She stumbles to a halt, panting between smiles. Months of freedom are finally starting to show—there’s a healthy plumpness to her arms and face and a soft glow in her cheeks.
“We’ve been searching everywhere for you! Are you ready?”
My face morphs into something between a wince and a grin. “How angry is Dendera?”
Nessa shrugs. “She’ll be appeased once the mine is open.” She shoots an awkward bow at Theron and grabs my hand. “May I steal her away, Prince Theron?”
He brushes his thumb over the curve of my hip bone in a movement that sends a shiver up my skin. “Of course—”
But Nessa is already hauling me across the snow.
Conall and Garrigan meet us just inside the first street of the city, Conall with a glower, Garrigan with an amused smirk.
“You should have taken us with you,” Conall reprimands. He realizes who he’s reprimanding and clears his throat. “My queen.”
“She’s perfectly capable of taking care of herself,” Garrigan defends me. But at Conall’s glare he tries to hide his smirk behind a rather aggressive cough.
“That’s not the point.” Conall whips to me. “Henn hasn’t been training us for nothing.”
I almost repeat Garrigan’s words, almost lift my chakram for emphasis. But the lines of strain around Conall’s eyes make me tuck my chakram behind my back.
“I’m sorry I worried you,” I say. “I didn’t mean—”
“Where have you been?”
A trembling squeak catches in my throat as Dendera comes storming up the road.
“I leave you alone for one minute and you take off like—” She slams to a stop. I try to hide my chakram even farther behind my back, but it’s too late.
The look she gives me isn’t the furious glare I expected. It’s tired, drained, and as she closes the space between us, her forty-some years hang even heavier from her face.
“Meira,” she chastises.
I haven’t heard her, or Nessa, or anyone but Theron call me that in . . . months. It’s always “my queen” or “my lady.” Hearing it now is a burst of cold air in a stuffy room, and I gulp it in.
“I told you,” Dendera says, easing the chakram from my hand and passing it to Garrigan. “You don’t need this anymore. You are queen. You protect us in other ways.”
“I know.” I keep my jaw tight, my voice level. “But why can’t I be both?”
Dendera sighs the same sad, pitiful sigh she’s given me way too often these past three months. “The war is over,” she tells me, not for the first time, and probably not for the last. “Our people lived under war for too long—they need a serene ruler, not a warrior queen.”
It makes sense in my head. But it doesn’t make sense in my heart.
“You’re right, Duchess,” I lie. If I press too much, I’ll see the same expression I saw on her face a hundred times growing up—fear of failing. Just like with Theron and his scars, and Nessa too—if I catch her when she thinks no one is watching, her eyes become hollow and glassy. And when sleep brings her nightmares, she weeps so hard my heart aches.
As long as no one mentions the past or anything bad, we’re fine.
“Come.” Dendera claps her hands, all business again. “We’re late enough as it is.”
Meira
DENDERA TAKES US to a square that opens mere paces from the Tadil Mine. The buildings here stand whole and clean, paths swept clear of debris, cottages repaired. The families of the miners already deep in the Tadil pack the square along with Cordellan soldiers, most bouncing from foot to foot in an effort to keep warm. An open-air tent caps the entrance to the square, our first stop as we file in alongside tables littered with maps and calculations.
Sir and Alysson bow their heads in quiet discussion within the tent. Their focus shifts to me, a genuine smile crossing Alysson’s face, a sweep of analysis passing over Sir’s. They’re just as sharply dressed as Nessa and Dendera in their gowns—while traditional Winterian clothing for women consists of pleated, ivory, floor-length dresses, most of the men wear blue tunics and pants under lengths of white fabric that wrap in an X pattern around their torsos. It’s still strange to me to see Sir dressed in anything other than his battle gear, but he doesn’t even have a dagger at his hip. The threat is gone, our enemy dead.
“My queen.” Sir bows his head. My skin bristles at my title on his lips, one more thing I have yet to grow accustomed to. Sir, calling me “my queen.” Sir, my general. Sir, Mather’s father.
His name seizes me.
Mather, back in Jannuari, training the Winterian army. Mather, who hasn’t really talked to me since we sat on our horses side-by-side outside of Jannuari, before I fully took up the responsibilities of being queen, and he fully surrendered everything he thought he once was.
I’d hoped he just needed time to adjust—but it’s been three months since he’s said more than “Yes, my queen,” to me. I have no idea how to go about bridging the distance between us—I just keep telling myself, maybe foolishly, that when he’s ready, he’ll talk to me again.
Or maybe it has less to do with him no longer being king and more to do with Theron, who, even though our engagement has been dissolved, is still a permanent fixture in my life. For now, it’s easier not to think about Mather. To fake the mask, force the smile, and cover up the awfulness underneath.