to Maven,” I reply. “They’re still firm allies.” Due in no small part to me, since I killed his son in the arena during a failed execution. Of course, he was also trying to kill me. “They won’t surrender easily.”
Tiberias scoffs. “No one ever does.”
“And if you win the city?” I prod. If you survive?
“Then I think we can get Maven to the table.”
The name sends a jolt through me. At my collarbone, Maven’s brand smarts and warms, itching for attention.
“He won’t negotiate. He won’t surrender at all.” I feel sick at the thought of Maven’s empty eyes, his wicked smile. The cloying, unbreakable obsession plaguing us both. “There’s no point in it, Tiberias.”
He winces at my use of his full name, eyes sliding shut for a second. “That’s not why I want to see him.”
The implication is clear. “Oh.”
“I have to be sure,” he grinds out. “I asked the premier about whispers in his country. If there are any newbloods like Elara. Anyone who might be able to help him.”
“And?”
When I walked away from Tiberias in Corvium, he looked heartbroken, agonized. This is no different. Love has a way of cutting us apart like nothing else. “He didn’t think so,” he admits quietly. “But he said he would keep looking.”
I lay a hand on his arm, still damp with sweat. My fingers know his skin as well as my own by now. He feels like quicksand. If I linger too long, I won’t be able to escape.
I try to be gentle. “I doubt even Elara could fix him now. If he would let her.”
His flesh flares hot beneath my hand and I pull away, remembering myself. He doesn’t react. There’s nothing he can say, and nothing he has to say to me. I know what letting go of Maven Calore looks like.
The passage ahead of us dead-ends at a T-shaped junction, trailing off to the left and right. His rooms to one side, mine to the other. We stare at the wall in silence, neither of us daring to move.
Speaking to him feels like a dream, a painful one. Even so, I don’t want to wake up.
“How long?” I whisper.
He doesn’t look at me. “Davidson will be here in a week’s time. With another week to plan.” His throat bobs. “Not long.”
The last time I set foot in Harbor Bay, we were on the run. But my brother was alive. I wish I could go back to those days, hard as they were.
“I know what Evangeline’s trying to do,” Tiberias says suddenly, his voice thick with too many emotions to place.
I glance sidelong at him. “She’s not exactly subtle about it.”
He doesn’t return the gesture, continuing to stare at the wall in front of us. Never leaning one way or the other. “I wish there were some middle ground.”
A place where our names and our blood and our pasts don’t matter. A place without weight. A place that has never been and will never exist.
“Good night, Tiberias.”
Hissing, he clenches a fist. “I really need you to stop calling me that.”
And I really need you.
I turn and walk toward my room, my footsteps echoing and alone.
SEVENTEEN
Iris
Archeon will never be my home.
Not because of the location, the size of the city, the lack of shrines and temples, or even my bone-deep, inborn disdain for Nortans. None of those things weigh as much as the emptiness I feel without my family at my side.
It is a hole I try to fill with training, prayer, and my other queenly duties, boring as some of them might be. But all are necessary. The most important is to stay in fighting shape. It would be easy to soften in my apartments of silk and velvet, waited on by Red servants tripping over themselves to bring me anything I want. It was the same in the Lakelands, but I never wanted to find solace in food and alcohol the way I do here. My training sessions also set a good balance, so I don’t fall into the trap so many royals and nobles find themselves in. A trap Maven baits well. Many of the lords and ladies still supporting his reign seem more preoccupied with his parties and feasts than they are with the wolves at the door. Idiots.
Prayer is more difficult to come by in this godless country. There are no temples in Archeon that I know of, and the shrine I demanded be built for me here is small, a glorified closet tucked away