The Reckless Reign (Book 3, The Culled Crown Series)

Chapter 27

Reubinon Beach.
Reubinon Palace, Pellarmus.

At some point, Cohen and Nadia set out our picnic. It was simple, just a collection of brown-paper wrapped sandwiches and containers of lemonade and water. We all sat together on a red blanket that Cohen had gone back to the palace to fetch. Our conversation remained light, but it was an effort. There were so many unknowns and so much fear amongst our small party, but we were all unwilling to let worry seize this moment. There hadn't been a lot of opportunities for us to just be together, as friends. No agenda, no motives, just simple conversation.

And I needed it.

I needed my friends.

I'd decided pretty quickly that I liked the beach, but didn't really enjoy sand. It stuck to everything and itched. But I ignored it for the most part and just took in the beauty of our surroundings. And it really was beautiful. From where we sat, we could see small boats gliding across the water, their brightly colored sails stark against the light blue sky of the horizon.

While the rest of us talked, swapping stories from our childhood like they were playing cards, Leighton and Anna held their own conversation. She seemed interested in his past and how he'd ended up in one of the workcamps in Varos. I knew from talking to Kai that workcamps and slavery weren't things that existed in Vayelle. They had prisons and the death penalty. The idea that someone could do something wrong and completely lose their humanity seemed like a foreign concept to most people outside of Erydia. In other places, bad choices didn't make bad people. Life could continue on. In Erydia, bad choices often made corpses.

Anna seemed equally as surprised as Kai had been.

"—They'd do that?" She was saying. "They would take someone's hand for stealing bread? Wouldn't they need to go before the courts and have a trial?"

While Leighton had always seemed like a very private person, he'd relaxed a little with Anna and didn't hesitate to carve his answers out on the ground at their feet. At her question, he shook his head and quickly wrote, no courts, no trials in the sand at the edge of our blanket. Once he was sure she'd read it, he wiped it away and wrote: magistrates and the temple are the law in most places. He glanced up at her, shrugged his shoulders and wrote: The people in power are cruel. Sometimes it is better to be dead.

Anna nodded and sighed. "That's horrible." She pulled her shawl tighter around her shoulders and said, "Vayelle has many problems, but I don't know of anyone who has been killed or maimed because they were trying to protect their family. Taking food from those who have plenty is not necessarily right, but it isn't worth killing someone over. We should have an obligation to look out for our neighbors and help provide for them when we can. Turning a starving person into a slave because they took food that wasn't theirs doesn't help anyone. It definitely doesn't deal with the root of the problem."

Leighton nodded.

Cohen had started to listen in too and I could tell he wanted to ask something but was hesitant to insert himself in this sort of discussion. Leighton saw him looking and offered Cohen a small smile. In the sand, he wrote: yes, prince?

"I was just going to ask how you ended up in the workcamps. Was it for stealing or something like that?" Leighton opened and closed his mouth, his surprise at the question only overshadowed by Cohen's quick response of: "It's totally fine if you don't want to talk about it. It was rude of me to ask. I just—I don't know. I was curious. I apologize."

Leighton lifted a hand to wave him off. He smoothed out the sand again and wrote: It's fine. Then, after a second he wrote: It's a long story.