Page 41 of Trial of Three
My whole body tenses, my gaze first surveying the quint commander for marks of last night’s injuries—River moves stiffly, but his color seems decent enough—then cutting away from him. Hard. Just looking at the male makes my chest sting with the knowledge of all that he kept from me about his father, his past. Betrayal eats at my lungs like acid.
Autumn’s pen drops, her gray eyes tired. “So you are going to do it? Dethrone the bastard?”
River closes a hand around the back of a chair, his face dark. “I don’t see that we have much choice. Not now that...” He shakes his head. “We’ll talk about it tomorrow, when we can all think straight again. Speaking of thinking straight, the infirmary is allowing us to visit Kora’s quint after dinner.”
My eyes narrow. Dinner first. Then friends. Then, maybe sometime tomorrow, we can get around to discussing how to kill his father. Over lunch. Maybe supper.Horseshit.
“It’s considered bad form to disembowel a male who’s just been whipped,” Tye whispers into my ear. “Don’t get me wrong, lass, better River than me, but—”
I get to my feet, and this time Tye lets me go without resistance. Coal steps back as I advance on River, Shade flashing prudently into his wolf form and trotting over to curl up on the couch.
River’s chin rises. “Leralynn, is something—”
“Your room. Now.” I stride past him, catching Tye’s murmur of “good luck there, mate” to River before I push open the bedchamber door.
28
Lera
River winces as he shuts the door behind him, his hands going behind his back. A mask that I want to slap free of his face settles across his features. Calm. Nonchalant. In control.
I take a deep breath. River’s room is much like the others’, with a large four-poster bed dominating the middle, a wide-open window, and a chest of drawers. He also has a desk and chair, clean sheets of parchment and an inkwell standing at the ready. Familiar, and yet the male’s large body, his earthy scent, somehow make the large space suddenly seem small. Intense.
“Leralynn.” River’s deep voice rolls over me. “What did you wish to discuss?”
“Really, River?” I cross my arms. “You don’t know?”
His jaw tightens. He takes a step toward me.
I step back.
He stops. Clears his throat. “I never thanked you, did I? You are the one who saved all our lives last night. If you hadn’t interfered when you did, things might have ended differently. Would have ended differently. The courage it must have taken to grab hold of that much power—”
“Wrong answer,” I snap. “Try again.”
River draws a breath and rolls back his shoulders, the motion making him stiffen in pain. “I’m sorry you were dragged into a problem that my family appears to have started. Thank you for—”
“Try again, River.” I raise my chin. “And if you decide tothankme one more time for doing what any member of a quint would do for any other, I will walk out this door right now and not speak to you again until you pull your head from your ass.”
River’s nostrils flare and he crosses his arms in a mirror of mine. Then uncrosses them with a sigh. His neck bobs as he swallows, his cheeks and ears taking on a darker hue. Something in his back shifts, and in that moment, River suddenly looks... exposed. Vulnerable enough to make me want to wrap my arms around his neck and pull him against me.
I wait.
“I should have told you about my father,” he says quietly. “The whole of it, not just the insinuations. Should have told you that Klarissa was pushing me to take the Slait throne. And why I can’t—couldn’t. And may have to anyway. I... am sorry, Leralynn.”
“Better.” I walk forward, taking the chair for myself as all the fight goes out of me at once, fatigue taking its place. Plus, with River practically four times my size, there is little point in standing anyway. “Do you want to start with the explanation of what the hell happened with your father, or why you hid it from me?”
“I’d prefer to go into neither,” River mutters, the vulnerable truth of it flashing again in his gray eyes. He walks over to sit on the bed a few paces away from my chair, and this time, when he sits, he lets me see his cringe of pain. “But I imagine I’ve lost the privilege of keeping secrets, haven’t I?”
My neck tightens. “You don’t trust me with the truth?”
“What?” He shakes his head, running his hand through his hair. “No, Leralynn. I trust you. I... I am not proud of my heritage. And yes, I do worry that you might force me into something behind my back—”
“What—”
“Like, say, a second trial that I haven’t approved—but that’s not the same.”
The last is said with neither condemnation nor apology, and it’s my turn to flinch. “All right. I’m too honest to promise that would never happen,” I admit.
