Page 21 of Guardian of the Drowned Empire

By the Gods. Tristan was accusing Rhyan of having a vorakh. I was going to be sick. I tried to take a breath. I was around Rhyan enough hours in the day to know he showed no symptoms of reading minds or having visions. I was too acutely aware of the symptoms, too tuned in to what they looked like. I would have known. Rhyan was just the rare Lumerian who saw people as people, whether they had vorakh or not. Tristan only saw vorakh—the monster that had killed his parents.

“Then how about this?” Rhyan said. “If you really aren’t a fan of the Imperator—if you’re actually legitimately concerned with his treatment of her grace—then tell me. Tell me why you assisted him with her arrest. Why you bound her in ropes. Have you ever been bound yourself? Did she ever tell you what they felt like? How much they hurt? How much they burned? How your actions left her all alone, suffering in pain for hours?”

Tristan closed his mouth, his nostrils flaring, eyebrows drawn closely together. I stepped back, not wanting to relive that memory, not wanting to dig up that wound with Tristan.

“You storm in here,” Rhyan continued, “making this big useless show of attacking me because you’re concerned for her protection, but it’s all staves and crystals because you know damn well this doesn’t help her. Just like you knew damn well you wouldn’t save her from prison. You, the man who is supposed to love and protect her for the rest of your life, have failed her on your first test. You’re working alongside the man hurting her. The man who gave her seven months to survive a brutal training or face exile. The one who just took half those months away on a technicality. The one who lashed her. The one who just reopened her wounds.”

Tristan turned to me, eyes wide and full of concern. “What?”

“It’s nothing,” I said. “He…He was just patting me on the back. And my wounds weren’t ready for that.”

“Lyr,” Rhyan said, a warning in his voice.

“You are to address her as your grace.”

“Who? Your fiancée—no, sorry, just girlfriend, right? What’s the latest title your grandmother’s allowed you to say? Special friend?”

“Fiancée,” Tristan snarled.

“Oh, well, then! Lord Grey, I would have offered my congratulations, but—where’s the ring?” Rhyan looked pointedly at my finger. My empty, ringless finger.

It was in the Shadow Stronghold, being kept as payment by Ka Shavo for looking the other way just long enough for Tristan to break me out of prison. Only the attempt had failed. It had been thwarted by Rhyan—because I’d asked him to. Because Rhyan had been right—it had just been for show. Tristan had had no plan to execute his break out beyond the prison walls.

Rhyan stalked forward. “As entertaining as your interruption has been, I’m done with our little interlude. Kindly get the fuck out of my training room. Now.”

Tristan moved to my side, his hand holding mine a little too tightly. “Lyr, let’s go.” He took a step, but I held my ground, refusing to move my feet.

“Tristan,” I waved my arms helplessly. “I can’t leave now.”

“Yes, you can. The day’s over. And this,” he said to Rhyan, “is the last time you keep her late.”

“And this is the last time you trespass in my training room. You came here because you were concerned for her safety? Because you want to protect her? Shall I do a recap for your tiny little brain? She was whipped for being unprepared. She was just warned by the Imperator again for taking a few measly hours off to heal from said whipping. She’s not being given any breaks. And if you really have an in with him and you’re actually on her grace’s side, you’re going to think of some way to leverage favor for her—to get her a break. But until that day comes, she’s been ordered to stay late—to stay tonight until her combat clinic, which she is required to observe. I am not forcing her to do this. I am not the one giving orders. I am the one following them—the neutral, low-level, forsworn bastard soldier at the Arkturion and Imperator’s command. So stop coming in here to distract and upset her, stop trying to get in the way of her studies. Get out of my room, and for Gods’ sake, stop keeping her up late at night. Her exhaustion is hurting her. Just look at her face.”

I stepped back, fully self-conscious. Most of my scars, my wounds, my bruises, and my cuts were hidden. But the large cut on my cheek and my black eye from when Meera had punched me, those I’d been unable to hide. Those I’d hoped to pass off as results of the fight in the habibellum. Only Rhyan knew they were from something else—something Tristan could never know about.

“Care to explain her black eye?” Rhyan asked, something deep and primal in his voice. “That cut on her cheek?”

“Rhyan, stop! Enough!” I yelled.

Tristan’s mouth twitched. “I blamed you for that.”

“Did you now?” Rhyan asked darkly. “What about her limp?”

Tristan blinked, looking honestly confused. “Limp? Lyr?” He wrapped his arm around my shoulder, staring down at my feet. “When were you limping?”

Rhyan watched carefully as I shook my head fervently.

“I wasn’t. And I’m not.” I stepped out of Tristan’s embrace and balanced myself first on one foot, then the other. “See?”

“Then what is he—?”

“I tripped before the habibellum. I thought I’d twisted my ankle, but I had it looked at—twice—it’s fine.”

Rhyan frowned. Why wouldn’t he fucking let it go? Gods. The limp was nothing compared to the way the lashings had felt. But in some weird way, I preferred the lashings to the pains he was pointing out now. The lashings were simple. The Imperator was evil, and he was doing evil things to me. Every other bruise and wound on my body, every scar, my blood oaths—they’d been given to me by people I loved, by people I would die to protect. And they hurt, and they were complicated. And Rhyan wouldn’t let them go.

“I need to finish training tonight,” I told Tristan. “I’ll send word once I’m finished with the clinic—I’m just observing tonight. I’ll take it easy, I swear. I’ll be with Haleika and Galen, they’ll watch out for me. It’s fine.”

“I’ll watch out for you,” Tristan said. “What time is the clinic?”

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