Page 115 of Heartbreak Prince

Either way, I cannot remain at his side if I hope to stay sane.

He must do his duty. I’ve already done mine.

23

I fly due east for two hours, knowing that eventually I’ll have to angle either southeast to Xarsi or due south toward Belavrin. Every few minutes I change my mind and decide to go back to the Celestial Seat, but I always talk myself out of it, so I never actually tell Severin to turn around.

Maybe I should stay with Vawn and see this through. But he said it himself—I’ve completed the assignment. I’ve done my job. As much as I want to keep protecting and supporting him through what comes next, it would be cruel to put myself through the agony of watching him bind himself to those two rulers.

Maybe I should have tried harder to talk him out of it. Maybe I should have told him how I feel. But I didn’t want to manipulate him or exert emotional control, not when he’s trying so hard to be a worthy king for his people.

In a way, what I’m doing is a confession. I’m giving him the space to make his final choice without my immediate presence. This way, he can reject me without ever saying a word, without having to deal with my pain on top of everything else he’s enduring. If he doesn’t want me, if being the king and fulfilling the treaty is the future he prefers, all he has to do is let me go.

“This is a strange land,” Severin comments. “It smells like ruin.”

“What does ruin smell like?” I murmur absently through my scarf.

“Broken turf, bodies frozen in deep holes, crumbling plaster, shattered rock,” he replies. “I do not like it.”

“I don’t much like it either.” I shiver, conscious that darkness will soon be upon us and with it, life-threatening cold. “We should probably find somewhere to spend the night.”

“You have money?”

“A little.”

“So this is how it will be, then? You and I, wandering aimlessly from kingdom to kingdom while you sell your body or your skills for enough coin to survive? I assume you have no intention of returning to Belavrin to find employment.”

“The Redemptive Authority knows what I look like. They know I helped Vawn escape them. Even if someone in Belavrin would hire me, I’d be in constant danger of being snatched up by Redeemers and either killed or tossed in jail. Death seems more likely, given what they did to Lord Kaenan and his guards. Did I tell you about that? How they hung them from the border wall?”

“That must have been difficult for the prince.”

“Yes.”

“He has lost everyone who is dear to him.”

I shift uncomfortably. “Yes...”

“You are dear to him.”

“I’m not. If he felt that way about me, he would never have considered a marriage contract with the Twins. And he would have told me that he cared.”

“Would he? The Naughty Prince, for whom intimacy has always been a pastime and a joke?” Severin chuckles dryly.

“What do you know? You’re a woven rug,” I grumble. “Magic carpets aren’t supposed to understand emotions or dissect them so skillfully.”

“Well... I’m not like other magic carpets.”

“That, my friend, is a vast understatement.” I sigh, re-crossing my legs. “Do you think we should go back?”

“I fear for him,” the carpet says. “You believe he does not care for you, yet I happen to know that he cares deeply, far more than you know. He didn’t want me to tell you this, but I have no choice now. After you freed him from the bounty hunters, you were terribly wounded—”

“I know.”

“You don’t realize how bad it was. You were dying, Forsythia. You were moments from your final breath. The prince—”

But a rumbling sound, followed by several screams, interrupts what he’s about to say. Looking off to my left, I see the ground caving inward, a sunken spot imploding from beneath a tiny hamlet consisting of a dozen small, domed houses.

Snow and dirt puff upward in a rolling cloud as the cottages slide and crumble into the hole. We’re so close that the resulting disturbance in the air makes Severin waver on his course. I can see several bodies wriggling and dangling over the edge of the pit, clinging to debris that’s swiftly moving down, into the chasm.