous. And yet . . .
“How would you feel, Cub?” she asked. “What if one day you discovered you were not the prince, that your father had lied to you your entire life?”
“I can’t imagine it,” he said. “Perhaps your father is convinced the kind of fighting he has had to do will not be asked of the next warrior.”
“Then he should have told me, for it would not matter.”
“Contention valid again,” he said. “I’m with you. You know that. But that does not mean I don’t understand why your father did it.”
“But you think it was wrong?” She needed this from him, for some reason she didn’t quite understand.
“I know you. I know how strong you are. I think it was unnecessary.”
It wasn’t the blanket condemnation of her father she wanted just now, but it would do.
“Think of it no more now,” he urged. “We will continue our adventure, and at worst have a pleasant, leisurely ramble through the woods, up this mountain.”
“And at best find treasure?”
He laughed. “I’m afraid any treasure there might have been is probably long gone, looted by the Coalition. They wouldn’t let a little thing like not being Graymist stop them. They’ve robbed every world they conquered of everything of value.”
“Except Trios.”
“Only because they never realized the greatest treasure Trios held was her people. When they failed to wipe them out, they sealed their own doom.”
“Spoken like a true prince.”
“Let’s not think about that, either, now.”
“Fair. We leave it all for this time. It will seem short enough.”
“And we will have one last adventure,” he said, sounding as if he were thinking of the countless others they’d had since they’d first toddled out beyond the gates of Triotia and into the world, adventurers together.
Chapter 6
FOR A MOMENT Lyon just stayed where he was, listening as she moved about. He was banking the fire, preparing for the night, while Shaina cleared a place for sleeping. She had inherited her mother’s lovely voice, and it echoed even in the light, aimless air she seemed to be making up as she went. Once the fire was set for the night, she settled cross-legged before it and dug into her pack. She came out with a small brush and began to work it through her hair. He found himself studying how the strokes became longer as the glossy strands smoothed, and she reached a rhythm that was oddly pleasant to watch.
“I’m thinking my mother was right, back when she defied tradition and kept her hair short. And Rina, now.”
She said it without looking at him, a fact for which he was thankful, since he’d been staring at her. Although he should have known she would sense it. Not much got by her.
As was fitting, for the next generation’s flashbow warrior.
Just thinking it hit him like a
blow all over again.
He tried to hide the chaos that was churning inside him. Since she had told him, he’d been haunted by images that made it hard to breathe. He only now realized just how much he had hoped that one day Shaina might wake to the fact that life had changed, that they had changed. He’d told himself he couldn’t force her to see what she didn’t want to see, that he couldn’t make her feel what he wanted her to feel, what he felt. But neither could he change what he felt.
He’d come to Arellia for room to think, away from her, as much as anything. He needed some distance, and time to decide what to do about the simple fact that he wanted more from her. He wanted to be more to her. He spent half his time aching with the need to be more.
He’d understood her fear of losing what they had together as he began to assume his formal duties. But he’d hoped, with the examples of their parents before them, that she’d someday realize they didn’t have to lose it at all. He’d told himself he had to give her time. That from Shaina, so stubborn about choosing her own path, it would be worth nothing unless she chose him freely, as their parents had chosen. Not because of some silly old predictions from people who wanted a legendary match between them, but because she wanted him. In the same way he wanted her—had wanted her, ever since the day he’d looked at this dearest of friends, who was everything he loved and admired and respected, and seen a woman, full-grown and beautiful.
It wasn’t that he’d been blind; obviously, he’d seen the changes in his childhood companion as they’d grown, just as he’d seen his own. She’d even complained to him about the nuisances of it all. It was just that one day he’d caught himself admiring a slim waist, sleek skin, and curved hips he’d never really noticed before. Womanly hips, with a taut, rounded backside that, had it been on another woman, would have drawn his eyes long before.
But it wasn’t another—it was Shaina. And so it had taken until that moment for his imagination to erupt with possibilities never before considered, possibilities that fired his senses.
But now that chance was gone, before it had ever flowered. Because as the flashbow warrior, she was tied to him in ways he’d never wished for. In ways she had no choice about. The biggest choice of all, who she would be, had been taken from her.
And one day, he himself might have to send her out to fight, to risk her life. Perhaps even send her to her death.
Needing to move, he walked down to the stream, thinking it had been a long time since he’d reduced life to the basics in this way—something he should do more often. He’d heard the stories often enough, usually from Glendar, of when his father had finally returned home after having been liberated by his mother, how the survivors of Trios had been living in caves, furnished only with what they had been able to salvage from the ruins. The planet, and especially the capital city of Triotia, still bore ugly scars from the war, but thanks to his father’s guidance and his mother’s seemingly endless energy, much had been restored.
What if one day you discovered you were not the prince?
Shaina’s question echoed in his mind as he knelt to splash the cold, fresh water on his face. He couldn’t conceive of his father lying in such a way, not as a man, nor as a king. And he truly could not imagine what it would feel like to find out his own father had hidden from him something of the same magnitude as her father had hidden from Shaina. He must think of this, of her pain, not his own shattered dreams.
He avoided the subject as he returned from his ablutions, letting her speak first.
“So, in the morning, what path shall we take?” she asked.
Not the one I’d hoped we would take, he thought, and firmly set aside the heated images that brought to mind.
“I’ve been trying to remember what I can of the old tales,” he said. “Something about a cave below the crest, that opened to the west.”
“And guarded by Arellian lions,” she said.
“Which don’t exist anymore,” he felt compelled to point out.
“You’re spoiling the fantasy, Cub.”
“Sorry. I know that’s usually your job.”
She laughed, and in the light sound he sensed she had, for the moment at least, pushed her anger aside.
He rubbed at the still-tender spot behind his ear.
“Poor Cub,” she said teasingly. And then, a note of concern coming into her voice, she asked, “You are all right, though? No dizziness, headache, odd vision?”
“No, mild, and no,” he said. “I’m fine, beyond feeling more green than Triotian grass.”
“You were here for the celebration, not expecting to get thugged at your first step,” she said, coming to his defense as swiftly as she had teased him.
“But I should have been more wary. Large crowds, filled with many who started imbibing days ago, are always worth extra care.”
“It is what you get if you insist on walking among them,” she said. “But you would not be Lyon of Trios did you not.”
He felt a small jolt of pleasure at her assessment. Shaina did not toss compliments about lightly.
“Glendar taught me well the lesson that our people must know us. And home on Trios, it is a joy. But I’m not sure it transfers well.”
“You would have it no other way.” She grimaced. “I may not know who I am, but I know you.”
“Shaina—”
She waved him off, indicating she did not wish to go into it again. At least, not now. Because eventually, Lyon thought, they would have to. Her entire concept of her life, of the world and her place in it, had been shattered. It was going to take time and thought to deal with the debris. Not to mention the debris of his own shattered hopes.
“All right,” he said. She threw him a grateful glance. “But eventually you will deal with it. One way or another.”
“When I’m ready.”
“I’m not certain one is ever ready to deal with something like this, but it can wait until it is less . . . raw.”
She studied him for a moment, and then a smile slowly curved her mouth. “And that is why I know you will be a great king,” she said. “You have your father’s wisdom, and your mother’s heart.”
For a moment he was taken aback. This was more flattery than he’d ever had from her. Yet Shaina was nothing if not innately honest, to the point of bluntness. Flattery or no, she wouldn’t say it if she didn’t believe it.
THEY BOTH WOKE before dawn, ready to set out again.
Shaina stretched before saying, “So again I ask, what path?”
Lyon shrugged. “Since we are chasing but a legend, it hardly matters, I suppose, but the story says it faces west, so the west face.”
“West it is,” Shaina agreed. “And up.”
“Down would be far too easy for such an adventure.”
She flashed him the grin he’d been missing as she got up and headed for the stream to wash up. It was a perfect replica of her father’s devilish grin, but calling upon some of that wisdom she credited him with, he didn’t point it out. Once the comparison would have pleased her immensely. Now . . . Shaina may have inherited her father’s grin and recklessness, but she had her mother’s volatility.
You have your father’s wisdom, and your mother’s heart.
Her words came back to him, along with the look in her eyes when she’d said it. He hoped she was right. If she was, then he had a chance to become half the leader his father was.
Or perhaps not. Perhaps you had to go through something like what his father had gone through to be that kind of leader. He suspected only his mother knew the whole truth about what he had been subjected to. The bond between them was strong, unbreakable, and the rock upon which his own life had been built.
And in fact, what his mother had done, turning her back on her life and everything she had always known, leaving a career that had included medals and great accla
im, all to save the man she hadn’t even known was a prince, was as courageous as any heroic action in battle. He respected her as much as he loved her, and that was a great deal.
Shaina emerged from the trees, hands in front of her. “I found some rockfowl eggs,” she said. “I don’t have a vessel to put them in, but I think that thin, flat rock there will heat enough to cook them.”
“I have a few life bars left,” he said.
“A meal fit for a prince, then,” she teased. She was obviously in a better mood now. Or was simply doing as he’d suggested and not thinking about what had happened and why she was here at all.
He made his own visit to the stream to wash, and when he returned she had already begun the eggs, he suspected it was more to find out if her rock would work than from a desire to cook. It was working, and she was smiling.
“I just had to get it as hot as possible first, so the eggs started to cook right away and didn’t run off the edges,” she explained, clearly thinking it more a logistical exercise than a cooking chore.
“You should be in charge of the cooking, then,” he said, knowing how she would react.
“You would subject yourself to that? You would starve in a week.”
He laughed, glad to hear her usual bantering tone once more.
“I’m glad you’re here,” he finally told her when they’d finished the last of the eggs, garnished with some organics she had found growing on a small, protected ledge. And he meant it. Even with all the complications it had brought, even with the tangle of his emotions around her, her presence brought the balance back to his life.
“Then can you do something about these zipbugs?” she asked, swatting at one buzzing her ear. But she was smiling when she said it, and he knew his words had pleased her.
“I’ll stir up the fire a bit, that should help.”
He leaned forward and stirred the coals, then added another piece of wood. It flared up slightly, and the bugs retreated. He settled back, and finally brought up what had been on his mind since before he’d left Trios, in fact since the moment she’d announced she would not be present for his first official act. He thought he knew, but he wanted to hear it from her.
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