Page 99 of The Half King
“Goodbye for now,” she echoed, because she believed him.
“My lady of the temple,” Kian called to her after they returned to their horses and began the slow, careful descent back down the mountain. They rode in a single file with General Petros leading the group, followed by Father Padron, Daerick, Cerise and Blue, and Kian riding at the rear of the caravan. “It’s time for you to explain how you walked into a pool of acid and then fell out of the sky.”
“Yes, do tell,” Daerick added over his shoulder. “That was most impressive, and I’m not easily impressed.”
Cerise released a breathy laugh when she remembered how clumsily she had faced each of her challenges. She doubted anyone would’ve been impressed if they’d watched her being tossed back and forth by a rotting corpse with her arm lodged inside its chest. But she told the group what had happened, focusing mainly on the second trial. She wanted them to know that Nero had offered to sacrifice his life for hers. Not that it made much of an impact. When she finished telling her story, Father Padron stared at the trail ahead of him, seemingly as bored as ever. Daerick chewed a thumbnail and gazed off into the distance. A trace of concern lined Kian’s forehead, and General Petros turned around and frowned at her so hard that a dimple appeared in his chin.
“I would have killed the boy,” the general grumbled. “And I like him.”
“You don’t know that,” Cerise said. “No one knows what they would do in any situation until it happens. If you had been there and seen the look on his face—”
“He would be dead,” the general interrupted.
“Actually, you both would be,” she told him. “Compassion was the test.”
The general pointed at his own face, flushed so hot by the sun that his skin nearly matched the color of the tattooed flames on his head. “Does this look like the face of compassion, my girl?”
Cerise didn’t want to lie to him, so she answered with a shrug.
“Clarify something for me,” Kian said from behind. “Did you know that you could’ve preserved your life by taking Nero’s?”
She turned to face him. She understood what he was really asking. He wanted to know how she had been able to disobey his direct command to survive by any means necessary. “Enchantments were stripped away, remember?” she quietly reminded him. “The rules of magic were different.”
“So you were simply going to die down there?” he asked, his eyebrows knitting together. “You were going to leave the rest of us behind to grieve your loss? Did you give us no consideration when you decided to surrender your life and drown in that wretched place?”
“But I didn’t drown,” she reminded him. “I’m safe and whole…and the first person in a thousand years to hold the Petros Blade.”
“That we know of,” Daerick interjected.
“That we know of,” she agreed. “But if I had done anything differently—if I had killed Nero to try to save myself—I would have ruined all of our lives. I’d be dead, Nero would be dead, and we wouldn’t have the Petros Blade. I made the right choice—the choice that brought me back to you.”
“But you didn’t know that at the time,” Kian argued. “When the water was rising up to your neck, you had no idea that you’d made the one decision that would save you. Quite the opposite. You had every reason to believe you would drown.” There was a dark note of pain in his voice, as though his trust in her had been betrayed. “You seem far too eager to leave this world. That worries me.”
Conflicting emotions stirred within her. She hated to see Kian hurting. His pain was her pain. But even though she understood the reason for his hurt, a small part of her resented him for letting his fear of losing her overshadow her triumph. She had accomplished something more remarkable in one day than most people accomplished in a lifetime. And she had done it by trusting her instincts. She had listened to her heart, not to the orders of men. The orders of men would have gotten her killed. She had herself to thank for her survival, and maybe it was petty of her to want credit for that, but she did.
“You asked me to have faith in myself,” she reminded him. “So I did, and that’s what saved me. I’m not eager to leave this world. I want to live. But it’s not fair for you to praise me for having an uncommonly pure soul and then criticize me for refusing to commit murder.”
Kian grumbled under his breath.
“Don’t you agree?” she prompted. She wanted to hear him say it.
“All right, yes,” he told her. “You’re right. Your empathy is my favorite thing about you. I shouldn’t have faulted you for being exactly who you are. You did well, Cerise.”
“Spectacularly well,” Daerick added. “We’re proud of you.”
“Thank you.” She sat a bit taller in her saddle and then turned again to face Kian. “Please try not to worry about me,” she said, for what little good it would do. It seemed a lover’s primary job was to worry. To lighten his mood, she teased, “I have every intention of outliving you.”
He laughed without humor. “To outlive a firstborn Mortara is no accomplishment. None of us have lasted beyond our twenty-first birthday. But I do see your point.” He lowered his voice so that only she could hear him. “I still command you to preserve your life, but I’m willing to remove murder from the list of necessary means. As long as you don’t have to kill an innocent person with your own hands, I order you to do whatever is required to protect yourself.”
Cerise heaved a sigh. She hoped he wasn’t expecting her to thank him. She had wanted him to remove the compulsion altogether.
“I’m glad that’s settled,” Daerick said, sliding her a teasing grin. “I do loathe to see Mommy and Daddy fight. Now let’s talk about what to do with the Petros Blade.”
At the mention of the blade, Cerise felt its weight strapped to her back, held in place by a makeshift sheath that General Petros had constructed out of strips of old rucksack leather. The weapon itself was as light as a dream. What weighed heavily on her shoulders was the urgency to use it before time ran out. With Daerick’s Claiming Day and Kian’s twenty-first birthday fast approaching, she had to hold herself back from galloping at full speed down the mountain. She wished she didn’t need Cole Solon’s blood to complete the ritual. The palace had never seemed so far away.
“I think we should have a ceremony,” she said. “A proper one. Something lavish to honor the goddess when we ask her forgiveness for the Great Betrayal.”
Daerick furrowed his brow. “Do we have to? We’re already short on time. I was hoping we could get started as soon as we stable the horses.”
