83

I still felt distant from myself, unreal, like the events of the past few weeks had happened to someone else. How was it possible that I was standing safely in this room? How was it possible that the man who raised me had tried to steal the throne? That the duchess’ blade had been at my throat just a little while ago? And that just days before that, I’d been a hostage of the Fae queen, and before that, a relic in Draunar’s hoard?

I wasn’t sure how much time passed as I stood at the window. The sky turned golden with the dawn and the soup cooled to a lukewarm temperature in my bowl. I was about to give up, crawl onto the welcoming mattress and try to sleep, when finally, finally, the door opened.

I turned from the window.

Elias stepped over the threshold. The King of Frasia.

My husband.

In the privacy of our quarters, with his exhausted gaze meeting mine, the numbness finally cracked like ice inside me. I dropped the soup and barreled forward, threw my arms around his neck, and pulled him close to me. He hummed a low, surprised sound, then embraced me just as tightly. I didn’t care about the dirt, the sweat, or the blood still flecked on his skin. At least he’d lost his armor somewhere along the way. I buried my face in the side of his neck and inhaled deeply. He smelled like home.

“Elias,” I choked out. My throat was tight, and tears burned hot behind my eyes. This time, I didn’t try to hold them back. I let the sob tear itself from my throat as I slumped against him, trusting him to hold me up.

“I’m here,” he murmured. He kissed my temple and just held me, his strong arms wrapped around my body as grief and exhaustion poured out of me. It was a catharsis eased by the rhythmic, smoothing motion of his hands up and down my back.

Eventually, I cried myself out, and then pulled back and rubbed my eyes. “Sorry,” I murmured. “You must be exhausted.”

“Reyna,” he said. “I’ll always be here for you. No matter what.”

I took his face in my palms and looked at him. Really looked at him. I was trying to commit his face to memory again, the gold-flecked depths of his brown pupils, the crow’s feet at the corners of his eyelids, the stubble along his strong jawline.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry about your father.”

“He’s not—he wasn’t—my father.” Still, tears welled up in my eyes again. “You shouldn’t be sorry for what you had to do. He deserved it. He deserved worse, for everything he did to me, and for his treason.”

Elias said nothing. He just kept holding me close, his hands on my waist. He was patient while I gathered my thoughts.

“But even though he never really loved me… And was never truly my father…”

“He still raised you,” Elias said. “You can’t change that.”

I nodded. “It still hurts. His betrayal, his death—all of it. It just hurts.”

“I know,” he said.

He didn’t have to say anything more than that. I knew he knew. I knew he understood. I closed my eyes and leaned against him again.

“Come on,” he said warmly. “I smell terrible. Let me get cleaned up.”

“Mmf,” I mumbled. I didn’t want to let him go, but I didn’t put up too much of a fight when he unwrapped my arms and pulled me toward the ensuite bathroom. Inside, he stripped off his sweat-stained clothes, and then stepped into the tub of mostly clean water I’d left behind. It couldn’t be more than lukewarm now, but he still sighed in relief as he sank in and began to scrub the grime from his body.

“Here,” I said. “Let me.”

I pulled up a small stool behind him, guiding Elias to lean his head back against the edge of the tub. To my surprise, he didn’t resist. His eyes flickered and closed as he leaned further towards me. I wet his hair, then poured a small amount of shampoo into my palm, working it into a lather before I gently raked my fingers through dark locks. He groaned with pleasure as I did so, seeming to melt even deeper into the bathwater.

For a moment I worked in silence, massaging the shampoo into his scalp. Then I asked, “Are you all right? After everything?”

He sighed heavily.

“After the duchess?” I asked. “Are you okay?”

“It’s strange,” he said in a low, rumbling voice. “I didn’t know she was like that. So power-hungry. She’d always been controlling. Particular. But I never thought… I never thought she’d do anything like this.”

“Seems like Rodthar may have had something to do with that,” I said.

“Perhaps he encouraged it,” Elias said, “but no one could make my mother do anything she didn’t want to do.”

I gazed down at him, at his closed eyes, and the small furrow in his brow.

“I should’ve seen it coming,” Elias said. “I should’ve suspected it. How could I have been so blind? How could she have changed so much without me noticing anything?”

“She saw you becoming a leader,” I said. “No longer allowing her to lead from the shadows.”

“I guess that started from the Choice,” Elias said. “The first time I went against her wishes.”

“That was the first time?”

He nodded. I began to rinse the shampoo from his hair.

“I wonder sometimes if there was a way to pull my father out of the craziness,” Elias said. “We didn’t try. Mother said the only way forward was to kill him. That we’d lost him forever. I was so young.” The muscles in his jaw twitched. “I trusted her when she told me that was the only way. But when I went into the mountains, I felt crazy too. And yet I was able to emerge from it. You brought me back.”

I pressed my palms to his head and leaned down, kissing the crown of his head.

“I wonder if I could’ve done so for my father,” he murmured. “If we had just tried. I wonder now—if Mother wanted him dead. If she wanted me on the throne. I was young. Easy to manipulate.”