Leandros followed his cousin’s trail out of the building, then down its paths to a bench that overlooked the riotous sea. His boots crunched on the gravel as he approached, signaling his presence. Rhea didn’t look at him, not even when he sat beside her.
He waited. She would speak when she was ready. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her expression shift occasionally, saw her jaw grind as she chewed on anger. Most animals out in the wild viewed eye contact as an act of aggression; Leandros avoided Rhea’s gaze now, instead staring out at the stormy sea.
Finally, Rhea asked, “What were you thinking?”
Her voice cracked like a whip, unfamiliar in its intensity. It made Leandros forget himself and look her way, eyes wide. He knew she’d been angry — angry at him, even — but he’d never seen her so angry that she forgot herself. “I apologize if I surprised you in there,” he said, choosing his words carefully, “But that wasn’t going well. I had to make the gamble.”
“We’re Nochdvors. We do not gamble.” Rhea looked down her nose at him as she spoke, lighting the kindling of Leandros’ own frayed temper.
“Did you have a better plan, then? Pray, enlighten me, because it seemed like you were faltering fast. You cannot do that, Rhea. You can’t fight with them, and you certainly can’t lose. This may not be a perfect solution, but it’ll keep them from cutting us out — and I know you know that, otherwise you wouldn’t have vouched for me the way that you did.”
“Stop talking to me like I’m a child, Leandros. I’m your Queen, now.”
Leandros sighed. “It’s because you’re Queen that I’m saying any of this. You, Rhea, cannot fight with Unity. The Magistrates remember their grudges. If we’re unable to get your father back and it falls on you to lead—”
“Don’t say that.”
“I apologize,” Leandros began, “But my point stands. For as long as you lead, you’ll need to maintain your relationship with Unity. But I don’t matter the way that you do, which is why I can argue. You heard Magistrate Malong: they already have their grudges against me. What’s one more?”
“Unity can be just as dangerous as Orean,” Rhea warned.
“Only in the shadows,” Leandros said. “I plan on sticking to the light.”
“Whatever that means,” Rhea murmured. She crossed her legs, then uncrossed them, then crossed her arms and sighed. “Why did you lie about that woman? You told Magistrate Diomis that she was a normal orinian. You know that’s not true.”
“I do,” Leandros agreed. He knew what he and Rhea had seen, despite the scores of Alfheim officials, Unity representatives, and now Magistrates telling them that they’d been under pressure, that they must be in shock, that they misunderstood what they saw. “But the Magistrates will never believe us. If we want their help, we have to play their game — keep the truth to ourselves until the time is right, and in the meantime use Unity’s resources to learn as much as we can about that woman.”
Rhea made a complicated expression and wrapped her arms around herself. She let her guard down around Leandros, incrementally, but she was still hard to read. “I need a moment.”
Leandros shrugged and turned back to the view. The space where the sea and sky met was nearly indistinguishable, washed out and stormy-gray. It looked like it might rain later. Leandros understood how Rhea felt — he thought he did, at least. He felt much the same. Grief, rage, frustration — they coiled inside him like a magical ring of fire summoned by a red-eyed orinian, hot anger encircling his heart. It made it hard to think, hard to breathe. The truth was, all his talk back in the Magistrates’ Chambers was thoughtless, instinctual, born of a selfish desperation to do something.
It wasn’t until Rhea wiped her eyes that Leandros realized she’d been crying. He reached a hand toward her, then dropped it after a moment’s hesitation. “Rhea? Can I help?”
Rhea laughed and shook her head, the question only making the tears fall faster. She wiped at them with a frustrated groan. “Ugh, don’t look at me,” she said. “You’ve helped enough. You’re right, you know. I don’t know what I would’ve said if you hadn’t cut in. It makes me so angry. You make me angry, sometimes.”
Leandros stared at his cousin, shocked. “Me?”
“You’re supposed to be the one losing your temper! Not me! I’m supposed to be better at this than you.” She gestured at herself, then scrubbed at her eyes before continuing. “It’s silly, but I used to be so proud of it. You got to go on all these adventures, got to get away from Alfheim. Before everything happened with your father, you were the favorite. Everyone loved you. Even Egil loved you. But I hated you for it, I was so sick with envy. At least I could restrain myself, I thought. I could do one thing you couldn’t, fit in somewhere you never would: home.” Rhea looked at Leandros, her eyes and nose rimmed red. “I wish I could’ve talked to the Magistrates the way you did, but what comes next is one adventure I don’t envy you, Leandros. Are you sure about this?”
Leandros gave the question due consideration. It was the least Rhea deserved. The aftermath of the explosion had passed in a blur, as had the journey back to Alfheim. There, they’d been greeted with fear and anger thinly veiled under a guise of pity, and they hadn’t had even a moment to grieve before they’d been forced on a train to Gallontea to beg Unity for help. They were both exhausted and numb, which didn’t leave much room for surety.
Rhea, though, had grown a lot in the last few days. It hurt Leandros to have to see, so he turned away to stare back out at the sea. Around them, the island was civil and clean and quiet, unlike Illyon and unlike the city just over the bridge. The cobblestone paths were surrounded by fields of flowers, blue like shallow waters in a southern climate. The flowers swayed in the breeze, a breeze that raised bumps on Leandros’ skin. Leandros pointed out the flowers. “Those are called taurel. You remember the old children’s rhyme, don’t you? Taurel, taurel, old stone and coral.”
Rhea glanced dully at the flowers, unimpressed. “You will be Egil’s bane,” she said, quoting the last line of the rhyme.
“Mm. It’s about Unity.” Leandros pointed at the flowers, the bridge, and the rocky cliffside respectively. “The flowers are only known to grow here, on this Island.”
“You’re changing the subject.”
“I’m not. I only mean to say that they make me think of him. This may not surprise you, but that’s something I do often – I find myself wondering what he’d do or say, how he’d approach a situation. For him, decisions like these were painfully easy. He’d do what would help people, what was right. He never centered himself. I’m not so selfless, but I do believe that this is right.”
Rhea peeked at him past her long bangs. “But are you doing it to help my father, or yourself? Are you sure it isn’t just easier to take up some noble quest for revenge than to return home without him?”
“Rhea, this isn’t a game to me. It isn’t an adventure. I owe your father everything and I’m willing to give everything — even my life, if I must — to get him back,” Leandros said. “And yes, maybe it helps me, too. You and I grieve in different ways; every moment I don’t act is agony. I have to feel like I’m doing something to get him back, and I won’t get that in Alfheim.”
Something wavered in Rheamaren’s expression and for a moment, Leandros worried she might cry again. “You want to stay here.”
“Yes,” Leandros said, simply. “I do. You have a province to run, and someone needs to advocate for your father here.”
“Let someone else do it. Let Unity handle it. I don’t want to go back without you.”
“I can’t, Rhea.”
Rhea studied Leandros like she wanted to dissect him, like she could see through him to the turmoil beneath, stormy and gray like the sky. “If you repeat what I’m about to say to anyone, as your new Queen, I will have you executed.” She paused, took an even breath. “I’ve always looked up to you, even when I was angry with you. You know I have.”
Leandros hid a smile and nodded.
“I’ve lost my father, possibly for good, and next to him you’re the person I’m closest to in all the world. I won’t lose you, too.”
While Leandros didn’t doubt the honesty of the sentiment, he was surprised Rhea would express it. Was surprised at how sad it made him. Despite his words, they weren’t close. They certainly weren’t as close as they could – should – have been. “You won’t,” he promised. “Just trust that this is something I can do.”
“Promise you’ll be more careful with the Magistrates, first,” Rhea countered. As if afraid of being overheard, she looked back at the island, but there was no one there, no one around. Just the courthouse looming behind them, blotting out the sky. “Do you really think they have alternate motives, or was that a bluff?”
“It was only a bluff,” Leandros said, an easy lie for his cousin’s peace of mind.
Rhea nodded, her brow unknitting. “Either way, they won’t like you getting in their way.”
“Probably not,” Leandros agreed easily.
“It’s not that I doubt you, Leandros, but…Unity is one thing. That orinian woman? She’s something else entirely. You saw how dangerous she was. Even Unity might be in over their heads. You think one person, or even one team, can stop her? I don’t know that a whole army could. We don’t know who or what she is, and I don’t like the thought of you getting near her until we do.”
“But she has Amos,” Leandros reminded her as gently as he could.
Neither of them had said it out loud, but they knew what the woman was. The word was at the front of their minds: magic. Strange, fantastic things happened all the time, but nothing so impossible as what they saw that day in Illyon. That woman was magic, and magic wasn’t supposed to be real. Leandros knew that better than anyone — he saw what Egil’s stories turned into.
“I’m not planning on charging blindly after her. It’ll be alright,” Leandros said. At his cousin’s petulant expression, he laughed and leaned into her, just enough to knock shoulders. It was the most fond affection he’d ever shown her; the most shocking part was that she allowed it, even leaned into it. “Don’t worry, Rhea. Magistrates permitting, Unity and I will find that orinian and rescue your father, and I’ll be back in Alfheim before you begin to miss me.”
“Fool,” Rhea said through a smile, “I’ll miss you the moment I leave this place. Make sure you write with updates.”
“I will.”
Leandros let Rhea lead the way back, back to the courthouse and back into the chambers where the Magistrates waited. Afterward, Leandros escorted Rhea to the train station. They didn’t speak much on the journey, and when they reached their destination there were no tearful farewells. Alfheim guards stood by to escort their Queen; it wouldn’t do to show that sort of weakness in front of them, not so early into her reign.
All she said was, “Good luck, Captain Nochdvor. Bring my father back. Make Alfheim proud.”
Leandros responded with a low bow. As the train departed, he walked back to Unity’s Island alone, the anger in his heart settling like silt at the bottom of a river.
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