Page 24 of The Queen's Shadow

A shiver moved through her at the intensity in his voice. She believed him. Of course she did. But she wasn’t so sure the rest of the Mediran army would feel the same.

“Come on,” she said, pushing past him. “We should probably find Castez. And some food. I’m starving.”

***

An hour later, Castez leaned back in his chair and let out a long, slow breath. “How in the name of the Archer did we miss that?” he asked.

He was perched behind a heavy mahogany desk in a room twice the size of the one Cassandra had slept in. A shelf of leather-bound books leaned on the wall behind him, and a swath of gold-embroidered curtains adorned the window. A red velvet chaise sat under it, and Cassandra caught a hint of cigar smoke clinging to the fabric.

Arphaxad shook his head. “The chanters are going to great lengths to hide what’s going on. If I hadn’t received a”—he cast a quick glance at Cassandra—“a tip from one of my sources, we would still have no idea.”

Cassandra almost snorted. A tip from one of his sources indeed.

Castez rifled through a stack of paper inscribed with neat letters in thick black ink. “We’ll need to gather a significant force to raid the enclave. They may think you’re dead, but my guess is the accident put them on high alert.”

“We’ve seen what havoc they can wreak when they don’t know they’re being watched,” Arphaxad said. “I don’t want to know what kind of horror they can stir up when they do.”

Cassandra listened to the two men draft plans for how to best draw out the rogue Inetians without tipping off the chanters. She didn’t feel like she had the right to interject, though Arphaxad kept glancing at her for confirmation every now and then. This was his territory. And the last thing she wanted to give away to Castez was who she really worked for. Castez seemed to take her presence for granted now, which showed just how much he trusted Arphaxad.

She also wasn’t sure why Arphaxad hadn’t kicked her out yet. Even with the possibility of a Rendran–Mediran alliance on the table, there wasn’t much more she could do here. He’d quipped earlier about the dangers of leaving her to roam a Mediran military outpost on her own, but he surely couldn’t expect to watch her at every moment. She wasn’t complaining. She wasn’t ready to leave yet. And she didn’t want to think too hard about exactly why that was.

Arphaxad sat back in the chair beside her and ran his good hand through his hair. His face was ashen. Cassandra wanted to kick him back to the infirmary and make him rest. He’d taken an arrow to the back not even twenty-four hours ago.

“Inetian traitors in our midst,” Castez said with a shake of his head. “I bet you’re glad to have sniffed this out before your wedding, eh, Arphaxad?”

Cassandra’s stomach dropped. Wedding?

Arphaxad went rigid beside her as Castez rose to grab a glass decanter of amber liquid from the shelf behind his desk. He poured a splash into a glass and then turned to hand it to Arphaxad, who accepted it woodenly.

Castez shook his head. “Who’d have thought the likes of you would end up marrying an Inetian princess?”

Cassandra’s body went cold. A strange roaring built in her ears, and she could see Castez’s mouth moving, but no sound was coming out. It was as if she were underwater, sinking slowly downward into a bottomless pool.

Marry the Inetian princess.

Arphaxad was marrying the Inetian princess.

Her fingers pressed numbly against the fabric of her tunic. How could she have been so stupid? All this time she had just assumed it was the Mediran king who was marrying the princess. But of course, it wasn’t. It could never have been. The king had never shown much interest in marriage, and he was far too old to be thinking of marriage now. He didn’t have an heir, but his next oldest brother was well-positioned to take over if anything happened to him, and the king seemed all too happy to let him.

And Arphaxad. He was the perfect candidate. He was well-connected, handsome, charming, and far enough from the throne that it was unlikely he would ever ascend to it. The perfect man for the job. How had she not seen it?

Her gaze shifted from where it had been fixed on a knot in one of the floorboards, and she found herself staring directly into his eyes. It was suddenly hard to breathe.

How could she have been so blind? The truth was so candescently obvious.

And then, in a blazing flash of clarity, she understood. She hadn’t wanted to know because then she’d have been forced to face the terrifying truth that she’d tried so hard to ignore: that she was in love with Arphaxad Ilin Serra. And she had been for a long, long time.

Her mind whirled. Her body thundered with the knowledge, and for a moment, the world was right and whole and good.

She was in love with Arphaxad Ilin Serra.

She remembered the way he had pulled her close as they danced in the Mediran palace, how much she had wanted that night never to end, and all the times before that when they’d clashed, and he’d made her feel more furious and more alive than she’d ever felt before. How his fingers had traced her jaw in the forest outside the enclave, and how much she’d wished he would just kiss her already and that they could pretend the complicated world around them didn’t exist, even for a few exhilarating moments.

But she had never allowed herself to dwell on it, to comprehend it, because it was too impossible. Too dangerous. He was not someone she could afford to fall in love with.

But it was already too late.

He would be marrying the Inetian princess in a few weeks’ time, cementing Medira’s relationship with Ineti. Forging an important alliance. And she would go home to Rendra. And what? Forget him? That would be impossible considering they were the only two people who knew about Amanakar and the enclave. And if this were truly the thing that would bring Rendra and Medira together, then . . .

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