Touraine put her pen down with a smirk. “I’ve heard of that. Me and your guards know about ‘cleansing the mind.’”
Luca’s look went flat. “I know. I’ve heard you.” She glanced over her shoulder to include Guérin, even though the guardswoman was now on the other side of the closed door. Then Luca sighed and slumped deeper into her chair, away from the desk.
“If the visits annoy you so much, why do you go?” It felt risky, this casual tone, but the office door was closed, and Luca had made a joke first. Luca had cracked the door of herself open, and Touraine had the crazy urge to pull the door wider.
No, not so crazy. Vulnerability for vulnerability. Touraine could think of nothing more vulnerable, more terrifying right now, than letting the princess of Balladaire teach her Shālan. It felt good to pry back.
“She’s one of the few Balladairans who isn’t completely against my new changes. I need friends like that. No.” She shook her head. “Friend is too strong a word. Though that would be nice,” she grumbled under her breath.
“Friends who might support a deal with the rebels. Push back against Beau-Sang.”
Luca twisted toward Touraine sharply. “Someone’s been paying attention.”
Touraine raised an eyebrow. “A soldier who doesn’t pay attention to her enemies is a dead soldier.” She had even gone so far as to wonder if Beau-Sang hadn’t been behind the sky-falling broadsides. Him, or maybe the dear uncle Luca groused about when she thought no one was listening. Touraine asked, “Have you gotten word from the duke regent?”
Luca settled again, dancing her fingers distractedly against her legs. “My uncle claims that he’ll happily cede the throne upon my return. In every letter, he’s preparing for my coronation, he’s glad I’m getting firsthand experience, he’s certain—” She glanced nervously at Touraine, as if she hadn’t realized she was still there, listening. “Certain my parents would be proud of me. And yet every opportunity we’ve had to crown me before, he’s blocked with some excuse or another. Regents have ceded the throne to the rightful heirs as early as twenty-five and as late as thirty. Outside of Balladaire, heirs have been crowned as young as thirteen!”
Luca frowned. “But it’s only a matter of time before the letters include lectures because I’m somehow mishandling the Shālan colonies and am thus not ready to rule.”
Sitting beside her, Touraine realized how young Luca, the queen regnant, was. Clear, sharp eyes behind her spectacles and tawny hair that might not gray for years yet. Even the lines in her face when she focused on her books or winced at her leg—they hadn’t set permanently. She couldn’t be that much older than Touraine.
Touraine wanted to ask, Are you ready to rule? Instead, she asked, “What’ll you do, then?”
And as she asked the question and saw Luca open her mouth to answer without a second thought, Touraine imagined herself taking these words, all of Luca’s words, and carrying them back to the rebels. Giving them ammunition, giving them tools, terrain, traps. She wondered what her life would look like if she went down that path, but she couldn’t see anything worth gaining. Not compared to staying with Luca.
“What do you know about Shālan magic?” Luca met Touraine’s eyes full on and lowered her voice. “What did the Brigāni woman say to you when you were captive?”
That startled Touraine into stammers. Unconsciously, she cradled her left arm in her right. “Nothing? Nothing. Just—that it’s—she said it’s just rumors. She told me a story about a kid priestess who was good at healing, made it sound like it was her.” She realized she was backing into her seat, as if the Apostate were there in front of her, knife gleaming again. “She—did cut me. I thought she was going to do magic with my blood, but I think that was just to scare me.”
Luca picked up Touraine’s pen and a scrap of paper from the desk and began scribbling notes, muttering to herself.
“What about—” The princess waved her hand without looking at Touraine, trying to pluck the words from the air. “You fought the Taargens, didn’t you? What do you know about their magic?”
Touraine’s heart froze solid in her chest. She must have been silent for a long time, because Luca finally looked up. She put the pen down and really looked at Touraine for the first time that evening.
Touraine broke eye contact and started cataloging. The paper on the desk. Her wobbly Shālan letters beneath Luca’s elegant script. The oak desk, sturdy, not a traveler’s desk, not cheap. Luca’s hands, one of them so close to her own clenched fist. The smell of Luca’s perfume, rose and something darker, muskier. The musk was new. Touraine’s own sweat. Her breath, too quick. Luca’s breath, quick, too. Luca’s hands, warm, tight, clasped around one of Touraine’s fists. A squeeze.