Reign the Earth (The Elementae #1)(66)

“I love you too,” she said.





Hero

My husband returned later that day, but true to his promise, Galen did not. Then word came that the Resistance had attacked the Summer Palace, and Calix demanded Galen not return until they figured out how the Resistance had discovered their operations there. Smugly, in private, he told me it would be months before I saw Galen again, and I didn’t like the ache that created in my chest.

I took a walk one morning, and Kairos was waiting in the courtyard. “Morning, sister,” Kairos called, and Osmost clacked out some version of the same.

Zeph sighed beside me.

“Morning,” I called, smiling.

“Well, if you insist, I will join you on your walk,” he told me. “Where are we headed?”

“I was heading to the Royal Garden.”

“Very well,” he said. “Zeph, I can escort her back to her chambers if you wish.”

“Just don’t leave the palace without me,” he said, waving us forward.

I laughed, shaking my head as I joined Kairos, and Zeph turned around. “Can I revise our destination?” Kai asked.

I glanced back at the castle thoughtfully. “As long as we don’t leave the palace.”

“We won’t.”

“Then certainly.”

“Good,” he said, offering his arm in the Trifectate way. I took it. “Osmost brought a letter from home,” he told me softly.

“He did?”

He nodded. “From Mother and Father. Cael is to be married to a d’Skorpios girl,” he said.

“Soon?” I asked. Traditionally, desert weddings were very fast—it was only mine that had been planned so far in advance.

His mouth turned down a little. “It’s probably already happened.”

My heart ached. I didn’t like to think of them living their lives when I couldn’t be there with them. “Oh,” I said softly.

“And Aiden is living in Jitra. Courting some Tri girl over the land bridge,” he said to me. “Can you imagine?”

I shook my head. “I can’t imagine the land bridge as a thoroughfare instead of a boundary,” I told him softly. “What else?”

He shook his head, and I nodded. There was so much more, of course, and I mourned the small things I would never hear about because they couldn’t be communicated in a precious, secret letter.

“Have you heard from Rian? We all heard that they raided the Summer Palace.”

He looked at me. “He said he didn’t find any prisoners.”

I drew a breath, nodding. “That doesn’t really mean Calix kept his word, of course.”

“No.”

“But it’s something,” I allowed.

Kairos lifted a shoulder, and I understood. He would never approve of Calix or this marriage, and even if I needed to cling to the hope that my husband still had a shred of humanity left, he didn’t.

“But that’s not why I came here today,” he said.

“It isn’t?”

“No,” he said. “You need to practice.”

We had just discussed our brother’s treason and a secret letter from my family, and yet at the thought of someone overhearing about my ability, I looked around us. There was no one in sight, except guards in the courtyard we were leaving behind to go down the road past the garden.

“No one can hear,” he whispered. “And no one can know. But you still need to do it.”

Nervously, I nodded.

Up ahead, I could see the entrance to the garden, with guards standing there, and they bowed to us as we walked past, not speaking.

Kairos led me farther, under a stone archway. “That leads out from the castle to a walkway in the cliffs,” he said. “We’ll go there next time.”

The path was growing steeper, and we walked down to another stone arch with a heavy iron gate in it, and yet another guard. “My queen,” he greeted me, bowing.

Kairos nodded, and I asked the guard, “Please unlock the gate.”

He obeyed, and we walked out past a small dock with two oared crafts and onto a long, rocky beach that lay in the shadow of the massive cliff the castles stood on.

Far down the beach, Kairos stopped me. “Here will work,” he told me.

“What am I supposed to do?” I asked.

“Use your gift,” he said. “Use it the way you were always meant to. Use it so it won’t control you.”

It wasn’t the same as the desert, but I took my soft slippers off to dig my feet into the cold gray sand and I felt the threads leaping against my hands at the touch of so much stone. We were up on the dry part of the beach, and yet I felt the tide as if it were rushing over my skin, dragging on the rocks, taking smaller bits of sand, and curling it into the gentle, rolling wave in this protected cove.

With a deep breath, I stretched out farther along the threads, to the distant rocks that the violent ocean gnashed against.

“You don’t need to reshape the earth,” Kairos told me, following my gaze with a smile. “See what small things you can do.”

I pulled the silver comb out of my pocket and held it up, curling one tine at a time and straightening them out. “I’ve been doing this,” I told him.

He nodded. “Rake the sand,” he said, pointing down.