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Rathmore continued on, mumbling low enough that Hector couldn’t hear what he was saying.

After a short time, Anicca stepped closer to the Gate. “You are getting lost in your own musings again,” she said firmly. “Rein that wandering mind of yours in, please.”

Rathmore stopped and looked at her. Hector wished he could see the expression on the man’s blurry face. Given how wildly Rathmore’s mood had shifted, Hector wondered if he would get upset with her again or become even more timid.

Anicca left him an opening to respond, but when he didn’t, she spoke up again. “How will any of this help me to reclaim my birthright?” she said. “I’ve granted you the resources you asked for. I’ve bestowed titles and land to you. I’ve given you influence of your own within my court. And yet the years continue to draw on with no destination in sight. No path to my crown.”

“You have a crown.”

“Not the crown of my mother. Not the one that was stolen from me.”

Rathmore scoffed. “Even now, you cling to this idea of vengeance? After all we have built together?”

“What have we built? A palatable place to hide and die in? A little corner of the world to call mine, only because none else know to claim it? You speak of nothing. Empty lands and hollow words.”

“And you speak of greed and ingratitude. What you have is more than most in the world, and yet it is not enough for you. Nor will it be, ‘till you have brought ruin to it all and perhaps finally realized your own foolishness.”

“Again, you speak out of turn.”

“Because again, you push me when you should not. You do not make it easy to love you, dearheart.”

Anicca said nothing.

“You say I speak of empty lands and hollow words? That is your old crown. Nykeir has made it so. There is nothing to reclaim. It has been too long. Your people will not rejoice upon your return. They did not fight for you. They did not weep at news of your death. They do not care. And why should they? You were little more than a babe, hardly out of your swaddling clothes.”

She turned and walked over to Rathmore, right up to his face, and slapped him.

Rathmore just took it.

“Yours are craven words,” she said, sounding not just bitter but almost tearful, too. “Repeating such lies. Why? Cruelty ill suits you.”

“If you think that was cruelty, dearheart, then you truly have learned nothing of the world, even after all this time.”