Reign the Earth (The Elementae #1)(17)

He came to me, pulling the red cloth from the bed. He held it up, a flimsy curtain between us. “Come,” he said. Despite the cloth, he still watched me as I stood from the bed, and he looped the cloth around my neck when I was before him.

He evened out the sides of it, letting his fingers graze my skin, and I wanted to pull away.

He spread out the pieces of the cloth so that they covered my breasts, and the long, wide ends overlapped and formed a skirt low on my back, leaving much of my skin bare. It hadn’t looked strange on Danae, but I hated the way it felt. Exposed. Displayed. Unprotected.

“You are stunning,” he said, running his hands along my sides, pulling me closer to him.

I didn’t feel stunning, and I clutched my arms. “I’m cold,” I told him with a shiver.

He stared at my body for a while longer, and then his finger touched my chin, drawing it up higher. “Then I will get something from Atalo to cover you with,” he told me, moving away.

He left me, demanding a coat from the vestai as I stayed within the chamber. He brought it to me, a thin silk garment that skimmed my arms and went the length of the dress to the floor. There was no way to close it, and it hung open over the foreign clothing.

We left with as little ceremony as we’d come the night before. As we walked out to meet Danae and Galen, the wind kicked up and caught my dress, ruffling the light fabric, but it felt so cold on my skin I stopped and sucked in a breath, rubbing my arms.

Galen was staring at me, his hard eyes fixed and shocked like I had stepped out naked from the castle. I felt naked. I couldn’t move forward.

“What in the Skies is that?” Kairos asked, appearing behind me.

I looked around. “The clothing?” I asked.

“Clothing?” he repeated, laughing. “You look like a bobcat in butterfly wings. Like a—”

My mind filled in any of the awful words I had been thinking.

He sighed, drawing his wide desert scarf off his neck and pulling it around my shoulders. “Like you’re frozen,” he said softer, rubbing my arms.

I held the scarf tight around me, nodding. He kept one arm on me as he walked me to the carriage, his watchful eyes considering Calix, Danae, and Galen all in turn. Kairos was about to help me into the carriage when he murmured, “They will never take the desert from you, Shalia. Don’t fear.”

I nodded, clutching his hand, more grateful for having him with me than I knew how to say.


We stopped again that night, shackled by the slow progress of the army. By the third day, I didn’t even want to open my eyes and look out on this new kingdom. I wanted to go home. I wanted to be warm again, feel the heat on my skin and the bright, sustaining love of family wrapped around my heart.

And yet, when we readied the carriage that morning, Danae stretched and said to me, “We need fresh air. Will you join me in a ride, my queen?”

Osmost swooped, catching something up in his jaws, and Kairos smiled. “Osmost thinks it’s an excellent idea.”

The wind blew across my face, fresh and cold, and I nodded, wrapping Kairos’s scarf more tightly around me. “That would be a welcome change, I think.”

Kairos helped me onto my horse before mounting his own, and Calix scowled and got into the carriage alone. I saw Galen ordering his soldiers about, and Danae led me into the column. At the shout of a man on horseback carrying a flag, the army lurched forward with loud, coordinated stomps.

It wasn’t long before there was a clearing in the trees, and I saw a green valley below us.

“We’re in Nomikos, the northernmost part of the Bone Lands,” Danae told me. “Just for a little while longer.” She held out three fingers on one hand, raising up the knuckles like the legs of a spider. “People call the Trifectate the Bone Lands because it looks like three fingers—three great mountain ridges running into the sea.” She tapped her fingers one by one. “Nomikos, Kyrikatos, Liatos.” She wiggled the tip of her middle finger. “And the City of Three is here, in Kyrikatos. We’ll make Kyrikatos by the end of the day, and hopefully the City of Three in another day.”

“The Bone Lands are vast,” I murmured, looking out into the green. “Is that forest?”

She shook her head. “No, those are mostly farmlands. There were forests around here, but they’ve been culled and are starting to regrow. The shipbuilders in Liatos get their trees from the mountain regions now.”

“My father always said you had strong farms. You feed your people well.”

She smiled. “Yes. One of Calix’s first acts as king was to improve our farmlands. His quaesitori found that the land can be fortified so that it won’t grow fallow as often, and it’s worked very well.”

I frowned. “What’s a quaesitori?” Weren’t they the men who Calix wished to send into the desert?

“They are men of knowledge,” she said. “They study the ways of the world. Calix has been very enamored of their art ever since we were young.”

Kairos drew his horse up beside mine. “I can’t quite imagine him as a child,” Kairos said. “Your mother must have had her hands full.”

“I suppose so. It was only my father who would ever chastise him, even before my mother died.”

I looked at Danae. Her posture was straighter now, and she looked only ahead. I couldn’t imagine losing my mother so young—or ever. Even being away from her for a few days felt like someone was pulling my insides out.