Page 29 of A Baron of Bonds
He nodded again and raised a well-groomed brow my way. “Thevin will be back for the summer by then, will he not?”
I blushed. “Yes.”
“And do you think you’ll tell him how you feel this time?”
“No.”
His face softened. “Saelyn, no happiness was ever had without a risk being taken.”
“I don’t know any happy people who became so from taking a risk.”
“You know me.”
“What risk did you take?”
He nodded toward the vast courtyard. “I chose to come here. Felgren is not the place I have always called home, and by taking that risk, I have found myself to be happy.”
“And my mother? Was she ever happy?”
“Ah, Saelyn, you are too observant. You notice too much for your young years, and I fear one day you will find yourself in trouble because of it.”
I picked at the skin of my apple, ripping pieces off each slice in one long strip of red. “I’m right, though, aren’t I? No risks they ever took made them happy. My father is dead after all.”
He reached across the space between us and pulled me into an embrace, smoothing my hair back and kissing the top of my head just as he did when I was little. “Your parents took risks and were very happy. We do not know what our future holds when we take the uneasy step of moving toward the unknown, but we do know what our future holds when all we do is stand still.”
I glanced up from his chest to look into his golden-brown eyes. “And what’s that, Pah-Pah?”
“The same, Sae. The same life we have always lived.”
His words filtered through Viridis’s breeze and I sighed. The barest brush of my name whispered through the birch trees, and I wondered if I’d ever be brave enough to step forward and take any risk at all.
Chapter 19
Rev
I was ready.
I would guess the Queen was not.
In the last sixteen days since I had arrived in her court from Felgren, she was not convinced of my love for the woman she raised who left her castle seven years prior. She refused to see that what I had done was to keep Karus safe, not to deceive the Queen for nefarious purposes.
Queen Rina was possessive of her, wanted control over her life. I knew that now.
Even the way she refused to accept her name from “Ash’Arah” settled into the back of my mind. I knew we would be on dangerous ground as soon as Karus set foot in Hyrithia.
I had tried diplomacy at first, resonating confidence and ease in my words, taught by the man who had caused so much pain and death in this city years before. But Queen Rina was never going to trust me. She would never believe me again—at least not without the help of Karus.
As I gradually released the walls I had created around us, I watched Karus steady herself once more.
She was good at it. I’d seen it many times in her years in Felgren how she’d inhale fully while her neck and back wouldstraighten and an undeniable strength would radiate from her skin as if obstacles to her desires did not exist.
Fuck, I loved her.
She’d told me she didn’t deserve me which I’d decided to write off as exhaustion. I’d get her alone tonight and show her exactly who deserved who.
“That was quite a display of power, Baron Revich.” The Queen’s voice, authoritative yet worn, filled the throne room in the silence of our reveal.
She didn’t know the half of it.
