“Oh, that,” he mutters, and runs a hand through his hair. The short locks stand on end, mussing an otherwise kingly appearance. “Everything went to plan.”
I scowl, showing my teeth. “Funny, I don’t remember fighting a killer nymph in the middle of the ocean being part of the plan.”
He adjusts in his chair, uncomfortable. Slowly, he starts discarding his armor, revealing the thin, tight shirt and trimmer form beneath. It’s a dare, but I hold my ground. Each piece hits the floor with a resounding clatter. “We needed the ships. We needed the harbor.”
I keep circling, and he keeps tossing pieces of armor away. He unfastens his gauntlets with his teeth, never taking his eyes off me.
“And we needed you to go toe-to-toe with her? Who had the advantage there, Tiberias?”
The king smirks against red steel.
“I’m still alive.”
“That isn’t funny.” Something tightens in my chest. I run a finger down the adorned edge of his desk, swiping at the dusty surface. My skin comes away gray, leached of warmth. Like it was when I masqueraded as a Silver, suffering through painted-on makeup just to keep breathing. “We almost lost Kilorn today.”
Tiberias’s smirk drops instantly, wiped away, and he forgets the armor for a moment. Darkness clouds his eyes, dulling their gleam. “I thought New Town fell easily. They didn’t expect—” He cuts himself off, clenching his teeth. I look away as his gaze lands on me. I don’t want to see his pity. “What happened?”
My breath feels ragged in my throat. It feels too close to relive, the danger still near. “Silver guards,” I mumble. “A telky. Tossed him down a stairwell. Tore up his insides.” The words hitch as the memory reigns. My oldest friend, his skin going pale, dying faster by the second. Red blood on his chin, his chest, his clothes. All over my hands.
The king doesn’t say anything, holding his tongue. With a great burst of will, I look back at his face to find him staring, eyes wide, lips pressed into a grim, thin line. The concern is clearly written on him, in his furrowed brow and tight jaw.
I force myself to move again, my path taking me back around. Closer to his chair, into the circle of familiar heat.
“We got him to a healer in time,” I say as I walk. “He’ll be all right, same as you.”
When I pass behind him, I bite back the urge to touch his shoulders. To put one hand on either side of his neck and lean forward, bracing myself against him. Letting him hold me up. Now more than ever, the need to let go and rest, to allow someone else to carry my burdens, is difficult to resist.
“But you’re here with me,” he whispers so low I almost don’t catch it.
Instead the words linger, smoke between us.
I have no answer for him. None I’m willing to give or admit. I’m no stranger to shame. I certainly feel it now, as I stand in his bedchamber, with Kilorn recovering miles away. Kilorn, who wouldn’t be here if not for me.
“It isn’t your fault,” Tiberias pushes on. He knows me well enough to guess my thoughts. “What happens to him isn’t on your shoulders. He makes his own choices. And without you, what you did for him . . .” His voice trails off. “You know where he would have ended up.”
Conscripted. Doomed to a trench, or a barracks. Probably dead in the final gasps of the Lakelander War. Another name on a list, another Red lost to Silver greed. Another person forgotten. Because of people like you, I think, forcing a deep breath. The bedroom smells like salt air, fresh from the open windows.
I try to take some comfort in what he says. But I can’t. It doesn’t excuse anything I’ve done, or what Kilorn has become because of me.
Though I suppose we’ve all changed since last year. Since that day when his master died and he stood in the dark beneath my house, trying not to mourn his life as it was snatched away. I swallow hard, remembering what I said. Leave everything to me.
I wonder if we changed into who we were supposed to become, or if those people are gone forever. I guess only Jon would know, and the seer is long gone, far out of reach.
Clearing my throat, I change the subject with little tact. “I hear there’s a Lakelander fleet on the horizon.” I put my back to him, turning to face the exterior door, the one leading back into his receiving chamber. I could walk out right now if I wanted. He wouldn’t stop me.
I’m just stopping myself with every single breath.
“I hear that too,” Tiberias replies. Then his voice drops, deepening. It wavers in fear. “I remember darkness. Emptiness. Nothing.”
Reluctantly, I look over my shoulder to watch him stand, shedding the last of his armor. Avoiding my gaze. He’s still tall, still broad, but lesser without the weight of the battle-worn steel. Younger-looking too, just twenty years old. Tipping on the edge of manhood, parts of him still clinging to youth. Holding on to something as it disappears, just like the rest of us.
“I went into the water and I couldn’t get back up.” He kicks the pile of steel on the floor. “Couldn’t swim, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think.”
I feel like I can’t breathe either.
Tiberias shudders as I watch, a tremor that starts in his fingers. His fear is terrifying. Then he forces himself to look back at me. With his feet planted and his hands firmly settled on his hips, he is rooted. The king won’t move unless I do. He’s going to make me surrender first. It’s what any good soldier would do. Or he is simply letting me choose. Letting me decide for both of us. He probably thinks it’s the honorable thing to do.
“I thought of you before the end,” he says. “I saw your face in the water.”
And I see his corpse again, suspended before me, dappled by the shifting light of a churning sea. Afloat, at the mercy of a foreign tide.
Neither of us moves.
“I can’t,” I bite out, looking anywhere but his face.
He responds quickly, with force. “Neither can I.”
“But I also can’t—”
Stay away. Keep doing this. Denying ourselves in the face of always-looming death.
Tiberias hisses out a breath.
“Neither can I.”
When we take the step forward together, from opposite directions, both of us laugh. It almost breaks the spell. But we keep walking, equal in motion and intention. Slow and methodic, measuring. He watches me, I watch him, as the space closes between us. I touch him first, putting my palm flat over his thudding heart. He inhales slowly, his chest rising beneath my fingers. A warm hand slips around my back, splaying wide over the base of my spine. I know he can feel my old scars through my shirt, the knobbled skin familiar to us both. I answer by curling my other hand at the nape of his neck, gently digging my nails into the lock of black hair.
“This doesn’t change anything,” I say against his collarbone, a firm line against my cheek.
I feel his answer in my rib cage. “No.”
“We aren’t making different decisions.”
His arms tighten around me. “No.”
“So what is this, Cal?”
The name has an effect on us both. He shivers, and I move closer, flattening against him. It feels like giving in, for both of us, though we have nothing left to surrender.
“We’re choosing not to choose.”
“That doesn’t sound real.”
“Maybe it isn’t.”
But he’s wrong. I can’t think of anything more real than the feel of him. The heat, the smell, the taste. It’s the only real thing in my world.
“This is the last time,” I whisper before I cover his mouth with mine.
Over the next few hours, I say that so many times I lose count.
TWENTY-ONE
Maven