Protect the Prince (Crown of Shards #2)(16)

“Hello, Sully,” I drawled. “Did Serilda send you to check on me? To make sure that I wasn’t tempted to do another swan dive over the cliffs and put myself out of my own misery?”

A crooked grin lifted his lips. “No, Serilda didn’t send me. I wanted to check on you myself.”

My heart stuttered again at the obvious concern in his voice, but I forced myself to rein in my attraction and especially my feelings. Sullivan had made it absolutely clear that we could never be together, a bastard prince and a queen, and I was going to respect his wishes, no matter how much they hurt us both.

He turned toward me. “You did well today.”

I arched an eyebrow. “You mean because I survived being poisoned and assassinated for the second time this year at Seven Spire?”

He shook his head. “No. I meant that you did well during court. Dealing with the nobles. You’re good at it.”

“You sound surprised.”

He shook his head again. “I shouldn’t be. I know that you lived at the palace after your parents were killed when you were younger. But the way you handled Fullman and Diante . . . It was very skillful. I couldn’t have done that.”

“You’re the magier enforcer for the Black Swan troupe. Surely wrangling some scheming nobles isn’t any harder than keeping gladiators and their enormous egos in check.”

Another faint smile lifted his lips. “You know as well as I do that things were far simpler at the Black Swan and that the gladiators could take out their anger and frustrations on each other in the arena. I would much rather deal with an angry gladiator with a sword in their hand and fury in their heart than I would a noble with sly words on their tongue and schemes galore in their mind.”

I couldn’t argue with that.

“Besides, I was never very good at being at court, at . . . dealing with people.” A dark, distant look filled his eyes, as though he was thinking back to his own experiences in the Andvarian royal court.

“What happened? Was it your father? Did he treat you . . . poorly?”

“No. He was actually very good to me, and to my mother as well. We had our own chambers in the palace, and we were always included with the queen and her children, my half brothers. Everything was always equal—except for how other people treated us.”

His jaw clenched. I could well imagine how the Andvarian nobles had tried to use him, and his mother too, to further their own agendas.

Sullivan shrugged, as though he was trying to slough off his anger, along with his bad memories. “The palace games never seemed to bother my mother, but they infuriated me. I always wondered why people couldn’t just say what they meant and do what they promised.”

“Is that why you left?”

“Partly. There were also some . . . extenuating circumstances.”

Those circumstances must have been quite extreme, given the tension in his voice and the scent of ashy heartbreak that swirled around him. I waited, hoping he would elaborate, but he didn’t.

“And now you’re going back to Andvari, back to the Glitnir royal court,” I said. “All because of me.”

He nodded. “You were correct before. Securing an alliance between Andvari and Bellona is the most important thing right now. If we aren’t united, then we’ll both fall to the Mortans.”

“Is that why you set up the trip?”

As soon as I had killed Vasilia, I had started thinking about the best way to repair relations between our kingdoms. To my surprise, Sullivan had volunteered to contact his father, and he had brokered the deal for me to travel to Andvari.

He shrugged again. “More or less. But I also want to see my mother, and Gemma too. I want to make sure that she’s really okay.”

Gemma was Sullivan’s niece and the king’s granddaughter. The girl had been part of the Andvarian contingent that had been at Seven Spire during the massacre, and she was the only one of them who’d survived the slaughter. I wondered if she had nightmares about it like I did. Probably.

Sympathy filled me, and I laid my hand on top of his, which was resting on the stone wall. Sullivan jerked, as though my soft touch burned, but he didn’t pull his hand out from under mine and step away like he had in the past. Instead, he swayed toward me, a hungry look in his eyes. It matched the aching, breathless hunger pounding through my own body.

A gust of wind whistled down from the mountains, whipping my black hair around my face. Sullivan lifted his hand, as though he was going to brush my hair back, but then his gaze drifted up and locked onto my crown. The slight weight suddenly seemed as heavy as a boulder crushing my head, and my heart along with it.

Sullivan’s lips twisted, and he dropped his hand to his side and slid his other one out from under mine. I stretched out my hand to grab his again, but I thought better of it and curled my fingers into a tight fist instead. For a moment, I could still feel the warmth of his skin against my own, but another gust of wind swept over us both and ripped that away as well.

Sullivan cleared his throat, pretending like he hadn’t noticed my reaching for him, and lowered his gaze from mine.

“What’s that?” he asked. “There, on top of the wall?”

I looked down. Two large hearts had been crudely carved into one of the stones, along with the initials J + K running down the center where the hearts overlapped. I grimaced. I hadn’t realized where I was standing, but I should have. I had always gravitated toward this spot.