The Bridge Kingdom (The Bridge Kingdom #1)(68)

Hand going to his weapon, Aren turned to see Jor coming around the corner, his face filled with amusement. “I hate to break up your picnic, Your Majesties, but dawn is upon us, and we need to be on our way.”

As if to punctuate his words, horns sounded out over the water announcing ships on the horizon. “Does this change things for you?” he asked Lara, helping her to her feet.

She closed her eyes, her face clenching for a moment as though she were in pain, then she opened them and nodded. “It changes everything.”

Hope, and something else, something uniquely reserved for her, flooded his heart and, taking Lara by the hand, Aren led her back to the boats at a run.





24





Lara





Everything had changed.

And nothing.

It wasn’t lust. Lara wasn’t so weak as to abandon a lifetime of planning and preparation for the sake of a man too handsome and charming for his own good. If that had been the sum of it, she’d have sated her curiosity, then carried on with as clear a conscience as any spy could have. No, it was her admiration for Aren that was becoming increasingly problematic, as was her grief over what would happen to Ithicana once she was through with it.

Lara and her sisters had been taught to despise Ithicana for a reason. Their purpose had been to infiltrate the defenses of a nation so that it could, at best, be conquered. At worst, be destroyed. An easy thing to envision when the enemy had been nothing more to her than masked demons using their might to keep her people oppressed.

But now they had faces. And names. And families.

All of whom were annually attacked by kingdoms and pirates alike. Perhaps the Ithicanians were cruel and merciless, but now Lara found she couldn’t fault them for that. They did what they needed to survive, and with every piece of information she stored away about them, her guilt swelled, because she knew Ithicana wouldn’t survive her. While that knowledge might have once brought her satisfaction, it was now nothing but an inescapable fact that seemed destined to plague her every waking moment with self-loathing.

Her actions on Aela Island had accomplished what she’d feared impossible: earning Aren’s trust. And not just his trust, but that of all the soldiers who’d fought in the battle. Their expressions in her presence had gone from distrustful to respectful, and as one, they’d stopped questioning her right to go where she pleased. A right she’d instantly abused. No one had questioned her when she’d stepped away from the healers and the injured after the battle. No one had stopped her or followed her when she’d walked to the base of the bridge pier, where she’d found the nearly invisible entrance, which she marked with a few carefully placed stones that would mean nothing to the Ithicanians and everything to the Maridrinian soldiers when they took Aela Island.

Inside the pier she’d also hidden three of the horns she stolen off corpses on the beach, ready to misdirect Ithicanian reinforcements when the time was right. A strategy that Aren had practically explained to her in his attempts to coax her away from the injured and into a boat. Which he’d only done because he believed she was coming to love them the way he did.

Do not falter, she silently chanted, eyes fixed on the sky as she floated her still aching body in the hot spring. Do not fail.

Biting at a hangnail on her thumb, Lara considered what she’d learned. Considered whether it was enough for Maridrina to take Ithicana. Enough to conquer the unconquerable, and enough to give Maridrina the bridge that would be its salvation.

It was enough.

All that was left was to get the details of her invasion plan to Serin and her father, then for her to fake her death and escape Midwatch and Ithicana and, hopefully, her father’s inevitable assassins. Where she’d go, she didn’t know. To Harendell, perhaps. Maybe once the dust had settled, she’d try to find her sisters. Make a life for herself. Though try as she might, she couldn’t envision what a life beyond Ithicana might look like. A life without him.

Lara’s eyes stung, and in a flurry of motion, she climbed out of the spring, reaching for the towel sitting on the rock. Over a week had passed since the attack on Aela, and yet she hadn’t taken one step further to putting her plan into motion. She’d told herself it was because the muscle she’d torn in her shoulder during the battle needed time to heal before she would be strong enough to make her escape. But her heart told her that she was delaying for other reasons. Reasons that put her whole mission in jeopardy.

But tonight was the night.

Aren had sent word from the barracks via Eli that there was going to be a storm this evening, and that he planned to dine with her. And if he was with her, that meant Taryn, who still insisted on sleeping outside her door, would take a break from her bodyguard duties. A double dose of a sleeping narcotic in Aren’s wine after dinner, and then she’d have the whole night in his bedchamber to work with no fear of interruptions.

Already clouds were rolling in, the wind blowing, for even in the calm season, the Tempest Seas were not without teeth. Lara worked methodically on her appearance, drying her hair, then using a hot iron to create coils that hung down her back. She darkened her eyes with kohl and powders until they smoldered, and stained her lips a pale pink. She chose a dress she hadn’t worn before: dark purple, the silk scandalously sheer, her body revealed beneath whenever she passed in front of a light. On her ears, she wore black diamonds, and on her wrist, the clever bracelet that concealed the vials of narcotics.