“Highness—” the woman began to say, but Rayne was gone, gathering her skirt in her hands and running in long strides toward the back of the room.
“Rayne!” her father barked, but she was already at the door, slipping through the small opening Tierri had left. In the corridor she paused, breathing hard, her head swiveling to the right and then the left, catching a glimpse of someone disappearing around the corner. She ran again, her slippered feet making no noise on the stones. Around one corner, and then another, until finally, there he was, crossing through the foyer toward the looming wooden doors that marked the exit.
“General!” she shouted. A maid who had been carrying a stack of blankets across the foyer glanced her way and then hurried past wide-eyed while Rayne barreled across the room.
Tierri stopped and turned, but made no move toward her. “Princess,” he said when she was close enough, dipping into an elegant, formal bow.
“What are you doing?” She let her skirts fall back around her ankles, feeling foolish. Hadn't she told him to go? Wasn't he just following orders?
“I'm leaving,” he said simply. “When the prince…died…there was a flare, and then…” He held his hands out, palms up as if to show their emptiness. “Nothing. I don’t have a purpose here anymore. Your father has agreed to let me go free on the condition that I leave Hail.”
Though the cause of Danyll's death remained a mystery, it was clear that it was Tierri who had rallied the scattered guards after their leader's death, and Tierri who had saved Hail from the Knights. His reward was his banishment, barely disguised as freedom. He was still a Malstrom, after all.
“And you made it clear that you wanted me to go.”
Rayne blanched, remembering her words to him and the pain of loss as she had knelt beside her sister's body. “Yes,” she said, her voice a whisper. “I did.” Out of sight, out of mind. For her, for her father, for the whole kingdom.
His hand went to his pocket. When it emerged, he offered its contents to her. There sat two golden semi-circles, their edges ragged where they had cracked when Danyll's magic had died. “Don't feel bad, Princess. I spent my childhood in hiding and my adolescence in slavery. I'm free,” he said, “for the first time in my whole life.” He handed her one of the halves and as she reached for it, their fingers brushed and she felt it. The coil of magic in her stomach, a gust of wind against her neck, and she knew.
He was lying.
She schooled her face and took the warm metal into her hand. “Where will you go?” she asked, studying the band. It seemed so insubstantial. How was it possible for a trinket like this to hold such tremendous power?
“Perhaps to find my sister. The slave master's records indicate she was transported to Flagend and sold to a brothel in Silverton. Seems like a good place to start.”
Rayne didn't say that it was probably a hopeless journey, a wild goose chase around Casuin that would likely end in tears. Instead, she said, “I hope you find her.”
He gave a curt nod, touching his temple with two fingers in farewell, and turned to go, but hesitated. She watched his head bob and his shoulders heave with a huge breath. Then he was back in front of her, clearing the small distance in two steps. His nearness made her pulse quicken. She could still feel his hands in her hair, his breath on her neck. She lifted a hand without thinking and brushed her fingers over her lips, remembering. Wanting.
“Tell me to stay.” His voice was husky, his head dipped low so that only she could hear, his dark eyes hidden behind sweeping bangs.
The words stirred something deep inside of Rayne that she struggled to push down. She tried to remember how it felt to lose her sister, to lose Madlin, to watch her father betray them all. To remember the danger of love. But she wanted to let him in, against all her better judgment.
“I'm burning up,” he whispered when she didn't answer. When he slipped a hand under her hair and grasped the back of her neck, his skin was warm as if it had been dipped in a fire. She gasped. Enos help her, she wanted him. When she had been with Merek, it was because she had wanted somebody, anybody. She had wanted to belong and feel accepted. But with Tierri, it wasn't a general longing, but a specific desire, one that made her heart race when he looked at her like he was looking at her now. “With the wanting. With the not knowing. But I will stay if you tell me to.”
Rayne's heart stuttered. The yes inside of her threatened to bubble to the surface, but she bit her lip to keep it inside. It was selfish and stupid, and she was a princess, a future queen. She would not beg. She would do what was best for him. “I can't. You're not a slave. You're not mine to command. I understand the need to see your sister safe. I cannot take her from you, knowing that grief myself. Knowing how it feels.” Her voice quaked and she stopped. She was supposed to be done mourning, but when Tierri pulled her head forward to press his lips to hers, the barely-disguised grief welled up inside of her and spilled out of her eyes, tears streaming down her cheeks so that their kiss tasted as salty as sea water.
Her hands grasped his arms to keep him there even though she knew it could not last. Sweat prickled where his hands touched her neck and her face, his big thumbs wiping the tears from her cheeks. She wanted to melt into him, disappear in the shelter of his arms. Her stomach rolled and the ground seemed to tremble beneath them, his hands growing hot as he sucked up all the warmth in the room. Stay, stay, stay. The word was on her lips, but she didn't dare pull away, even as she struggled to breathe against him.
It was the slamming of the front door that jarred them apart, the heavy oak bouncing off of the stone wall, the afternoon light streaming inside. Tierri's hand slipped off of her and to the sword at his hip. She immediately felt the chill of his absence. A boy her age stood silhouetted in the doorway and they all watched as he moved into the foyer. The guards were arguing with him, demanding that he stop, that he announce himself, but he strode forward without acknowledging them. When he grew nearer to her, going as if to pass her and head to the gathering in the great hall, Tierri stepped forward in the boy's path.
“Who are you?” he asked, his hand still on the sword of his hilt. “You cannot come into the palace acting like you own the place.”
The boy glanced from Tierri to the sword, then to Rayne, where his eyes lingered too long, as if he were trying to remember where he had seen her before. Rayne studied him, too. He had light brown hair and olive skin decorated with black tattoos that looked strangely familiar—the swirls and patterns not words she knew, but words she had perhaps seen before. A bow was strapped to his back and a full quiver of arrows was at his hip. In one of his hands, he held a delicate circlet. He looked travel-worn and exhausted, his clothes crusty with salt air and stained red with blood in places, but he forced himself to turn back to Tierri and meet his glare.