Tempest (15 page)

Chapter 17

“Care to explain this afternoon?” a voice asked.

I knew without looking it was Cadeyrn. Not long after I’d faced off with the wyver, we’d camped for the night. I now sat on a cot under the stars, talking quietly with Daegan while Maeve finished eating the rations we’d been given by Reenah. Oran lay at my feet while Lochlen was decidedly avoiding me. The dragon and I were long overdue for a talk.

I looked up, my eyes meeting the angry gaze of the Sadeemian prince.

“There isn’t much to explain,” I answered.

Cadeyrn glanced at Daegan and Maeve.

“Go,” he ordered.

They both looked at me, and I nodded.

“Should we take Oran?” Maeve asked.

I shook my head, and Daegan and Maeve both disappeared into the night, walking toward the hasty fires and torches thrown up by the Sadeemian guard. Cadeyrn took Daegan’s place across from me, folding his large frame onto the cot before leaning over, his hands on his knees, a silver pendant hanging from his neck. I stared at it rather than at his flashing eyes.

“You challenged your king while traveling with a party of Sadeemian soldiers,” he fumed.

The pendant was as strange a design as the tattoo I often caught glimpses of on Cadeyrn’s chest. An intricate woven design of three knots.

Cadeyrn’s Adam’s apple moved as he swallowed. “Do you understand what you did?” he asked.

I glared at the pendant. There was something about Cadeyrn that made it hard for me to look him in the eye.

“I challenged my king’s supremacy,” I responded.

Cadeyrn inhaled. “You did so while with a Sadeemian guard,” he repeated. “You do realize he could see that as a threat?”

The pendant was silver, the metal work beautiful. It shone as if the prince polished it often. Three silver knots.

“Are you afraid of him?” I asked.

The question threw him. “What?” Cadeyrn asked. “Of your king?”

I shrugged. “Raemon will get his war. He wants your father’s throne. You’ll discover when we reach the coast that it won’t matter if I challenged him. It won’t matter in the least because our king has already declared war on Sadeemia. You just don’t know it yet.”

“And still,” Cadeyrn said, “you challenged your king while in the company of people I am sworn to protect. I have nothing against your vendetta, I even respect it. Nevertheless, as much as I pity your plight, my people come first. Do you understand?”

I didn’t answer him. I reached for the swinging pendant instead, letting it fall in the palm of my hand. Three silver knots. Cadeyrn froze.

“What does it mean?” I asked.

Pulling it from my grasp, Cadeyrn shoved it into his tunic.

“Don’t do anything like you did today while amongst my people. Understand?” he ordered.

I finally looked up, my eyes meeting his.

“Three knots,” I said. “I’ve seen that before. On a damaged Henderonian armoire I had in my room. I looked it up because it fascinated me. Two knots stand for love. Three for family.”

Cadeyrn’s eyes flashed. His long hair was down around his shoulders, and his white, sand-stained tunic was splayed open at the chest. The pendant kept falling out of his shirt, but he didn’t put it back in again. Three knots.

Cadeyrn stood.

“Never again, Medeisian. Understand?”

I nodded, and he moved around me. My back was to him when I cleared my throat.

“Raemon killed him. He used the wyvers, used the magic he’s forbidden his people to track me down, and he killed Kye. Did you know he doesn’t know I’m a girl? Did you know that I almost hung as a boy named Sax. Two weeks after that, Kye—Raemon’s
son
—knelt before a group of rebels and took the brand of the scribe and the brand of the mage, despite not having magic and never having studied scribery. He did that for us. And now ... now I’m doing this for
him.
”

There was silence. I thought for a moment Cadeyrn had left, but then he exhaled, the sound long and suffering.

“You are young,” he said. “Tragedy ages us, yes, but in the long run, you are still naïve in so many ways. Love can be more dangerous than any weapon. It tears a person apart, it builds him up, and sometimes it completely destroys him. Most of all, it blinds him. You challenge a king, but do you challenge him because you are in pain? Or do you challenge him because you care about your people?”

I stiffened.

“You loved once, did you not?” I asked.

Cadeyrn laughed, the sound harsh rather than humorous. “My consort speaks too much.”

I glanced over my shoulder, my eyes finding Cadeyrn’s swinging pendant once more.

“You loved once, did you not?” I asked him again firmly.

“I did,” the prince answered after a moment.

He leaned down unexpectedly, his knee landing in the hard sand at my feet. His fingers went to my chin and lifted my face to his, lifted it away from the pendant.

“I wouldn’t tell you how dangerous love is if I hadn’t been there. You are young. Don’t let grief make you rash.”

I felt the tears, and I didn’t fight them. My chin trembled.

“I loved him,” I whispered. “I loved him so much it hurts, but I love my people, too. I challenged my king because I watched him burn the only mother I’ve ever known alive because she bore the mark of the mage. I watched him hang innocent people. I watched good warriors die, and I bathed the face of my deceased lover. I’m not rash, Your Highness. I’m tired … tired of losing people I care about. I’m not sure a heart can survive being broken as much as mine has. I will never be whole again.”

Cadeyrn’s face searched mine a moment, and then he nodded as if he’d come to some unspoken conclusion. He released my chin.

“Love and war. They don’t go together, Aean Brirg.”

Aean Brirg.
Little bird.
I stared at him.

“You don’t love your people?” I asked him.

He stood. “I am one of their rulers. I command an entire army. I send men off to war to die. If I grieved every death, my army would collapse, and our country would fall. Love doesn’t belong in war.”

Turning, he started to walk away from me.

“The knots,” I called out. “What do they mean?”

Cadeyrn paused only long enough to answer.

“It stands for myself, my wife, and my son.”

Chapter 18

The next day we reached the coast. We topped a sandstone cliff and stood on the edge, our faces to the ocean in the distance. I’d never seen an ocean, had only read about them. No words could fully describe the rolling blue-green water, the white caps as the waves broke, and the smell of salt on the breeze. Seagulls dove, their calls loud, and weirdly peaceful. There was sand and rock, but the sand below was different than the one we were leaving. Whiter, softer looking.

“By the gods,” Maeve breathed from next to me, her long, dark hair lifting in the breeze. We’d stepped out of the Ardus’ strange magical boundary, and wind circled around us, cool and refreshing.

“The Sea of Rollinthia,” I whispered.

Daegan looked down at me. “Is that what it’s called?”

Maeve lifted her hands to the sky. “I don’t care what it’s called. It looks like the Great Veil!”

“The Great Veil?” Reenah asked.

The consort had begun walking closer and closer to our group over the last couple of days. She seemed fascinated by us, or maybe she was simply spying. I hadn’t made great friends with the Sadeemian prince. If anything, I’d angered him. And yet, every time I glimpsed him that day, I thought about the pendant. Three knots.

I looked down at my wrists.

“We all miss him,” Lochlen said suddenly from behind me as Maeve explained the Great Veil to Reenah. The Great Veil was the home of our gods, the great beyond, a wonderful place we went after death. I wondered if Kye was there.

My gaze met Lochlen’s. “I’m sorry,” I told him, moving back so that I stood next to his massive head. Lochlen still carried supplies for the Sadeemians during the day, his draconic back taking some of the burden off the remaining sand equus. I ran my hand over his gold scales, and he closed his eyes.

“The rebels need you, Drastona. Losing Kye was a great blow—”

I cut him off. “I know,” I said. “I’m ready now.”

Lochlen looked at me. “Are you?”

For the first time since I’d met him, I shared an intimate moment with Lochlen. Laying my head against his, I ignored the smoke that rose up from his nostrils. His scales felt cool against my face, and I kissed them.

“I’m not okay,” I whispered, running my fingers down his jaw, “but some of the best leaders are broken ones.”

I stepped back. Lochlen bared his teeth, and I knew in his own way he was smiling.

“You took down a wyver on your own,” he said, amused.

I looked away, my cheeks flushed. “It was rash of me.”

“It was incredible,” Daegan defended.

Maeve nodded in agreement, but she didn’t look at us. Her eyes were on the ocean, her cheeks turning pink from the wind.

“Your eyes look like the ocean,” Maeve said suddenly.

Oran pushed at my leg with his snout. “She’s right,” the wolf agreed.

I’d forgotten about my eyes. No one had mentioned them since we’d first entered the desert.

“So they are still changed?” I asked.

Lochlen stared at me. “They have remained blue-green this entire time, Drastona.”

My gaze moved over them. “Really?”

Reenah looked confused. “Your eyes are not originally this color, no?” she asked.

I shook my head. “I suppose not.”

Maeve glanced back at me. “It really suits you,” she said, her tone wistful.

I moved to her side and leaned in close. “How are you doing, Maeve?”

A tear slid unchecked down her face. “I loved him,” she murmured.

I put an arm around Maeve’s shoulder and held her. Other than our marked skin, Kye was the one connection we shared. We’d both loved the same man. Her love for Kye had been a different kind of love than what I’d shared with him, but she’d loved him all the same. I was beginning to learn that love came in many forms, that sometimes it swept a person away while for others it simmered a while, unrequited.

At first, Maeve stiffened in my embrace, but slowly she relaxed, her body settling into mine. She was taller than me, and it made the hug awkward. Laughing, she swiped at her cheeks.

“So small to be so mighty,” Maeve teased.

Daegan grunted. “One day in the Great Veil, I will thank Kye and Brennus.” We all looked at him, and he grinned. “After all, they did leave me all the women.”

Maeve choked before laughing, the laughter wild and mad. It was the kind of fanatical laughter that followed a good cry, the kind that said “everything is going to be okay”.

I grinned. “Come,” I commanded, my voice full of mock sternness.

The Sadeemians had begun to descend the cliff, traveling along a rough road cut into the side. We all followed, although I hung back a moment, my eyes on the Ardus.

“I love you, Kye,” I whispered into the wind.

Maybe it was wishful thinking, but when the wind swept my face, it felt like Kye’s hand. I wasn’t saying good-bye to Kye. I was carrying his memory with me. Unfortunately, in that moment, I felt like I was saying good-bye to his spirit and it smashed my already battered heart.

Above me, a falcon called. I shaded my eyes as Ari circled before coming to land on a nearby rock, her feathers lifting in the breeze.

“I hate seagulls,” she muttered, her beady eyes on the ocean.

I laughed. “Why?”

She looked at me. “Because they think they are funny, but they are not.”

“Ah,” I said. “The jester of the birds. It is good that they try though.”

Ari preened her feathers. “Very bad jesters,” she murmured.

I glanced out over the ocean.

“King Raemon is angry. The rebels have had to go into hiding in the mountains. Refugees are flooding the forest,” Ari said suddenly.

I turned to her. “Feras?” I asked.

She didn’t wait for me to elaborate. “The dragon rex knows about Kye, and he grieves. All hope is on you now,” she answered. “As for Raemon, he received your message from the wyvers. Anyone who comes across the boy, Sax, is to bring him in unharmed. The king wants your head.”

I smiled at the bird. “He’ll die first,” I warned.

Ari watched me a moment. “There will be war. The king’s insanity has made him brash.”

I stared out over the ocean. “And the Greemallian princess?” I asked.

“She is still in danger,” Ari answered. “According to the castle mice, the king has a spy within the Sadeemian army.”

My head shot up. “Not possible.”

“Well,” Ari said slowly, “mice aren’t exactly dependable.”

“A spy,” I breathed.

“Blayne Dragern,” a male voice said.

I straightened, my eyes going to the figure approaching me on the cliff.

“The falcon, she comes with news of a spy?” Cadeyrn asked.

I nodded. “And you think it could be the man I wrote the missive to?”

Cadeyrn continued to stare at the bird. “It’s possible. He’s my mother’s brother and a shrewd man. My mother was the daughter of King Brahn of New Hope. It is a small country, but it is rich in many resources, especially silk.”

I stared at him, at his strange gold-streaked mahogany hair. “Is that why you don’t look entirely Sadeemian?” I asked.

A faint smile crossed Cadeyrn’s face as his eyes met mine. “No royal is of one blood. Our marriages are made simply to strengthen alliances. But you? Is there a reason you don’t look entirely Medeisian?”

I turned my head, my heart pounding. I knew he meant my eyes. Why had they changed in the desert? Did it have something to do with my magic?

“Come,” the prince said, ignoring my unease. “The convoy leaves us, and your people are lagging. They wait on you. Thank the falcon for me. I know now to stay alert.”

The prince left then, and I looked at Ari.

“Be watchful, Phoenix,” she said, her large wings spreading. In an instant she was gone, her cries drowned out by the seagulls.

“What did the fish say to the fisherman?” one of the seagulls called out.

“I’ve heard that one before,” another seagull answered.

The one telling the joke ignored him. “I don’t want to be hooked,” the seagull cried out before laughing hysterically.

I couldn’t help it, I chuckled. Ari was right; seagulls told really bad jokes.