weary, nearly emotionless musings and the anger of Rohan’s arrival that summer. Then he had seethed with fury and guilt, seeking refuge in words and begging Chay for the negation of them that would signal forgiveness. But now he was merely resigned, a man looking at himself from outside himself, knowing there was no excuse—and not seeking any.
“I enjoyed slaughtering Jastri’s army. I enjoyed raping Ianthe. I’m going to love destroying Roelstra. Look what that makes of me.”
“It makes you a man like all the rest of us,” Chay said quietly.
A tiny smile touched Rohan’s lips. “Do you know how galling that is for someone like me?”
“You don’t understand,” Chay said, struggling to find the words. It was so important that they be the right ones. “You’re like us, but unlike. Rohan, you’ve tried. You have the courage of your dreams—when most of us don’t even know how to dream. You know this isn’t the way to live, always at each other’s throats. Your people trust you because they know the sword goes against your nature. It takes greater courage to—”
“To live by it when it’s not of my choosing? Oh, but I chose it, you know. I’m doing a very good job of living with my sword in hand.”
“But when this is over, there’s something more for you—and for everyone else.”
“Yes, of course. I can force everyone to do things my way, and that will make me into another Roelstra. Nothing better than he, in spite of my pretensions. I’d do anything to butcher him and his army, and I’ve done everything to secure myself a son. But there’s one thing I have that he tried to get and failed. I have my very own Sunrunner, and I can use her without first binding her to me with dranath. She’s all mine, Chay, just as Andrade planned she’d be.” He lifted the goblet again, but this time did not drink. “What gives me the right?”
Chay heard emotions battling to break through the calm facade, and sent up a small whisper of thanks. A Rohan pretending detachment from himself was a Rohan who had nearly lost himself. “Power frightens you,” Chay murmured. “You use it, but you don’t feed off it the way Roelstra always has.”
“And that gives me the right? The fact that I’m a coward?”
“You’re not listening to me.” Chay leaned forward in his chair, speaking quickly so Rohan would not be able to withdraw again into the unfeeling shell. “With you, we’ve got a chance for life. You’re our only hope. Do you think I enjoy seeing my son at war? Gentle Goddess, he just turned twelve! What makes you different is that you hate all this! You fear power and you’re scared you won’t use it wisely—Sioned’s power, too, and she’s just like you! That makes you the prince and princess we need! Do you think she’s not frightened by her power?”
Rohan flinched. “I saw my son in her Fire. I can’t deny him—no matter who his mother is.”
“If Sioned has courage enough to take him, can’t you find enough to accept him as yours and hers, and not Ianthe’s?”
“Make believe he wasn’t born of rape?” Rohan shook his head bitterly, blond hair lank and dull in the lamplight. “It’s not just Ianthe. I’d be raising the grandson of the High Prince.”
“Rohan, it’s a baby! What fault can there be in an innocent child?”
“His birth!” Rohan threw the goblet across the tent and the wine made a crimson splash against the fabric, dripping down onto the carpet. “He should have been Sioned’s!”
“What makes you think he won’t be? Maarken is as much Lleyn’s now as he is Tobin’s and mine. Rohan, there’s no two people in the world who are solely responsible for what a child becomes. Ianthe may have the bearing of him, but he’ll be yours and Sioned’s to raise.”
Rohan lay back on the cot and stared up at the tent roof, silent for a long time. At last he sighed quietly and said, “You’re right about power. It terrifies me. Not the everyday kind princes have—deciding who has the better claim to grazing lands, ordering a new keep built or an old one replenished. It’s this kind of power, Chay—an army around me, power at my disposal just because I’m a prince and I decide who’s going to die. I’ll accept it as a responsibility, but I won’t believe that there’s anything about me that gives me the right. I’m not wise. I’m