The Girl of Fire and Thorns Complete Collection (103 page)

I chuckle. “You are a wise man.”

“Funny, I tell my wife that exact thing all the time!”

“What does this have to do with Hector?”

He sobers. “When I married Aracely, my father gave up trying to groom me to be a conde and turned instead to his next son, my brother Ronin.” Pain flashes across his features, so aching and fresh that I almost recoil. Softly he says, “Ronin died in the war with Invierne. On the day you defeated their sorcerers. He went with Conde Eduardo to defend the southern front and was cut down with an arrow to the chest.”

“Oh.” Hector lost a brother in the war. Barely seven months ago. And I never knew.
Why didn’t he tell me?
“I’m so sorry,” I choke out.

“So that left Hector,” he said. “To inherit Ventierra.”

I gape at him.

Felix says, “My parents wrote to him, begging him to come home.
I
wrote to him. His king was dead, after all, and Hector has always been the best of us. Born to lead, to rule. He wrote back. Said he would come home as soon as possible. That he missed Ventierra more than words could say, that he would resign his position as commander of the Royal Guard and give up his seat on the Quorum. But something happened.”

It feels like someone is standing on my shoulders, and I’m frozen with the weight of it.

I
happened. I changed his mind. I remember the day well. He came into my office and laid a letter of resignation on my desk. I asked him to reconsider, to become my own personal guard.

“I had no idea,” I whisper. “None at all.” And more recently, after visiting Storm in the tower, he asked me to dismiss him. He thought he had failed me. But maybe, just maybe, he also wanted desperately to go home.

“He gave up a countship for you, Majesty. And the home he loves. I’ve always wondered why. But now I understand.”

I open my mouth to protest but change my mind.

Is it possible? Could Hector love me as much as I love him? Is it cruel of me to wish that he would, when there is no chance for us?
Something
made him kiss me in the sewer tunnel, at a time when we should have been fleeing.

After too long a silence, I say, “Hector is naturally loyal, with a strong sense of duty. He’ll stay in whatever position he feels will be in best service to his country.” Would he, though? If I gave him the choice, would he stay with me?

“You know him well,” he says.

“No one knows Hector well.”

He says something else, but I don’t hear because my Godstone leaps. I gasp.

“Your Majesty?”

“I’m not sure . . .” The stone tingles, and then I feel the slightest brush across my belly, like butterfly wings. “My Godstone! It . . .” The butterfly wings coalesce into something more solid, poking, prodding, and like ghost fingers, they reach painlessly into my stomach, wrap around my Godstone, and
pull
. “Oh,” I breathe. “Oh, my.”

“Should I fetch Hector?”

“No. It’s all right.” The sensation eases, but it’s still there, tugging gently. Tugging in a very specific direction. “I think I’ve found it. The way.” I turn to him. “I know which way to go.”

He gives me a skeptical look. I don’t blame him. It seems ridiculous. Maybe I’ve imagined it.

But I close my eyes, let the tugging sensation guide me. It’s faint but sure. I pivot slightly to my right, lining up my toes with the exact direction. I raise my arm and point into the endless watery horizon.

“That way.”

He shakes his head, resigned. “Of course it’s that way. Right into the wind.” He turns toward his crew, cupping his hands to his mouth. “Beat to windward!”

I return to quarters, knowing it’s best to keep out of the way as they work to adjust our course. The
Aracely
is a warren of ropes and hooks and beams and swinging things, but I seem to have an instinct for it all, and I navigate it with ease. And so much glorious wood! Always kept in polish. Never have I seen so much wood in one place, for it is hard to come by in my desert.

Mara is alone, sitting on the huge bed, her satchel opened and spread out before her. She looks up when I enter.

“I found it, Mara. The
zafira
. My Godstone sensed it.”

“That’s wonderful news!” she says, closing up the satchel. “I felt us shift course, but I didn’t know why.”

“I’m sorry we had to sell your saffron,” I say, eyeing the leather in her hands. “You took such care to keep it from getting wet, even in the sewer.”

She laughs. “It wasn’t the saffron I was worried about. Something much more valuable.”

“Oh?”

Hector bursts in, and we look up, surprised.

“Felix said you gave him a new course,” he says.

“Yes! Hector, I sensed the way. It called to me. Just like the
Blasphemy
said.”

He takes a deep breath, whether from relief or trepidation I cannot tell. “That’s good,” he says.

“It’s good,” I agree. I turn to Mara and say, “There’s something I’d like to discuss with Hector—”

“I’ll go visit Storm,” she says. “He’ll hate that.” She gathers up her satchel, and at my curious look, she mouths, “Later.”

After she shuts the door behind her, I turn to face my guard. Neither of us moves to close the distance.

He leans against his brother’s desk and crosses his ankles. His fingers thrum against the beveled edge. It’s the tiniest break in his usual composure, but it’s enough to make me study him closely. He stares wide-eyed at his brother’s rug as if it contains all the wisdom of the world. He’s nervous, I realize. Why?

Ah. Our kiss.
He thinks I want to talk about it.

I clear my throat. “Felix told me . . .” This is going to be harder than I thought. But I can’t bear to think that he might be with me against his will. I plop onto the bed, lean my head against the bed post, and try again. “After Alejandro died, you could have inherited Ventierra.”

The words come out wrong, like I’m accusing him of something. They hang in the air between us, and he is silent for so long that I worry I’ve offended him.

At last he says, “I chose not to.”

My fingers dig into the silk bedspread as I softly ask, “And do you regret that choice?”

He hesitates, which tells me all I need to know. “It was the right choice,” he says.

“That’s not what I asked.”

“No,” he agrees, “it’s not.”

I steel myself, force steadiness into my voice. “Hector, I’m so glad you stayed. There is no one I trust the way I trust you. And . . . and whose company I enjoy as much.” Surely my heart is in my eyes, saying all the things I really shouldn’t. “But when this is over, after we’ve found the
zafira,
I’m going to give you the option to go home. To be free of me. So think about it.”

His mouth parts and his eyebrows lift. After a long moment, he says, “I thought you might marry me to your sister and pack me off to Orovalle. I’m quite the bargaining piece, or so Ximena tells me.” I’m certain I don’t imagine the edge of bitterness in his voice.

I sigh, too loudly. When I see Ximena next, we will have a very long talk about . . . a lot of things. Carefully I say, “It
is
important that we find a good match for you.” Now my hands are clenched so tightly in my lap that my knuckles hurt. “But only in consultation with your own feelings on the matter. I know what it’s like to not be consulted. I could never do that to you.”

He nods, though he looks everywhere but at me. “It would be very nice to see home again,” he muses, staring out one of the starboard-side portholes. Toward Ventierra.

I smile sadly. “So you already know, then, what your choice will be?”

“No. But I thank you for giving it to me.”

The sun drops below the horizon. Mara and I are alone in Captain Felix’s quarters.

“Storm said something you should know about,” she says as she unravels my braid.

“Oh?” I say, feeling my muscles slacken as she works.

“He said that the gatekeeper would sense you coming. That he would test you.”

The relaxation disappears and I sit straight up. “What does that mean?”

“I don’t know. But it makes sense that the gate would have a gatekeeper, yes?”

“Maybe so.” I frown, wishing I had thought to bring my own copy of the
Blasphemy
to study. Ximena was the one who packed it into the queen’s carriage. I never even saw it. Perhaps she
meant
for me never to see it.

“Father Alentín said something about a test, about proving myself worthy, but nothing about a gatekeeper.”

She pulls the brush through my hair. “Maybe you should pay Storm a visit. Ask him about it.”

“I will, yes. But right now I want to know what’s in that spice satchel. Mara, what could you possibly be carrying that is more valuable than saffron?”

She moves around to face me. Her eyes sparkle. “Just a little something I brought for us.”

I watch, wildly curious, as she retrieves it and lays it out on the bed. She reaches into a pocket and pulls out a clay figurine. It’s ochre-colored, shaped like a naked woman from the knees up. She’s voluptuous, and she crosses her arms over her stomach, as if protecting it.

Mara pulls off its head; it comes uncorked with a popping sound. She tips it, and a few tiny grains spill into her palm.

“Lady’s shroud,” she says. “I have two bottles, one for each of us. Had to sneak it past Ximena. I knew she wouldn’t look in my spice satchel.”

At my confused look, she sighs. “Ximena never told you about lady’s shroud, did she?”

“No.” There are many things Ximena never told me about.

“Take eight to ten of these seeds once per day. No more. Chew them well and swallow.” She pours them back inside the bottle and stoppers it, then shoves it into my hand. “It will keep you from getting pregnant.”

My hand closes around the bottle like a fist. “Oh,” I breathe.

“You don’t have to take it, of course. But I just thought, well, we were going on this journey, and there was so much talk of splitting off, and I knew Hector would be with us, and sometimes the look you two share could liquefy sand, and . . . I wasn’t too presumptuous, was I?”

“No. Well, I don’t know.” I stare at the figurine. She is lush in my hands. Naked. Shameless.

Mara’s voice is softer when she says, “You could have a first time with someone you trust and love.”

I look up at her, startled. So she knows how I feel. If she knows, then Ximena assuredly does too. “He might not have me,” I admit.

“Elisa, he wants you desperately.”

Warmth floods my neck. “I think he regrets staying on as my guard. He may leave after we find the
zafira
. To go home. And my sister, Crown Princess Alodia, has expressed an interest in betrothal with him. So, you see, it would go nowhere. There is no future for us.”

She moves the satchel aside and sits next to me on the bed. “But you love him,” she says, and at her simple acceptance, the last of my barriers crumbles away.

“Oh, Mara, I do. I love everything about him. I love that he cares so much about honor and duty. I love how, when he’s working hardest to mask his feelings, they’re actually leaking out all over the place. I love the way his hair curls when it gets wet, his slightly crooked smile, the way he smells. When he laughs, I feel it in my toes.” I let my forehead drop onto her shoulder. “I sound like an idiot.”

“Yes,” she says, and I hear the smile in her voice. “You do.”

“He kissed me. In the sewer.”

“Holy God,” she says. “That was very bad timing.”

“The worst.”

“And very unlike Hector.”

“Very unlike him, yes.”

“I really think you should start taking the lady’s shroud. Just in case.”

I straighten, take a deep breath, look calculatingly at the figurine in my hand. “Ximena wanted him to promise not to form an attachment with me.”

She wraps an arm around me and hugs me tight. “Ximena is a wonderful woman, and she loves you very much, but she is a meddlesome fishwife.”

I choke on surprise and laughter.

“You have to be the one to decide, Elisa. Not Ximena. What do
you
want?”

“I want Hector.” There. I’ve said it.

“Even if it means you can only have him for a short time?”

“I don’t know.”

“Fair enough.” She scoots behind me and reaches for my hair to put it in its sleeping braid. We sway a little as the wind picks up and rocks the ship. It’s comforting, like being rocked in a cradle.

“You said you brought two,” I say. “One for each of us.”

Her fingers on my hair still. “Yes. Belén and I . . . He is so handsome. And capable. Quiet and fiery, both at once.” She sighs. “We’ve both changed a lot. He’s scarred too, now. So maybe he won’t mind that I . . . even after everything that happened between us, I thought . . . maybe . . .”

“Just in case,” I say.

“Just in case,” she agrees.

Tonight, I decide not to take the lady’s shroud. But I wrap it carefully in my spare blouse and stash it in my pack. I lie awake a long time, wondering which would be more foolish, to prepare for something that may never happen, or not to prepare for something that might.

Chapter 23

THE
waves grow playful. They toss the
Aracely
about, and I clutch the rail as I descend the stair on my way to the passenger cabin to visit Storm.

I knock, and I hear what might be permission to enter, but I can’t be sure. I open the door anyway.

The scent of stale vomit makes me gag.

“You really need to let some fresh air in here.”

“Go away,” he mutters. He lies on the bottom bunk, one long leg dangling over the side, his arm over his eyes. Footsteps patter across the deck above us. A single fly executes lazy circles around the slop bucket near the head of his bed.

“Maybe you should go up on deck. At least you’d be able to throw up over the side instead of in that bucket.”

The ship tilts on a sudden wave, and he groans.

“I sensed the
zafira,
” I tell him. “We’re heading toward it now.”

He lurches to a sitting position. “You’re sure?”