CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

THE PRICE OF LOVE

Khine almost died.

I only learned about this the next morning, when Cho came bursting into my room, startling the servants and the healer, who had come to check my wounds. “You promised you’d let us go home!” Cho screamed. The guards rushed forward to detain him.

I stopped them with one hand before turning back to Cho. “I made no such promise,” I said. “I told you I would consider it if it was safe. You know how it’s been since we left Kaggawa’s estate.”

I might as well have been talking to a deaf man. “I warned you,” Cho snarled. “I warned you about what he could do.”

“I didn’t ask him to.”

“But you knew! You knew the risk of having him beside you! And now he’s lying back there dying because you were too busy with your own shit to realize what other people are willing to sacrifice for you!”

“What does he mean?” I asked, turning to the healer.

“I’m sorry?”

“His brother, the one your chief surgeon was taking care of. How is he?”

A shadow crossed the healer’s face. “He may not make it.”

I pulled myself up, nearly ripping the bandages off my arm. “What are you talking about?”

“Please calm down, Lady Talyien,” the healer replied. “It isn’t as bad as it sounds. At least—not yet. We just haven’t gone into his treatment long enough to make an assumption one way or another. He did lose much blood, and I believe he has a long road of recovery ahead of him in order to use that arm again.”

“Cho—” I began in an attempt to explain.

He tightened his face. “What’s he to you, anyway? You’re a queen. He’s a con man, scum from Shang Azi who can’t even hold a job longer than a few months at best. Yet you’re clinging to him like he’s some gallant knight. You’re just using him, aren’t you? He’s going to die here like some dog because he’s too stubborn to listen and you’re too stubborn to care!” He pounded his fists on the side of the mattress. The guards came for him now, cuffing him as he turned his anger on them. They dragged him through the door.

“Zarojo pests,” the healer said as soon as they were gone. “They’re crawling through the whole castle, now.” But the impact of Cho’s words remained. Perhaps I might have known how to ignore them before—I have been accused of worse, have weathered critics that didn’t know where to draw the line. Now his words only reopened those feelings from yesterday, reflected back by the state of my bruised and bloody hands.

I had always known, of course, that men were expected to die for me. Warlord San’s little show hinged around reminding people of that fact. A warlord for whom no one would die was as useless as a rotten tooth. Khine had given me a gift, one my own father wouldn’t have squandered. Even now, I could hear him whispering in my ear. Proclaim him a hero. Appoint him as your personal guard. And if he should be close to death, grant him land, maybe even a village to call his own. Make his funeral into a national ceremony and dare your warlords to defy what people have seen with their own eyes.

Mere thoughts stirred by a lifetime of drilling by a man who saw opportunity everywhere he looked. Sometimes one needed to make ruthless decisions for the greater good. If my goals were the only things that mattered to me, then Khine’s circumstance—while unfortunate—was necessary.

It was the anguish in Cho’s voice that bore down on me, that cut deep enough to hurt. A commander out on the battlefield, seeing his captain arrive with reinforcements, might’ve been filled with warmth and relief. Not dread. Raging against iron bars because I couldn’t save him—and if Agos and Huan hadn’t come in time, they would still be sweeping parts of him from the arena grounds this morning—these were not feelings someone like me should have. I was starting to understand, perhaps for the first time in my life, that the path between my mind and my heart was not as clear as I had once believed. Khine’s death might suit my purposes very well, but I couldn’t even think about it without a surge of panic. They were feelings unbecoming for someone in my position. Cho was right. If Khine lived, he had to go.

The healer wouldn’t allow me to leave my bed, so I spent the next two days shifting between herb-induced sleep and staring up at the ceiling, trying to find the words I could use to get Khine to listen to me. Sometime during the third morning, they stopped forcing tea infusions down my throat and told me I could exercise my legs—at least as far as to the window and then back. Against the servants’ protest, I immediately hobbled out of the door to the next room.

A greying, wrinkled man met me at once. “I thought you’d be here once they let you,” he said. He glanced at the figure on the bed. “The worst is over. He’ll live.”

“And the arm?”

“That’s up to him. If he tries to exercise and move it, and not let it wither…”

“I would like to speak with him alone.”

For a moment, I was afraid he would say that Khine’s health did not allow for that. But the chief surgeon bowed and stepped outside, closing the door behind him. I locked it.

Khine was awake and staring right at me. There was a sickly tinge to his skin, its usual glow replaced by an unnatural paleness—proof enough of his brush with death. There were black hollows under his eyes and dark bruises along his torso and down the side of his face. His injured arm was in a sling, streaked with blood.

I pretended that the sight of his injuries didn’t make me want to weep and sat on the edge of the bed. He scooted over to make room for me. “You look well,” he said, cracked lips breaking into a grin.

I looked away. “Well, you know, I nearly died.”

“I hear that can be painful.”

“Tell me about it. Speaking of which, how was it having a dragon for a dance partner?”

“It was lovely. We had a wonderful time. You should’ve been there. They had snacks.”

“It’s good to know you seem like the sort who doesn’t get killed by dragons easily.”

“No, fortunately enough it seems. Women are a different story altogether.”

The smile on my face faded. I took in the shadows on his, his ghost-like complexion. I didn’t even want to touch him. I was afraid his skin would be as cold as my father’s the day he died, a thought so repulsive I physically recoiled from it.

“You shouldn’t have done that,” I said, the anger suddenly thick in my voice. “It was unnecessary.”

“I wanted to do it,” Khine grumbled.

“You wanted to die? Just like back in the Sougen?”

He was quiet, staring at the ceiling.

“Damn you, Lamang. I thought you were stronger than that.”

“I thought you were, too.”

I felt my skin crawl. “What the hell are you saying?”

“I’m…”

“What are you saying, Lamang?”

He took a deep breath. “I’ve seen you change the last few months. Slipping slowly, staring too long at nothing—and you don’t even see it, I don’t think. You’ve given up, haven’t you? Deep inside? Why are you worried about me? You’re the one with a son to live for.”

“Don’t start,” I said in a low voice. “You don’t know anything.”

“I know enough,” he whispered. “I once thought that if you could peer out from behind that queen’s mask, the weight would fall off your shoulders just like that. I even thought that if I got you to see what was happening around you, things would change for the better. An arrogant fool, pretending I knew of the world when I didn’t have a fucking clue. I thought that if I could give this back to you, give you back who you are—”

“You’re right. You don’t know anything,” I repeated, my voice rising. “You don’t know the decisions I’m faced with every day, and you’re certainly not in the position to make them for me. Your feelings are going to get you killed.”

Khine pulled away. “So they will,” he conceded. I think he found the idea amusing. “There are worse things in the world to die for.”

“This isn’t a joke,” I hissed. “Cho wants you to come home with him. He’s been asking me to let you go since the Sougen. If I knew it would come to this—”

“I have no intention of leaving. If Cho is harassing you about it, tell him to stop. He can go home if he wants. Let me get better and I’ll send him back myself.”

“I don’t want your service, damn you.”

“I thought you did. I thought that’s why I was here.”

“Not like this!” I hissed. “If this is the road you’ll take, then I have to forbid it.”

Khine pressed his lips together as the humour left him. “I don’t need your permission.”

“You…” I held my breath. “What do you think will happen over time? That all you have to do is stay a little longer and then maybe someday I’d love you back?”

His face contorted. I knew it wasn’t fair for me to use something I knew would hurt. But I was never the sort of person who pulled punches. If it got him to see sense a lot faster, I was willing to strike deeper. If it saved his life, I was willing to make him bleed. I had taken worse upon myself.

“I thought I made it all clear back in the Sougen,” Khine whispered. “I know the troubles that ail you, Tali. It was never my intention to add to them.”

“Yet you are,” I snapped. “You just did. Did you do this to impress me, Lamang? Because I am very much impressed—by your foolishness. I expected more from a man as intelligent as you.”

“I thought queens are used to that sort of thing.”

“That’s what I’ve been telling myself the past few days. But I can’t do it, Khine. I can’t watch you do this to yourself anymore.”

“Tali—”

“I will not give you hope,” I murmured. “Whatever we are, whatever you think we have…”

Khine’s eyes softened. “I know you aren’t free to love. I’ve known that from the beginning.” His voice dropped an octave. “When I fell for you, I fought it, believe me. I realized it not long after you last saw your husband in Shang Azi, and I threw myself at my work with Lo Bahn to distract myself. I thought I could still be that man you first met—the one who couldn’t care less who you were or what you did with your life. But the more I struggled to keep away from you, the more I convinced myself you are not the kind of woman who should ever cross my mind twice, the worse it got. You are everything I hate about this world, Queen Talyien. You remind me of how helpless I am, how infuriatingly pointless my life is in all of this, how much I detest people with as much power as you have. And yet none of it mattered. I felt like I would drown if I couldn’t be near you.”

His words left my ears ringing. “You’re looking for Jia. You visited Dar Aso as often as you did because you wanted a glimpse of her and you found that with me.”

“Don’t bring her into this. You don’t know her. This is…”

“Different? Lamang…you’re in love with an idea, a shadow.”

“So what if I am? I have no desire to possess you, Tali. I would not dream of stepping between you and your husband.”

I started to laugh. “Gods. If we’re going down that route, then let me tell you in turn: you don’t know anything about me and Rayyel, either.”

“You loved him. You still do.”

“You think you know me better than I know myself? I can love again. You know this.” I spoke without meeting his eyes, because I didn’t think I could bear to see a spark of—of anything in them. “You may deny it, but a part of you is watching, waiting, to see how this unfolds. My father raised me to read people. To look at them and judge them, to see what they want, what they hope to get out of me. You think I don’t see how you look at me? Do you think I’m foolish enough to believe that you’re some saint, completely void of desire? Lo Bahn, at least, didn’t hide it. Agos doesn’t. You—I still don’t know what con you’re trying to pull. Are you just waiting for a reward? Is that it?”

“That’s—” His face contorted. “That’s a low blow, Tali.”

“It’s only a blow if it’s the truth,” I said. “My father would have me use it, use you, to accomplish my goals. Maybe this is what makes me a weak queen, but I won’t. I do care about you, Lamang—enough not to want your head on a spike for me. I will not pave the way to my throne on a sea of corpses.” I began to walk away.

I heard him sit up in alarm. “What are you going to do?” he gasped.

“I intend to leave without you. By the time you can stand up and walk through these doors, I’ll be long gone.”

Khine laughed. “I’m just going to find you again. You should know to give up by now.”

“But first,” I continued, ignoring him, “I’m going to pay Agos a visit. Don’t be a martyr, Lamang. You’re not the only one who got hurt trying to play hero.”

“Tali,” he growled. It was a warning.

I hesitated at the lock.

There are worse things…

“Tali—!”

I undid it and walked out, slamming the door behind me.

My entire body was screaming at me, telling me I was making a mistake, that I had to turn back now before I lost Khine forever.

But to lose him was exactly what I needed. I had seen what chasing after a man did to my life, and I had no desire to repeat my mistakes. More than that, though—what I felt that day in San’s arena, seeing Khine walk straight to what would’ve been his death, terrified me more than I could explain. Nothing in all the years of me pining for Rayyel could rival the gaping hole that moment left in me. One thing was achingly clear: Khine didn’t belong in my world. In my world, love was a drawn sword. You could use it to cut others or you could use it to cut yourself.

I supposed I was doing both when I found myself in Agos’s room that night. He was sitting on the edge of his bed, wrapping a bandage around his knee. “Princess,” he greeted me easily. “Lamang is still alive? Damn kid’s harder to kill than he looks. What are you—”

I locked the door, trembling, heart and soul begging me to reconsider. I shouldn’t be here. I should be in that other room, to hell with mistakes and opening my heart again. But then what would that do? A dead woman—I reminded myself that I had so very little left. I wouldn’t risk Khine, either, not for a moment’s reprieve.

I heard Agos draw a sharp breath.

“Princess…” he began again.

I walked towards him and pressed my lips over his.

Silence filled the room as our lips locked. It was brief—so brief it felt like a butterfly’s touch. His hands came up to stroke my back before he flipped me onto the bed, a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. “Look,” he said. “If you’re just doing this to get someone out of your system…”

“Just shut up, Agos.”

He grew serious. “You’re a married woman.”

“Now you notice?”

He grazed my cheek with his hand. I could hear his heart beating. “We’ve made this mistake before.”

“I can’t turn back time.”

“We both know the man you really want is in the other room. It’s not too late. Princess—”

“If I can use my power for one good thing, for once, then I will.” I stared into his eyes. “Kiss me,” I ordered. I wasn’t giving him room to back out.

He knew that, too. He didn’t even flinch as he obeyed. “Is that all?” he asked, after he pulled away.

“You know very well that’s not all.”

He tugged his shirt loose. I reached up to help him take it off.

A memory from that first night returned, unbidden. I pushed it away. I was a woman now, too old to really be confused about why I did the things I did. Too old to start on something and then just let it fall through. Things were different from what I remembered—the tension, the uncertainty, was gone. I knew what I wanted out of it this time around, knew that I wanted to cross a bridge from which there was no turning back. I allowed myself to explore his body with my fingers while his tongue did the same. There is not a lot of room for thought when you haven’t been with a man in over five years, and even less so when that man was someone as restrained as Rayyel. I found myself responding easily to Agos’s touch, which made the entire thing less difficult than I thought it would be.

And it helped that restraint was not a word Agos was familiar with. He grabbed my hips and pulled himself up to undress me, hands tearing at my robe so he could nip at my bare shoulder. He traced a line from it and down my chest before drawing his attention to my bandages.

Between the haze and the heat of our bodies, I was almost afraid he would hesitate. Instead, his lips quirked into a smile.

“What’s so amusing?” I asked.

“Nothing.” He pushed my robes aside and began to run his hands down my belly. He paused at the scarred flesh there. I wondered if he was comparing me with the girl he’d had a long, long time ago, the one with the smoother skin and a heart that had only once been broken. But before I could ever really start to doubt myself, he grazed his teeth along my belly button and down, his fingers working their way into my inner thighs. I reached down to clasp his shoulders, stopping him before he could get any further.

“Now?” he asked.

I nodded.

“But—”

“Now,” I said, through gritted teeth.

He stroked himself to stiffness and went in. No pain, no resistance—only a fullness, a burning need to be lost in…something. I didn’t love Agos, not that way, but it was enough that he wanted me. Enough that I found warmth in his arms, that I knew exactly what we were in each other’s lives. I gasped as he pushed deeper and found a rhythm. Against the candlelight, sweat gathered over the muscles of his arms and his chest.

No room for thought, now. Not anymore. I was lost in the moment and the heat of his mouth. As he climaxed, I felt my own insides shudder around him. It was an unexpected response, and he saw it, too. Before he could say anything about it, I pulled him into my arms and hid my face in the crook of his shoulder. If there was anything on my expression there—an absence, or longing for another—I didn’t want him to see.

He fell into the bed beside me. “And now,” I murmured against his racing chest, “everything they say about me is true.”

“Princess…”

“Don’t start,” I said. “I don’t want to hear it.” I turned my head away from him and stared at the wall. “Tomorrow. We head out tomorrow night before Qun catches on to what Warlord San has done.”

“I suppose that means we won’t be getting any soldiers.”

I shook my head. “If I manage to fix things back at court, then I get Kyo-orashi’s full support.”

“And how do you plan to deal with him?” he whispered into my ear. “Your husband.”

“Kill him between horses? I don’t know.” I turned to look at him. “You’re talkative all of a sudden.”

“Let me have a drink and a few minutes. I’ll be less talkative again.”

“Agos—”

He cleared his throat. “Is Lamang even allowed to leave? Last I heard, he was at death’s door. I’m not looking forward to dragging a corpse around, just so you know.”

“It’s just going to be the two of us.”

“Really? He agreed to that?”

I didn’t reply. The smile on his face faded.

“I see,” Agos grumbled, realizing what I had just done. What I was still doing. “You argued with him. You’re not just trying to get him out of your system—you want him out of your life.”

“I can’t fall in love again, Agos,” I whispered. “Not after everything. Look at how it is. Look what almost happened to him. He can still…live a good life, away from all of this. Away from me. It’s too late for us, but I can still save him.”

“And falling in love with this man scares you enough that it’s worth making this mistake all over again?”

I didn’t reply. Eventually, I mumbled an apology.

“You said that the last time. I should really work on my performance.” Agos pressed his lips against my shoulder. I turned to glance back at him. After a moment’s hesitation, he kissed me again—softly.

I was wrong, at least, about something. There could be comfort in need, between rustling sheets and flickering shadows. We measured time with each ragged breath, rising higher and higher until the blessed darkness came, leaving only the bittersweet tinge of my sins in my mouth.

But long into the night, I stayed awake and thought of my father and the things he had done, the things he felt like he had to do, and wondered how he coped. You built walls around your heart or you drowned in the harsh truths. I didn’t know if Khine would ever forgive me, and I supposed it didn’t matter. It was enough to know that I could never forgive myself.