“I don’t want to discuss anything at all, Lorcan. You’ve made your position clear. Let me make mine similarly explicit: we’re done.”
“I’m not—” Lorcan was smart enough to stop talking mid-sentence when I raised one eyebrow. “I don’t want to fight.”
“I don’t either. So, let’s not fight.” Again, I walked away.
“You’re not queen, yet, Zosia,” he called after me, in English. I shot him the middle finger without looking back. No one here will know what it means, except possibly Tovian. The gesture has no significance in Auralia.
Lorcan’s soft chuckle trailed me down the rest of the ramp.
I loathe him.
* * *
I spent the night on a pallet in Brenica’s rooms, working until the queen complained about the hour and I had to douse the lamp.
In the morning, I assessed my accomplishments: Press releases sent to Raina and Saskaya for editing, notes for the conversation with Humayun ready, indifference to Lorcan clutched like a cloak of ice around my shoulders. He doesn’t want to have sex with me. Fine. That’s his right. But then stop toying with me. Enough rejection. I can’t take it anymore.
And I’m sick of clinging to my hurts. Let me move on.
I could find another man. Maybe. But when I thought of having a baby with anyone else, the idea lost all appeal. So, it’s back to Plan A. When it’s my bones in the Hall of Ancestors, there will be no one to sit in vigil for me. I shall be the last princess. The last queen.
Bashir wins, after all.
Our little group departed the Ansi village in a cloud of tension the next morning. Tovian and Keryn both took Tahra to task for being too forward with Lorcan. She sulked at the back of our spread-out line, leaving Lorcan and me behind Tovian. Arguing.
“You’re the one who should’ve sent Tahra away yesterday.” I didn’t look at my knight as I spoke in a sidelong hiss of frustration. “Instead of leaving it to your friends to chastise her.”
They didn’t speak to Lorcan about it, leaving that to me.
“There was nothing to chastise either of us for. We didn’t do anything. You know that, Zosia. You saw us. She was the only person who came to ask how I was after our fight. She’s a friend. I wouldn’t—”
“But you did.” I cut him off because he may be right but he’s still refusing to accept that Tahra’s behavior was out of line.
He shook his head. “Not with her.”
Relief loosens a bit of my resentment.
“You know perfectly well how she feels about you.”
His jaw worked. “We covered this back in Tenáho. I don’t want to keep arguing about what I did last year. I was wrong, I know it, I’m sorry. I’m trying to make it up in any way I can.”
“By sitting with Tahra alone in our room?”
“We. Didn’t. Do. Anything.”
“It looked bad.”
He scowled. “For someone who always hated her father’s obsession with appearances, you sure seem to be concerned with them all of a sudden.”
The truth hit home. Hard.
“Yes, well, now I understand why he was so adamant that I look and behave a certain way. My father was right.”
I stalked away before Lorcan could respond.
I, alone, wore ordinary traveler’s clothing. Brenica’s dress was too beautiful to risk ruining it, so I stuck with my white linen top, brown pants, boots. Sweat ringed my underarms and dripped down my face. The Ansi know how to live comfortably in this environment. Lost in thought, I followed Keryn across a narrow vine-and-wood-planks bridge.
“Princess, wait—”
