Eno could only stare dumbfounded at him. His brain was completely locked up. What? How?
He shook his head a couple of times, trying to get the brain cells working again. “I’m sorry. I…he proposed…”
“And now I’m lying here naked, sweaty, and filthy with you, telling you I love you,” Rayne replied, his smile back in full force.
“Yes, and how…he’s a prince.”
Rayne turned his head and pressed a kiss to Eno’s jawline, helping to settle some of the anxious butterflies panicking in his chest. “Yes, and for maybe a heartbeat, I was tempted. The good I could do. The easy peace between Shey and me. Things between us were always easy.” Rayne paused and shook his head. When he looked at Eno, his eyes glistened with unshed tears. “But things between us will never be easy, except for one thing. Loving you. Shey’s proposal helped me realize that being able to love you for one day would bring me greater joy than a lifetime with anyone else.”
“Really?” Eno choked out around the lump of emotion lodged in his throat.
“I understand what you meant about it being enough. Even if you never loved me, what we have right now is enough. Being able to see you, hear your voice, it’s enough for me for as long as I can have it.”
Eno tightened his arms around Rayne and kissed him deeply. “I love you. Love you so much. And I am never letting you go.”
Rayne sighed, settling his head on Eno’s shoulder. It was as though the very last of the tension flowed out of his body. He could feel Rayne falling asleep on him, finding peace at last.
Closing his eyes, Eno rested his cheek against the top of Rayne’s head. In this second, trapped in the belly of a ship as it sped toward a foreign country that would launch them on a dangerous journey, Eno clung to Rayne.
This was enough, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t going to do everything within his power to protect Rayne, to fight for a tomorrow for them.
He just prayed the gods were in a generous mood.
FOUR
Drayce Ladon
Fuck.
Zastrad was some scary shit.
Maybe not quite Ordas-level scary, but man, it was freaking close.
The drive from Sirelis to the Zastrad border took only three days, and on the first day everything began comfortably with wide, smooth roads and frequent towns. But by the first hour on the second day, the road narrowed, and they started steadily climbing to a higher altitude. At night, summer became a distant memory with the air taking on a bitter bite.
They were forced to stop early that second day as they waited for word from their contact on where to meet and when. Not the best omen for the trip, but then it wasn’t as though he’d gone into this with high hopes for things to run smoothly, considering the shit that had already occurred in the past couple of months.
When the message was relayed at last through Prince Shey in Sirelis, they continued to the border. While there might not have been any signs or border guards, it was easy to see where Caspagir stopped and Zastrad started. The worn, paved road immediately ended, changing to a packed and rutted dirt road.
They bumped and bounced along what felt like little more than a path through dirt and scrub grass for several hours, seeing no signs of human life other than bits of trash rotting on the side of the road. The very last bar on their cell phones vanished and didn’t return. They were cut off from the world they knew. Caelan had no way of sending a message to Caspagir or Erya if there was an emergency. If the Empire chose to attack Stormbreak or even Sirelis again, it was unlikely they’d discover it until they left Zastrad.
The feeling of being so cut off from home was unnerving. They all checked their phones at random times, as if hoping to see a flicker of a bar for only a second. Something that would stretch the tiniest thread to them from home. Drayce had grown accustomed to being away from home long ago, but after seeing the destruction of Stormbreak, his skin crawled to be so far from it now. New Rosanthe was still out there, plotting their schemes. Fuck the gods and their timing. They shouldn’t have left already.
But he kept those thoughts to himself and forced a smile on his lips for Caelan. If he was frustrated with being away, the king had to feel a hundred times worse. More than anything, he needed to keep Caelan focused on the road ahead rather than worrying about what they’d left behind.
As they continued into this foreign land, Drayce couldn’t escape the creeping feeling that they were alone in the world. His skin crawled and his nerves were rubbed raw at the vast emptiness that stretched out in front of them. They traveled for hours and never saw a person, a single hint of a town, or a little curl of gray smoke against the pale-blue sky. The wind howled across rocky ground and shoved around the tall, yellow grass. Was this kingdom that worshiped a dead god filled with only the dead? Did that mean they’d soon join them?