Eona - Alison Goodman [125]
He laughed. “But I like Lady Eona much more.” His finger dropped from my hair and traced the sweep of my jaw. “Truly, you look very beautiful.” The blatant appreciation in his eyes brought a flash of heat to my face.
I focused on our clasped hands. The leather thong still bound his ring against my wrist. Although something within me knew I should not say it, I could not stop the words. “I had a lot of help. From Moon Orchid.”
His fingers around mine tensed. I glanced up, almost afraid to see what was in his face. The soft smile sent a shard of ice into my heart.
“Moon Orchid helped you? How is she?”
“She is well. Very beautiful,” I said tightly.
He pulled his hand free and rubbed the back of his neck. “Good. That’s good.”
“She recognized your blood ring.” I forced my finger through the knot tied by Moon Orchid. With a yank, I unwrapped the leather and pulled it free from my wrist. “Here. I brought it back.”
We both stared at the ring swinging between us.
“Keep it,” he said.
“Moon Orchid said it meant a lot to you.”
“It does.”
“Your ‘step into manhood,’ she called it,” I said, with too much edge in my voice.
His fingers closed around the ring, stopping its arc. “Did you think I had lived as a monk, Eona?”
“Of course not,” I said, but I did not look up from his fist. I was a fool. He was an emperor, required by the law of his land to marry royalty, keep a harem, and sire many, many sons.
“I have not seen her for a year,” he added.
“It does not matter, does it?” I said, a terrible realization breaking over me. I let go of the leather, the two long strands falling over his hand. “I am not royal. And I will not be a concubine. There is no place for me.”
“There is a place for you if I say so.” He opened his fist. The ring had pressed a dark red indentation into his skin. “Your power changes everything. It has its own rules.”
It always came back to my power. Ido was right.
“What if I said you could have either me or my power? Which one would you choose?”
“What kind of question is that?”
“Which would you choose?”
“It is not even a real choice, Eona. Your power is part of you.”
I lifted my chin. “Which one, Kygo? Tell me!”
His mouth tightened. “I would choose your power.” I pulled back, but he caught my shoulder. “I would choose your power because I choose for the empire. I can never just choose for myself. You said you understood.”
“I understand perfectly.” I knelt, dislodging his hand, and bowed my head. “May I withdraw, Your Majesty?”
“You are not just your power, I know that,” he said. “Eona, why are you creating a problem where there is none?”
I kept my head bowed.
“You are being ridiculous.” His voice snapped into exasperation.
“May I withdraw?”
He hissed out a breath. “All right, go.”
I backed away out of the shelter of the tree into the sun, the burning heat on my nape the only warmth in the whole of my frozen body.
I did not want company. Nor did I want the hunk of bread that Dela held out. But she would not go away. She crouched in front of me, blocking the sightline of my target, a tree stump a few lengths away. I leaned around her and threw another rock, hitting the wood with a satisfying clunk.
My retreat was not the most comfortable or prettiest of places—the small, raised outcrop of stones and dirt amid the lush grassland was like a scab on the earth, and it had no protection from the blazing sun—but it did have the advantage of being as far from Kygo as possible within the confines of our camp.
Dela dusted off a half-buried rock and placed the bread on it. “I hear that Master Tozay has found your mother,” she said.
I grunted and threw a smaller pebble. It ricocheted off the stump. Ten points, if I was keeping score.
“Finding your mother; that’s good, isn’t it?” she ventured.
I grunted again. If I said something, she would think it was an invitation to stay and talk. I’d had enough talk. And enough thinking. And definitely enough feeling.
“You seem to have had another disagreement with His