Page 43 of Hearts Lost

“I did,” she agrees. “I did work wonders with horses.”

Suddenly, she looks so miserable that I step forward and close her in my arms. Her body is hard and angry, her shoulders as tense as steel. I run my fingers down her back, feeling the ridge of her spine through her dress. Waiting to see if she wants to talk. Finally, she sighs. Her body softens against mine.

“Grathgore took my sister,” she says.

I know better, now, than to assume I understand the implications behind those words. So I hold my tongue, run my fingers up and down her spine, and wait for her to continue. Or not.

“She was only ten,” Ithronel says, her voice thick. “But, her magic. She’s a magician. The king’s men came for her. They said it was a great honor.”

She swallows thickly. I think of King Galan’s magicians, bakers, gardeners, and blacksmiths who get together to discuss magic over bottles of wine, and I quickly decide I know nothing about life in Ithronel’s kingdom.

“I’m so sorry,” I whisper.

A shiver dances across her skin. She steps out of my arms to rub her eyes.

“A few years later, I entered a festival race. I won, but some of the boys said I cheated. So.” She shrugs, then glances into the tangle of trees. “I punched them.”

I smile before I can stop myself. Yes, that sounds like the woman who’d laughed at the void.

“After that, the king’s men came for me,” she continues. “They said they needed someone fast. That they needed a fighter. I spent years cursing my temper, and my decision to enter that stupid race, until my sister explained it to me.”

She falls silent; my mind ruthlessly fills in the blanks. She’d said getting attached to someone was like handing King Grathgore a stick he can use to beat you.

“You were the stick for your sister,” I say, and my gut twists at the brutal logic of it. “If he wanted her to do something, he’d use you.”

Ithronel nods miserably, and for a heartbeat, I really do think I’m going to be sick. Using another person as a threat, putting an innocent life at risk in order to force someone else to cooperate; voids, the Kingdom of the Summer must be even worse than I’d imagined. Ithronel runs her hands over her shoulders and stares into the trees.

And it must have gone both ways, I realize as my body turns cold. If Ithronel wanted to leave the Royal Guard, if she’d violated protocol or disobeyed orders, then what was it she’d said? It could be your sister’s head on the chopping block.

Yet here she was, on the other side of the portal between our worlds, sent to assassinate Grathgore’s direct descendant. What in the nine hells had King Grathgore used to get her to agree to this mission?

“He threatened your sister, didn’t he?” I ask. “That’s how he got you to do this. To go through the portal.”

Ithronel’s body jerks like I’ve just slapped her. Her eyes dart across the trees, and she sinks her hands into the skin of her own arms. Her mouth opens, then closes, and then she turns away from me.

A cold thread spools through the back of my mind. There’s something she’s not telling me, I think. She spins back to me, her cheeks flushed and her dark eyes blazing.

“Well, what about you?” Ithronel snaps. “You say you’re royalty, right? What are you doing working for the Royal Guard?”

Ah. Clearly, suspicion runs both ways. That realization shouldn’t make me smile but, voids help me, it does.

“I am related to royalty,” I say. “But I’m not in the direct line of succession, no matter how hard my parents try to tangle the hereditary charts. And King Galan did away with all of that anyway.”

Ithronel snorts like my answers are deeply unsatisfactory. Which is probably true. Why would I leave a position of wealth and power for marching exercises and cleaning drunks off the streets of the Crystal City?

“I hated every hour I spent in my family’s estate,” I say. The words sting a bit as they come out; the truth has sharp edges. “I would have done literally anything to get away from my parents. But the Royal Guard was the only thing they would approve because it gave me a long shot at claiming a throne I never wanted.”

Ithronel’s arms drop to her side. “Wow,” she says. “That’s… awful.”

I grin. I’ve never said any of that before, not even to Orryen. The truth may have sharp edges but, now that it’s out, I feel like a shadow monster sliding into the river to let the current carry me away. I raise my fist in an imaginary toast.

“Here’s to wallowing in self-pity,” I declare.

Ithronel smiles at me, her eyes brightening. She remembers, then. Of course she remembers sharing tea and brandy with me in the officers’ mess that very first night, the first time I realized I had to stay the nine hells away from this woman or I was going to lose my heart.

“Cheers,” she replies as she taps her fist against mine.

And it’s too late, I realize when our eyes meet.

My heart is gone.