Page 168 of Of Bargains & Betrayal

“Do I selfishly, and a little foolishly, wish I had gone to Embervale myself to check on you? That it had been me caught in your sights? Maybe. But there are no hard feelings toward either of you.”

I hadn’t prepared for this conversation at all.

In all the possibilities I’d run through in my mind, most were a little hostile at the very least, a little laced with betrayal and disappointment in my behavior. But this ruefulness? The mournful tone to his voice? That had never been a factor.

And, goddess, it pulled at my heart in an unfamiliar way.

“You’ll be caught in my sights plenty, Max. Or, at least, I hope you will be, as my husband.” I caught the smile that tugged at the corner of his mouth. “But we will need to figure out what this means for all of us.”

Maksym nodded slowly and lifted my hand, pressing his lips to my bargain-marked palm. “Semantics for another, less tumultuous day. Be safe, will you?”

“No promises.” I righted a loop of ink-black hair tangled around his right horn. “But I’ll try my best.”

There was so much more I needed to say to him, but there wasn't time.

Everything else would have to wait until my brother's desperate display had been dealt with and we'd all made it back to the Keep in one piece.

37

LOOK ME IN THE EYES AND LIE

JASPER

In all my years crawling across the Wastes with Maksym, I’d been in plenty of fights. Meager ones, large ones. Brawls in taverns, fistfights in alleyways. Skirmishes in towns that wanted little to do with our band of misfits. Even the culmination of our building rebellion against old King Callum, which ended in weeks of bloodshed and battles breaking out everywhere in sight.

In theory, the mage training of my youth had prepared me for it all.

To strategize, assess danger and risks, and enact plans carefully crafted with my arcane knowledge. To be the right hand of a king who needed guidance; to impart my wisdom on brutish generals and squadron commanders who could see little reason beyond their need to conquer.

But that morning, I learned just how frighteningly little in my life had actually prepared me for something that truly tasted like the cusp of war.

Behind the tentative safety of Grimmoria’s border wall, we were a well-organized disaster. A sea of dark fae troops, dotted with hurriedly erected tents and weapon stores, painted the landscape for as far as I cared to look.

Groups had moved trebuchets into place.

Specialized squads were packed into the battlements, on standby for movement with ballistas and archers loaded.

Our infantry was chomping to do damage, scattered out in battalions, balanced with magecraft and brute strength. But they’d be the last to go through the reinforced gate, beyond the safety of the wards, and only if the ward stone was felled.

We would fight from a distance, returning equal fire, until we were given no other choice. And I desperately hoped it would not come to that.

The siege of my kingdom aside, I refused to consider an outcome in which Max lost his life. I’d gladly lay down my own before it came to it, if I could offer a second of distraction in the name of any greater good.

Thankfully, Odessan forces had retreated since their earlier offensive on the anchor stone, a mighty obelisk of ink-black veined with crystalline blue that stood a hundred feet in the air and easily thirty feet across, etched with thousands of ancient runes.

The Odessan war camps were a murky smudge of smoke and tents below the ridgeline of the last plateau separating Grimmoria from the desolate lowlands of the Wastes.

Whatever they had done to secure that land—usually inhabited by willing and harmless outcasts of society—was beyond me, but it made my blood boil all the same.

Our border guard hadn’t even known Odessan forces were about to launch an assault until they’d appeared on the ridgeline and volleyed their first wave of projectiles at the ward stone. An entire fucking battalion, pulled from thin air, equipment, bodies, buildings and all.

It was a feat I could handle if desperate measures called for a broad retreat, but it would leave my body wrecked after, and a magic-drained mage was an utter waste during war.

Many years had passed since I left the lands of the god-touched people, sure, but our intelligence stayed fairly reliable until Enora’s father died, and we had never known of noteworthy Steppers in royal service.

I’d have plenty to mull over once we cleared through to the other side of this irritating display from Odessa’s pissant boy king.

“High mage!” came a call from somewhere to the right of me, and a young Umbrite messenger came funneling through, waving a paper in her hand.