FOR MOST OF THE DAY, Wil slept fitfully. She dreamed that she made it back to Arrod, and that she climbed the castle wall to enter through her bedroom window. Only all the windows had been replaced by mirrors draped in black gossamer, and the gossamer ensnared her until she was drowning.
The dead were not allowed to return.
By the time she managed to free herself from the tangles of her nightmare, it was evening. Her leg still ached, though it was more manageable.
Limping to keep her weight on her good leg, she made her way to the chamber’s bath. She bathed carefully, and changed into the white satin tunic and trousers that were left folded by the sink, presumably by Loom.
She didn’t bother with her gloves or her boots. With all the sand and stone, there was precious little out here to be her victim. For that reason alone, she liked this place. Not that she would say as much aloud.
The castle was quiet and still, and Wil was grateful there was no one to witness the pathetic way she hobbled down the steps, trying to keep her weight off her bad leg.
She found Loom by a fire he’d built along the shore, turning caught fish over the flames.
“Hey,” he said, glancing as she positioned herself beside him. “I was going to come up in a little bit and see if you were hungry.”
“Starved,” she admitted. She had the vague recollection that he’d been to her room and set a plate of toast and fruit on the nightstand, but she’d been too tired to reach for it.
He handed her a plate of freshly cooked fish. The plate, like the glass from earlier, was finely etched crystal. “How’s your leg? I’d tell you to stay off it, but I’d have better luck telling the clouds not to cover the sun.”
“Healing nicely,” Wil said. “You might have considered a career in medicine, rather than regicide.”
He laughed. “Why not aspire toward both?”
After she’d eaten, Wil rolled her satin trousers up past her knees and lay back and let the fleeting sunlight touch her as it wished. She kept her knee bent to protect the healing flesh from the sand, but it didn’t hurt nearly as much now.
“Land of eternal summers,” Loom said, and lay beside her.
She shielded her eyes with her hand and glanced at him but said nothing.
“People used to travel to the Southern Isles for leisure,” he went on. “It used to have many allies. The East, the ever-neutral West, and, yes, even the famously arrogant North. But my father is too proud for the good of his kingdom. Under his rule, the past two decades have seen us become hermits. Completely self-contained with growing poverty, all because he refuses for us to have any codependence. I used to think he just didn’t see it, but he does.”
Wil closed her eyes and angled her chin up toward the sunset. Shades of orange and red bloomed behind her eyelids. “Who can ever understand kings?” she muttered.
“This is going to be an ugly war,” he said. “And your kingdom will have more kills to boast when it’s through. I just hope it can end quickly.”
Your kingdom.
“What is it?” Loom asked. Wil was sure that she had not let her face betray any of her worrying, but Loom was able to read her.
She heard him shift in the sand, most assuredly watching her. She draped her arm over her eyes, shielding them from the sun, and now, from him. “I think it’s foolish of you to hang any hopes on me,” she said. “I think that if you want to save your kingdom, you should come up with a better plan. One that employs logic and strength, not hope. Hope is not a weapon.”
“Now I really wonder what your story is,” Loom said. “If you think that hope isn’t a weapon. Everything is a weapon.”
“That’s weak logic,” Wil countered. “If everything were a weapon, we’d all be matched and the world would be a stalemate.”
“Not everyone is strong,” he said.
“I’m beginning to think you just like to argue.” She sighed, arching her back in a stretch against the warm sand.
She heard footsteps shuffling toward them, Ada’s contented giggling.
“Save any dinner for us?” Zay asked. Her presence sent a cold dread through Wil’s blood. She didn’t fear that Zay would harm her again—that knife throw had been justified, and doubtful such luck from an amateur fighter could be repeated. But no, it was something else. Wil was thinking of what Loom had told her, about Zay screaming that Wil might kill her son and sell the crystal shards of him to pay her way. She had believed herself a monster from the day she turned the vendor to ruby, and she had gone to such lengths to hide it, but Zay saw right through her.
Loom sat up, and Wil raised her arm from her eyes to watch him.
Zay grabbed at a tuft of his hair and kissed his forehead before dropping beside him. He clapped a hand around her shoulder and squeezed her against him. Their easy affection made Wil bristle.
“Ada.” Zay patted her lap, and her little boy settled into the embrace. She gave him a hug so tight that he struggled to free himself, reaching for the plate. He was so used to being adored that he thought nothing of turning down affection; there was plenty of love for him to squander. Right now, he was only interested in food.
Zay didn’t offer Wil a glance, but that lack of acknowledgment was also pointed, making it evident that she and Loom had come to some sort of understanding on this matter.
Under the relentless Southern heat, Loom eased out of his shirt, and Wil rolled her eyes away. She paid little mind to the conversation Zay and Loom lapsed into. They were speaking in Lavean now—something to do with witches and the mountain palace.
Wil scarcely cared what they had to say, until she heard the word Loom used to address Zay.
“I keep saying your temper will be the death of you one day, ansuh.”
My wife.
She opened her eyes at that, and propped herself on her elbows.
And now she saw the proof on his upper left arm: two overlapping moons, accented in shimmering silver. A perfect match for Zay’s.
Loom saw the recognition in her eyes. “Ah,” he said. “I knew you spoke Lavean. I was wondering if you’d ever let on.”
Her frustration only deepened at that.
“Then why”—she made her voice cool—“did you almost kiss me?”
Zay shoved Loom so hard he toppled sideways into the sand, prompting him to laugh.
Zay sneered at him, but then she laughed too. “Eternal hells. You really do have a lust for bad decisions,” she said.
Neither of them seemed inclined to offer any sort of explanation, so Wil nodded to the toddler in Zay’s lap and asked, “Is he yours, then?”
“Ada is nobody’s but mine.” Zay’s jaw clenched.
“All right,” Loom said to Zay. “You’ve had dinner. Isn’t it about time for you to go someplace that isn’t here?”
“Come on, Ada,” Zay said. “Wouldn’t want any of Loom’s life choices to influence you.” She rose to her feet, her son in tow, and left. But not before casting Wil a disdainful glower.
Once she was gone, Loom inched closer. In the fading light, his eyes seemed bigger and darker. But it was their sincerity that did Wil in over and again; the way he pleaded for her to believe every little word he said.
“It isn’t what you think,” he began. “Zay is the daughter of my father’s high guard. As a reward for her father’s loyalty, she was to be queen when I inherited the kingdom. We were promised to each other before we were born.”
Wil eyed him skeptically. “But she has a child. He isn’t yours?”
“He isn’t,” Loom said.
“But he must have a father,” Wil said. “Where is he?”
“The father lives outside Cannolay, in Lamponay. The slums,” Loom said. “He came to Zay’s father and asked for her hand in marriage and was laughed from the palace. Instead, our wedding was pushed up. We had no choice in the matter. We pretended Ada was mine, for appearance’s sake. But when I was exiled, my father wanted to keep him in the palace. So Zay told him the truth—that he was just a bastard. Given the bounty on my head, it would be unsafe for Ada if anyone believed he were my heir now.”
Wil lay back and stared at the graying sky. “She wanted out of the palace that badly?”
“She never cared about being queen,” he went on. “When I was banished from the kingdom, my father would have arranged for someone of her class to marry her and raise Ada as his own. But instead, she chose to follow me here. It’s no sparkling palace in a mountainside, but it’s home.”
“Don’t know why you bothered to keep it a secret,” Wil said. “You could have just told me so.”
“Says the girl who buries her own secrets deeper than the sand.” His smile was warm in the dying embers of daylight. “Don’t take anything snide she says to heart. Zay has had a difficult go of things. Life in a palace isn’t as easy as you’d suspect.”
“Oh no?” Wil raised an eyebrow. “It’s not all dress fittings and comportment?”
From Loom’s hesitant expression, he couldn’t decide if she was being serious. That made her smug. He couldn’t draw everything out of her, after all.