Fireblood (Frostblood Saga #2)(63)

He was quiet for a minute. The silence was complete. The castle slept peacefully, only a rising wind rattling the casements.

“What was the consequence the queen warned you about?” I prompted softly.

He blew out a breath and lounged back on his elbows, but his jaw was tense.

“I could have borne a lashing or a beating without complaint. But it wasn’t me who paid the price. The queen took control of my family’s island and gave it to one of the other masters, a prince’s daughter from a tiny, outlying island who had just passed her trials. Her family had built ships for the queen.”

“So… your father no longer rules.”

“He and my sister and her daughter live on our home island, but in a small house far from the estate where I grew up. The clay on their land is so dense and rocky it yields barely enough wheat to last one season. I send them coin, but my father is proud and won’t accept anything from me. So I have to give the money to my sister, who tells Father that her work as a tutor pays much better than it really does. I’ve offered her a place on my ship, but she won’t leave him. His health has declined. No doubt that’s my fault, too.”

“You can’t blame yourself for everything.” I wished I could smooth the tight crease between his brows.

“I don’t. I only blame myself for the things I’m responsible for, and that’s plenty.”

“So that’s why you sail your merchant ship and occasionally indulge in a bit of piracy? To send money to your family?”

“Also because it’s fun.” He grinned at me, the same disarmingly roguish smile that had grown so familiar. “But I’ve been hoping to find a way to restore my family’s name. And then, when I heard about you, I thought I’d found it. A nice fat offering”—I smacked his shoulder and he grinned—“in exchange for my second chance.”

“She didn’t want me as an offering. She thought I would fail. You said so yourself.”

“Well, you’ve proven her wrong.” He clinked his goblet to my cup of water and drank.

“So everything has unfolded according to your grand plan. Now, you just have to pass your third trial.”

“Yes. I ‘just’ have to pass. And for that, you ‘just’ have to pass.” The irony was clear. It wouldn’t be “just” anything. He stared into his empty goblet. “But what horror will she unleash on you tomorrow, hmm? What atrocity will she demand of me? That’s the part I didn’t let myself think of when I came up with this brilliant plan.”

“Is your test after mine, then? Assuming I pass?”

“I would guess so.”

I pulled my knees up and rested my chin on them. I didn’t know anyone in Sudesia, so there was no danger that the queen would make me hurt someone I cared about. But still. “I don’t want to pass if it means killing someone. I’ve had to kill before and I made a vow to seek the light… .” I waved a hand. “Maybe that sounds fanciful—”

“It doesn’t.” He adjusted his body so that he was sitting sideways on one bent leg, his arm braced behind me as he leaned closer. “I could have closed my eyes to Goran’s suffering and killed him. Afterward, sometimes I wished I had. When my family had to leave their lives, their identities, behind and move into a dilapidated hovel with a leaking roof, then I wished I’d been stronger.”

“Cruelty isn’t strength.” As I said the words, I was reminded that Arcus had once said something similar after I’d run away and he’d found me in a blizzard. He’d said, “Tyranny is not strength.” At the time, it had surprised me, the idea that the mysterious, ill-mannered Frostblood held an opinion in harmony with mine. The memory gave me a twist of homesickness.

I waited for Kai to agree, but he seemed occupied with letting his eyes rove over me. Warmth slowly spread across my skin and I was glad my heightened color wouldn’t be visible in the dim light. It was confusing that I could think of Arcus in one moment and feel warmth for Kai the next. Arcus lived in my heart, but I didn’t know when I’d see him again, or if there was any future for us. He had told me we had to let each other go a little, and I had tried to do that. Kai was here, and he was warm and charming and alluring, drawing me into his current. I looked at the floor, trying to sort through the confusing tangle of thoughts and feelings.

“A debate for another time, perhaps.” He wound a lock of my hair around his fingers, seeming fascinated by the way the end curled. He brought it to his face and inhaled before tucking it back over my shoulder, his hands smoothing down my back. I shivered helplessly. “I’ve had too much wine to philosophize.”

“You seem lucid enough to me,” I replied lightly, though my heart had taken up an elevated rhythm at the stroke of his long fingers over my shoulder blades. “I hope you’re not planning to use the claim of intoxication as an excuse to flirt.”

“I never need an excuse to flirt—though I prefer to call it ‘appreciating your allure’—any more than I need an excuse to breathe. And you are more intoxicating than wine, Lady Ruby.”

I laughed to cover the way his words sent honey through my veins and how I had to make a concentrated effort to push the feeling away. “And you flirt almost as much as you breathe.”

“You don’t mind, though, do you?” he asked softly. “Not really.”