Page 30 of The Prince's Fealty

And now it was only Pel, his mother, and Tor sitting around the fire.

This was not, at all, what Pel had thought he might be dealing with today. He’d actually thought he’d gotten to the point where he expected the unexpected, given everything that had happened recently. But no, this was a step too far.

His mother was alive because renouncing her Fealty and going to live with the exiles had felt like a safer choice than remaining with her children and the man she’d been bonded to.

Pel wasn’t sure he’d ever be able to get over it completely, but he also didn’t like the idea of Forex holding them hostage to ensure his wife’s behavior. Would he really have killed them to prevent their mother from taking them? Pel certainlyhopednot, but when the man was in his blackest mood?

Well, Pel wouldn’t have wanted to put it to the test.

“Why now?” he asked. “Because Father is dead?”

“Tama brought the news.” She sighed. “I know nothing I did is enough. But I did try to approach him, just once. Five or six years ago. The weather had grown unpredictable, and some of us feared it was going to get worse. I’d hoped that the intervening years would have… softened him a little.” She scoffed. “He was… immoderate in his rage. He thought I’d died when the bond broke, and he nearly—” She cut herself off. “I had help, but even so, we barely made it out. I knew that I could never try again.”

“What about us?” Pel asked, hating how small his voice sounded. “You could have told us.”

She swallowed thickly. “Maybe I should have. You’ll never know how much I missed you. But I didn’t want to put you in the position of having to lie to him. I didn’t know what he’d do if he found out.”

Pel didn’t really want to think about it. He wanted to insist that this should have been their choice to make, but Lara was only twenty-one. Would they have made that decision for her when she was a child? Would their mother have told only him and Bav while they had to keep it from their sister?

Pel hated all of the choices.

“Father’s behavior towards the exiles got even worse. He wanted to stamp you out, to stamp all of you out.”

She nodded, lines furrowing her brow. “We represented his failure, the diminishing of his realm. More and more, he convinced himself that if he could bring all of us under his control, if he could take back the land and the people, it would somehow bring back a golden age. He chose to remember only the victories from before, not the failures or the blood or the death. He conveniently ignored squabbling with neighboring realms and the threat of war. He acted as though the exiles left to be petty and not because they felt it was their only choice tosurvive. Those were the parts I could never forget.”

Pel had mostly learned to tune out his father’s nostalgia rants, but maybe his mother hadn’t had that choice.

“I know Bav’s upset right now,” he acknowledged, “but I’m sure he’ll want to resolve things peaceably with the exiles.”

Emotions might be high, but Bav was nothing like their father. His mother was gazing off in the direction that her eldest son had gone.

“I hope so. Being at peace with Tond would mean a lot.” Her gaze shifted to Tor. “But the reason that I’m here right now, at this moment, is actually because of you, Prince Torex.”

Tor looked taken aback. “Me?”

She nodded. “You. Because we have a problem, and I think you could be our solution.”

“And what problem is that?” Tor asked warily.

“The weather and the land.”

He blinked at her, looking even more stunned. “The land? Theweather?”

Her gaze was intent, never leaving Tor’s face. “Twenty-five years ago, the land over the mountain was cut off from Tond and given to the exiles. No one who set foot there owed Fealty to any ruler. This was exactly what the exiles wanted, and for a time, they prospered. Back then, the land was much as it was on this side of the mountain. We had a similar growing season, not as long as you do in the south, but more than enough for our needs.”

She sighed. “And yet each year since then, the situation has deteriorated. Everything has grown more extreme. Rain has been torrential, or drought has set in. Some rivers have dried up; others have uncontrollably flooded their banks. Animals have grown scarce. Insects have proliferated. Crops have failed. Bit by bit, year by year, it’s become harderand harder to survive, to the point that raiding has become the only way we’ve been able to eke out an existence.”

“But what could that possibly have to do with me?” Tor wanted to know.

For a long moment, Pel’s mother stared at Tor, like she was assessing him for something. And finally, she spoke.

“The theory—not so popular because no onewantsit to be true—is that while people might be able to live without Fealty, the land can’t. In essence, the land has been getting sicker day by day, and so have the people living on it. We experience more illness than I’ve seen in any other realm. Tama and our other healers are constantly busy with ailments I rarely saw in other realms.”

Pel and Tor exchanged glances, and Pel asked, “Didn’t you say that the Alossan healers weren’t nearly as busy as ours was?”

Slowly, Tor nodded his head, although he pointed out, “But you have a king.”

“Not a king like yours,” Pel noted. “Not a king who cares deeply about his people the way that King Varex does. Plus, the High King rules over all of the United Realms. That might help. We both know how my father feels about the people.”