The Price of His Heart

I turned the ring inward.

The heat stopped. For a moment, shame struck harder than relief. Then I remembered what Ronan had given me: a way to close the connection, because he had never intended his pain to become mine.

I could not help him while I was on the floor.

I got up, slid Mara's knife into my sleeve, and hammered on the door.

"If the queen wishes me to appear in public, she can let me walk there."

The key turned.

Two guards waited outside. Between them stood Cedric.

"What is happening?" I demanded.

He looked at the amber mark burned into my finger.

"She found the scouts. One of them carried Blackthorn's colors."

"Where is he?"

"He reached the north gate before the crown stopped him. The guards brought him to the square."

"Alive?"

"Yes."

I pushed past him. The guards moved to stop me, but he raised a hand.

"I will take her down."

We went through the palace into a square already crowded with soldiers, courtiers, and people summoned to watch the royal reunion. Spring muster banners hung from the cathedral. The doors through which I had fled my wedding stood open.

At the center of the square, Ronan knelt in a circle of white fire.

His hands were braced on the stones. Every time he tried to rise, the queen touched her crown and the flame drove him down again.

I started toward him.

Cedric caught my arm. I struck his hand away so hard my fingers stung.

"Don't."

"She will use you if you go near him."

"She is already using him."

Ronan lifted his head. Across the square, his eyes found mine.

He looked at my hand, at the ring turned inward. The relief on his face nearly undid me.

The queen stood on a raised platform beneath the cathedral steps. Gold ribbon ran from the arm of her ceremonial chair to the altar, carried on silver hooks above the pavement. Its stitched lettering glowed with the crown.

"Elara," she called. "Come here, child. Let everyone see that you are safe."

I walked toward her because that was where the ribbon ended.

At the edge of the circle, Ronan turned his hand palm upward.

I stopped.

He lowered two fingers toward the gate. Our agreed signal to leave if speech became impossible.

I shook my head once, then touched my sleeve.

His gaze sharpened. He understood.

I went on.

The queen embraced me for the crowd. Her cheek was cool against mine.

"You should have taken the ring off," she whispered.

I kept my hands at my sides.

"Let him stand."

"There is the girl I remember. Always asking for something she has not earned."

She turned me toward the square, one hand resting firmly against my back.

"My ward has been returned to us after a grave enchantment. You can see its source before you."

Ronan coughed. Blood marked the stone beneath his mouth.

"I am not enchanted," I said.

The people nearest the platform heard. A few heads turned.

The queen's fingers dug into my back.

"You are confused."

"I was confused at my wedding. You let me believe I was going to have a husband and a home."

She shifted so the crowd could see her concerned expression.

"We will care for you, Elara."

"Then stop hurting the man who brought me home alive."

The murmurs spread.

Cedric came up the steps, keeping his voice low. "Your Majesty, the envoys are here. We agreed that no action would be taken before the border discussion."

"We agreed that you would retrieve my ward. You failed. Stand aside."

He looked past us at Ronan. I could see him searching for an explanation that would let him remain the man he believed himself to be.

The queen raised her free hand.

The crown brightened. Ronan arched against the invisible restraint. Under the platform, I felt a second pulse of power move through the gold ribbon.

Windows across the square glimmered. The palace fountains, dry for winter, began to run.

I stared at the water.

There was no ash storm here. No threatened farm. The queen was drawing power to light her palace while the border houses crumbled.

"You use it for all of this," I said.

She followed my gaze.

"A sovereign maintains more than walls."

I looked at the red stone in her crown. At every flare, light drained from Ronan's wound and gathered above her face.

She caught my chin and turned me toward her.

"You have seen what his freedom costs. We cannot have him roaming the kingdom with that power. You will annul this marriage publicly and place your hand upon the altar. We will finish what was interrupted."

My stomach turned.

"You said it had to be freely spoken."

"The last invocation remains unfinished. It needs your blood, not your enthusiasm. Once the foreign claim is surrendered, we can proceed."

Cedric stepped forward. "She will not annul anything under threat."

"I do not require your understanding."

"You promised the towns would be supplied. The orders you showed her sent the wagons to the northern garrisons. I checked at the gate."

The queen looked at him as if a chair had begun to speak.

"The garrisons must be prepared."

"For a war you are choosing."

Her grip on my chin loosened. I watched Cedric understand that no explanation would make this version of duty clean.

"You used the villages to bring her here," he said.

"And it worked."

She signaled the guards.

Cedric reached for his sword, then looked at me, the queen, the soldiers moving up the steps. Drawing it would start a fight with me trapped between them.

He let them take it.

I had waited years to see him put someone else's safety before the way he looked with a weapon. Now that he had, I wished it had not taken so much.

The queen turned back to the square.

"Our captain has allowed personal feeling to cloud his judgment. Remove him."

A guard caught Cedric's arm. He twisted just enough to knock over the silver stand beside the chair.

The gold ribbon sagged.

I moved toward it.

The queen seized my wrist.

For an instant, I thought she had seen the knife. Instead, she pulled me against her and raised her voice.

"You see how the creature's influence spreads. Even our finest soldier has been turned against his sovereign."

Ronan lifted his head again.

Something in his face had changed.

He was no longer struggling against the fire. He looked from the fallen stand to my trapped hand, then to the crown.

His mouth moved.

I could not hear him across the square, but I knew my name when he spoke it.

I turned my ring outward and pressed the stone once.

Warmth answered. Beneath it, I felt a gathering pressure, immense and terrible. He was drawing what remained of his fire toward the wound.

The queen felt it too.

"You would not dare," she said.

Ronan rose onto one knee.

His voice carried through the square, rough but clear.

"You cannot hold what I destroy."

The crown's red stone darkened at its center.

My blood went cold. He meant to burn the stolen flame where it was. He would end the connection, but the fire was part of him. There might be no dragon left afterward.

"Ronan, wait."

His eyes stayed on me.

"Leave the platform, Elara."

I looked at the fallen ribbon. At the queen's fingers around my wrist. At the blade hidden against my forearm.

We had planned for one breath.

He was about to spend the rest of his life to give me more.