A Queen of Ice (A Trial of Sorcerers #5)

Chapter 7

7

L avette’s home encompassed the entire top floor of one of the tall buildings in the center of Qwint. Composed of several rooms with towering ceilings and more curtains than doors, the whole place had an airy and open feel. Walls of honeyed plaster reflected the late afternoon light, casting every room in a warm, golden hue.

The building’s height afforded panoramic views of the entire city-state by way of a wide veranda that wrapped around the entire exterior—from the breaker walls that shielded Qwint from the ocean and opposing naval forces, to the distant land wall, far to the west, that separated their land from Carsovia’s.

Eira, Alyss, and Cullen had been escorted to the tall building, still licking sugar off their fingers the entire time they climbed the many staircases up to the D’astre apartments. As soon as they arrived, Lavette quickly got them up to speed on what little they’d missed and gave them a tour of her family’s home that included explaining how the rooms had been divided among them.

Everyone was taking time on their own to rest and freshen up. After doing the same, Eira had made her way through the central common area and out to the widest part of the veranda, positioning herself at the farthest point of the arc and surveying the city as she would on the bow of a vessel.

Curls of magic teased her palm, as though an invisible hand was trying to lace its fingers with hers. Eira pushed off the railing with her elbows, shifting to face Cullen.

Trousers of deep navy clung low to his hips, a wide sash holding them in place. What looked like a checkered blanket, or oversized scarf, was wrapped around his shoulders. With no shirt underneath, swaths of the sides of his abdomen peeked out above the trousers and below the scarf. His arms also on display.

He huffed soft amusement, running a hand through his still-wet hair. Proper bathing in fresh water was a luxury not afforded on ships that they were all taking their turns indulging in. “Do you like what you see?”

“Life on a ship has been kind to you, Lord Drowel.”

“Cullen, please.” He grimaced at his family name, as if it were strange and unwelcome to hear. Eira could relate to that feeling all too well. “Or beloved. I’d accept that, too.”

She laughed softly and shook her head. Her attention drifted out over the city once more. In her periphery she saw his do the same, gaze softening. They’d spoken about nothing of consequence during their sticky bun excursion—focusing more on the reprieve, the pretend normalcy.

“Speaking of your family name… Did you find him?” she asked as delicately as she could manage for a man she had never much liked.

“No word.” He didn’t elaborate, and Eira left it at that. Whatever the truth was, it wouldn’t be found in Qwint. “Though, speaking of families…”

Eira hid a grimace. She’d opened this avenue of questioning; it was only fair of him to turn it back on her.

“Are you all right? You came right out here to be alone after the bath.”

“We are all doing our own things.” Eira gestured inside. Ducot was sitting with Crow on one of the wide sofas in the common area. Olivin and Yonlin were still sorting themselves. Alyss had promptly gone off to take a nap the moment she saw the bed. Lavette and Varren had secluded themselves as well.

“Probably because this is the first time we can be more than forty paces apart from each other,” he mused.

“Probably.”

“Would you like me to be forty paces from you?” He arched his eyebrows.

Eira shook her head. “You’re welcome to join me. There’s a lot of railing.”

“Even railing that’s roughly forty paces away.”

“You know, I’m going to start thinking you want to be away from me .”

“Well, let me prove the contrary.” He stood next to her, sides almost touching, elbows brushing as he leaned forward. The touch somehow reminded her of the first time their knuckles had brushed back in Risen. The tingling happiness of that memory was weighted by all the times at the bow of the ship where he had been her silent companion in their mourning. “Seriously, Eira, how was it?”

“They were as they’ve always been.” Eira sighed and let her walls come down. It was still all too easy—instinctive, even—around him. “As I never wanted to see them…”

“We’re all blind to the faults of our parents.” Cullen could speak from experience. “We never want to see them as who they are. It means admitting their shortcomings… Even for those who had the best of parents, that’s still the moment you realize that they aren’t the paragons we once imagined them to be, and accept that you can’t depend on anyone but yourself.”

Eira hummed, supposing it was true. Part of her had been holding out hope that her parents would prove her expectations wrong. Even though, at every turn over the years, they had shown her exactly who they were.

“But I honestly don’t care about them. How are you ?”

“I’m all right.” She was grateful he didn’t contradict her because she meant it. “It feels…done. They’re not shut out of my life forever. But they’re not a part of it either. They hold no power over me—I don’t need them. But that also means I realized I don’t need to shut them out entirely, either. It’s…”

“Complicated,” he finished for her.

“I imagine you must feel similarly about your father.” Every word was spoken as though it were cradling fine, blown glass. Eira glanced at him from the corners of her eyes. His face was stony, but not grimacing or crumpling.

Cullen nodded. “Part of me hoped he’d be there. But another part of me…” He made a noise of something like disgust. “Thinks it’s for the best he wasn’t. I’ve begun to wonder what I might say to him if I’m ever presented with the opportunity. How he might see me now.”

“And?” She was, admittedly, achingly curious.

“I’ve a lot of choice words.” Cullen chuckled darkly, eyes shadowed and gaze intense toward the distant horizon. “But, at the end of it, I made my own choices. I should have been more of a man and stood up for myself. I can’t blame him for everything.”

“Look at you, accepting responsibility.” She nudged him with her shoulder.

“I know, what a shock.” Cullen hung his head and glanced her way through strands of hair that had fallen loose from its usual part.

“It was, once.”

“Once,” he repeated, and a disbelieving smile carved across his face. She wondered if he, too, was thinking about just how far they’d come.

The talk of family—of surviving and not—had Eira’s thoughts wandering back to Noelle. The back of her throat was saltier still from all the tears she’d refused to shed today.

“It’s unfair that we’re both here—that my parents, of all people, managed to be here—and she’s not.”

“There are a great many things that are unfair about her death.” Cullen straightened, looking back over the city. “She would’ve loved it.” The words were barely more than a whisper on the wind, carried over the rooftops toward the distant horizon, where the watercolor sky blended with darkening sea.

“She would’ve told us how much better Norin was.”

Cullen snorted, stifling a laugh. For a while, even smiling had felt like a betrayal to her memory. Laughing was practically forbidden among them. But all ice thawed eventually, it seemed.

“She would’ve,” Cullen agreed, looking out again once he’d managed to compose himself. “Totally convinced she was right to the point that we’d all agree.”

“Absolutely.”

A silence stretched on for what felt like eternity. Amid the sunset, she could almost hear his thoughts. It wasn’t until lights from distant buildings began to flicker on, mirroring the early stars overhead in the twilight, that he spoke again.

“You know, it wasn’t your fault,” he whispered.

“Don’t,” Eira said firmly, straightening to look him in the eyes. “Don’t,” she repeated, gentler, but as unyielding as steel. “You keep her death and her memory in your way; let me keep it in mine.”

Cullen seemed poised to object but thought better of it when a pointed look from her silenced any retort. He turned his face back toward the sprawling city with a sigh. His voice carried a surprising conviction when he said, “Let’s go out.”

Eira made a surprised noise and lifted her brows.

“We’re in a new city, for the first time in weeks we don’t have any kind of stink, and our pockets are still heavy with Adela’s gold.” He grinned. “Why not go out?”

“We need to stay focused.”

“On what?”

Agitation tugged on the corners of her lips at the question. “We need to ensure our ship will be cleared to sail when next we want. That it’s properly repaired and restocked so we have all we need. And anything else we can do to ally ourselves with Qwint so they return to Meru’s aide.”

Eira counted on her fingers as she spoke, listing off everything she wanted to accomplish.

Cullen grabbed her fingers with an encouraging squeeze. “None of that will be done tonight. Except maybe getting some supplies, which won’t be done here. We’ll have to go out anyway.”

“You can be stubborn, you know that?”

“I think you like me stubborn.” He smirked, the fading light highlighting every bit of confidence Cullen wore in new ways that Eira realized she might not have fully appreciated before, if ever.