“You have avoided my presence for weeks now. For months, in fact. You have gone out of your way to create distance between us, ever since—” My teeth dig into my bottom lip, containing the rest of my words.
“Since?” he prompts.
Since you kissed me. Since I felt your body against mine, your hands in my hair, your fire in my blood. Since you held my pleasure in your callused palm, and I in turn stoked yours to a searing blaze I can still feel each time I close my eyes.
I want to say it, but embarrassment stills my tongue. My cheeks are burning. I tell myself it is from the heated air off the pools, not my deep mortification.
“Since Fyremas,” I finish weakly. “Since the battle. It’s like we are strangers again.”
He is silent for a long time, absorbing my words. I can see the toll they take on him as much as I can feel his tension through our bond. Eventually, he breaks eye contact and looks out over the bight, his gaze scanning beyond the bubbling pools to the dark blue sea.
“It’s not you I’m avoiding,” he says finally. “It’s everyone. Everything. The entire bloody kingdom. The entire bloody world, and all who inhabit it.”
He shakes his head, weariness stealing over his features. The shadows beneath his eyes are so deep, I ache to trace my fingertips over the hollows, to soothe them away. I knot my fingers together behind my back to keep from doing so.
“Since that night,” Penn continues in a rough voice, “all I do is replay my mistakes over and over again. Each failing. Each life lost. I cannot be in the present. Not while I am consumed by the past. Not while I am haunted by the future that still awaits.”
“Efnysien, you mean.” I chew my lip. “You want payback.”
“He will pay for his crimes, Rhya.”
“Soren has returned to the Northlands. Perhaps—”
“If Soren had succeeded in killing him, we would know about it by now. You think he would deny himself the opportunity to crow about his own success?” Penn shakes his head, still not looking at me. “No. Efnysien lives. Hidden away in his shadowy spires. Biding his time until he can strike at us again.”
Anxiety stirs deep in my gut. “I know you fear another attack on your people. I know that’s why you’ve been so fixated onstrengthening the wards. But, Penn, surely we are safe. At least for a time. Surely—”
“Safe?We are not safe.”
“But—”
“It’s not just the threat of Efnysien or his red army. Violence gathers in the air. With the Reavers to the southwest and the Frostlanders in the northeast, we are penned between two enemies eager for our demise.” His teeth grit together as his jaw ticks. “The blight worsens more each season. Our fields are failing, our crops dying on the vine. Between the increase in quakes and the influx of all manner of vile creatures coming down from the Cimmerians…we are vulnerable in ways we have never been before. Our troops are already stretched too thin as it is. I fear we are living in a house of cards. The faintest breeze will cast us into utter ruin.”
“This burden is not yours alone, Pendefyre.”
“No?” He scoffs bitterly.
“It does not need to be. Not if you would let me help you. Let me take a turn charging the wards.”
His response is instant. “Absolutely not.”
“Why?”
“You will not risk your life for my kingdom.”
“But you’ll risk yours?”
“As I said,” he retorts flatly, “it’smykingdom.”
I push aside the hurt those words—however accurate—births inside me. It is true, Caeldera is not my home. Not really. I do not have a home anymore. But his blunt reminder of that fact wounds me far more deeply than I will ever admit.
“Promise me,” he demands. “Promise me you won’t go anywhere near the wards. Promise me you won’t put yourself in undue jeopardy.”
“Fine,” I agree grudgingly. “Then put me to work some otherway. I am not entirely useless with a bow. Let me help Mabon with the perimeter patrols. Send me to the front lines with Jac and Cadogan, so I may—”
He cuts me off. “Out of the question.”
“Penn—”