The silvered guards stationed at the palace doors said nothing, and he wondered if they’d known—they had to have known, letting so many of their own pass through into the fog. They wouldn’t meet their prince’s gaze, but they met one another’s, exchanging a single nod that might have been pride or solidarity, or something else Rhy couldn’t read.
His second guard, Vis, was standing in the front hall, clearly waiting for word of Tolners. Rhy shook his head and pushed past him, past everyone, heading for the royal baths, needing to be clean, but as he walked his armor seemed to tighten around him, cutting into his throat, binding his ribs.
He couldn’t breathe, and for an instant he thought of the river, of Kell trapped beneath the surface while he’d gasped for air above, but this wasn’t an echo of his brother’s suffering. His own chest was heaving itself against the armor plate, his own heart pounding, his own lungs coated with the ash of dead men. He had to be rid of it.
“Your Highness?” said Vis as he fought to strip off the armor. The pieces tumbled to the floor, clanging and sending up plumes of dust.
But his chest was still lurching, and his stomach, too, and he barely reached the nearest basin before he was sick.
He clutched the edges of the bowl, dragging in ragged breaths as his heart finally slowed. Vis stood nearby, holding the discarded helmet in his hands.
“It’s been a long day,” said Rhy shakily, and Vis didn’t ask what was wrong, didn’t say anything, and for that, Rhy was grateful. He wiped his mouth with a shaking hand, straightened, and continued toward the royal baths.
He was already unbuttoning his tunic when he reached the doors and saw that the room beyond wasn’t empty.
Two servants draped in silver and green stood along the far wall, and Cora perched on the stone rim of the large bath set into the floor, dipping a comb into the water and running it through her long, loose hair. The Veskan princess was wearing only a robe, open at the waist, and Rhy knew her people weren’t prudish when it came to bodies, but still he blushed at the sight of so much fair skin.
His shirt still half buttoned, his hands slid back to his sides.
Cora’s blue eyes drifted up.
“Mas vares,” she said in halting Arnesian.
“Na ch’al,” he responded hoarsely in Veskan.
The comb came to rest in her lap as she took in his ash-streaked face. “Do you want me to go?”
He honestly didn’t know. After hours of holding his head up, of being strong while other men fought and died, he couldn’t put on another show, couldn’t pretend that everything was all right, but the thought of being alone with his thoughts, with the shadows, not the ones outside the palace walls, but the ones that came for him at night …
Cora was starting to rise when he said, “Ta’ch.”
Don’t.
She sank back to her knees as two of his own servants came forward and began to undress him with quick, efficient motions. He expected Cora to look away, but she watched steadily, a curious light in her eyes as they freed the last of his armor, unlaced his boots, unfastened the buttons at cuff and collar with hands steadier than his. The servants peeled away the tunic, exposing his bare, dark chest, smooth except for the line at his ribs, the swirling scar over his heart.
“Clean the armor,” he said softly. “Burn the cloth.”
Rhy stepped forward, then, a silent command that he’d see to the rest himself.
He left his trousers on and padded barefoot straight down the beautiful inlaid steps and into the bath, the warm water embracing his ankles, his knees, his waist. The clear pool fogged around him, a clouded train of ash in his wake.
He waded to the center of the bath and went under, folding to his knees on the basin floor. His body tried to rise, but he forced all the air from his lungs and dug his fingertips into the grate on the bath floor, and held on until it hurt, until the water smoothed around him, and the world began to tunnel, and no more ash came off his skin.
And when at last he rose, breaking the surface with a ragged gasp, Cora was there, robe discarded on the edge of the bath, her long blond hair held up by some deft motion of the comb. Her hands floated from the surface of the bath like lilies.
“Can I help?” she asked, and before he could answer, she was kissing him, her fingertips brushing his hips beneath the water. Heat flared through him, simple and physical, and Rhy fought to keep his senses as the girl’s hands caught the laces of his trousers and began to drag them loose.
He tore his mouth free. “I thought you had a fondness for my brother,” he rasped. Cora flashed a mischievous smile. “I have a fondness for many things,” she said, pulling him close again. Her hand slid over him, and he felt himself rising as she pressed into him, her mouth soft and searching against his, and part of Rhy wanted to let her, to take her, to lose himself the way he had so many times after Alucard left, to hold off the shadows and the nightmares with the simple, welcome distraction of another body.
His hands drifted up to her shoulders.
“Ta’ch,” he said, easing her back.
Her cheeks colored, hurt crossing her face before indignation. “You do not want me.”
“No,” he said gently. “Not like this.”
Her gaze flicked down to the place where her fingers still rested against him, her expression coy. “Your body and your mind seem to disagree, my prince.”
Rhy flushed and took a step back through the water. “I’m sorry.” He continued to retreat until his back hit the stone side of the bath. He sank onto a bench.
The princess sighed, letting her arms drift absently through the water in a childlike way, as if those fingers hadn’t just been questing deftly across his skin. “So it’s true,” she mused, “what they say about you?”
Rhy tensed. He had heard most of the rumors, and all of the truths, heard men speak about his lack of powers, about whether he deserved to be king, about who shared his bed, and who didn’t, but still he forced himself to ask. “What do they say, Cora?”
She drifted toward him—wisps of blond hair escaping her bun in the bath’s heat—and came to rest beside him on the bench, legs tucked up beneath her. She crossed her arms on the edge of the bath, and leaned her head on top, and just like that, she seemed to shed the last of her seduction and become a girl again.
“They say, Rhy Maresh, that your heart is taken.”
He tried to speak, but he didn’t know what to say. “It’s complicated,” he managed.
“Of course it is.” Cora trailed her fingers through the water. “I was in love once,” she added, as if it were an afterthought. “His name was Vik. I loved him the way the moon loves the stars—that is what we say, when a person fills the world with light.”
“What happened?”
Her pale blue eyes drifted up. “You are the sole heir to your throne,” she said. “But I am one of seven. Love is not enough.”
The way she said it, as if it were a simple, immutable truth, made his eyes burn, his throat tighten. He thought of Alucard, not the way he’d been when Rhy sent him away, or even as he was on the Banner Night, but the Alucard who’d lingered in his bed that first summer, lips playing against his skin as he whispered the words.
I love you.
Cora’s fingers stilled, splaying on the water’s surface, and Rhy noticed the deep scratches circling her wrist, the bruised skin. She caught him looking and flicked her hand, a motion of dismissal.
“My brother has a temper,” she said absently. “Sometimes he forgets his strength.” And then, a small, defiant smile. “But he always forgets mine.”
“Does it hurt?”
“It is nothing that won’t heal.” She shifted. “Your scars are far more interesting.”
Rhy’s fingers went to the mark over his heart, but he said nothing, and she asked nothing, and they settled into an easy quiet, steam rising in tendrils around them, the patterns swirling in the mist. Rhy felt his mind drifting, to shadows, and dying men, to blades between ribs, and cold, dark places slick with blood, and beyond, beyond, the silence, thick as cotton, heavy as stone.
“Do you have the gift?”