is that supposed to mean? How dare you spew that shit at me.”
Kamayin’s eyebrows shot up. “If anyone talked like that to my mothers, they’d spend the rest of their life in a dungeon.”
“Sloane’s known me since I was born,” Audric mumbled, tugging on his tunic. “She talks to me like that all the time.”
“Only when you deserve it.” Sloane folded her arms over her chest. “What do you mean, you can’t see them?”
“I mean…” He trailed off. How could he possibly explain that if he saw Evyline, and Fara, Ivaine, Maylis—Rielle’s devoted guards—it would be like losing her all over again? How could he describe the dark tide rising higher and higher inside him, blacking out all thought and feeling, leaving him numb, erased, irrelevant? Or his anger at Ludivine for her manipulations, his anger at Rielle for leaving him, his anger at himself for pushing her away?
And more than anything, his anger at Corien, which remained a distant thing, so titanic and boiling that his mind couldn’t fully grasp it and instead focused on the more immediate things, the smaller furies, the paler fears.
He looked at Sloane, helpless. “I can’t see them,” he said again in a whisper, and something changed on Sloane’s face. A softening. Slight, but real.
She nodded slowly, gave him a tight smile. “You should go back to sleep.” She came to him, straightened the collar of his tunic, glanced up at his dripping hair, and declared, with a kinder smile, “And you look terrible, it must be said. I’ll come again this afternoon to help you prepare for tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow?”
“We’re meeting with the queens—you, me, Ludivine, the Sun Guard, the royal advisers, and the Mazabatian high magisters. A war council.”
“And me,” said Kamayin, turning her wrists as her castings hummed. The spilled water evaporated; soon the bed was dry. “I’ll be there too.”
“I’m not meeting with anyone,” Audric said automatically. The very idea of facing all those watching eyes made him want to sleep forever.
“Fine, then. I suppose Merovec will remain on your throne, Corien will destroy us all, and meanwhile, you’ll be here, hiding in your bed, letting Miren’s reports go unread while she and everyone else at home live every day in confusion and fear.”
With that, Sloane marched out of the room, and when Kamayin quietly followed suit, a strange urge to be near another person flared inside Audric’s chest. He thought of calling for Ludivine and immediately decided against it.
“Wait, please,” he said.
Kamayin turned, watching him curiously.
“I am…” He paused, struggling to speak. He couldn’t bear to stand any longer and so sat on the rug, leaning back against the bed. “Could you sit with me for a while? If you have duties that need attending, I understand.”
“I’m a princess,” she said, not unkindly, “not a physician or one of your servants. Besides, we hardly know each other.”
“I know.”
“Wouldn’t you rather Lady Ludivine sat with you?”
He couldn’t keep the darkness from his voice. “No. I don’t want to see her just now.”
Kamayin nodded. “I always worry she’s poking around in my head.”
“A reasonable fear.”
“But you still love her.”
“Of course.”
Kamayin blew out a breath. Then she sat down next to him and hugged her knees to her chest. “It’s really terrible, what’s happening. What may happen. To all of us, I mean.”
Audric leaned his head back against the bedpost. “Yes.”
“I’ve been reading all about the Angelic Wars with my friend, Zuka. To prepare, you know. I don’t skip past the grisly bits. I read everything. I’m a bit obsessive about it. I’ve never seen a war.”
“I’m sorry that you may have to.”
Kamayin was quiet for a moment. Then, more softly, she said, “It’s also terrible, what’s happened to you. If I were you, my love gone and my home taken from me, I’d not get out of bed for an entire year. At the very least. My mothers’ advisers would have to drag me out, kicking and screaming.”
“And if they casted water at you while you slept?”
“They wouldn’t dare,” she said matter-of-factly. “They would be too afraid to throw anything at me, and rightly so.”
Audric smiled a little and said nothing. He didn’t feel words were required of him. It was a relief, sitting quietly beside someone who seemed content to do all the talking. Someone who understood the reason for his grief but did not feel it herself, or ask him to explain it.
He slept, and when he awoke, stiff on the floor, it was dark, and Kamayin was gone, but she