Total pages in book: 82
Estimated words: 77692 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 388(@200wpm)___ 311(@250wpm)___ 259(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 77692 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 388(@200wpm)___ 311(@250wpm)___ 259(@300wpm)
“A quick snack,” I say around the bite. “And then we go.”
Luna nods. “Good enough for me. As long as you eat something.”
Her gaze turns on the slope of the mountain and the horizon beyond for a moment, and I know she hears the drums just as well as I do in the distance. For a while, the two of us stand side by side, listening to the Hallans say goodbye.
“They’re so sorrowful,” Luna whispers, “but it’s beautiful, too.”
“Like her life,” I agree. “We’re only sad because she lived.”
Just knowing … Well, that, too, helps me.
“Have another bite, Halun,” Luna tells me. “I can’t have you wasting.”
The notion makes me chuckle. Even if it is a dry one.
I do take another piece of fruit, though.
If only to please my mate.
When I do finally make my way to the palace later with my brother, we’re greeted on either side of the winding road leading through the market and court up to the palace by the drummers of the Hallan army. It isn’t often our family can walk through large crowds without being called for and touched by our people who only wish to adore us, but today, they give us our space as we make our way through.
Inside, I find my father’s private quarters empty. A servant changing the bedding in one of the rooms directs Bothaki and I to the throne room where my brother hesitates just before we enter.
“Maybe you should go in first to speak with him,” Bo says quietly. “He might appreciate one of us right now instead of two.”
Glancing over at him, I ask, “When has both his sons ever been too much for Nowas?”
Bo smirks at that, likely remembering every memory of our father growing up that proved he was a worthy Hallan to raise us. We could never tire him out. Never make him give in. He was as patient and kind as he was present for us, and demanding of us to do our very best, no matter the circumstances.
“Well, maybe I need another minute before I see him,” my brother finally admits.
“You think he’ll do it.”
I don’t say what it is. I don’t even pose the statement as a question. The way my brother’s gaze casts down, and his broad chest deflates a bit tells me the words he plans to say before he does so. They cut me all the same when they come out.
“Wouldn’t you, brother?” Bo asks me.
I think of my mate, and how it would feel if I lost her now. Now … before we’ve even started our family or had a chance to enjoy the life we’ll create together. Now when it’s still so new between us and I haven’t discovered every little thing about her that there is to know.
Could I live the rest of my days without her?
Could I carry on?
“Would you?” I ask Bo instead of answering.
“Fate needs me,” he says low.
“We need him,” I counter. “We don’t have to be children to need our father, Bo.”
Bo looks my way, then. “But don’t we?”
I know what he’s really asking.
What he won’t say.
Is that fair to ask it of him?
I understand in that moment why my brother doesn’t want to go into the throne room to greet our father first, and I don’t think less of him for it. I just wish I could see the situation before me in the same black and white way as Bothaki.
I wish it could be that easy for me.
“You don’t have to go in to see him right now,” I say.
Bothaki sighs shakily. “It’ll be easier, that’s all. If somebody else tells me. Somebody that isn’t him.”
I nod, feeling my hands ball into fists at my sides. The only show of my own stress. “Fair enough, brother.”
“I’ll be here.”
Yes.
And still suffering, too.
I don’t find my father sitting on his throne in the grand room where I know he’s spent a good portion of his reign. Instead, I find him off to the side of the room in the doorway of the throne room leading to the short stone corridor overlooking the Minas’ courtyard garden. Nursing a ceramic cup of something with rolling steam, my father hears my approach long before I join his side, but he doesn’t move or speak until I do.
“How are you feeling?” I ask.
I don’t expect the expression of softness and happiness that my father turns on me, but it gives me hope, nonetheless. I cling to the way he seems lighter. How his shoulders don't slump forward and he stands a bit straighter. I dare to hope that his change in mood and demeanor means good things. That he’s found some strength within himself to carry on without my mother.
Without his mate.
“Better,” he murmurs. “These have been my darkest days, Halun.”
“I know.”
As if that’s all he has to say on the matter, my father lifts the cup for another sip of his drink as his gaze turns back on the large petaled flowers on the vines covering the inner walls of the corridor. The same kind that my mother once said he’d had planted along every corridor she would walk just because Jozay loved the smell.