Page 142 of Between Fear and Favor

I staredinto the swiftly darkening sky, watching Irses circle above us. Rain pulled me closer, pressing a kiss to the top of my head, and I dared to consider relaxing for just a night. With the warm front coming in from Seyma’s Gulf, pushing the cold of winter away once and for all, the temperate day had been like a balm to the soul.

Lasu and the rest of the King’s Guards were handling the Supreme, so Rain and I were able to travel ahead by ourselves. For just a few hours, I had been able to pretend we were traveling to Nara’s Cove to visit Dewalt—not to petition a god for favor.

The Supreme had gotten further in understanding how to do just that—something he’d been studying for centuries, waiting for the Beloved’s blood. And, though he could have lied, we had no choice but to take his word. Because if Nereza was on her way to Nara’s Cove, eager to search for the place where Ciarden had chosen to vacate his mortal body before returning to the eternal lands, we had to stop her. And it only benefited us that Aonara had supposedly picked the same place.

We could potentially thwart Nereza and ask Aonara for her favor in one fell swoop. We had to try.

Since Nereza hadn’t even left her encampment near the Aesiron yet, as far as Lasu had heard reports of, we had plenty of time to beat her there. So, when we encountered a large field just east of the coast, clover stretching as far as the eye could see, I thought Rain and I deserved a single night’s rest before facing a goddess.

It was still warm, so we’d yet to light a fire, and we didn’t bother to lay out cloaks as we laid down upon the softly fragrant clover. Fresh and crisp, I breathed deep.

“Are you afraid?” I asked, feeling a pulse of something down the bond I couldn’t quite place.

“I’m not afraid of the goddess,” he answered.

“And yet you fear something else.”

“No matter what she says, no matter how this war will end, I worry over what I might lose. You have given me everything, Em. I fear it being taken away. The gods might not?—”

“Fuck the gods,” I said. “We pray and we beg, and they do nothing. They might listen, but they stopped caring long ago.”

“You’ll tempt them with such words,” Rain admonished, placing his hand over mine where it rested on his chest. “Instead of favor, Aonara could?—”

“Let me worry about Aonara. I might ask for her favor, but she is not untouched by my scorn.”

Rain chuckled, dragging his fingertip down my spine. “Who knew being blessed by the gods would make you so bold.”

“Boldness is all I have left after their blessing turned out to be a burden,” I said, surely souring our peaceful moment. I was angry, and I was scared, and I struggled to pull myself out of the swirling pit of despondence.

Sometimes, I wished I didn’t feel so bold; it would have been so much easier to give up.

“I’m here to shoulder it with you, dear heart,” Rain said softly, his presence somehow managing to break through my dreariness despite everything. Adjusting where I rested against him, he forced me to join his stargazing. “You can’t see Teleria this clearly anywhere else.”

I did my best to calm my racing mind as I watched his fingertip point toward each star in the constellation. If only I could allow his calming warmth to soothe what I could not.

“And you remember which constellation starts there, correct?” he asked, pointing toward the end of Teleria’s bow. The huntress’s collection of stars branched off to another constellation, but I couldn’t recall the name of it for the life of me.

“Give me a hint?” I asked, and Rain chuckled and sat up on his elbow to loom over me.

“I think I can do that, dear heart,” he said, but his thick fingertips walked a path over my collarbone, down to the drawstring of my chemise.

I’d have preferred more practical clothing for this journey, but everything I’d worn to the Seat had been stained in my blood. Veda had a friend who’d been kind enough to gift me with a simple cotton slip, black front-lacing woolen stays, and a beautiful blue petticoat with matching skirt. I’d wanted to refuse them, knowing how expensive the dye must have been to create such a color, but I couldn’t remain in those bloody clothes.

We’d been so close to raising Iemis, and I’d burned the evidence to forget it.

“I don’t know of any stories involving untying a lady’s chemise,” I said. “A royal lady, at that.”

Rain dipped, pressing his soft mouth to the top of my breast as he exposed more of my skin to the cool, night air. Moist and hot, his breath warmed me everywhere. “Ah, but a queen?” he murmured against my chest. I hummed at the intimacy.

To have him so close, so comfortable, so calming—I was certain I’d had a dream just like this. Rain and I, stargazing well into the night. Had my dream come true? Fleetingly, I wondered if maybe I’d been a Seer too, like my mother and my sister. Perhaps my visions of the future only came to me within dreams.

“So, it is a tale involving a queen?” I asked, unable to hold still as he peppered tender kisses across the top of one breast and then the other.

“You tell me, dear heart. What does the constellation look like?”

Lessons in ancient history—kings and queens and gods of old—were always my least favorite. The only reason I remembered any of them was because Rain had taught me how the stars told their stories. Teleria had hunted down the boar who’d gored her lover, before poisoning its meat and serving it to her husband, explaining the origins of the first queen of Nythyr. And all the queens who came after her could look up at the night sky and see Teleria’s weapon, remembering they would bow to no man.

But the constellation which started from the top point of her bow evaded me. As Rain tugged at my stays, I struggled to focus. Staring up at the stars, I looked for a familiar shape, but I couldn’t quite place it. Long lines of stars with a protrusion at the top, I thought perhaps it was a tree.

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