Days later, he was called into the library, summoned like a royal courtier, and he obeyed again, paying special attention to his appearance, combing his hair back from his face and carefully shaving the growth from his jaw. He had a maid press his tunic and a porter shine his boots. Then he strapped on his anger and his disdain and made sure he was late.
She was waiting alone, as carefully coiffed as he, no feather duster or ladder to climb. No sweet pleading for another kiss. There wouldn’t be another one. She’d seen the truth all along.
And still she didn’t look at him.
“You are Queen Saoirse of Dendar.” It was the only thing he could think to say.
“Yes,” she replied. He expected her to elaborate. To cry. To fall into his arms. But she sat primly, her hands in her lap, her back straight, her face forward, and her eyes focused beyond his head.
“Should I kneel? What is customary when speaking to a queen in Dendar?” he asked.
Her face remained immovable, but her throat convulsed briefly.
“You may stand,” she whispered. “You owe me no fealty.” She swallowed again, but her eyes stayed averted.
“I see. So tell me, how did Lady Saoirse of Kilmorda, a child, grow to be Queen Saoirse of Dendar?” He matched her tone, the unemotional delivery, the feigned boredom.
“I was Gifted, and my parents were afraid. They knew what happened to Lady Meshara of Corvyn. I was just a little girl, but I could see terrible things. I would tell them elaborate stories that always seemed to come true. I made their lives miserable.” She paused, collected her thoughts, and proceeded without inflection.
“An arrangement was made between Kilmorda and Dendar. A betrothment. I was sent to Dendar along with three ships filled with gold, fine silk, and exotic spices. When I was twenty summers, I became Queen. A year later, King Aren sent me back to Kilmorda. He told me it was just for a while. Dendar was under attack, and unlike the rest of Caarn, I couldn’t spin to protect myself.”
She wrapped her story in concise sentences and careful words. She didn’t embellish, didn’t add drama or flair the way she usually did. The delivery was dry, flat, and colorless. Everything that Sasha wasn’t.
“Why did Padrig take your memories?” he asked the question with just enough disdain to let her know he was no longer convinced that he had. It was theatrics. He knew Padrig had taken Sasha’s memories as surely as Kjell had stolen her kisses.
“King Aren ordered him to. He told Padrig if Kilmorda fell, I would try to return. He knew if I could remember Dendar, I would try to go back, and I would be killed.”
“And will you?” he pressed, nonchalant.
Finally, her eyes found his.
“Will I . . . what?” Ah. There she was. Sasha of Quondoon. Persecuted servant, looking to him.
“Will you go back?” he asked. And there he was. The Kjell of old, scathing and sharp.
She didn’t explain herself or say, “It is expected,” or “I must,” or “I have no choice.” She simply replied, “Yes.”
Yes.
She would be going back.
“King Tiras and Queen Lark have agreed to arrange a small contingent of soldiers and supplies from Corvyn to Dendar,” she expounded. “There was wealth recovered in my father’s house. It is now . . . mine. Padrig has not been back since we fled. He doesn’t know what we will find, but he is confident Caarn is waiting, and we will be welcomed home.”
How kind of King Tiras and Queen Lark. How very considerate. They were arranging all the details. He wanted to kill his brother.
He bowed slowly, with great pomp, the way he used to bow before Lark, just to make her seethe. “I wish you safe travels, Your Highness. It has been a pleasure to have served you.” He kept his gaze locked on hers as he straightened.
She didn’t reply, but her eyes grew bright and her lips parted slightly, as if she wanted to speak but hadn’t decided what to say. He stared at her a moment longer, waiting for words that didn’t come, before turning on his heel and striding from the room.
For days he avoided all the chatter, all the glorious gossip of the long-lost Queen of Dendar who had miraculously been found alive and rescued by the valiant king and his good queen. He didn’t want to know. Didn’t want to hear. Didn’t want to count the days until she was gone. But there were preparations he couldn’t ignore and people he couldn’t evade. Jerick cornered him—making everything decidedly worse with his effusive sympathy—only to run from his presence. Tiras summoned him several times, but Kjell defied his edicts.
He spent hours in the yard, taking his rage and impotence out on anyone who would come against him with a jousting stick, a sword, or a spear. When he realized his men were eyeing him with more pity than fear, he abandoned them too, leaving Jeru City for endless patrols with only Lucian and his sour thoughts for company. Still, avoiding a Seer indefinitely proved impossible.
Sasha found him four days later in the royal stables, mucking stalls that he’d already cleaned, feeding horses that were too full to eat, and oiling saddles that were already gleaming. Her hair was arranged in a crown of braids and loose curls that hung obediently down her back and past her breasts, as if each one had been carefully placed. Her gown was the same soft green as the scarf he’d bought her in Solemn, her lips pink, her nails buffed, her presentation perfect. But her dark eyes were bruised and weary, and her cheeks were pale beneath the smattering of copper. She didn’t appear to have slept, and the starch he’d observed in the throne room was missing from her posture.
“We are leaving the day after tomorrow,” she said softly.
“Go and do no harm,” he shot back, the traditional Jeruvian parting sounding like a slap. She turned away from him and pressed her palms to her face, easing the sting.
“I remember. But I haven’t forgotten,” she said, her voice breaking slightly.
“I don’t know what that means,” he answered, but he abandoned the bales of hay that didn’t need to be moved again and dropped down onto one of them.
“I remember. I remember everything. And everything has changed. But I have not forgotten how I feel about you.”
His throat closed and his skin burned, and he fisted his hands in his hair so he wouldn’t reach for her. He kept his eyes on the wooden slats of the stable floor, waiting for her to continue. But she didn’t. Instead she began to cry. It was not the keening of the night when Padrig returned her memories. It was not the gentle sniffling of a tender moment, or the pretty cries of a manipulation. Her cries were so deep and raw, they ricocheted through his chest and reverberated in his head. She shook with them, her hands covering her eyes and her hair creating a shroud reminiscent of the day she sank to her knees and declared herself his.