Page 9 of Kept

“I haven’t stopped loving you.”

She looked at me sharply. Her horse, already spooked by the sun and the strange environment, shied again. Which was fine, since it gave me an excuse to keep my hand where it was as I looked at my queen.

Wide blue eyes stared back at me. Her full lips parted, and her cheeks went pink. I drank her in, admiring her otherworldly beauty. How had I ever convinced myself she wasn’t elven-born? I hadn’t, of course. I’d simply refused to acknowledge the truth. My honesty, it seemed, had its limits, after all.

“I love you,” I told her again. “Did you think I might have stopped?”

She bit her lip. Looked toward Laurent.

I followed her gaze and watched him watching the knights. His handsome, haughty face was inscrutable, his lean shoulders rigid. He was beautiful—and he was enough. In my heart, I knew I could have gone the rest of my life loving only Laurent, and I wouldn’t have felt a lack. But the interesting thing about love was its capacity to expand. To grow and become something different. When you least expected it, love squirmed between the tightest, most entangled vines. It pushed you. Forced you to make room in the narrowest regions of your heart.

I turned back to Given and found her blue eyes on me once more. Her pulse fluttered in her neck. Doubts stirred in her sapphire eyes—the same eyes that had kept me sane in Vai Seren. The ones that had wept for my past. Yes, things were different now. My heart had grown.

“I love you both.” Slowly, I moved my hand to her thigh and squeezed. “You both belong to me.”

The doubt in her eyes faded, replaced with desire.

“The king is ready to cross, my lord,” Radu said gruffly.

I pulled my hand from Given’s and quickly rearranged my features as I faced the Rift. The knights had crossed. Laurent waited on foot at the mouth of the Pass, his eyes on Given and me. Petru and Jordan flanked him.

“Come, my queen,” I told Given, urging my horse forward.

The sun blazed hotter at the Pass, waves of heat shimmering in the air. It was hard to believe that just a few dozen steps behind us, snow fell in Nor Doru.

Laurent and I had planned the order of our crossing in our last Council meeting, and we quickly dismounted and arranged ourselves in the proper order. Petru went first, his black robes sweeping the ground. The irony of watching him pass from the unrelenting sun into the twinkling twilight of the Deepnight wasn’t lost on me. It was as if the canopy had become unmoored and was now drifting into Sithistra like the icebergs that crowded the uppermost regions of the Wastes.

With Petru safely across, I stepped in front of Laurent and Given, and we advanced as a group. Every fiber of my being recoiled at the idea of my king and queen crossing the Bleak Pass together. Lar Guna and the other lords of the Council had argued bitterly about it, ultimately deciding it was better to minimize the number of crossings. Laurent and Given walking the Pass separately meant me shielding them one at a time—and giving the humans more opportunities to kill me with a well-aimed arrow.

My knights watched for archers now, their crimson cloaks stirring in the breeze as they formed a living shield on the human side of the Rift. My heart pounded with every step, my senses primed for an arrow’s whistle or the whisper of Midian’s voice as the black void of the Rift yawned on either side of me.

But neither came, and the cool, purple twilight of the Deepnight enveloped me as I stepped onto Sithistran soil.

Immediately, knights moved into position, arranging themselves shoulder to shoulder in a circle around Laurent and Given. I stayed in front, and I led the way as we walked to the pyre. After a moment, Jordan fell in at my side.

“General,” he murmured in acknowledgment.

I kept my gaze on the humans, watching for signs of an ambush. “You couldn’t find a clean robe to wear?”

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him smile, and then he said, “The Brotherhood excommunicated me. I thought they might object to me wearing their clothes.”

“They’re more likely to object to learning they harbored a mage.”

“I doubt they’re just learning that today, my lord.”

We fell silent as we neared the pyre. Nobles in fine clothes stood before it, a row of Green Guards behind them. Each nobleman was flanked by two women—wives, I assumed. Every Sithistran wore a round, mirrored pendant.

As we reached the pyre, two women and two men stepped forward.

I’d never seen Rolund’s queens, but they matched the descriptions my spies had ferried from the South. Both women were swathed in black, with sheer, black veils trailing from elaborate headpieces. The taller one was Elissa, the First Queen. She was pretty enough with reddish hair and brown eyes, but her pinched expression diminished her beauty.

The woman at her side was shorter, younger, and lovelier. Rolund’s Queen Consort, Lidia, had glossy black curls and bright green eyes that tilted up at the corners and reminded me of the cats that prowled the streets of Lar Katerin.

The males were easy to identify. With his gray robes and oversize mirror pendant, the white-haired male could only be Crasor, the Prelate of the Brotherhood. The male on Elissa’s left was her father, Lord Rellan Blackmun of the Meadowlands. According to Laurent’s spies, Rellan had more money than the royal coffers, and he’d used his wealth to buy his daughter a crown. His graying red hair was shaved close to his head. His golden breastplate was engraved with an apple tree.

My knights fanned out, their crimson cloaks streaming to their ankles. I stepped aside, and Laurent moved forward with Given’s hand in his. He’d removed his gloves and thrown his hood back, and the bloodstones in his crown winked in the muted light. He guided Given between us, and he caught my eye as he lifted her knuckles to his lips before releasing her.

With the sudden clarity of a thunderclap, I realized what he’d done. He’d maneuvered us precisely where he wanted us—and he wanted Given between us. We stood in juxtaposition to the Sithistran men with their two wives, turning the South’s polygamy on its head.

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