“Only a misunderstanding,” Jase said. “It’s been cleared up.”
But now everyone was eyeing me anew, recalling what they had heard, or where they had seen me before, remembering the Vendan clothes they had seen me storm into town with, and the weapons I had worn at my side. Paxton’s doubtful insinuation had its desired chilling effect.
Gunner shifted nervously, noting the whispers, and stepped forward. “Of course, Rahtan! She brought word that the Queen of Venda is coming here to formally recognize the authority of the Ballengers and their territory.”
Paxton blanched, shaken off balance by this news—just as the rest of us were. Jase stared at Gunner like he had gone mad. A pleased rumble ran through the crowd.
“Coming here? To you? That is quite a development.” Paxton’s tone conveyed his genuine surprise, but he didn’t seem as pleased by this news as the rest of the crowd.
Quite a development, I silently agreed, but said nothing. Paxton watched me, searching for confirmation. I gave him nothing. I wasn’t going to sink into this quagmire the Ballengers were creating and make the queen look like a fickle liar when she didn’t come. His focus suddenly dropped to Jase’s hand still curled around my waist, and his brows shot up.
“The signet ring? You’ve lost it already?” His tone was condescending, as though he were shaming a careless child. Heat flared at my temples.
Jase withdrew his hand from my side and rubbed his knuckle where the ring should have been. He had told me it had been in his family for generations, gold added, reworked, and repaired as it wore away, but always the same ring. Once it was put on, it never came off. Until now. Paxton was publicly chipping away at Jase’s credibility bit by bit, first making note of his absence, then missing the wrapping ceremony, and now recklessly misplacing his ring, which symbolized his rule like a crown on a king. Or Paxton was outright digging to expose where Jase had been. Could he know? For my purposes, it was too soon for things to unravel. I still needed to get back to Tor’s Watch and didn’t need to get in the middle of a personal play for power, or take on some new unknown thug who wanted to displace the Ballengers.
“The ring is—” Jase began, I knew searching for a plausible explanation.
“Jase!” I said, shaking my head, as if something had just dawned on me. “I forgot to give it back to you.” I looked back at Paxton and explained, “It’s a bit large on him, but he didn’t want to have it refitted until after the funeral. He handed it to me this morning as he bathed.” I smiled at Jase. “I’ll get it for you.” I turned for privacy sake, facing his mother as I hiked up the front of my dress, then reached down into my grimy pocket, searching for it among the crumbled remains of wish stalks. His mother’s gaze was hard, disbelieving, wondering what I was up to, but a glimmer of hope resided in her blue irises too. My fingers circled around the ring, and I nodded to her. I turned and held out the ring to Jase. “You’ll have to call on the jewelsmith soon,” I said. He looked at me like I had just pulled a Candok bear out of my ear. How? When? But those answers would have to wait. He leaned forward, and gently kissed my cheek as if we were happy lovers, then slid the ring back onto his finger, his gaze still considering me.
Wondering.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
JASE
I closed the heavy double doors behind me, secured the bolt against interruptions, and turned to face my family. Everyone was present except for Lydia and Nash, who were too young to hear most of what I had to say. The family had maintained our charade all the way back to Tor’s Watch, even through the front entrance and into the hall. When Gunner began to ask questions, I shut him down and said, “Family meeting room. We’ll speak there.”
As soon as I turned, Jalaine ran to hug me, and my mother came forward and slapped my face in the way only she could. “Straza! What have I told you a hundred times!” And then she held me too. I looked over her shoulder at my brothers and sisters, who patiently waited for answers.
When she finally let go, everyone took a seat at the long table filling the center of the room, and I told them everything about where I had been and what I had done. Almost everything. I didn’t include some of the parts with Kazi.
“How did she get your ring?” Mason asked. “Do you think she was working with the labor hunters?”
“No. She stumbled into them, the same as me. And ran for her life the same as me.”
“It could have been a trick,” Samuel offered.
I told them no again, it was no trick, but I still couldn’t figure out how she got the ring either. I had seen the hunter dump all the goods they had taken from us into a box beneath the wagon seat. When we escaped, there was no time to dig through it. “I’m not sure how she got it, but I’ll be asking.”
“Can she be trusted?” Aram asked.
Titus laughed. “Of course she can’t be. Not if Jase had to post two men outside her room.”
For now, she was in my room while guest quarters were prepared for her. I had posted Drake and Charus at the end of the hall so as not to be obvious. I still had made it clear to everyone at Tor’s Watch what the limits to her wandering were. There were some places no one went but the family.
“She can be trusted in some ways,” I answered. “But she is Vendan, and she did come here to investigate treaty violations. We’ll have to be careful.”
“Violations,” Gunner grumbled. A seething rumble echoed from the others.
“So, just what happened out there between you two?” Priya asked.
“We were chained at the ankles. We had to work together to—”
“Don’t be coy, Jase. You know what I mean.”
Titus chimed in, “There were a hundred other things you could have said to Paxton to explain your absence. Why imply that you were holed up with her?”
“Because that excuse could not be refuted,” my mother said. “No witnesses.”
“Nor delicately discussed in depth,” Mason added. “It did end Paxton’s interrogation.”
“He could have said he was sick,” Samuel said.
My mother shook her head. “No. The healer would have been summoned, and the last thing we want to suggest is that another Patrei is in poor health.”
Everyone jumped in with their own opinion on why it was or wasn’t a good excuse. Priya finally held her hand up to stop the discussion. “Jase, you still haven’t answered me. What happened between you two? You think I didn’t see how you looked at her?”
I didn’t remember looking at her in any particular way, only with a long moment of trepidation when I stretched out my hand, wondering if she would take it. I had taken a calculated risk that she would help me again, just like she had in that alley the first day we met, that she would choose me over wolves like Paxton, just as she had chosen me over labor hunters. She could have walked away that day, as the hunter had ordered. Instead she drew her sword. She may have hated me, but she hated some people more, and maybe I hoped that after all we had been through I wasn’t just the lesser of two evils. Maybe I gambled that she would choose me because she wanted to. “If you imagine you saw me looking at her in any way, it’s only because we managed to stay alive together.”
Jalaine pouted like she was disappointed, but her eyes were lit with a smile. “So, you weren’t really making little Ballengers?”
Aram and Samuel snickered.
Mason shrugged. “I was convinced.”
I shot them a frigid stare to let it go.
“Well, we need her now,” Priya said. “She’s going to have to write a letter to the queen and actually tell her to come now that Gunner—”
“No,” I said. “We’re not going down this path again. After Father—”
“We have one of the queen’s premier guards in custody,” Gunner argued. “She’ll come! We are through being snubbed by the kingdoms.”