His shoulders lifted, and he squeezed his hand in mine. “I have to try.”
He let my hand go. “I wish we would move faster. I’m so desperate just to be there. It seems so long since we’ve been home,” I said.
Kairos’s smile was weak. “We’re nomadic, Shalia. We don’t really have a home.”
I grinned at him. “You know what I mean. Family. The whole clan gathered to celebrate.”
He nodded. “It will be wonderful.”
His expression fell quickly, though, and I could tell he was weary to the point of pain. Whatever these visions were, they were taking an awful toll on him.
By the seventh day, we were climbing higher into the mountains, and the air was growing dry and warm. We had eaten at the castle we’d stayed at during the night, but barely an hour into the ride my stomach twisted hard.
“Oh,” I yelped, dropping from my horse fast enough that I almost fell, voiding my stomach on the side of the road. The dirt was packed hard, and the mess splashed onto my dress and coat, and I even got a little in my hair.
“Shy?” Kairos said, helping me up.
I was staring at my hair. “I can’t—I thought we would make the desert by nightfall.” I felt suddenly and stupidly close to tears. “I don’t want them to see me with vomit in my hair. And on my dress,” I told him. “I hate being sick all the time.”
“I know,” he told me, putting his arm around my back.
“Ugh,” I said, bending over as I retched again. There wasn’t much more to come up, but it hurt, my body trying hard to expel things that weren’t there.
“My love?” I heard Calix ask behind me. “Are you all right?”
“She will be in a moment,” Kairos said, braiding my hair fast away from my face.
My stomach heaved again, and I straightened afterward, nodding. I rinsed my mouth with some water, staying close to Kairos like I might fall over. “I want to walk for a little while,” I told Calix.
“Love, you look like you’re about to pass out as it is,” he told me gently. “You should ride in the carriage.”
I clutched my stomach at the thought. “No, I think that will make it worse.”
He sighed, but nodded. “Very well.” He turned and shouted orders to his guards, that we would travel only as fast as I was walking. He kissed my temple, but he didn’t stay beside me, going instead to his carriage, calling one of his quaesitori to ride with him. Kairos stayed off his horse, and Galen and Zeph appeared behind me.
“Shouldn’t you be riding?” I asked, glancing at them.
Zeph stretched. “I feel like a walk. Don’t you, Commander?”
“Damned relief, if you ask me,” Galen said.
I shook my head, but smiled at them.
“Besides, I protect the Princess-in-Progress,” Zeph said, looking at my belly.
I covered the bump with my hands. “We don’t know it’s a girl,” I said, casting a wary glance at the carriage ahead. I didn’t think my husband would be pleased at the thought. “And that is not a real title.”
“It should be,” Zeph insisted.
“I’m very excited to see Zeph as the Baby Guard,” Kairos said. “I’ve never seen him frightened of something.”
Zeph looked offended. “I’m excellent with children,” he grumbled.
“You look like you’re excellent at eating children,” Kairos told him.
Galen laughed at this. “Children, maybe. But a baby? I can’t think you’d have any idea what to do with it.”
Zeph cast around as if taking on challengers. “I will be a formidable Baby Guard. This is not up for debate. And besides, the baby is a part of the queen, and I protect the queen. And I’m good at that, so I’ll be good at protecting the baby.”
I giggled. “I have no doubt, Zeph. You’ll probably be the first to give her a sword.”
Zeph lit up at this, but Galen shook his head. “Now, wait a moment, no sharp objects until she’s at least … thirteen.”
Laughing, I smiled at Galen. It felt forbidden and strange—we hadn’t been alone since Trizala, and though I thought of our kiss constantly, the pain from the argument that followed seemed more real, a heavy weight in my chest. Being able to speak with him and laugh with him now when it had happened so rarely since Trizala felt suddenly intimate. “Thirteen?” I asked. “That’s a little specific.”
He crossed his arms. “Well, I want her to know how to wield a weapon before boys start coming around.”
Kairos smiled. “What boys? They’ll have to go through all of us and half the Dragyn clan to get to her.”
Galen smiled and nodded at Kairos. “I like that line of thought.”
“Great Skies,” I said, shaking my head. “You all know so little. This girl will have you all in knots before she’s a year.”
“When you say ‘Great Skies,’ ” Galen asked, lacing his arms behind his back and stepping closer to me, “is that a god?”
I felt the threads shiver closer to my fingers at the nearness of him. “We don’t have gods,” I told him. “We have spirits. But we consider the sky to be a sort of deity, I suppose. There are people who can tell the future in the clouds, and we live and die by what we see above us. Our lives are very dependent on the weather and climate.”
He nodded. “Do you pray to the skies?”
“We talk to the skies. Thank the skies for bounties—when we go to the desert, the ceremony to bless the baby is asking the skies for good fortune.”
“Does the sky ever respond?”
I laughed at this. “Of course! We speak to the sky, and the sky always speaks back in his own way. Rain, sun, clouds, lightning—these are the sky’s way of talking.”
Galen glanced up. “What is the sky saying now?”
There were few clouds, a gentle heat, and a bright, round sun. “The sky wants us to get to the desert,” I told him. “He’s making it easy for us.”
He smiled. “It’s strange to think that you don’t have a god to judge your actions. To pass down edicts.”
My shoulders lifted. “The sky is something far beyond my understanding. If something must judge, or dictate—to me, that seems little more than a powerful man, doesn’t it?” My eyes strayed dangerously close to the carriage with Calix in it.
“Maybe,” he said, and his eyes followed mine.
I drew in a deep breath. My head was throbbing; my whole body ached from retching so often.
“You’re in pain?” he asked, turning toward me a little.
“Just my head,” I told him. “As thrilling as it must seem, voiding my stomach every other time I eat isn’t very pleasant.”
“And here I was so jealous,” he said, brushing my hair off my face. His hand settled on my shoulder, reaching under my braid to rub my neck.
“Oh,” I murmured, leaning into his touch, ignoring the danger of his skin on mine because of the relief it brought me. “Keep doing that. That helps.”
“When we were in Trizala,” he said, taking advantage of the closeness to speak quietly to me, “and you said your power is triggered by something—what is it?”