Kingsbane

So instead she lay awake, beneath a carpet of stars and a waxing moon, and listened to Remy breathe against her. Her eyes burned from lack of sleep; she had not yet recovered from what she had done in Karlaine. Her mind moved slowly, as if clogged with mud, and her castings still buzzed around her hands, like a faint itch she could not satisfy.

And, of course, because nothing was easy, it was time for her monthly bleeding. She was bloated and aching, and while Jessamyn had offered her a soft fabric stopper from her bag of supplies, it was her last one, and Eliana had refused to take it, choosing to use rags instead.

On the other side of Remy, Harkan shifted in his sleep and let out a snore. Eliana watched him fondly—the softness of his face, how even in sleep he seemed to curl protectively close around Remy.

She carefully slipped out from Remy’s arms and shifted him into Harkan’s. At the movement, Harkan’s eyes opened a crack.

“Don’t worry,” she whispered to him. “I’ve just got to take a piss.”

Which she did, far enough away from camp to enjoy at least some privacy. Then she wandered back toward where the others slept—Remy and Harkan, Gerren and Patrik, six Red Crown soldiers, and four of the refugees who had come with them to Karlaine: two men, two women. Rogan, Darby, Oraia, Catilla. Patrik had urged them to stay with their families—after all, that was why they had returned to Meridian—but after seeing Eliana bring Remy back from death, they had refused to leave her. They had appointed themselves as her guard, it seemed, which left Eliana even more uncomfortable than her bleeding.

“They mean well,” Zahra murmured, appearing as a column of darkness at her side, so insubstantial that it would have been easy to mistake her for a trick of the eye. It would take her some time, she had said, to regain her full strength after being trapped in the blightbox for weeks. That was the word for it, she had explained. She had known of the mechanisms’ existence, but had been fortunate enough to avoid encounters with them until that horrible confrontation with Sarash in Annerkilak.

“Them meaning well is not the problem,” Eliana replied, crouching at a small brook to wash her hands. Though she desperately wanted to be alone, she didn’t have the heart to demand the wraith leave her.

“The problem is that you fear disappointing them,” Zahra said.

“The problem is that when they look at me, they don’t see me. They see the Sun Queen.”

Zahra was a mere glimmer in the night air. “The sooner you accept that these are not two separate things—Eliana and Sun Queen—the happier you will be, and the easier you will find it to exist in your own skin.”

“I expect that’s true.”

“But musings on identity and magic are not what you want to think about at the moment,” Zahra guessed, sounding amused.

Eliana shot her a glance. “Rummaging about in my mind, are you?”

“Only glancing.”

“Then you must know what I’m wondering. Why do you think Simon lied about the blightbox? He must have known what it was, and yet he acted as though he didn’t when we brought you back from the Nest.”

“I’ve thought about that,” Zahra replied, “and I’ve tried to explore his mind to find the answer, but…”

“But you can’t, because his mind’s a horrible mess you can’t sort out.”

“Essentially.”

Eliana sighed, looking away into the night. “Maybe it’s simply that he didn’t want to distract me. He wanted to keep me focused on his mission, and not on trying to free you.”

“Or he didn’t want to raise your hopes. Blightmetals are nearly impossible to shatter.”

“Or he didn’t want me to waste my power on such an effort.”

“That is highly likely,” Zahra conceded.

Eliana crossed her arms over her chest and shook her head. For a long moment, she was silent.

Then she said quietly, “I should hate him, I think, or at least distrust him. But I don’t. Does that make me a fool?”

“You’re not a fool. You’re a young woman, and you’re tired and lonely, and your heart holds a thousand different aches. And though I have little love for him myself and can’t read what’s inside his mind, one does not need to be a wraith to see certain things that are true.”

A shift of air brushed across Eliana’s brow, a soft gathering of tension in the night’s fabric: Zahra’s kiss. “Go to him,” the wraith said gently. “He will comfort you, and that is enough for now.”

Then Zahra was gone, and Eliana walked on alone. She avoided Harkan and Remy, made note of Jessamyn on watch at the western perimeter, and searched the night’s gloom for Simon.

He sat at the eastern perimeter, at the base of a stubby pine—legs sprawled out, revolver at his left hip, sword resting on a bed of pine needles at his side.

From a few paces away, Eliana watched him, unsure how to approach him. Once, she would have marched over and said something to nettle him so that he would nettle her back, and their exchanged barbs would liven her, clear her fogged mind and distract her from her cramping.

But now she felt newly shy around him. How naked he had looked in the wake of that thread, how newly made and unlike himself, all the hard, cruel lines of his face gone soft.

“I see you lurking,” he said, not turning to address her. “Do you need something?”

She rearranged her features into indifference and gingerly settled herself on the ground beside him. She looked out across the grassy fields that shimmered silver-black in the moonlight, from the edge of their woods to the mountains on the horizon.

“I don’t need anything,” she replied. “It’s just that I can’t sleep.”

“Nightmares?”

“Not this time. I’m afraid that Remy’s wound will open as I sleep, and that he’ll die and stay dead.”

She felt Simon glance at her. “I understand that fear. I suppose it would do no good to reassure you, yet again, that both Patrik and I inspected his abdomen, and there is no danger of that happening?”

“You suppose correctly. I don’t trust your eyes in this matter.” She held up her palms. Moonlight shone dully along the chains of her castings. “I don’t trust these either, or what they did.”

“What you did, Eliana, was real and true. Remy’s alive because of it, and…”

He fell silent, and when she finally dared to look at him, she realized at once that it had been a foolish thing to do, for moonlight suited him far too well, painting his ruined skin silver and gilding each gnarled scar. It had been a long time since she had examined him in a moment of calm. She noticed things she hadn’t realized she had missed—his long lashes, his full bottom lip, the weary lines around his mouth and eyes. How desperately he needed a shave and how utterly his unkemptness endeared him to her.