Rise of Fire (Reign of Shadows #2)(34)

My head spun as if I had just twirled in a speeding circle. I set my spoon down, my hunger forgotten as Maris hopped happily in her seat beside me, clapping her hands. Chasan didn’t move or make a sound. If not for the steadiness of his breathing, I would not have known he was still there.

It made perfect sense for Tebald to play it this way. It was safe. It was smart. For both kingdoms. Even I could see that.

Accepting what was safe and smart, however, was not so simple.





FOURTEEN


Fowler


I WOKE ABRUPTLY with a gasp. I had been dreaming that I was still underground, running, searching, calling for Luna lost somewhere within the dwellers’ web.

I blinked, my gaze swerving around the strange chamber with its vaulted ceiling, remembering at once where I was. I’d woken one time since the physician slapped the foul-smelling, skin-burning salve on me. A girl had been there, holding my hand, wiping my feverish brow. She’d declared herself the king’s daughter, Maris. She also called me things, endearments that left no doubt she considered herself my betrothed. I’d opened my mouth and tried to explain that we couldn’t be betrothed, but speech was lost to me then.

“Glad to see you are healing well.” My gaze jerked to the man sitting in a chair beside my bed, and I knew he was the reason for my sudden state of wakefulness. He passed the smelling salt he held to the physician hovering beside him. Folding his hands neatly in his lap, the king smiled tightly. “You’ve slept long enough, my young friend. It is time we talk.”

My chest lifted with panting breaths, as though I had in fact been running through tunnels and not merely dreaming about it. I pushed up on the bed, wincing. I felt as weak as a child, but I wasn’t going to have a conversation with a man as ruthless as my own father while lying on my back.

Tebald eyed my bandaged arm with lifted brows, as though he could see through the wrapping to my arm itself. “You should belong to the dwellers, but thanks to me, you are still here.” I nodded slowly, even as I thought: Thanks to Luna I’m still here. “Barclay here says you should be able to leave your sickbed and walk soon.”

“I can walk now.” At least I would have liked to attempt it. No more sickbed. No more weakness. No more lying defenseless while Maris stroked me like her new pet.

There was that slow smile of his again. It didn’t reach his eyes. It didn’t even crease his ashen cheeks. He brushed a finger along the line of his well-groomed beard. “Maris tells me you’re stubborn. Even sick, you fight and resist the help you need. I see that now.”

I tensed. So he knew his daughter had been visiting me. What else had she said about me to her father? I watched him, careful to keep my expression blank. Maybe he even encouraged her to come to me. There was that ridiculous betrothal between us, after all—made when I was barely walking and Maris was still in a cradle. Maybe he thought to honor it. Or rather, he thought to make me honor it.

Tebald continued, “Rest easy. No rush on walking yet. You could relapse, and we want you well. We need you well.”

I didn’t mistake his emphasis on need. It was the reason I lived at all—the only reason I had been brought back to the castle and treated by the king’s own physician. The king and Lagonia needed me. Maris claimed to need me as well. I recalled that from when she sat at my bedside. But that was more tied up into want than need. She was a child and I was the bright and shiny toy for her. Nothing more than that.

“Thank you,” I replied because he stared at me so expectantly, compelling me to speak.

He inclined his head slightly. “Ah. Gratitude is a good thing. It means people understand . . . they know their place in the order of things.”

He leaned back in his chair, lacing his fingers together. “This kingdom has lasted seventeen years. Others have fallen. And others are just skeletons of what they once were.” His gaze narrowed on me. “Relhok hangs on by a thread. True, your father wields an iron fist, and his human sacrifices serve as timely feedings that keep the dwellers in check for now, but how long can that continue before his people revolt? Or the dwellers grow hungry for more?”

He wasn’t saying anything I hadn’t thought of before, or even anything I hadn’t said to my father, trying to persuade him to change his ways.

Tebald continued, “But here Lagonia stands. We’re surviving in these walls. My legacy will continue. If only one royal house is still standing when the eclipse lifts, it will be mine. Be assured of that.” He nodded resolutely, a fanatical light gleaming in his eyes. I supposed there had to be a bit of the fanatical in anyone determined to survive the eclipse. “The question, Fowler, is whether you will be part of this house . . . if your legacy will live on.”

The threat was subtle. Join him or perish. And there was only one way to join him that he would accept. We stared at each other for a long while.

“You don’t want me to marry your daughter,” I said quietly, thinking not only of me in that moment but of her, too. I could never love her, and she would know that soon.

Even though I had been half out of my mind with fever when she visited me, I knew enough of the princess already. Maris was a coddled girl, childlike and with no awareness, no fear or respect for the reality of this world. I couldn’t be with someone like that. She would sense that I wasn’t truly with her even when we were together. There would always be someone else there, a ghost hovering between us. A girl with stars in her eyes, full of dreams that didn’t belong in this world. Maris would come to hate me for that.