The Tide Lords #04 - The Chaos Crystal by Jennifer Fallon

Author:Jennifer Fallon [Fallon, Jennifer]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science Fiction, Fiction, General
ISBN: 9780732283384
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2008-11-30T23:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 34

'We won the war!'

Stellan looked up and frowned at the little princess as she let herself into his room and bounded over to his bed where he was stuffing the few clothes he actually owned into a bag he'd borrowed from one of the queen's ladies-in-waiting.

It seemed odd, seeing Nyah back in petticoats and ribbons, after the time she'd spent in the mountains with Maralyce, dressed as a boy. In a futile attempt to make her look more like a young princess and less like a street urchin, this morning her ladies-in-waiting had dressed her entirely in pink. She wore pink ribbons in her hair, too, holding back two small pigtails that were too short to do much of anything but stick out directly from the side of her head, making her look faintly ridiculous.

Stellan gave no indication he thought that way of her, but he had a feeling she knew, because she pulled the ribbons from her hair impatiently as she spoke, and stuffed them into the cuff of her sleeve. Outside, it was snowing. Stellan wasn't looking forward to the trip across the iceberg-ridden lake in a storm, despite the fact it meant finally returning home.

'Thousands of Crasii died out there on the ice yesterday, Nyah. I'd hardly call that winning.'

'But the Glaeban king is dead. Now you're their king. You should be happy.'

'In theory, I'm their king,' Stellan agreed, taking a seat on the bed beside the bag so that he was eye to eye

with her. 'But it remains to be seen what the people of Glaeba have to say about it.'

'Lord Tyrone told Mama he's done a deal with you. That you're going to be Glaeba's king because you agreed to acknowledge Caelum as Glaeba's sovereign master.'

'I'm aware of the conditions, Nyah,' Stellan said with a heavy sigh at the concessions forced from him by Tryan and Syrolee. Word of the new agreement hadn't taken long to get around the palace if Nyah already knew about it. 'I was there during the negotiations, you know.'

Calling them negotiations was a bit of a misnomer. Stellan had listened while the immortals had told him how it was going to be. There had been neither need nor opportunity for any input from the new Glaeban king.

'Why did you agree to their demands if you don't like the terms?'

'Because enough people have died already, Nyah, and the alternative was very unpleasant.'

'But the honourable thing to do —'

'Is to save lives,' he cut in before she could finish. 'I didn't think the people of Glaeba would appreciate me sacrificing their lives over an obscure point of honour.'

That sage piece of advice delivered, he stood up and returned to his packing. Tryan had a barge at the ready and they were planning to be gone inside the hour. Hard as it was to believe, he would be home inside a day, returning as her king to the country he'd fled as a fugitive a few months ago — which made the fact that he was packing a few clothes into a borrowed bag more than a little ironic.

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