Page 102 of A Chill in the Flame
She pulled away. “The slain princess?”
Tempus sank from somewhere in his middle, like abuilding whose pillars had cracked. Sweat glistened on his brow from both the heat and the stress of their fight. If the light had caught his eye in any other way, Tyr would have thought the man was about to cry. “She would have been on our side, Zita. She wasn’t just a pretty monarch set to marry Raascot’s king. She didn’t just want peace. She sought justice. Caris desired unity for all the right reasons.”
Zita considered the information, chewing on each word as if it were a particularly tough piece of meat. After a prolonged silence, she asked, “And his second born? The princess with us now?”
He shrugged. “The girl desires singular vengeance for her sibling. I believe she knows Caris was her superior in every way, and the best contribution she could make to this world would be to end the life of whoever killed her. She isn’t our enemy. She isn’t anything.”
Tyr closed his eyes against the assertion. It was hard to hear, even for him. He leaned his head back against the cool marble of the stone, breathing in the smell of freshly juiced oranges and limes as he digested what Tempus had said. No one on the continent believed in Ophir. They didn’t know her. They didn’t know what she could do. Even if they did, would it matter? Maybe that was part of what he liked about her. Nothing about her was obvious. Her underestimation was gift and curse. It was the continent’s preconceptions and folly that made them unable to see what she was capable of—that was no failure of hers.
It was odd, this feeling. Almost like an itch within a wound, the healing stitch beneath a scab that would reopen and be more painful if one contacted it. He wanted to tear at it, to alleviate the discomfort, but he knew it was inherently unwise to do so. He didn’t prod. Tonight wasn’t about perplexing, invisible injuries and indefinable sensations, no matter how much they bothered him. It was about information.
Focus.
“But tomorrow…” Tempus prodded.
“I know.”
“So, what do we—”
“We do nothing.”
Zita pulled away from the embrace, and Tyr saw the pained look again. It was the face of a man in love. Such a dangerous, treacherous thing. Love wasn’t an emotion, not really. It was a verb. It was the force that shaped his life. A feeling was the least of Tempus’s worries—clearly his feelings fluctuated greatly, as Zita’s contradictory tugs on his heart pushed and pulled him with equal intensity. Whether he went to Farehold, shaped the kingdoms, influenced criminals, or lured princesses was perhaps inconsequential contrasted against his reason for doing it.
“Do you have a plan, Zita? What have you brewed for six hundred years?”
She wilted. “It hasn’t been six hundred.”
He looked to his feet. “I know. I know the first few years…and with your children…”
“I don’t want revenge.”
Tempus dared to return her gaze. “Maybe you should.”
She swallowed. “It wouldn’t serve us. It wouldn’t serve Midnah, or Tarkhany. It wouldn’t serve the people of Farehold who are no more guilty of the atrocities than our own citizens. The poor shouldn’t suffer for the disputes of monarchs.”
“They took everything. They took what didn’t belong to them. They—”
The powerful woman before him remained downcast, as if whatever fury and strength that fueled her had smoked out. “They didn’t take everything. That’s the tactic, isn’t it? You offer two options, one in which your heart is cut out, the other in which it’s merely broken. Isn’t that why the shop boy stays with his cruel employer? Why the woman remains with her wicked husband? Why we live on in Midnah without outright war? Our hearts are cracked, yes, but they’re ours.”
Tempus didn’t argue.
It was a terrible fight. It was wrong—surely the man could concede that much. He couldn’t have agreed, but he must not have known how to form a rebuttal. She was describing abuse. Whether from the assistant, the wife, or the kingdom, it was lose-lose. This couldn’t have been the first time they’d had his conversation. Or the second. Or the tenth. It was clear from the slump of his shoulders and the way he headed for the door that he was a man who’d lost this fight long ago.
“What do you want?” he asked finally.
She looked at him in a way that showed the entirety of her soul. Even Tyr could see the crushed powder of her heart from where she stood. “I want them to do the right thing.”
Tempus’s lips became a flat line. “Waiting on someone else to come around for justice—”
“Is like waiting for rain in the desert. I know.”
“You could do it. You have a power unlike any the world has seen. You could bring Aubade—no, Farehold—to their knees. You should have done it then.”
“I won’t use it.”
Exasperation choked Tempus. “But now we have their princess. It’s his last remaining daughter. If we—”
“No,” she said, voice low but firm. “Ophir is not a hostage. She’s not leverage. I’d rather have her as an ally. If Caris truly would have been an agent for justice…”
