Page 95 of Heart's Escape

Ithronel meets my eyes. She looks almost apologetic.

“That’s where the whole family is,” she says. “Mom’s been writing to me. The ranch is doing well. They’ve expanded, and Braern’s wife is having her second kid in a couple of months. We’ll be aunts again.”

I swallow hard. “You’re going home,” I say. My voice sounds like it’s made of glass.

“I am,” Ithronel replies. She spreads her hands in front of her chest with her palms up, like she’s offering something to me. “For a little while, at least. And, you know, you’re welcome to come too.”

I open my mouth to say something, but my voice refuses to cooperate.

“You never talk about it,” Ithronel continues, her voice low and soft. “About Mom or anyone back home. I didn’t know if you wanted to come, so I haven’t made any promises.”

I manage to close my mouth. “I— It was easier,” I finally stammer. “In the castle. It was easier not to think about home.”

Ithronel meets my eyes. “I know,” she says, softly. Her gaze drops to the floor. “I felt the same way. At first, I thought Dad would break down the doors of the palace to bring us back home. When I got the letter that he’d died—”

Her voice fades. My chest feels tight. I know exactly how she felt because I felt the same way. It was easier to think I was alone than to accept that no one I loved was coming to rescue me.

But that wasn’t true, was it? Even in the palace, didn’t I have someone who would have risked everything to rescue me?

“Ithronel,” I say as my hands twist in my skirt and the question I haven’t yet dared to voice whispers in the back of my head. “When we were… in Grathgore’s palace. And I told you about, uh, why I needed to leave. Would you have left with me?”

My voice fades as I speak, until the last words are hardly more than a whisper. Ithronel looks up at me, and the suggestion of a smile tugs at the corners of her mouth.

“Of course,” she says.

My shoulders drop. I hadn’t realized how tightly I’d been holding them.

“That’s why I went to the Lands Below, you know,” she adds. “Because that asshole Grathgore told me he’d set you free if I stopped the Kingdom of the Fall.”

“Oh,” I manage to whisper. I’d suspected as much, but suspecting it and actually hearing it are different things.

Ithronel makes a sound like a rusty hinge opening. It’s the laugh she makes when she’s trying to force humor into a situation that doesn’t warrant humor.

“We probably would have both died,” she says, shaking her head, “but yeah, I would have run with you. I was trying to think of a way to do it even as I went through that portal into the Lands Below.”

I blink, then rub my hands into my eyes until the tears sink back down. It might have been easier to think I was alone, that I had to do everything by myself, but it was never true. All I had to do was ask.

“Anyway,” Ithronel continues, clearing her throat. “About coming with us to the Kingdom of Stone and Sea. You don’t need to decide now. We’ve got to see who good old King Grathgore is sending over in the delegation, and then we’ve gotta get them in and out of the Lands Below without anyone murdering anyone else. But, you know. The offer stands.”

I manage to stammer a thank you as Ithronel pulls me off of my bed and drags me toward the Dragon’s Rest Inn, which is the only place on this side of the portal to get a decent breakfast.

Chapter43

Phaedron

I AM HAPPY

“Permission to enter?”

I glance up and see Aloserin standing in the open door to my tiny little room. And of course it’s Aloserin; he’s the only person in the entire Lands Below who’s polite enough to actually ask before barging into someone’s personal space.

“Of course,” I reply.

I come to my feet and wave my arm vaguely at my wall, as if I had anywhere to actually welcome him. This room only holds a cot, an oil lamp on the wall above the window, and a little chest at the end of the bed. The walls were thick with dust when I first moved in, so the voids only know how long this particular guard’s room had been empty before I arrived three months ago. Aloserin crosses the threshold of my room, leans against the far wall, and makes a face like something is caught in his shoe.

“What’s on your mind?” I ask.

“Well,” he says, speaking slowly as he runs his hand across the bridge of his nose. “Two things, I suppose. One professional, and one, ah, slightly more personal.”

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