Reign the Earth (The Elementae #1)(49)

I leaned my head on his shoulder, touching his fingers on my stomach, wanting to believe this man was more real than the vengeful ruler who blinded a guard for a moment’s mistake. The warmth of his hand was soothing. “Will she?” I asked. “We’ll have to watch out for her.”

“Zeno will watch out for her,” he said.

“Zeno?”

“Our son,” he said. “And then we’ll need another boy—Zeno will need someone to command the armies.”

“Was it so with you?” I asked. “Did you three know the roles you would play at birth?”

“Mostly,” he said. “I would be king, of course. For Galen, he could either vie for the military or the trivatii—a religious appointment.”

“And Danae?”

“She is the hidden face,” he said. “She has always been unpredictable.”

“And did your father teach you in such a way?”

He was silent for a long while, and I was about to speak, say something else. “There’s another piece of the vision,” he told me softly. “The one that foretold my death. There was a book full of his visions that was discovered after his death. In it, he said I would not see my first child born into this world.”

I tried to pull back from him, but he held me tight. “What?” I asked. “Why didn’t you tell me that before?”

“It’s not true,” he said softly. “It can’t be. And you will be my way to prove that. We will have many children together. We have to.”

“What do you mean, we have to?”

There was another stretch of quiet. “The Concilium of Vestai knows of this prophecy also. They trapped my father—either we were the Three-Faced God incarnate, as he claimed, and I could thwart such a prophecy, or we weren’t, and that made him a liar and our reign invalid. If I don’t pass my crown on to a son or daughter, it will fall to the Concilium. And I can’t imagine they’ll allow my siblings to survive such a shift in power.”

I gripped his hand. “Do Galen and Danae know this?”

“Yes,” he said softly.

Pale light peeked into the carriage, and the gray haze lit his face enough for me to see deep worry etched there. “We’ll have many children, Calix. I promise.”

Then he drew me closer, holding my hand on his heart. “You are my salvation, Shalia,” he whispered to me.





Watch the Skies

It was a short carriage ride to an ocean port. The sky was dark, full of ropy, bulbous clouds that were barely catching the light of the coming dawn, and the wind was picking up as guards ushered us down a long wooden pier. Theron walked in front of me, getting into what I assumed was a boat despite never having been near a body of water larger than the lake at Jitra until recently. It was long and wide and staffed with men at oars. I hesitated at the edge of the pier, glancing at Calix, but he was speaking to a guard.

Unsure, I looked back to Theron, and he nodded sharply, holding out his hands. Sucking in a breath, I put my hands in his.

“Jump here,” he said, tapping a raised board with his feet.

I closed my eyes and obeyed. My feet hit something solid and I wobbled, my knees going weak, but Theron held me until I was steady and opened my eyes. He smirked at me.

“Well done, my queen.”

I huffed at him, but he pointed me forward, and I pried my fingers away from him slowly.

The boat was a living thing. It rocked under my feet, and I gasped, tipping forward to find something to grab onto. Theron came to me, offering his arm, and I gripped it. “Sit, my queen,” he said, pointing to some kind of narrow wooden bench in the center.

I nodded, sinking down. My husband stepped on the boat and it pitched again, and I yelped, gripping the wood.

Calix sat beside me, chuckling. “We must work on your sea legs, wife!” he said, patting my knee.

The wind blew through me, but I couldn’t figure out how to hug my coat tight around me and hold on to the bench at the same time. I shivered, but I refused to let go of the bench.

Theron sat on the left side of me, and he blocked some of the wind, but then the oarsmen pushed away from the pier and the boat lurched again with the effort. I kept from crying out, but fear shot through me and I found my fingers on the bench shaking with the effort to hold on.

Calix stood, shifting the boat again, moving closer to the pointed front of it.

I could feel Theron’s eyes on me, but I couldn’t even look at him. He coughed. “The boat is very safe, my queen,” he said. He spread his hands, explaining, “It’s a wide, low boat. It means it’s difficult to tip over.”

I managed to nod.

“We will only be on the water for a few hours,” he said. “This is the fastest way to Liatos, the southernmost of the Bone Lands.”

I shivered at the thought, and a fierce wind rushed under my clothes.

“Let me see if I can find something warmer in your things,” he told me, standing.

He moved, and I shuddered at the rocking of the boat and a sharp gust of wind. My husband sat down again beside me, and I clutched his arm.

“Oh, my sweet,” he chuckled. “The ocean is nothing to be frightened of. We have conquered it the same way we have conquered the land. You!” he said, shouting at Theron, his voice close to my ear. “Sit. You are disturbing the queen.”