11. Chapter Eleven

Chapter Eleven

When they finally climbed back onto the bank on the other side of the pool, dripping wet, Rory couldn't stop shivering. Evrard had made use of their time in the cave and had rolled together a handful of logs and other small sticks, gathering everything together into something resembling a pile. With trembling fingers, Gray pulled matches out of one of the saddlebags. It took three unsuccessful attempts to get a handful of the pine needles lit, and then another few minutes for the fire to spread to the larger pieces of wood.

Rory was still standing on the wet bank of the pool, staring across the water to the cave where they'd just battled and then defeated Sabrina. One of his shaking hands was clasped tightly around the dagger and the other was clenched in a fist around what Gray presumed was the ring they'd gone in search of. He hadn't spoken, and he'd ignored two of Evrard's kinder entreaties to come over and try to get himself warm.

It was freezing; that was undeniable. But Gray wasn't even sure it was the temperature causing Rory to shake. The letdown after violence and confrontation could be a harsh one, and Rory was undoubtedly not used to the feeling. Gray, who'd spent most of his life poised and ready for the sort of encounter they'd just experienced, felt shaken. He could only imagine the physical and emotional exhaustion Rory was dealing with.

It was one thing to know your aunt wanted you dead; it was entirely another to watch her transform into a chimera in order to accomplish her goal.

"Rory," Gray said patiently, standing despite his cold, aching muscles, and walking over to where he stood motionless on the bank. "Come stand by the fire and get warm."

"Gray is right," Evrard said, likely breaking every rule of the universe by admitting that particular sentence out loud. "Come, before you freeze to death in those wet clothes."

But Rory didn't move and didn't speak.

"Your Highness," Evrard said after a long moment, and this time his tone was not nearly so sympathetic. "Come to the fire and tell me about the cave."

Rory did glance over, but he still didn't move. "Did you know she would be there?" he asked in a small, hard voice.

"I thought she would find a way, yes," Evrard answered gravely.

"Did you know my dagger would wound her where Gray's would not?"

Finally, Rory took one step and then another, stopping right before Evrard, and extending the dagger until it was right under Evrard's aristocratic nose.

"Yes," Evrard admitted. "Bronze is not something magical creatures enjoy. Myself included." He gave a delicate shudder and turned away from the warm glow of Rory's blade.

"We got back here alive, and we have the ring, that's all that matters," Gray pointed out. "We got what we wanted, and we didn't let her stop us."

"She tried to kill me, but we still got the ring," Rory said moodily, and now instead of the misty wall of the Veil, he was staring into the now-crackling fire. It wasn't much of an improvement, but at least he was growing warmer now. Gray understood how he was feeling all too well. He'd felt much the same way after he'd escaped Tullamore, but then he'd had months and years to dwell on it. Which, Gray could admit now, perhaps had not been truly all that advantageous.

"The ring?" Evrard questioned.

Rory's eyes snapped to his, suddenly blazing and alive in a way they hadn't been only a moment before. "The ring! The Bearer of Truth. The thing you sent us in there to find, so we could return to Beaulieu and defeat her once and for all. The thing we needed to take back my throne and rescue Fontaine from her evil grasp."

"May I see it?" Evrard asked, and Rory reluctantly opened his palm. He'd been gripping the unadorned silver ring so tightly it had left a circular indentation in his palm.

"Is it what you expected?" Gray asked, because not only was he curious about the ring's significance and ultimate role in achieving their goals, he also intended to distract Rory from agonizing over his aunt.

"I did not know what to expect." And that, at least, felt like an honest answer.

Rory stared at the ring in his hand. "How will we use it to defeat her? Perhaps we should discuss the plan going forward."

"Your Highness, you should put your cloak on, and sit by the fire, continue to warm yourself," Evrard said, and again, his words felt very honest to Gray. A little too honest.

"I think it's time to divulge this great plan," Gray inserted. "How will we use this ring to defeat Sabrina?"

Before he had met Evrard, Gray never would have believed he'd witness an animal blanch, all the blood rushing from its face. But Evrard defied human understanding, and even though Gray had never personally seen him blanch before, he was not as shocked as he could have been when he did it now.

"It's difficult to explain," Evrard hedged.

Rory's hands curled into fists, and Gray had to work to keep the frustration out of his voice. Evrard didn't tend to respond well to threats. "Explain it anyway. We risked our lives going into that cave to fetch it because you said it was important, and now I want to know why it's important."

When Evrard still did not respond, Rory said with suitably dramatic emphasis, "We almost died."

"It was dangerous, but then you knew it would be. You were armed, including with a dagger I knew could seriously injure her if she appeared."

Gray ground his teeth together. "But we did not know that. I wasted precious time and a dagger strike when if I'd used Rory's, she would have been turned away far quicker with far less danger."

"Some things you should not know, you cannot know," Evrard defended, but there was an undeniable edge of guilt in his voice.

"Does it even work? This ring? What does it even do?" Rory wondered when Evrard stayed silent. He slipped the ring on, and outwardly nothing changed.

"Do you feel any differently?" Gray asked.

"No," Rory said uncertainly. "I don't feel any different and I don't think this ring is going to force me to tell the complete truth. I just think it's . . . a ring." He turned to Gray. "Your eyes are brown," he lied, and anger coalesced into a hard ball inside Gray.

"Why," Gray repeated to Evrard, emphasizing with each crisply uttered word how furious he was, "did we go fetch this ring?"

Evrard sighed. "You went and fetched the ring because I wanted you to. Because you needed to do something before you went to Ardglass and then to Fontaine. When we escaped the valley together, you have to understand, Gray, you didn't even want to assist Rory. You didn't even like him. You distrusted him. And you, Rory, you liked Gray, but you liked him for all the wrong reasons. Because you thought he was attractive and tall and had a nice chest."

Rory made an outraged sound, but there was a swelling inside that chest that Gray couldn't identify and definitely couldn't control.

"You wouldn't work together, and therefore, you wouldn't have survived," Evrard continued. "So I gave you time by telling you that the ring was necessary. You had to work together to get it. I knew it was rumored to be located in rough country and was depending on the fact that you would have to learn to trust each other or fail in the attempt. And you did not fail, you succeeded, far beyond my wildest dreams."

"Wait," Rory said after a long, charged silence. "This isn't . . . this isn't even part of the plan?"

Gray stared at Evrard, incredulous, with fury mounting inside him like a fire roaring out of control, hungrily consuming everything in its path.

"And why do we need to go to Ardglass?" Rory didn't seem particularly angry, just confused.

But Gray? Gray was something else entirely.

"We need to go to Ardglass," Gray said, the words exploding out of him before he could stop them in, "because this . . . this . . . lying creature in front of us has been manipulating us this entire time. My entire life. You think lying about a few weeks of traveling together is bad? Try living with him for fifteen years. Try letting him make every decision, including insisting, when you are eleven years old, that you need to hide who you really are, and keep hiding, even as he insists on helping others regain what they have lost. Namely"—Gray paused—"your throne."

"I don't understand," Rory started to say, but Gray was done listening, he was done hiding, he was done blindly following.

"You lied to me," Gray roared, and Evrard ducked his head under his onslaught. Maybe later he would feel guilty for a lifetime of anger and frustration bursting out of him, but now all Gray felt was vindication. "You lied to him. How do we even know that we can get his throne back? You certainly never wanted me to get mine back. Maybe if you wanted me to like him you shouldn't have given him the one thing I always wanted. The freedom to choose for myself. Instead, you picked my escape. You picked my name. You picked my occupation. I've been used and abused by you since the moment you appeared to me. I couldn't help it then, but," Gray said, his voice dropping as the anger exploded out of him, "I can help it now."

Evrard said nothing.

Instead, Rory spoke up again. "I'm sorry, but I don't understand," he attempted again. "Your throne? Ardglass? You're not . . . you couldn't be . . ."

Gray had sworn to Evrard that he would never tell anyone who he truly was. He'd kept that promise for fifteen long years, pushing everyone away who ever could have helped him bear that burden, and then when Rory had come along, he had been so twisted up inside and angry, that he'd sworn to himself that he would never tell Rory who he was.

It wasn't like those promises didn't mean anything, they just meant less in the wake of Gray seeing Evrard for what he truly was. A manipulative monster who possibly wasn't any better or more honorable than Sabrina herself.

Gray collapsed onto the fallen log next to the fire and stared moodily into the flames. "My name isn't Gray. It's Graham."

"You're the lost prince," Rory said, awestruck.

"I told you I was lost," Gray said bitterly. "I didn't lie about that."

Rory's eyes flashed, not with anger, but with understanding. "That's why you can wield Lion's Breath, you were trained to fight with a sword. And the tutor! Of course you had a tutor, you were a . . . you're a prince."

"I'm not," Gray said flatly, but that wasn't quite true, and he knew it. He was a prince. Even if he wasn't sure he wanted to be.

But that didn't stop Rory. He kept going. "All your knowledge of the road through the edge of Ardglass. The Karloff geography. And Nargash. You knew all that stuff because you were . . . that was going to be yours, someday." Rory turned to Evrard, and this time it was his expression that was accusatory. "You told him not to tell me?"

Evrard's voice was soft. "I told him not to tell anybody. It wasn't safe. Sabrina wanted him; she still does."

"You couldn't have possibly thought . . ." Rory scoffed. "I never would have . . ."

"You liked him for all the wrong reasons, at least at first. You thought he'd help you understand why all your texts talked about sex in reverent tones," Evrard said, and this time his own voice cut deep. "You wanted something from him, but you didn't really want him. To you, he was just a simple farm boy, one you'd remember fondly when you left the valley. But you still had every intention of leaving."

"I didn't . . .I mean I wouldn't," Rory insisted, but even though Gray didn't want to, he heard the echo of the lie in Rory's voice.

"That is exactly what you thought," Evrard said, relentless. "If I must face up to my own shortcomings, then, at the very least, we must all be honest with each other."

"I . . ." Rory hesitated. "I might have thought that then," he finally admitted. "I did think that, very briefly, while we were still in the valley. But then Gray rescued me and then he kept rescuing me, and when we were taken by the tribe, and I rescued him, he looked at me like . . ."

Rory looked at Gray, and his heart was in his eyes.

"I looked at you like what?" Gray demanded. Except that he already knew what Rory was going to say, because the memory of that moment was bright and vivid in his own mind, refusing to fade away.

"Like you saw more than just Prince Emory, a pretty, useless little prince with all his books and his forgotten, dead languages," Rory said quietly. "And I knew by then that I saw more than just Gray, the man who owned a farm and shoveled manure in squash patches."

"Without this time, you never would have seen each other for who you truly are," Evrard said. "I am sorry I lied. I am not sorry that the methods resulted in you trusting one another. I am sorry that you will no longer trust me," Evrard said, and Gray would grant him this: the apology did sound genuine. It also sounded like Evrard—an apology mixed in with a reminder that he'd made the right choices and all his manipulations had worked out in the end.

"I don't think that's necessarily true," Rory said cautiously, despite the looks Gray kept shooting him. He had no intention of trusting Evrard again. He'd exposed them to the greatest possible danger and for what? To build trust? So he and Rory would like each other? In the overall scheme of things, why did that even matter? After all this was finally over, Gray knew he would return to the farm in the valley, and Rory would go on to become the ruler of Fontaine.

"I think his excuses smell worse than a load of dung," Gray muttered.

Rory came over and plopped down on the log next to Gray. "I know you feel betrayed," he murmured, "but there's something you're missing here. I know I couldn't do any of this without you, and if I'd asked you to come to Fontaine, to help me oust Sabrina, you never would have agreed. You definitely would never have agreed to go to Ardglass."

Gray didn't like it, but he had no choice but to nod. After all, how could he remain angry at Evrard's lies if he himself continued to twist the truth?

"Sometimes, we commit dishonorable actions for the greater good. Like when you told me your name was Gray, not Graham. You thought there was a chance I was an emissary of my aunt and I could betray you. That's why Evrard did this; not because he liked the idea of lying, but because without your help, there would be no chance of defeating my aunt or regaining my throne."

When Gray looked up, Evrard had also approached. Gray frowned.

"Prince Emory is partially correct," Evrard said. "I said I would be honest, going forward, and I shall be. Rory needing your help to regain what he has lost is not the only reason you are here, Gray. You are here because you are not really Gray, you are Prince Graham of the kingdom of Ardglass, and it's time you remembered that."

"You spent the last fifteen years hoping I forgot it," Gray objected.

"I never wanted you to forget who you were. Gray and Prince Graham are not two separate men," Evrard insisted. "They are two parts of one complete whole. You didn't just survive in the valley, you built yourself a miniature kingdom. You prepared for strays, and when they passed through, you took care of them. You continued to build and improve upon the foundation you were given when we first arrived. You never accepted, you always pushed for more, for better, for me and for yourself. Does that sound like an unambitious farmhand to you? Or does that sound like a man who is born to lead a kingdom of people who depend on him?"

Evrard's question was one that both required contemplation and also one that Gray thought he knew the answer to immediately. Of course, he had never thought of his life in the valley in precisely those terms before, but nothing that Evrard said was technically untrue. He had done all those things, he had planned and worked and never settled. That was how Rhys had raised him, and those lessons, instilled at a very young age by someone that Gray worshiped, respected and admired, had persevered, right alongside Gray himself.

"Do you remember," Evrard continued, his voice softening, as his head dipped closer to Gray, just as he'd done when Gray was much younger, "when I told you that you would need to be brave and strong and loyal?"

Gray froze. He remembered those words like they'd been said yesterday, but it hadn't been Evrard who'd said them. It had been Rhys, on that last fateful night, when his warning had helped Gray escape with his life.

"I will need to remember them," Gray said, a thought dawning on him that had never occurred to him before, even though Evrard had given him all the pieces through the years. "Rhys never died, did he? You only hinted that he did. Rhys was never Rhys, he was you."

Evrard's eyes were fond as they gazed at him. "I wondered if you would ever realize it."

"You came to Tullamore to be my tutor knowing what would happen," Gray said slowly, disbelieving that not only had Evrard been the stalwart, somewhat smug companion of his last fifteen years, but the dear, kindly disciplinarian of his first eleven. A man he still remembered with great fondness. "You came to protect me."

"I have only ever wanted to protect you, my prince," Evrard said, his skin beginning to glow, like a lantern, lit from within. It was the first time, Gray realized, that Evrard had called him that in fifteen years. He did not know what to do with it. He had spent so long trying to let that part of himself go, only to discover that not only had he never been able to shake it, it was an unassailable, undeniable part of what made him who he was. "I came to Tullamore to protect you. I helped you escape to protect you. I even lied to you to protect you. I know you felt disparaged and set to the side when I asked you to help Rory. You believed that your throne was a thing of the past, but it is not. The situation in Ardglass is complex, but we must still travel there, and you must still reveal yourself to all of Tullamore. It is time."

After their ordeal, Evrard had insisted they stay another night alongside the Veil. Gray, who was unexpectedly worn out from his earlier anger and the emotional revelations, hadn't argued. Instead, he'd gone off alone with his dagger, throwing it and killing several squirrels, which he cleaned and prepped to roast over the fire.

He'd apologized to Rory, because while he might be used to eating such rough fare, surely the other prince was used to better.

"It's a hot meal," Rory argued, "I don't care."

The hunting trip had also given Gray some space, which he hadn't realized he'd needed after traveling in such close quarters with Rory and Evrard for the last week. He was far more used to being alone, with occasional visitors for company, and even though he found himself enjoying Rory so much more than he'd ever anticipated, some quiet wasn't a bad thing.

After dinner, he'd gone off to sit on the banks of the Veil, hoping the quiet mist would help to silence all the questions that kept bombarding his brain. He wasn't ready to ask them out loud yet, but they swarmed him anyway.

It didn't come as a surprise that a few minutes after he'd left, Rory left the warmth of the fire and plopped down next to him.

"How are you doing?" Rory asked.

Gray wasn't particularly keen to share in the best of circumstances, but after the day he'd had? "Maybe there's a simpler question you could ask," he told Rory wryly.

"It's quite a bit to assimilate," Rory agreed. "I keep getting stuck in the most inconsequential of facts, like you knew exactly who I was when I rode into the valley."

"I hadn't actually ever seen a picture of you," Gray admitted. "But the last time I'd been in the village, they were talking about you, and why you hadn't assumed the throne yet. I usually stayed far away from any sort of political discussion, but I needed the supplies. I do remember wondering why they kept calling you the Autumn Prince. Then you introduced yourself, and I understood instantly."

Rory flushed brightly enough that it was obvious even in the falling dusk. "It's a ridiculous nickname," he said.

"No." Gray lifted a hand and stroked a single curl resting against his cheek. "It's a perfect nickname." He cleared his throat. "It occurred to me that if things had been different, we wouldn't have met in a patch of squash, while I was shoveling dung."

"We'd have met across a banquet table or in a throne room," Rory said quietly. "I thought it too. That was actually my very next thought."

"It would've been easier maybe, but not any different," Gray said after a long silence. "Not for me anyway."

Rory reached over and placed his hand over Gray's much larger one. "Not for me either."

"I guess if I have to go back to Ardglass, I'd rather do it with you by my side."

"I would've thought that you'd be eager to do it, to take back what you lost. I feel like we can't get back to Fontaine quickly enough," Rory admitted.

"Going back to Ardglass means seeing my father again, and I would rather never have seen him again," Gray said. He knew how harsh his tone was, but it felt like it wasn't quite harsh enough.

"I guess you'd come to terms with the fact that you wouldn't be going back." Rory hesitated, but Gray moved his hand, tangling his fingers with Rory's, giving them a reassuring squeeze.

"I was just thinking," Rory finally continued, his voice dropping until Gray could barely hear it, even though they were pressed closely together, "that if I were you, I'd want to talk to someone. Then I remembered that I'd been in a similar position, and I did have people to talk to. I had my guard. Marthe and Anya and Rowen. Diana and Acadia. I miss them. I'll probably never know what happened to them."

"You could," Gray pointed out.

"No," Rory insisted. "We have far more important things to do. And I didn't come over here to complain, not when you've faced far more than I ever have. I don't have a right to whine that I've lost them, not faced with what you've lost."

"It's not a competition," Gray observed.

Rory gave a short laugh. "No, no, of course not. You're right. I just . . . I wish I knew what happened to them. If they were all dead or maybe if they survived, and I could have done something to help them. After everything they did to help me. Marthe gave me this dagger, you know, the day we left Beaulieu. She said she'd had it made especially for me. And I couldn't help but think today that she knew and she hoped that it would be helpful when we came to fight Sabrina."

"She was a good friend to you, then, not just a captain of your guard," Gray stated. He hadn't gotten the impression that Rory had been the kind of prince to spend time training with his guard.

"She was, at the very end. And it made me realize that she was probably a good friend to me the whole time, yet I barely ever acknowledged her existence." Guilt edged Rory's voice. "I took that friendship for granted."

"You don't think I took things for granted? It was so silly, but I wished for years that Rhys hadn't died, that he'd been able to come with me, and now today, I realize he did, and I never knew it." Gray sighed. "Evrard can be hard to get to know, but I never really tried. I lost myself in the work that I was convinced needed to be done, and never reached out to him."

"He could have reached out to you, too," Rory pointed out.

"Yes, he could have. Not exactly his strong suit, reaching out." Gray gave a dry chuckle. "We can't look back. We can't live with guilt and regret, not when we have so much else to face."

"It's hard to let it go," Rory admitted.

"That's why I know it's the right thing to do. The right thing is always harder than anything else," Gray said, and to his surprise, he believed his own words. He hadn't realized that the questions didn't necessarily need to be answered, only that he needed to talk to someone, and if he could ever have a choice of someones, it would always be Rory. Another unsettling revelation.

The next morning, Gray doused the fire with a handful of water from the pool, and then stamped it out as Rory strapped the saddlebags back onto Evrard.

"One thing," Gray said casually as he placed a hand in Evrard's mane, ready to mount and continue their journey, "I think we should stop in the valley first, on our way to Tullamore."

"What? Why?" Evrard sounded genuinely astonished at Gray's request, and when he glanced over at Rory, he saw Rory's eyes had grown huge in his face. He hadn't expected it either.

"Because it wouldn't be a bad idea to fetch more supplies, and I'm nearly certain that some of the members of Rory's guard survived the attack, and it wouldn't be a bad idea at all to ride into Tullamore with some experienced fighters loyal to the Crown Prince of Fontaine at our backs."

Evrard was quiet, clearly considering the suggestion. Before, Gray knew he would have simply shut it down, because the idea hadn't been his, but Gray could tell he was making an effort to be more inclusive in his planning.

"I can see the advantages to the suggestion," he admitted, "and it's not very far out of our way."

"It's not," Gray agreed.

Evrard, because he was Evrard, drew out the suspense for another moment by appearing to still be considering the request, but Gray knew he'd already made up his mind. "Yes," he finally said, "we will stop by the valley first, and see if any of Rory's guard survived, as well as add to our supplies."

Gray gave a sharp nod of agreement, and mounted. Rory paused, placing a hand on Gray's arm. "Thank you," he said quietly, "this means so much to me."

Clearing his throat, Gray stared at the trees ahead. Initially he hadn't really done it for Rory, but now, he realized that maybe he had. And maybe that wasn't something he should be ashamed of. "You're welcome," he said.

Evrard took off at a solid canter, clearly not wanting to lose any more time. "What should I call you?" Rory asked, raising his voice to be heard over Evrard's hooves pounding against the ground. "Should I call you Graham or . . .?"

"I'm Gray," Gray replied. "I've been Gray too long to be anything else."

"Prince Gray it is then," Rory said, the edges of his tone impudent, and Gray couldn't help but smile too. "I like it."

Secretly, Gray liked it too.