“I need you here,” Tiras demanded.
“Why, Tiras?” Kjell asked, incredulous.
“Because . . . you are the captain of my guard. You are Kjell of Jeru. You are protector of the city.”
“And you are a powerful king. The Volgar has been obliterated. I have spent the last two years looking for something to kill just to justify my existence.”
“There is nothing for you in Dendar, Kjell,” Tiras argued.
“I am not convinced there is anything for me anywhere.”
“That is not true,” Tiras pleaded. “You are my brother. This is your home.”
“No, Tiras. It isn’t. This castle has never been my home. I have stayed out of loyalty to you. But this is not about me, Tiras. She told me—Sasha told me—that our gifts are about responsibility. She is now my responsibility.”
“No, brother. She isn’t!” Tiras cried.
“Did I tell you where I found her?” Kjell shot to his feet, and he didn’t wait for Tiras to answer. “She was broken, laying in a heap at the base of a cliff. I didn’t think I could heal her. I had never healed anyone but you and the queen, and my devotion to you both—”
“—can’t be questioned,” Tiras completed his sentence.
“No, it can’t,” Kjell agreed, gritting his teeth against his sudden emotion. “Since I healed you, I’ve healed a hundred small wounds, a hundred minor injuries. But nothing like what I did the day when I restored your life. Not until I healed Sasha.” He winced and corrected himself, using her proper name. “Saoirse.”
“I made a bargain with her as she lay dying on the ground. I told her that if she . . . came back . . . that I would try to love her. But I haven’t even had to try. I’ve tried not to.”
“Kjell,” Tiras breathed, weakening.
“I love her more than I’ve ever loved anything—or anyone—before. It was never a choice.”
“The gods save us,” Tiras sighed, and he was contemplative for a moment, as if trying to puzzle out a solution. Then he shook his head and met Kjell’s gaze with compassion. “But she is the wife of another, Kjell.”
Kjell nodded, accepting the verdict, his pain so great he was swimming in it, gulping it in in giant mouthfuls. But it was like trying to swallow an ocean, and he stopped fighting it, letting it take him. “The day I healed her, I gave myself to her. And I made her a promise. Just ten days ago, before all of Jeru, I pledged myself to her. Everything has changed. But nothing has changed for me. And I am going with her.”
“I don’t know what you’ll find in Dendar, Kjell. Do you remember what Kilmorda looked like?” Tiras argued, changing his tactics.
“Yes. All the more reason to go. I will go with her, and I will put her back on the throne.”
“Just as you put me back on the throne,” Tiras said. “Caught in an eternal round of fixing what is broken and never finding what you seek.”
“I have no ambition in myself,” Kjell whispered.
“No. You don’t. You never have.” Tiras shook his head and pulled at his dark hair, vexed. “But perhaps fate has other plans, Kjell,” Tiras warned. “I understand falling in love with a woman you don’t think you can have. But you cannot . . . have her. Whether or not you go to Dendar . . . she is not yours,” Tiras implored.
Kjell winced, remembering all the times he’d insisted just that.
I am yours.
You are not.
In his heart she had become his—her flesh, her breath, the weight of her hair and the devotion of her black gaze. That much could not be changed by a Star Maker’s revelations.
“I will not shame you, brother,” Kjell insisted, his eyes hard, his voice shaking.
“And I would not blame you, Kjell. But if you go to Dendar, and the kingdom of Caarn still exists, if King Aren lives, you will be putting yourself in the service of another king. And you must give him your loyalty.”
“I am used to being in the service of kings,” Kjell retorted. “If he is a good king—and Sasha says that he is—then I can serve him. And when I am certain that Caarn is restored and that she is safe . . . I will return to Jeru.”
“And leave her behind?” Tiras challenged.
“Yes,” Kjell whispered. “And leave her behind.”
***
The journey to Corvyn would be nothing like the journey from Quondoon. When Kilmorda had been decimated and her people destroyed and scattered, her ships had remained in her harbors, empty, of no use or interest to the scourge of conquering birdmen. In recent years, King Tiras had attempted to rebuild the industry, sending teams of tradesmen and sailors to repair the ships docked at Kilmorda’s ports and sail them to the ports in Corvyn and Firi. But with the destruction in Porta, Dendar and Willa, and no one to resume trade on the other side of the Jyraen Sea, those ships had gone from the Bay of Brisson, tucked between Kilmorda and Corvyn, to the harbors in Firi and back again, following the Jeruvian coast, never venturing to the lands across the Jyraen Sea.
The Bay of Brisson lay directly north of Lord Corvyn’s fortress in the Corvar Mountains and word had already been sent to him that two ships should be readied, sailors gathered, and supplies loaded. One of the two ships en route to Dendar would carry an envoy to send east into Willa, and negotiations were already underway to send another expedition from Firi to explore what remained of Porta.
There was no love or familial feeling between Lord Corvyn and his daughter, the queen, and no loyalty or allegiance to King Tiras. The history between the provinces was long and painful, riddled with fear and injustice, political maneuvering and personal undermining. But Lord Corvyn was not a stupid man. Tiras was eager to resume old trade routes and reestablish connections lost to the Volgar blight. If the king wanted to commission two ships and the labor to sail them, Lord Corvyn would oblige, and happily. He would also make an obscene profit, Kjell had no doubt. If the ships were lost, they had never been Lord Corvyn’s ships to begin with, and if they returned with good news and the possibility of new trade, all the better.
The ships were to sail from the Bay of Brisson across the Jyraen Sea, heading northwest toward Dendar. When they arrived in the Bay of Dendar, Kjell, Queen Saoirse, and one contingent would continue to the Valley of Caarn while the other would head east to the realm once known as Willa. The journey across the waters would take them little more than a week, if all went well.
Tiras had put his steward over the cargo, the caravan, and the men who would travel to Corvyn, and from Corvyn, to Dendar. Kjell made a few minor adjustments and put himself in charge. The steward gratefully turned it over to him, and just after dawn on a midsummer Jeruvian morning, ten wagons, forty horses, and fifty people—members of the King’s Guard, a Star Maker, a queen, two maids, a blacksmith, a cook, a carpenter, and a slew of the Gifted, claiming talents just obscure enough to make them more odd than awe-inducing—left for Corvyn. Thirty sailors and two ships’ captains would meet them at the Bay of Brisson in Corvyn, ready to sail.
He hadn’t told Sasha he was coming, hadn’t seen her at all since he left her asleep in the straw. Telling her his intentions implied he needed a response or permission from her. He didn’t need either. So he didn’t tell her.
When she saw him, mounted on Lucian, making the rounds through the assembled men and wagons, she had stopped abruptly, Padrig beside her. The Spinner said something to her and touched her arm, but her gaze never left Kjell’s face, and she approached him with careful eyes and clenched hands, Padrig trailing her with disapproval and despair.