The Promised Queen (Forgotten Empires #3)- Jeffe Kennedy Page 0,57

we can destroy Anure’s power. If we can elude the wizards. If I can return the nobles to their lands. That’s a tremendous amount of uncertainty, Con.”

I filled in the condition she’d been too circumspect to say aloud. If Rhéiane hasn’t lost her mind. “And all of that is if we don’t all die and slide into the sea by tomorrow,” I countered grimly.

She laughed, though I hadn’t meant it as a joke. “An excellent point.”

“A critical point. If we manage all of that, then yes, I’ll go home to Oriel—just to see if anything is even left of the land, maybe help Rhéiane get her footing—but then I’ll come back here, to Calanthe. Home,” I added belatedly, but not quickly enough to deceive her.

“When did you start thinking of Calanthe as home?” she challenged, those bicolored eyes so brilliant in their ability to see through me. “Be honest, Con. You don’t. And you shouldn’t need to pretend you do. You’d never set foot on My island until a few weeks ago. This is not a place that demands your fealty. Oriel does. We both know that.”

I struggled to find the argument to counter that. “My home is with you.”

She smiled, but it wobbled with heartbreak. “That’s a lovely sentiment, but you and I are not people who can indulge sentiment. If you gave up Oriel for Me, you would be forever second place here on Calanthe, a land that isn’t Yours. And in time any affection you have for Me would turn bitter and resentful. I don’t think I could bear that.”

“Can’t we just savor the moment then?” I pressed. “We’re alive now, together now.”

She managed a small smile. “I thought that’s what we had been doing.”

“All right then.”

“But Con—no more talk of marriage, please. Or being a team, or of a future that might never come to be. I can’t—” She firmed her jaw, lifting it and drawing her cloak of regal indifference around her. Not that it fooled me, not anymore.

“What can’t you do, Lia?” I asked quietly, the burr in my voice harsh. “Love me?”

Her eyes flashed as she glanced at me, quickly gone again as she focused on the path ahead. And didn’t answer. She didn’t have to.

11

Con looked so wounded by what I’d said that I felt as bad as if I’d kicked Vesno on his tender muzzle. I didn’t want to be cruel, but I wasn’t as strong as I’d once been. Or maybe I’d never been truly strong—I’d just naively believed a brittle shell of poise and intimidating makeup made me invincible. Then layer by layer, I’d lost all of it. First Con had blasted into my life and cracked open the shell of ice I’d used to protect my heart—all of his passion, ferocity, and unlikely charm thawing me in a way I’d never thought possible—and then Yekpehr had happened. The events there had stripped me to the core. Ripped from Calanthe, from everything I’d thought valuable about myself, I’d been reduced to nothing.

And Con had come for me. He’d saved me at the risk of everything. No one should be that noble. He saw himself as some ignorant brute, but he was the best of men. Not perfect, but a shining example of selflessness. A true hero who I now believed could save the world from Anure’s death grip, and restore the forgotten empires, including and especially Oriel. He owed it to his land and his birthright. He owed me nothing.

Even before the wizards broke me on their altar to knowledge, greed, and power, I’d suspected I’d never be a good custodian of Con’s heart. That night before the Battle at Cradysica, I’d stopped him from declaring his love without fully understanding my own impulse. I had known, without consciously knowing, that we could never last. We’d been thrust together by dire circumstance, and now even more dire events had cut those bonds.

Con could be free of me, and should be. Maybe that girl in the other time line, in that world where Anure never happened, maybe she could’ve loved Con as he deserved. But the woman I’d become, the icy queen and incipient monster, she didn’t have it in her to love anyone. I’d become that hollowed-out tree, with no real life in me. Your kind aren’t truly human at all, thus You lack the capability to feel emotion.

Even my connection to Calanthe had changed. Where Her glorious voice once succored me, a strange and awful hole gnawed away,