He was one of her bodyguards. It was his duty to protect her. And instead he’d failed. Both to keep her from harm and to guard the one she had tasked him to watch.
His future wife. Whose parents were waiting for them just a few streets farther on. He forced himself to try to relax and turned his attention back to Sophie. She had tried to tamp down her happiness at finding out her parents were unharmed—out of deference for his own loss and others he imagined—but she hadn’t been entirely successful. A smile flickered at the corners of her mouth as she looked out the window, and she was creeping farther forward on the carriage seat with every foot they traveled toward their destination.
It was hard not to feel the envy that slunk through his brain when he’d brought her the news. His father had been difficult and demanding, but his death had punched a hole in Cameron’s world. One more thing to deepen the sensation that the world had tilted and that all was off-balance. Battle mages were taught to center themselves in times of stress or danger, to stay calm and unleash their emotions only when they needed to channel them for their magic. But right now, whenever he reached for that place of calm within himself that he had taken for granted up until now, it shifted and bent, throwing him out of kilter once more.
“Thank you for coming with me,” Sophie said, turning back from the window. She smiled at him. It was a genuine smile, free of the strain that had been shadowing her expressions since they’d first fled Kingswell.
“You don’t need to thank me,” he said. “Your family will be my family, too, soon.”
She nodded. “Did El—I mean the queen-to-be—did she say anything more about when we might marry? She didn’t really speak to me this morning.” Her smile vanished like someone had blown out a candle. Her lips flattened, hands twisting in her lap. “I think she’s very angry with me.”
“With both of us,” Cameron offered. He leaned across and patted her arm. A buzz of awareness hit his skin, warmed, flowed through his body, rousing it. He pulled back, trying not to look too obvious about it. But Sophie’s pupils had flared suddenly dark. It was clear she’d felt it, too.
“The queen-to-be will forget this soon enough,” he said. Once they were safely married. Though, with no chance to speak to her privately, he had no way to judge how she felt about handing her sometime lover over to Sophie. “She had plenty of other problems to deal with besides us.”
“I just wish I could do something to fix it. Or at least to help her. She needs to get well. If she recovers, the city will, too. Anglion will, too.”
“Domina Skey is taking good care of her,” Cameron said. “It’s been only a few days. She will be well soon enough.”
Sophie bit her lip, and he remembered again what would happen when Eloisa rose from her sickbed. A funeral. A coronation. And then a wedding. “Perhaps you could ask Domina Skey if there is anything you can do to help.”
That earned him a perhaps well-deserved look of skepticism. “I don’t think the Domina likes me very much.”
“Perhaps not, but she would be foolish to turn down any assistance she can get at this point.” Domina Skey hadn’t achieved her position by being stupid or slow to use any resources offered to her. The temple had to be stretched as thin as the Red Guard, tending to the injured. Though it wouldn’t hurt Sophie to seem eager to please. Which reminded him of something else.
“It might be wiser not to be seen with Madame de Montesse.”
Sophie’s brows lifted. “Madame de Montesse helped us escape. Am I supposed to ignore her if our paths cross? Because that’s what happened. I met her by chance. I didn’t seek her out.” She sounded defensive.
“I didn’t think you had. But the mood in the city will be dangerous for any refugee for some time to come. We haven’t discovered who was behind the attacks, but the prevailing theory is that it was Illvya.”
“If it was an Illvyan magician, it seems odd that there has been no following attacks, does it not?”
He shrugged. “Perhaps. Perhaps they miscalculated and got caught in their own destruction. Or perhaps they were working through agents. Which is why it would be wisest to avoid Illvyans right now.”
“She helped us,” Sophie protested. “She got us away from the attack. She didn’t have to tell us she had a portal. Besides, she’s been here for years. And she swore the oaths of loyalty to the Crown. Otherwise she wouldn’t be allowed to own a store selling the things she does.”
“Oaths can be broken,” Cameron said. “And I don’t think you and I need any more attention just now. It’s not like you were going to seek her out anyway, is it? So just try not to have any dealings with her until things are calmer.” He thought it was irritation that flashed in her brown eyes. But then she looked away, out the window again as the carriage reached its destination and came to a halt.
Sophie had barely stepped out of the carriage before the door of the small house they had stopped in front of flew open and a man and a woman he had to assume were her parents rushed toward her, enveloping her in tight embraces when they reached their daughter. Three identical expressions of delight shone from their faces, and he swallowed against a sudden stab of grief as he stepped onto the cobbles paving the small front yard.
Sophie’s father let go of her and looked past Sophie to Cameron. “And who is this, my dear?” he asked. He was a man of only middle height, his eyes the same clear brown as Sophie’s, dark hair graying. But his smile was warm, and the hand he extended to Cameron clasped his firmly.
“This is Lieutenant Mackenzie,” Sophie said hesitantly. “He—he kept me safe during the attack.”
“Then you have my thanks, sir,” Sophie’s father said. “Mackenzie? One of Inglewood’s boys?”