Last Stand (The Black Mage #4)(10)

Our trek was fast and efficient. Winter had yet to reach the midplains of Jerar, but it was cold enough that travel was less common for most. It helped that our procession was dressed as a standard patrol for the Crown’s Army. No one expected anything different, and so those that did traverse the King’s Road didn’t come to see a crown prince and princess in its ranks.

Most of the first three days were spent passing rust-colored foliage and barren fields. The fall harvest had come and gone, and many of the country’s youth were attempting their first year of study in one of the kingdom’s war schools, the rest sticking close to home, taking on the extra chores for a family trade.

We stuck to camping, not wanting to draw extra attention in any of the local inns. For the most part, the days were long, but I would have gladly suffered a constant sun to avoid the night and the jesting of our more brazen comrades. After all, Darren and I were husband and wife. The jokes that passed were innocent, but the silence that remained long after when Darren and I retired to our tent was not.

Silence and the momentary flicker of pain. Darren tried hard not to show it, and I tried hard to pretend I was blind. Even when he held me, as he had since that first night of the wedding, I felt a growing divide. Not grief, which would surely thaw, but guilt. It built with each moment that passed.

My nights were spent endlessly tossing and turning. If this is us now… But I couldn’t bear to think of the future. I just prayed to the gods it was worth it.

By the fifth day west, we had reached Demsh’aa, nestled at the base of the Iron Mountain Range.

Darren and the rest set to questioning the villagers, leaving me standing at the doorway of my parents’ apothecary. Paige stood guard further back, giving me privacy. I wasn’t worried about Darren’s safety, the village—contrary to Blayne’s belief—contained no rebels whatsoever. Derrick had made it clear Ferren’s Keep was their only base. The rebels hiding out down south were nomadic, never remaining in the same town long.

I watched an older woman explain something to a young girl at the front. She had the beautiful blonde hair and keen blue eyes of my brothers. Brother. Her lips were pressed and hard.

A man at her right with curly locks and a crooked nose helped another young apprentice with a potion for one of their waiting clients. The shop was packed full with waiting customers. The flimsy boarding had been reinforced and painted over, and new brocade curtains covered the windows. It was easily the most profitable building in the whole square. The coin Alex and I had been sending home during the apprenticeship had been put to good use.

As I watched my parents, it felt as if a palm were pressing down on my chest. Their demeanor had changed since that last visit. They had dark shadows under their eyes, and they were slow to smile.

You did this. I made myself take a little step forward and another, until I was at the front. I waited for them to notice.

My mother was first. For just a moment, there was light in her eyes, and then it died. She reached out for her husband, and then my father turned and spotted me as well. They left the shop to the girls and walked me back to their house across the way. It, too, had undergone many changes.

For a moment, there was a stilted, uncomfortable air as the three of us entered the building in silence, and then my mother made a small choking noise, pulling me into her embrace. Her arms went around my shoulders and her face pressed against my hair. My father’s feet shuffled across the room, and then the pressure tightened until I was listening to their hitched intakes of breath, a wordless moment fraught with emotion as the familiar scent of woodsy pine and cloves enveloped me whole.

“I wish you had been there,” I finally croaked.

“I’m sure you made a beautiful bride.” My father’s voice shook as he brushed my hair along the back of my head.

My mother was sobbing. “The capital where Derrick…”

I clenched my eyes, blinking back the tears at the mention of his name. I knew why they had refused to visit, but it didn’t make the pain any less.

I wasn’t sure how long the three of us stood there in the entry. The first hour was spent in silence with locked limbs, white knuckles, and glassy eyes.

These were the two that had raised me. Their presence begged for the past, for when I was just a little girl crying to my parents instead of an adult who so easily made mistakes. When I was just Ryiah, not a mage, and certainly not tied up with the Crown, in love with the brother of an evil king. I wanted them to tell me this was all just a dream, that I could make the nightmare vanish, that we could turn down the hall and see my youngest brother laughing in the corner with an impish smile.

But I couldn’t.

And yet, for the first time in the last two months, I didn’t have to be so alone. My parents needed to be prepared for what was to come in case I failed. I had no doubt the first people the king would seek out were my family.

It was much later into the evening, as wax dripped from candles long forgotten, that I finished telling my parents everything that had changed. It was much different than my visit before. Their hearts had already been hardened to loss, their youngest was dead, and their second son had joined a rebel cause. Hearing that their only daughter intended to betray the Crown, that she intended to break up the New Alliance and help the rebels all the while under the Black Mage’s nose? I suppose they had come to expect that the gods were not in our family’s favor.

“Oh, Ryiah.” My mom’s hand shot out to grasp my own. “You don’t have to be the one to do this.”