Now she was giggling, and laughter felt so good, so hopeful, when weighed against all the misery of the day. She tightened her arms around him, felt the strength of his body even through his exhaustion and sadness. “War will come, and heartache and betrayal, and friends will die and all of Gillengaria may be lost, and I will still love you,” she said against his mouth. “And if I accidentally set your hair on fire in a few years’ time, well, let me just say now that I didn’t mean to do it. Unless you made me angry, of course, but even then I will only make a little fire. Hardly enough to hurt you.”
“And who could mind that?” he said. “I look forward to a happy old age.”
She snuggled against him even more closely. “I hope we live to see it.”
CHAPTER 31
CAMMON had lived through some wretched days, but none as bad as the ones that followed the king’s death.
There was just so much grief. So much anxiety. Fear and tension and anticipation of violence. It lashed against him from all directions, impossible to block out. He tried to close his mind, concentrate only on the people who desperately mattered to him-but those were some of the people who were suffering most.
In public, Amalie maintained a steely calm that had everyone marveling. She listened closely to advice, made sometimes surprising decisions, exhibited only a decorous grief, and seemed ready to assume the heaviest burdens of government.
But at night, in her room, she broke down and wept so hard that she sometimes threw up whatever meal she had forced herself to eat last. Cammon could calm her-more quickly as the days went on, as he learned the trick of it-but sometimes she didn’t want him to touch her, didn’t want to be comforted.
That was especially true two days after the attack, when they had spent the morning burying bodies. Baryn and his fallen Riders had been interred in a cemetery on the palace grounds not far from the raelynx’s old haunt. Ghosenhall residents had not been allowed past the gates, but thousands of mourners had gathered around the walls, offering prayers and songs and leaving behind small tokens. It was not nearly the grand farewell a king deserved, but they did not have time for pomp. They did not dare parade the princess down the city streets as she followed her father’s casket through weeping crowds. They were forced to keep the ceremony small, private, and secure.
But that had not made it any easier for Amalie. She had been pale but tranquil at the graveside, quiet but functional as she made the day’s decisions, but as soon as she stepped into her room that night, she broke down completely. When Cammon tried to take her in his arms, she pushed him away.
“I want to get it out of me,” she sobbed. “All this sadness. I want to cry it away. Magic isn’t enough. I have to let it go.”
So he let her weep unrestrainedly for half an hour and then, when she was too tired to resist, he lay beside her on the bed and gathered her close. Still sobbing, she turned in his arms and buried her face against his shoulder. She let his hands play across her back, let his magic coax away her frenzy. The grief stayed inside her, black and silver and razor sharp, but he sprinkled it with peace, he blunted down its cruelest edges. He didn’t think he could take it away from her, didn’t think he should, but he could make it bearable, at least long enough for her to sleep.
Tayse, too, endured the funeral day with little outward emotion, though Cammon could tell that the Rider carried a heavy stone of sadness. But Cammon could practically see the marks of Senneth’s hands on Tayse’s heart; if there was healing that could be done there, Senneth was doing it.
Valri’s grief was just as deep and more unexpected. The day after the funeral, Cammon woke in the middle of the night with his stomach so tight he felt he had been dealt a physical blow. For a moment he thought he would be the one to start vomiting, but then he realized the pain was not his own. He kissed Amalie on the cheek and left her sleeping, though the raelynx lifted its head to watch him slip through the door. He need have no fear about leaving Amalie unguarded.
The pain was so strong that, at first, Cammon could not attach a person to it; he just held up his candle and followed the beacon of woe. But he recognized the door to Valri’s room and hesitated before he knocked. So many reasons not to seek out the widowed queen in the middle of the night, in her bedroom, unchaperoned. But then he rapped his knuckles against the wood.
“Valri? It’s Cammon. I know you’re awake. Let me in.”
He could feel her surprise and hesitation, but in a minute she opened the door. She had been crying; her porcelain face was blotched and red, her short black hair wild. “What’s wrong?” she asked in a low voice, raspy with tears.
“I came to see what’s wrong with you,” he replied, and stepped inside without an invitation.
Again she hesitated, then she shut the door and followed him inside. Like Amalie’s, her room was tasteful but luxurious. It was spacious enough to practically be two rooms, with a grouping of furniture on one side creating a sitting area, while the bed and dresser were arranged on the other side. Plush rugs on the floor held back the chill; the curtains and bed linens were colored in soft mauves and pinks and grays. Valri wore a dark green robe over a long nightdress but it was clear she had not yet been to bed.
“I thought you could not sense the Lirrenfolk and their emotions,” she said, sinking down into a well-padded armchair. He took a seat across from her.
“I can sense yours,” he said simply. “And you’re so distressed that you woke me from a sound sleep.”
She laughed shortly. “Now must be an uncomfortable time for a man with magic like yours.”
“It is,” he acknowledged. “I can’t even tell how much grief I might be feeling on my own, because everyone else’s is pressing so hard against me.”
She leaned her head against the back of the chair. “And yet you could still feel mine.”
“I don’t mean to be rude,” he said quietly. “I didn’t realize you loved Baryn so much.”
“I was not in love with him, no, but I loved a great deal about him,” Valri said. “I would have done anything he asked. I believed that while he was in the world, there was goodness and justice and order. Now I’m not sure any of those things still exist.” She flung up a hand as he started to answer. “And Baryn’s death makes me remember Pella’s, and remembering Pella, I remember all the things I left behind to be with her. And so loss piles upon loss and it becomes too much to bear. Do not worry about me, Cammon. I am touched that you heard my despair and came to comfort me, but I am not your burden. I will mourn, and I will recover, and you will need to do nothing for me at all.”
“It’s just that I don’t think you have anyone to comfort you,” he said. “And that makes you even more lost.”
She did not answer for a moment, just surveyed him. Against her red-rimmed lids, her eyes were even more impossibly green. “Who comforted you, when everyone you loved died?” she asked. “I heard the stories you told Amalie. No one cared for you. And yet you survived.”
“I did not survive very well.”
She shook her head slightly. “Do not try to take me on, Cammon. I am too dark for you. I want you to pour all your light and all your goodness into Amalie. I don’t want you to spare any of it for me.”
He smiled slightly. “That’s an odd way to hear oneself described. As being full of light and goodness.”