When I hear the carriage rattling down the lane, I know. The cottage is closed up tight against the weather, and we have a fire blazing in the hearth, but I throw a scarf around my neck and head out into the swirling snow anyway.
I half expect a full contingent of guards and soldiers to be following them, but I only see two horses pulling the carriage.
Good, I think, as I shiver in the chill. Tessa was smart. This is already risky enough. My heart settles a bit.
A second later, the door bounces open behind me, and a cloak is thrown over my shoulders. “Honestly. If you’re not careful, you’ll catch your death of cold and you’ll miss your chance at seeing him.”
I’m anxious now, so my answer is just as peevish. “I don’t see how that’s possible with you constantly throwing clothes and blankets on me.”
Quint’s eyes flash my way with feigned annoyance. I reach up to brush snowflakes out of his red hair, and the annoyance is replaced with a smile.
Miller, I think. Not Quint.
But I can’t get used to it. Even after six months, I don’t want to call him by any other name. I might be accustomed to Sullivan myself, but Quint . . . will always be Quint.
“We must be formal,” I warn. “We do not know who might be in attendance, and we cannot risk giving ourselves away.”
“You’re cautioning me?” The annoyance is back. “I am not the one who chose to send a letter directly to the palace.”
“It’s not as if I signed it,” I snap. “No one is watching for letters from a long dead king.”
We’ve been arguing about this for a week.
But then the carriage is drawing to a stop, the horses throwing up slush, and to my absolute amazement, the two palace guards who’ve driven the carriage are Thorin and Saeth.
As soon as they see us, they do a double take. Then Saeth grabs Thorin’s arm. His eyes are wide.
“You’re a ghost,” he whispers.
“No,” I say. “Just lucky.”
They move to climb down from the front of the carriage, likely to do their duty and open the door, but I don’t have the mettle to wait any longer. I stride right up and open it myself.
Then I find myself facing my brother, the king.
The shock in his face is so pure. The wonder. The relief. He’s frozen in place as if he’s afraid to move, as if he’s afraid to blink, his hands braced on either side of the doorway. I’m frozen as well, because I haven’t seen him since the moment he got on that ship to Ostriary. He’s so familiar and so different all at once, and I can’t stop staring at him. Our breath fogs in the air between us.
Then I reach out to rough up his hair the way I did when he was a boy. “It’s all right, Cory.”
He practically falls out of the carriage to give me a hug. His arms are so tight against my back that I can feel his heartbeat. His breath shakes, just a little, but so does mine.
I grip him back just as tightly. “I missed you, too,” I say. “It’s been so hard to stay away. Quint—ah, Miller—has been after me for sending the letter in the first place. But I had to tell you.”
He draws back to look at me. He says absolutely nothing, but then he hugs me again.
I hug him just as tightly. “We can go inside,” I say. “If it pleases you, Your Majesty.”
I’m partially teasing, partially not, and he pulls back again. He’s holding me at arm’s length, his eyes searching my face as if he still can’t believe it. “There’s a part of me that wants to punch you, you know.”
“I do know,” I say. “And I’m sorry.”
Tessa moves close, and she sets a hand on his arm. “And there’s a part of him that deserves it.”
That seems to strike Corrick like an arrow, because he frowns and pulls back farther. “I do.” But then he grabs Quint in a hug as well, but only for a moment. He draws back and gives him a look. “When I told you to take care of my brother, I’ll have you know that this isn’t quite what I had in mind.”
Quint smiles, looking a bit too pleased with himself. “We were sharing a house together. I simply couldn’t help it.”
Corrick smiles in return, but I don’t. I made mention of Quint in my letter to my brother, of course, but this is one thing that I’ve wondered about for the better part of a year.
“There were so many things I never discussed with you,” I say to him. “Were you very surprised?”
“Surprised?” He takes a step back, regarding me. “Of course not. Quint could charm a brick wall into lively conversation.”
“Brick walls are often easier,” Quint says, and Tessa laughs softly.
For some reason, that makes me blush, just a little. “No—I meant—” I break off. “Never mind. It’s cold. We should go inside.”
But Corrick frowns. “You meant . . .” His eyebrows go up. “You thought I didn’t know?”
I stare back at him, but the words catch in my throat and refuse to form.
They don’t need to form, because he bursts out with, “How could I not know? You made eyes at that stable boy for months!”
“What?” I sputter.
“Every single time we went into the Wilds.” His voice drops to a mockery of mine. “ ‘Go find a game of cards, Cory. Doesn’t that look like a lively dance, little brother? I’m going to go see some horses. Why don’t you join those boys by the fire. I’ll be back in an hour.’ ” He rolls his eyes. “I was young, but I wasn’t stupid. Lord, Harristan. No one likes horses that much.”
Quint bursts out laughing. Even the guards look like they’re trying to hide a smile.
I look between the two of them. “Don’t tell me. You knew this, too?”
Thorin and Saeth exchange a glance, but it’s Saeth who shrugs. “There was that one footman who always seemed to make you tongue-tied. What was his name?”
“Murphy,” Thorin says immediately.
Corrick’s eyes light up. “That’s right! You used to spill your tea every time, too!”
I simply cannot believe this.
Quint leans over to give me a kiss on the cheek. “So charming.”
“All right,” I snap. “Enough. Let’s go inside with all of you. I’ll take the crown back if this is how it’s going to be.”
Quint heats some mulled wine while we sit by the fire. At first the guards moved to take a position by the wall, but I urged them to join us, too. It settled something in my heart to see them look to Corrick first, to know he’s won their loyalty the way I did. Corrick gave me a sly look and said, “Of course you should sit with us. You’re friends of Sullivan’s.”
“I’m so glad to see you both,” I tell them. “Adam, are those a captain’s bars on your sleeve?”
Saeth nods, then glances at Thorin. “I’m trying to make sure no one has cause to close ranks against me.”
Thorin smiles. “Only when we play cards.”
“And you, Wolf?” I say. “Do you still see Alice?”
His cheeks turn pink. “I do.”
“They’re getting married,” says Saeth.
Thorin’s blush deepens. “I’d invite you both to come, but I expect you’d be recognized.”
“I could say the same thing about mine,” says Corrick, and my eyes snap to his.
“Very likely,” I say, and my voice goes a bit rough. There’s a pulse of longing in my heart that I’ve felt ever since news about the royal engagement made its way to Mosswell. “I don’t think I could go anywhere near the Royal Sector. Not for some time yet.”
But I glance at Quint and wonder if I could convince him to go. We argued for a week over sending a letter, and it was worth it. Convincing him to sneak into the Royal Sector might take a month.
I glance across at Cory, and he’s watching me like he knows what I’m thinking. His blue eyes are intent and daring. It reminds me of a thousand moments when we were younger, sitting across a table, waiting until dark when we could escape the trappings of the palace to race across the gardens and sprint through the tunnels into the Wilds.
Tessa looks between us, and she smiles. “I’ll have an invitation sent anyway,” she says. “If any of you are good at anything, it’s sneaking.”
“On that note,” says Saeth, “how on earth did you escape? I saw the rubble from the explosion. Did you make it to one of the tunnels?”
“Yes—by sheer luck,” I say. “After we lit the fuse, we ran. We got to the stairwell we used to escape that night, which was farther than I expected. But Annabeth was right. The palace did collapse into the lowest levels. We were trapped below for a time.” I hesitate and meet Quint’s eyes across the room. “Two days. Maybe three.”
“I had a broken arm,” Quint says. He gestures to me. “Sully had broken ribs. We were filthy and hurting when we were finally able to crawl out.”
“But if you escaped,” says Corrick, “why didn’t you simply go back to Consul Beeching?”
“By that point, too much had happened,” I say. “You were already home! They were calling you king! Consul Beeching had kept his promise. Rumors were saying that King Harristan had sacrificed himself to save the people from the wrongdoings of the consuls. We kept hearing it in the streets.” I shrug. “Too much had gone wrong. Too many people had been hurt. The wheels had already been put in motion. I couldn’t undo that.”
“But you could have told me,” Corrick says, and then I hear the pain undercutting the anger in his tone.
“No, Cory,” I say evenly. “I couldn’t.”
He glares at me, drawing himself up, facing me in a way he never would have in the past.
In that one shift, I can see how he’s grown into this role.
“You’re proving my point,” I say. “If you knew, you never would have risen to be king. You always would have known I was in the shadows, judging your choices, your movements, your ideas.”
“Then why did you tell me at all?” he demands.
I reach out and ruffle his hair again. “Because I love you too much.”
He catches my wrist, but then he grips my hand tight. His eyes gleam. “I’m very glad you did.”
“So am I,” says Tessa.
“Besides,” says Quint as he fetches the kettle to pour steaming cups of mulled wine, “I rather like having a cottage in Mosswell. The village gossip is downright vicious, and Sully can play with his horses all day—”
“Wait. You really do have a stable?” Tessa says in surprise.
“Oh, yes,” I say. “Farther down the lane. Twenty horses. We did quite a business in the fall. Should have some foals come spring, too.”
Corrick looks between us in wonder. “Twenty horses? How did you make that happen with just the clothes off your backs?”
Quint and I exchange a glance. “Oh, escaping from the palace took quite a bit of time, and once we knew you’d arrived safely, it’s rather possible we snuck back through some other tunnels because we knew how to reach the treasury—”
“The looters!” Corrick smacks me on the arm. “You thief!”
I smile. “You outlaw.”
Tessa lifts her cup. “Cheers, gentlemen. We can all drink to that.”
