Page 28 of The Queen's Shadow

They both stopped again.

“You’re here with the Mediran envoys,” she said stupidly. “I didn’t know you were coming, or else I would have . . . ” She trailed off. Or else she’d have what? Ignored a direct order from the queen and refused to come to the throne room? Avoided the Mediran envoys for the rest of the week?

“The whole thing was a little last minute,” he said.

“Elena only told me right before you all arrived and—” She cut herself off, embarrassment tinging her cheeks again.

They stared at each other.

“Did you get my gift?” he said in a rush.

She swallowed, her mind rushing to catch up with his words before she managed, “I did.”

“Good.” He smirked.

She almost rolled her eyes, but it turned into an incredulous smile. “Where— How did you get it back?”

He rubbed his bad shoulder absently. “I—I’m sure you heard that we raised a force to raid the enclave.”

She nodded. “I did.”

“It went better than we expected. We managed to apprehend the Inetians before they could work any of their newly learned magic, which, it seems, they weren’t adept enough to employ quickly enough to be of any use.” His mouth twisted. “It turns out that most of the enclave didn’t want anything to do with the Inetians after what happened in the cave.”

Cassandra snorted. She wasn’t surprised.

“That single mistake wiped out a decade of work,” he continued. “Doors of that size and complexity aren’t simple to build and take an enormous amount of power and time to make properly.”

Cassandra ground her teeth. It had all been because of greed and power. Amanakar was full of himself, but the enclave wasn’t without fault either.

Arphaxad watched her closely. “It seems the deal was struck with the Inetians by a few chanters in power within the enclave. It was a decision that was forced on the rest of them.”

Cassandra’s mind skittered to the white-haired chanter, Gustav, and how he’d snarled at her that there were things she could never understand. She understood what it was like to be unwanted. To not be acknowledged for who you were, like Gustav, like the chanters. But it hadn’t driven her to madness—and she supposed she had Elena to thank for that, and Andre.

“We apprehended a few of the chanters who sided with the Inetians, but it was a bit . . . explosive.” He grimaced. “Some of them surrendered and some of them just . . . disappeared.”

Cassandra’s heart dipped. She didn’t doubt that the white-haired chanter had been one who had slipped away. She couldn’t see him surrendering to Medira ever.

“Anyway,” he continued. “I found your bow during the raid.”

“You didn’t have to do that,” she said around the lump in her throat. He was glossing over how much extra effort it must have been to find it amid the chaos, to save it, to bring it back to the Mediran palace, and then all the way to Rendra.

“I wanted to,” he said softly. He fiddled with one of the loops where his daggers usually were on his belt, then glanced at the empty hearth at one end of the room, then back toward her. “I, just . . . That day at the outpost—why did you leave? Without saying anything. After all that.”

After all that. Her heart twisted painfully. “What else was I supposed to do?” she said miserably. “I was redundant. It was better that I just disappeared.”

“Not for me,” he said. Her head jerked up, the intensity in his voice sending shivers down her spine.

“You were supposed to marry the Inetian princess,” she burst out.

“I know,” he said. He crossed his arms and then uncrossed them. An extra movement. A nervous tick she wasn’t used to seeing from him. “I agreed to the king’s request that I marry the Inetian princess because it was the right thing to do for Medira. And I had to do something to—” He stopped abruptly. “The marriage alliance disintegrated after everything with the enclave. Ineti has too much instability. It’s not worth it for Medira.” He paused, and his eyes flicked to her face. “But what is worth it for Medira is an alliance with Rendra.”

She didn’t dare move. “An alliance,” she said.

“An alliance,” he repeated. Another shiver moved down her spine.

“Tomas came to me last week with a proposal from the queen,” he continued.

“Tomas did?” Cassandra’s mind reeled. So, her sister had lied when she’d said that Tomas was with his sick mother. The sneak.

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