“When the king found the queen, she lay next to the tree, dying, a piece of the white fruit still clutched in her hand. She never even got to taste it. The king realized that he’d forbidden her to eat the fruit but he’d never warned her about the snake.”
“The snake tricked her,” Gibbous whispered, shocked. Some of the men shared smirks at his outrage.
“Yes. But he hadn’t lied about everything. The queen did leave the king. She died,” Sasha said, her gaze solemn. The smirks disappeared, and the men grew reflective. Kjell stared at the landscape ahead, wishing he’d never heard that particular story.
In the days that followed no one shirked his duty or fell asleep on his watch. No one wanted to be the cause of the captain leaving them.
They did not continue in a straight line along the Jandarian Plain, paralleling the cliffs that dropped into the Takei Sea. Kjell had intended to travel to the city of Janda, just east of the sea, to confer with the lord of the province. But every step toward Janda took them further from the City of Jeru, and Kjell was eager—for the first time in his life—for the cover and safety of the castle walls. He saw danger around every rock, trouble around every bend, and an attack from every direction.
He kept his concerns to himself, driving his men hard, their horses harder, and veering north instead of east, heading for the mountainous pass that cut through the hills that bordered the southern edge of Degn. It would have been less strenuous to go around, but foregoing the journey to Janda and cutting through the mountains of Degn shortened their journey by two weeks.
Sasha showed no signs of fear or fatigue. She seemed to enjoy the journey, perched before him on Lucian, taking in the scenery and keeping them all from wearing too badly on each other’s nerves. In the evenings, surrounded by the King’s Guard, she told stories, in the day she made conversation, and each night she slipped her hand into Kjell’s as she fell asleep. He didn’t kiss her again, didn’t look for moments to steal her away and take what his body increasingly yearned for, but each day, she sectioned off another piece of his heart, and his impatience for Jeru became anticipation for something he hardly dared hope for. He could only pray his growing obsession with having the fruit would not blind him to the snakes.
The sun was just beginning to lower over the ancient seabed beyond Nivea when Kjell, Sasha, and the guard began to descend into the city of Jeru. Light dappled the ground and pinked the sky, and the walls of Jeru gleamed with black brilliance in the distance.
“She is the most beautiful city in the world,” Kjell said softly, and Sasha could only stare. Green flags beat the rosy sky and sentries sounded their horns. Even a mile off, the sound carried on the wind. They’d been seen.
“Are you sure you aren’t a prince?”
“I am a brother,” Kjell said. “And that is infinitely better.”
The people of Jeru gathered and tossed greetings and glad tidings, waving and running alongside the small contingent of the King’s Guard as they made their way through the city gates, down the wide streets, and climbed the hill to the castle itself. The battle with the Volgar within the castle walls had made Kjell a bit of a legend, but few Jeruvians had actually seen what he’d done. He’d made himself scarce in the years since Zoltev and the birdmen had been defeated, since Tiras had escaped the curse that had bound him, and since Jeru City had begun the long road of integration and tolerance toward the Gifted among them.
But people loved to talk—as evidenced by the fact that Kjell’s story had traveled to the villages of outer Quondoon, to a dusty hamlet like Solemn, and to the knowledge of a fire-haired female with a love of tales. Sasha’s face was wreathed in smiles, and she waved back at the children and clapped at the excitement of the citizens, welcoming the king’s brother home.
“They love you, Kjell!” she cried, her eyes wide and her face flushed.
“They do not love me. They love King Tiras. They love his queen. They love Princess Wren. It has nothing to do with me.”
The guard was trained to allow no separations between each horse as they moved in formation through a crowd, but as they neared the base of the hill leading up to the castle and the cathedral beyond, a man pushed his way through the throng that lined the thoroughfare and broke out into the street just ahead of the mounted procession.
The man was heavily bearded—the growth covering what little Kjell could see of his face. His forehead and eyes were shrouded by the deep cowl of the cloth he wore banded around his head. His clothes were dusty, his feet sandaled, his back bent over a staff, but he stood in the path of the horses and made no move to get out of the road. He reached out a hand as if to bid them halt.
“Move aside, sir,” Jerick called, inching forward to clear the path. But the man side-stepped him, his eyes on Sasha, his hand still raised.
“Saoirse?”
The word that hissed from his lips sounded like Sasha’s name, but not. It curled around the man’s tongue, hooking on the r before he released it with a sigh. It felt ominous, like the man had spoken a curse in a different language. Sasha stared at him, eyebrows drawn low over her ebony eyes. Then she raised her face to Kjell’s, confusion coloring her expression. The guard had come to a complete stop, the man causing a bottleneck in the narrowing street. Kjell lowered his lance, wary of the stooped stranger who had obviously mistaken Sasha for someone else.
“Step aside, man,” Kjell demanded, startling him. The man looked around, clearly unaware of the attention he was drawing.
“Forgive me, Captain,” he said, bowing so low his head was level with his knees. Then he stepped out of the way, sending a furtive glance over his shoulder as he melded into the crowd.
Sasha sat frozen in front of Kjell, her head tipped to the side, listening the way she was prone to do, seeing something no one else could see.
“Saoirse,” she murmured, drawing the sound out slowly—Seer-sha—and Kjell found that his mind was repeating the word as well. He resisted saying it aloud, ever cautious, ever suspicious.
“Did you recognize that man?” he asked.
“No,” she said slowly, shaking her head. “No. But he seemed to know me.”
“Jerick!” Kjell called, straightening his lance. “Follow him. I want to know who he is.”
Jerick nodded once, needing no further instruction. He took Isak and Gibbous and peeled off the main procession in pursuit of the man who had already disappeared into the well-wishers. Maybe the man had simply been curious. He wasn’t the only one ogling the red-haired woman seated in front of the captain of the King’s Guard. Kjell groaned. He’d been foolish to enter the city this way. He was drawing too much attention and speculation. The last time the guard had brought a woman home from a Volgar crusade, she had become Queen of Jeru.