I shook my head. “That’s not you, Lia.”
Her lip lifted in disgust as if she had suddenly grown weary of being sympathetic. “You’re hurt, Kaden. I’m sorry. Truly. But life is hard. Pull your Vendan he
ad out of your ass and get used to it. Didn’t you spit out very similar words to me back in Reena’s carvachi? Well, I get it now. So should you.”
Her voice was cold, detached—and what she said was true. Everything sank inside me, falling like she had cut both my breath and muscle loose. I looked at her, even the words on my tongue lost somewhere in the tumble, and I turned away. I walked back out the door, down the hall, not seeing anything as I went, wondering how she’d become so … perfectly royal.
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
RAFE
I leaned against the parapet watching Lia.
I was alone without benefit of guard, Ulrix, or Calantha. Though they let me know often that they were keeping a close watch on me, they were no longer constantly at my side. It seemed all the rules had been relaxed now that the marriage was announced and now that …
I rested my head against my arms.
My mother was dead.
It sickened me that her death gained me more credibility.
I should be home. Everyone in Dalbreck was probably searching and wondering—where is Prince Jaxon? Why isn’t he here? Why has he shirked his duties? Yes, my father would have Sven’s head and mine if we ever got back. That is, if my father was still alive.
Those are the toughest ones to kill.
My father was a tough bastard, just as the Komizar had said. But an old one. Tiring. And he loved my mother, loved her more than his kingdom or his own life. Losing her would weaken him, make him quick prey to scourges he had fought off in better times.
I should be there.
I was back to that again. I lifted my head and looked at Lia sitting on the far wall above the square below. My duty was in Dalbreck, but I couldn’t imagine myself anywhere but here with her.
“There were only small gatherings when I left.”
I turned. Kaden had come upon me silently. He was hidden in the shadow of a column, watching her too. His was the last company I wanted.
“The numbers have doubled every night,” I said.
“They love her.”
“They don’t even know her, just what the Komizar parades through the streets.”
He turned to look at me, his eyes filled with contempt. “Maybe you’re the one who doesn’t know her.”
I looked back at Lia, perched precariously on a high wall. I didn’t like anything about it. I didn’t want to share her with Venda. I didn’t want anything about this miserable land to love her. It was like claws digging in and pulling her into their dark den. But day by day, I saw it. I saw it in the way the bones swung from her hip as she walked, the way she wore their clothes, the way she spoke to them. For her they were no longer the same enemy they had been when we had first walked over that bridge.
“It’s not just the remembrances or the stories,” I said. “They ask her questions. She tells them about the world past the Great River, a world she’ll never see again if she marries your Komizar.”
“She’s embraced it. She told me.”
I snorted. “Then it must be so. We both know Lia always tells the truth.”
He looked at me, his eyes dead still, rolling the thought in his head as if he was shuffling through his memory for her past lies. I noticed the bruise on his jaw and his bandaged hand. Those were good signs. Dissension in the ranks. Maybe the Komizar would kill him before I did.
I lifted my gaze, and so did Kaden. We saw them at the same time.
Across the way on the high terraces, governors and guards had come out to observe Lia, and over at the north tower, framed in his window, the Komizar himself watched over it all. He was too far away for us to see his expression, but I saw it in his stance, the ownership, the pride, the strings he surely thought he pulled on his pretty little puppet.
Her words swept through the square, then echoed back from the walls, ringing clear, and a strange stillness crawled across the air. It was all eerily quiet, except for her.