He moved gingerly, creeping across carpets like an intruder. A door to another part of the suite opened, and Brin came out. She smiled and pointed at him with a hairbrush that she was holding. “You’re in luck. She just woke up.” Brin gestured at the door. “I’ll wait outside.”
Raithe stood in the center of the Shrine, watching Brin leave, then he looked back at the door.
Why am I so nervous? It’s just Persephone.
He reached out for the latch and hesitated. For a moment, he thought to turn around, to just leave.
Maybe this is a mistake. If Moya says she’s okay, then she is. If she were in trouble, Brin would have said something; Padera would have said something; Moya would have done something. They love Persephone, too. I’m being stupid.
Raithe knew Nyphron wasn’t keeping Persephone a prisoner. He’d known it all along. He just didn’t want to face the truth. He still didn’t. Raithe turned away to leave.
“Raithe?” he heard her call. “Raithe?”
Too late.
He opened the door slowly and poked his head in.
Persephone lay on a huge canopy bed adorned with thick embroidered blankets and pillows of shiny cloth. There was no window, and the only light came from three oil lamps that filled the air with a sooty stench. There were other smells, too, unpleasant and unknown.
“I thought I heard Brin talking to someone.”
“She, ah…Brin just left.”
“Come in,” she said.
Persephone looked beautiful; her face did anyway. The rest of her was covered by quilts. Knowing that a raow had attacked her, Raithe had been worried about what he’d find. As it turned out, she was pale, but other than that, she looked well.
He moved in slowly, noting his surroundings. Several tables were littered with bowls and glasses, pestles and mortars. Jars were filled with different powders—the source of some of the smells. Raithe crept up until he stood at the edge of the bed. “I heard about the attack. You all right?”
“I will be.” She made a clawing motion to her stomach. “Some pretty deep cuts make it just about impossible to move, so I’m stuck here while everyone else fights. I feel terrible about that. I’m supposed to be the keenig, and sure, I didn’t expect to be leading the attacks like Reglan did, but I thought I would be able to see them.”
“I think your job was getting us here. Giving us this chance. Now we have to succeed.”
She focused on his arm, and her face wrinkled with sympathetic pain. “Was it awful?”
“I guess that depends on who you talk to. According to everyone who watched, it was wonderful.” He frowned. “Farmer Wedon was killed. So was Kurt, Tope’s youngest, and Hanson Killian.”
He saw the names’ impact on her features and stopped himself. “Several others, too. I just don’t know their names,” he lied. “But it could have been so much worse.” Filled with guilt at having falsely accused Nyphron, he added, “I hate to say it, but Nyphron’s plan of putting those runes on the armor and having Moya’s archers attack the Miralyith was…brilliant.”
“Why do you hate to say it?”
He came closer, touched the covers on the bed with three outstretched fingers. “Because he’s my rival.”
“Rival?”
“Isn’t he?”
She didn’t answer. Her eyes searched the bedspread for one.
“I had it in my head that the reason I wasn’t allowed into the Kype to see you was because of him, that he had given orders to keep me away. But he didn’t, did he?”
“No, he didn’t.”
Persephone started to push herself up and cringed in pain.
“Easy,” he told her.
She shook her head and made a dismissive wave as she struggled to breathe. “I’m fine. I’m fine.”
“You sure?”
“Yes.” The pain looked to have mostly subsided, and Persephone seemed more embarrassed than anything else. “You were saying that you tried to see me?”
“Yes. I came almost every day at first, then less so as winter came on. Guess I started getting the hint. I was always told you were too busy. I believed it because I needed to.”
She didn’t say anything. Refused to look at him.
“Do you love him?”
“It’s complicated. He…” The words struggled to come out. She smoothed the covers. “He asked me to marry him.”
Raithe didn’t say anything after that. He couldn’t. He was too frightened. When he was a boy, Didan had once crept up behind him and put a dagger to his throat, whispering, Don’t move. That was how it felt when standing beside Persephone’s bed, those words lingering in the space between them, dropped but not swept away. He waited, waited for her to say that she had turned Nyphron down, waited for her to laugh at the very thought. She didn’t. Persephone said nothing at all, and the moment lingered until finally Raithe couldn’t bear it any longer. “Have you slept with him?”
Her head jerked up. “No! It’s not like that.”
“Then how is it?”