“Where were you?” he asked as I drew close, kissing my cheek sweetly.
“Walking,” I said. “Saying good-bye.”
He nodded once. “In the future, I would prefer not to wake up alone.”
I looked at him, trying to determine if this was a command or an intimacy, something he was sharing with me. “Of course,” I said. “Have the clansmen already gone?” I asked.
He thought, and then nodded. “Oh, you mean the ones bearing gifts? I had my servants take them. Your family has not arrived yet.”
Embarrassment flushed over my face. Those gifts were meant to be a clan’s blessing on the newly married couple—he had turned them away, and I wasn’t sure if I should tell him so. “Are the horses ready?”
“The carriage is.”
“A carriage? Through the pass?” I asked.
He looked at me. “Yes. You, Danae, and I will ride in the carriage. Galen will defend us from horseback.”
“Defend us?” I asked.
“Your Highness, Shalia,” Kairos greeted us as he walked in with Mother and Father, bowing to the king. And me, I suppose. He straightened without being bidden and kissed my cheek, and Osmost swooped in to sit on his shoulder.
“She is your Highness now too,” Calix said stiffly.
Kairos’s hand stilled on my arm, but he gave my husband a bright, teasing grin. “Little sisters can never be high to big brothers,” he told him. “Besides, I’m still a son of the desert, and she is queen of the Bone Lands now. But more importantly, it’s going to rain,” he said, a sly smile on his face.
I caught my breath.
Calix scowled. “Why does it matter if it’s going to rain?” he asked.
My father heard this and came closer to us, his giant scimitar on his hip. “It’s going to rain, Kairos?” he asked.
Kairos nodded.
“You’ll have to go with them,” my father said. “Lead them through the pass.”
“This is not necessary,” Calix said, glaring at Kairos, who was trying to restrain his smile and utterly failing. “And we don’t have room in the carriage.”
“I have my own horse,” Kairos said.
“The pass gets very dangerous in the rain,” I told Calix gently. “And I haven’t traveled it enough to help the way Kai could.”
“Yes,” Kairos said cheerfully. “And to repay me for my gallant service, I happily accept an invitation to your castle to stay with my sister,” he added, looking at my husband.
Color rose in Calix’s cheeks, and his mouth drew tight. “A guide would be most welcome. But unfortunately we will have to leave you at the end of the pass; it won’t be necessary to join us for the whole journey.”
Kairos’s smile grew tighter. “I’m sure it would be a comfort to my sister. Clans are very close; it would be difficult for her without any family around.”
“She’s my queen,” Calix said. “I will be her comfort.”
“Kairos attending Shalia is an excellent idea,” my father said with a single, authoritative nod.
“Please,” I said. “I’d like him to come with us.”
My husband’s face froze for a moment, and then he smiled at me. “Of course, wife.” He pulled me close, kissing me.
Father made some sort of growling noise at a man kissing his daughter in front of him, and by the time Calix released me, Kairos and my father had turned to gather Kairos’s things. I tried to pull away, but Calix gripped my hip. “Change into fresh clothes,” he said, looking at my robes from the day before. “And don’t contradict me.”
The first part of our carriage ride was over wide and easy terrain along the mountain ridge. Rising with the land, I could see the desert to the left, burning gold until the sight shimmered and blurred on the horizon, and the craggy, impassable mountains on the right.
We were headed for the tunnel pass, a narrow road into the mountain that led to a wide, old land bridge thousands of feet above the river. I had never traveled far enough to know if this river came from the ocean to the west or perhaps from the same river that fed Jitra, but it rushed its way out to the eastern sea. The land bridge was the sole connection between the desert and the Bone Lands to the south. It was in the pass, somewhere in the darkness, that Torrin had died, fighting against Calix’s men.
The carriage tilted downhill, and I caught my breath as we pitched.
“You’re unused to carriages?” Danae asked. She sat across from me and my husband, her careful eyes regarding me.
I nodded. My stomach felt tight and stormy, and every bump and tilt reminded me of the pain from the night before. “We walk most places. We ride horses around the edge of the desert, where the sand is packed firm and their hooves can manage it. We are never so … enclosed.”
“Miserable but safer,” Calix said. “No random arrows flying at your head.”
I turned to look at my husband. “Does that happen often?”
Calix’s shoulder lifted and he reached for my hand, swiping his thumb over my knuckles. “People try. People fail. We will keep you safe, my love.”
I held his hand in both of mine, surprised by the endearment. Did he love me? Was I meant to love him already?
“Calix is being dramatic,” Danae said, looking to her brother. “The Three-Faced God will never let you be hurt, Shalia.” I looked at her and she looked away again.
“Will you tell me of your God?” I asked Danae. “I don’t know much of your religion.”
Danae’s smile was gentle. “What do you know?”
“That you three are the God incarnate, yes?”
She nodded, looking out the window again. “Yes. When I was born, the third child, my parents rejoiced,” she said, and her smile grew a little tighter. “My father said the Three-Faced God had told him that his three children were the God Made Human. That we would be the most powerful rulers the Bone Lands had ever seen.” She held out her hands in a triangle, pointing one of the ends at me. “With three faces, you can only ever see two, at the very most,” she told me. “The third will always be hidden. Calix, he is the face of truth and justice. Galen is the face of honor and strength. And I am the hidden face, the piece that separates honor and truth, and also binds them together always.”
Her fingers broke apart, the triangle gone, and she sat back.
“Is there such an incarnation in every generation?” I asked.
“No,” Calix said. “The Three-Faced God has ruled for many years, and we are his first blessed vessels.”
The carriage rolled into the pass at that moment, plunging us into darkness, and as I bumped and shifted against my husband, I wondered what kind of power it took to declare yourself a god.