Page 11 of Steeling Light
“You’re right. I do enjoy a pleasant walk, though…”
“…gardens were always my choice,” he says, finishing my sentence, and it’s like no time has passed since I was seventeen and he was twelve.
Rhion stands up before offering me a hand. I chuckle and take it, but when he crooks his arm, offering to walk arm in arm like we did when we were young, I keep my distance. I maywantto believe that he’s the same person I spent so many afternoons with, but he’s not.
You can’t go back to the past no matter how wonderful it would be if you could.
We walk down the pathway that leads further into the maze, and I notice my everfolded pastries aren’t steaming any longer.
Rhion watches me out of the corner of his eye, but pretends like he’s looking at the rose bushes in this section of the hedges. He lifts a skewer to his mouth and absentmindedly pulls a piece of caramelized fruit off the end. “Oh, that’s good,” he says.
I take a bite of the first pastry and melt into the blackcurrant and venison filling. The sweet and savory blend is encased in buttery folded hot crust pastry, and it’s exactly what I wanted. Something decadent and hearty at the same time.
Rhion watches me, a smile crossing his face, but he doesn’t comment.
I can’t keep my heart from beating faster. No flesh and blood woman would look at Rhion and turn him down. They say that Sidon the Strong created the House of Steel in his image, and Rhion is exactly that. A man larger than anyone else, he looks like someone who was built to destroy the world around him.
I know his touch, though. I know the gentleness behind those eyes, at least with me. I’ve seen him and Cole fight. I know the brutality that he’s capable of, but he’s only ever been soft with me. In the world we live in, that’s not common. Even Cole, my best friend, has hurt me countless times when training. Rhion, though… I don’t know if he’s even capable of it.
I shake my head to clear the thoughts from it. Maybe he wouldn’t hurt me, but I know he’d hurt Darian, Cole, and Maeve. I swore my loyalty to both Cole and Maeve. I met with Rhion to get information out of him and maybe sway him to our cause.
“Why are you in Selithar, Rhion?” I finally ask, ignoring the way his look makes me feel.
“I’m here because you’re here, Ainslee. My father would tell me to lie to you and do whatever it took to find out what you’re hunting for in Selithar. You’d never come here alone without a good reason. More than likely, it’s because you know about the relics that my father is looking for, and you think one is here.”
The relics? That’s why he thinks I’m here? “I’m not here for the relics, Rhion. If that’s what you’re here for, then you should go elsewhere. I’m just trying to find an old friend of Maeve’s.”
Rhion frowns and absentmindedly brings the skewer to his mouth again, this time to pull a piece of poultry off it. His movements are smooth and almost sensual.
“Maeve’s friend?” He’s thinking, and I already know that I should have been smarter about what I said. He may look like a brute, but he’s still his father’s son, and if there’s anything everyone knows about Gethin, it’s that he’s the cleverest of the leaders of the Great Houses. “Before she became a High Fae, she was just a Wyrdling. Who would she have known? Brenna didn’t interact with her. Unless…”
He squints at me and asks, “Are you searching for Brenna? No, Cole and Maeve would have come for that. Maeve would want to hunt for her own mother, and Cole wouldn’t let her go alone. Who else could it be?”
The grin that crosses his lips makes me want to smack him because I know he’s figured it out. “Her sylph. Brenna couldn’t stay near her daughter, so she left a sylph behind to watch her. Sylphs are notoriously hard to scent out—even for harpies—and that’s why none of them found her, and there weren’t any whispers about dangerous shadow magic killing people. Brenna’s daughter was raised by a sylph, and that’s why there was a sylph at the Midsummer Ball. Sure, they were welcome to come, but only one came. The rest stayed far away, just as the gargoyles did.”
He finally seems to come back to the present and asks, “How’d I do? Did I guess it on the first try?”
“That’s an exciting theory, Rhion. It seems like quite the stretch though.”
I’m doing everything I can not to tell him what I’m doing in Selithar, but I feel like anything that I say is just going to give him more information. The best thing I can do is just minimize talking about it.
Rhion chuckles. “I don’t think so, but I’m sure time will tell us the truth.” He stops and turns to me, his hand reaching out and taking me by the elbow. “Ainslee, I need you to understand something. I’ve never lied to you, and I won’t start now. We’re on opposite sides of this thing between Cole and my father, but that doesn’t mean that I’m going to change. I am and have always been the same Rhion that you knew growing up, and I have never lied to you or any of your friends. I may have tried to kill Cole a few times, but it’s not like he hasn’t swung that sword of his at me on more than one occasion.”
I pull my arm from his grip, and he lets me go. “That’s just it, Rhion. No matter how you twist it, we’re on opposite sides of this fight. You just want to have dinner together and pretend like this isn’t eventually going to come down to our two sides trying to kill each other?”
Rhion shakes his head slowly. “I don’t know, Ainslee. I really don’t.” He focuses on the path before us as we step into the first bit of mist. Minutes pass and we walk in silence, the surrounding air slowly filling with the fog that reminds me so much of the Nothing.
“I’ve missed you,” Rhion says softly. “That’s what I know for certain. For over nine-hundred years, I’ve missed you. Not Cole. Not Darian. Just you. And I… might be willing to ignore some things my father would prefer I inform him of if that’s the price to spend time with you.”
I arch an eyebrow. “Have you ever considered abandoning your father and joining us? We could…”
“No. I can’t do that. Maybe Cole can leave his father to fight alone, but I was raised differently. I… don’t think Icouldturn against my father even if that’s what I truly wanted. But I can pretend I didn’t figure out why you’re in Selithar. I can ignore whatever you find. I can twist what we’re doing to make it seem like you’re hunting for relics, and I’ll have a good reason to stay in the city with you.”
“Isn’t that the same…” I try to convince him to walk away from his father, but he stops me.
“No, it’s not, and that’s all I’ll say about it. You don’t understand, Ainslee. The bond between a father and son is strong, and the bond between a King and his heir is even stronger. The power that my father controls runs through me as well, and when he commands me to do something, I can’t simply ignore it. My body refuses. I’ve tried to fight back, and I simply can’t. But I canmanipulatehow his commands work. Just because he tells me to report on what we’ve done doesn’t mean I have to tell him everything.”
I don’t respond immediately. Cole had tried to explain the way it had felt to refuse his father a command. I remember the day of the Shattering when Casimir had tried to force Cole to lead his armies, and Cole had refused. I remember seeing him fall to his knees in agony before Casimir had done anything. It’d been terrible, though not as terrible as when he’d begun torturing us when Cole had maintained that refusal.
