One of whom was royal. That changed things. A subject interfering in a duel her king had accepted. It—It implied a lot. That his subjects didn’t trust him. That they felt empowered to interfere. That he didn’t punish her for it.
That Emaurria didn’t keep its word. Didn’t trust its king. Didn’t behave honorably.
She covered her mouth. Divine’s flaming fire, he should have rebuked her publicly. He should have berated her, and she would’ve deserved it.
“I’m sorry if my intervention caused you trouble,” she said as they traversed the garden.
“I don’t care about that, Rielle,” he replied quietly, evenly.
Don’t… care…? Then why was he—
“Yesterday I saw something in you, when… he challenged you. Something I never want to see again.” His arms flexed, tightened, and he was all hard edges and rigidity.
And for that, he’d face untold political consequences.
“Castigate me publicly. Blame it all on me,” she offered. “I was the one who interfered, so if there are any consequences, I should bear them.”
He glared at her. “Not your decision to make.”
She took a step away. Seeing him now, strong, intense, only summoned the image of his blood pooling beneath his body anew. “You don’t owe me anything,” she said, with a swallow. “Now the world will assume—”
“You think I care what the world assumes?” he asked, calm, measured.
“You have to. You’re the king, and—”
They approached the villa’s entryway. “I may be the king, but I’m still a man. There was no part of me that would allow him to walk out of there alive.”
Neither could she. “I want to fight my own battles, Jon.”
He paused before the doorway, finally uncrossing his arms, and looked over his shoulder. “Before you speak to Olivia, there’s something I want to give to you.”
Give? She tilted her head, but when he ascended the steps, she followed him.
Upstairs, he entered a suite of rooms past two guards posted outside the door.
Inside, the suite was airy and opulent, something she might have imagined in a dream. The sea breeze blew in through open balcony doors, catching gauzy white curtains that fluttered against the parquet floor. A small sitting room led into a bedchamber, where a massive stone hearth and an enormous bed dominated the space.
The fire crackled in the hearth. On the nearby table, his blade sharpening kit sat before an armchair next to a small, plainly sheathed sword. She could picture him sitting there, night after night, maintaining his own blade. Faithkeeper. A king—with servants, squires, pages—and he still tended his own weapons. It should’ve been surprising, but with Jon, it really wasn’t.
Next to it was a carved wood piece, and wood shavings on the rug before the armchair. Something he’d been carving himself? She picked it up, turning it in her hand—still rough, not yet finished. Linden, by its smell. A bird, small enough for a child’s hand. A plump little bird, by its general shape, like a—like a winter wren.
It froze her to the spot, sending her pulse thundering. Great Divine, this was—he was—he thought about—
He took it from her, wordlessly, and set it on the mantle.
She frowned, staring at him as he braced over the fire, his shoulders tense. Here, in his quarters, she’d been privy to something inside of him, too, something he hadn’t wanted her to see.
He nodded toward the small sword on the table, in the plain brown-leather sheath. “That’s yours.”
A sword? She picked it up and drew the blade—the arcanir blade. It had to be vastly expensive. “Jon, I—I can’t accept—”
“You can and you will.” Pausing, he looked over his shoulder at her, a look that softened, and gave a slow shake of his head. “You have your magic, I know that, but sometimes you’ll need something… else.” He pushed away and crossed his arms again, taking a couple steps back from her before leaning his shoulder against the wall. “Brennan is an accomplished swordsman, from what I’ve heard. Ask him to teach you.”
He wanted to give her an arcanir sword and suggest she take lessons from Brennan?
Since that night of Veris, not only had he never spoken a single word against Brennan, but he’d actually—he’d actually encouraged her, just as he was doing now.
It should have been comforting, calming, but something shifted inside of her, rumbled, like a storm breaking.
He lowered his gaze, his face going slack as he turned his head aside. “If you want to learn to fight with a sword, you will. I just… I can’t tell you I’ll always be there—or that Brennan will always be there.”
He was right. Not just that he or Brennan might not always be there, but she… she didn’t want them to have to fight for her. Maybe it was foolish for a twenty-two-year-old woman to begin learning the sword, but if it meant she never had to watch someone she loved bleeding out for her sake, then she was willing to risk foolishness.
Brennan would laugh at her, but she wouldn’t take no for an answer. Maybe it would even be fun, training together every day.
“Olivia should be downstairs, in the library,” he said, with an air of finality.
Taking a step back, she nodded. “Thank you for this, Jon.”
Unmoving, he looked at her from where he leaned against the wall, his arms crossed, restrained, forbidden, and those Shining Sea eyes of his strained across the distance between them. He glanced away. “You said you wanted to talk to her about the second trial?”
She removed the basilisk’s scale from her coat, its texture rough against her skin. “I got this.”
“Basilisks,” he said, accepting it. “We fought them near Caerlain Trel. Their eyes are dangerous, of course, but everyone forgets about the tail.”
When she only eyed him, he continued. “Its gaze can petrify you—and it eats humans, as we learned—but it also has a twenty-foot-long tail, agile as lightning and strong as stone—that can hit you with the force of twenty men.”
She leaned forward. “You were hit?”
He placed a palm on his sternum and glanced down. “The gaze doesn’t work on paladins, but that tail certainly does. My armor took the brunt of it, but I’d probably be bandaged from head to toe if not for Olivia.”
Jon would have been lying on the field of battle, hurt, and if not for Olivia—
“Watch for the tail. And if all else fails”—he approached her and very slowly raised a hand to her face, and holding her gaze, he pressed his thumb under her chin into soft flesh—“they have a soft spot right here.”
That whisper of his stroked down the bare skin of her spine like a delicate caress, eliciting a shiver, and she closed her eyes.
It felt good, natural. And wrong.
She opened her eyes, slowly, cautiously, as he watched her face with those Shining Sea eyes, soft, warm, honest… as he always had, in the fledgling rays of dawn, in those quiet moments. The serenity of that look was a tender embrace, making her feel safe, loved, wanted—not for a night, but for a lifetime.
He released her, but the warm familiarity of his touch lingered, and he just stood, within arm’s reach, looking down into her eyes, searching them.
She couldn’t breathe.
He stepped away, back to the mantle, crossed his arms again and leaned against it. “Olivia will be pleased to see you. Ask her about Samara. Last I heard, she was with one of my maids, helping her with morning sickness. Since she arrived, she hasn’t stopped finding people to treat.”
One of his maids? Was it—
“The maid,” he added quickly, “Clarice, is married to my valet. They’re expecting their first.”
Of course. Certainly. She glanced away toward the door, her grip tightening on the sword, her breath slowing. “Thank you, for the advice.”
He nodded, but wouldn’t meet her eyes. “I’ll see you at the trial, Rielle.”
With that, he pushed off and strode past the gauzy curtains, to the balcony, leaving her a
lone, suddenly, she felt cold, like all warmth, all light had abandoned her.
She shivered. This was wrong. So wrong, these lingering thoughts, feelings. Brennan loved her, and she loved him, and he didn’t deserve any of this. Didn’t deserve her past still clinging to her, and didn’t deserve her still clinging to it.
With a swallow, she took a step back, and another, and another, and left these quarters, but no matter what she did, leaving him always seemed to feel like leaving a piece of herself behind.
It couldn’t go on this way. She wouldn’t let it. At the very least, Brennan deserved to know something inside of her was… broken, and no matter how much she loved him, might never mend again. And if he hated her for it, he’d be justified.
She’d tell him tonight. She’d tell him everything, and pray he still loved her.
Chapter 39
Olivia turned the page in Sangremancy Rituals of the Ancient World, and traced a finger down the lines of Old Erudi text. Unlike Old Sileni, at least she could read it without tedious translation. This section spoke of a bell.
But she was no closer to finding an answer to the dragons coming for Jon.
Divine… Jon… She’d kissed him. She’d actually kissed him—with no excuses like the not-so-genius distraction she’d cited the night of the welcome banquet.
She covered her mouth. For that first moment, it had felt so right. His sculpted body against hers. The feel of his lips against hers, soft, warm, sensual. Her heart racing so fast it had nearly burst from her chest.
And then it had been cold.
There had been no fire behind it, none of that hunger, from his end… nor even really from hers. As a daydream, it had been so intense she’d writhed, ached with need, but as a reality, neither of them had been in the moment.
Her mind had gone to James. To his body against hers, to his lips, to her heart racing in his embrace.
And Jon had been in another moment, too. With another person. And she knew that. Had always known that.
Tomorrow, she could find another man. Even tonight, if she so chose. Someone who craved her with the hunger she desired. And someday, she’d find a man who could live a lifetime in the memory of one moment with her. And chose to, over everything and everyone. Someday.
A soft rap on the door to the library, and she glanced back to see Rielle standing there in a coat the color of the Shining Sea, holding a sheathed blade in her hand.
The Queen’s Blade.
She sucked in a breath.
“Are you busy, Olivia?” Rielle asked, lingering against the doorjamb.
“Never too busy to talk to you.” With a grin, she rose, and she and Rielle embraced. “How are you? How are things with the trials?”
A corner of Rielle’s mouth turned up. “One of the reasons I’m here.”
Olivia gestured to the chair beside hers, and Rielle sat. “How can I help?”
Rielle rested the Queen’s Blade on the table and looked over the open books spread across its surface. “The second trial is in two days, and I’m fighting a basilisk. I think.” She removed something from her coat, a scale—definitely a basilisk’s—and set it down. “I was wondering if you had any books I could borrow about them… or anything, really, that could help.” Drawing her eyebrows together, she smiled sheepishly.
She was in over her head.
Olivia lifted some of the books’ front covers until she found A Compendium of the Immortals. “How’s your Old Sileni?”
Rielle raised a brow. “If it’s exactly like normal Sileni, then fantastic.”
Olivia heaved a sigh, then sat, rubbing her palms on the skirt of her green batiste dress. “Then it may be slow going.”
Rielle grabbed the book and dragged it before her, frowning over its text. “My Old Sileni isn’t great, but I can make some sense of this.”
Rielle’s interests had always skewed to field operations over scholarship, but she’d been raised a Lothaire—educated in multiple languages, and the classics. Even after her parents had died, the duchess of Melain had insisted on tutoring from the foremost scholars in the Tower.
It had been unconventional, but not even Pons would have been prepared to tell an Auvray—much less the duchess—no.
Such was the privilege nobility and rank commanded.
Something I will command someday. She’d already acquired the rank; all that remained was nobility, which an advantageous marriage would grant. A problem for another day.
She sifted through the books, picking out her other finds about the Immortals—the ones she’d already reviewed and made notes of—leaving herself the sangremancy books involving them. Two of the titles could be helpful, so she slid them over. “These, too.”
Rielle looked up from a page about dragons. That same one, with the illustration. “Can I borrow them? I’ll return them after the trials.”
Olivia nodded, staring at the illustration.
“I remember that one I saw overhead, that day on Khar’shil,” Rielle said, squinting. “I wish I knew more of what Shadow did there.”
“So do I,” Olivia said with a lengthy breath. “But she was good at covering her tracks. And the important part is that she’s defeated.”
Rielle gave a crestfallen nod. “She was just so… obsessed with destroying the man I love,” she said with a shake of her head. “And she didn’t even realize I’d be marrying Brennan in a few months. Even I didn’t back then, I suppose. But she got the wrong man.”
Did she?
As she’d parted from Jon, left the stable, the look on Rielle’s face had been bleak, like her heart had been dismantled to its raw, aching core. Nothing could make a person hurt so terribly, suffer so much, but love.
Rielle had been practically inseparable from Brennan, and the way they were around each other, like they knew one another in every way, looked like love, too, but was it?
She reached for Rielle’s hand.
Are you certain you’re not making a grave mistake?
The words trembled on the tip of her tongue, and she wanted to tell her all about Jon’s heart, about the time he had left if no cure could be found, but… He’d sworn her to secrecy. She couldn’t betray his trust.
“Olivia?” Rielle gave her hand a squeeze. “Is everything all right?”
Not in the least.
She mustered a smile and looked back at the page. “Dragons have been drawn to him. There was one at the coronation, that passed overhead. Then on the Aurora, the water dragon… It’s too uncanny to be coincidence.”
Her brows drawn, Rielle reached for the Queen’s Blade, fingering the intricate swept hilt. “Is he safe?”
“He’ll be safer once we’re back in Emaurria. He’ll have his Earthbound powers to fall back on.” Even if he shouldn’t use them.
Rielle nodded. “It may be whatever Shadow did.” She chewed her lip, scrutinizing the page. “I wish I could remember more, but the only thing that sticks out is the tower and the bell.”
“Bell?” Olivia blurted, sifting through the books again.
“Yes.” Rielle frowned. “As we approached Khar’shil, I heard a bell ringing. A massive one.”
At last her hands closed on Sangremancy Rituals of the Ancient World, and she scanned the page about the bell.
The blood of the caster, the blood of the damned… the water of the sea, the wood of the land…
…beneath the Bell of the Black Tower… thrice summoned and pled, the King of all Lords…
“What is it?” Rielle asked, dragging her chair closer and eyeing the book. “Bell of the Black Tower? Olivia, this could be the same one.”
“Lords,” Olivia said, thinking aloud.
“Who’s the King of all Lords?”
Olivia shook her head. “The Dragon Lords. The King of all Dragon Lords.”
Rielle went still. Deathly still. “Are you saying Shadow summoned a dragon king to go after Jon?”
“No,” she breathed. “Shadow summoned the Dragon King.” She shivered. Ther
e had been mention in various texts of the Dragon King, a dragon so strong, so powerful, that all the Dragon Lords had bowed to him… until he’d been betrayed by the wild mages he’d helped create.
“Olivia,” Rielle rasped, her breathing uneven. “He’ll need protection. Mages—”
“I know.”
“Not from the Divinity,” Rielle said. “I think things are worse than we thought. The Grand Divinus may be involved in more than the regicide and the attack on Laurentine… I think the Divinity might be supplying sen’a.”
Sen’a? If that was true, then…
Then the Grand Divinus would have had the perfect motive to remove King Marcus and the Faralles, to install a more agreeable king on the throne… Someone like Faolan, if he supported the sen’a trade.
And the Divinity could keep its own mages strong by prohibiting sen’a, all the while peddling it to hedge witches and heretics, keeping them weak and dependent.
“Brennan and I are looking for proof,” Rielle said grimly. “We’ll let you know if we find anything. He… didn’t want me coming to you with all this until we had any, but it’s you, Olivia. I know you won’t do anything rash.”
“Of course not.” She hesitated. “Are you sure you can trust him?”
Rielle stiffened. “I trust him with my life. He won’t lie to me, about this or anything else.” Her voice was firm, faithful.
Olivia nodded. Hopefully that faith wasn’t misplaced.
* * *
In the villa’s kitchen, Samara tied closed the bag of the raspberry leaf morning-sickness tea blend, and began work on the second blend. A mix of black tea and the tiniest amount of ginger, it could be used for four days at a time to combat severe nausea, with an ample addition of dried fruit to help the taste.
As she laid out her ingredients, Roger—Clarice’s young husband—approached, bearing an armful of books. He set them on the table and heaved a breath; for his slight frame, such a load would have been difficult to manage.
“Lady Samara,” he greeted amiably, then launched into a string of unintelligible Emaurrian.
She shook her head. “I don’t understand,” she said in Nad’i, looking over the books.
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