My eyes sting with the light. The clock says ten in the morning.
Fifteen hours?
“We’re going home,” Kalt says, “to bury Mother and have a proper funeral.”
No, it’s too soon. She needs to be buried in the mountains by the sea, the place she loved best. She doesn’t want to sleep forever in that city Father bought with blood. She needs the sea before they shut her away.
But no one listens to me. Or maybe I don’t even speak.
Leannya curls against Arrin during the flight, refusing to let go, a tiny white-knuckled fist around his arm. Kalt stares at his boots. Father looks out the window, his spine iron-straight. I want someone to say her name. I need someone to break the numb silence and admit what’s happened. I want to fall apart into a thousand sharp little pieces and feel pain.
But nothing comes.
Nothing, nothing, nothing.
Cyar’s waiting on the tarmac in Valon, and his arms are around me before I can protest.
“Look at me,” he says through his tears. “More of a mess than you. Sorry.”
He’s rooted in familiar honesty, nothing held back, and I let him hug me. Then I pull the still-fresh lemon from my pocket and give it to him.
They bury her in the evening, everything the wife of the General deserves, the stunned city brought to a standstill. Down the casket goes, into the hollowed-out ground. It looks like a cold and lonely place. Trapped forever. Caged in the suffocating earth.
“Wake me.”
But I can’t.
She’s covered by chamomile and dirt. I offer the crushed hibiscus, the last beautiful thing she held, and Leannya shudders, crumpling back against Father, sobbing. He places a stiff hand on her tiny shoulder.
His silent face holds all the fury of hell.
8
AURELIA
Hathene, Etania
It’s morning, the mountains outside still lit with dawn mist, when Uncle Tanek and Havis burst through the parlour doors and interrupt breakfast. Uncle looks like a panicked deer shot in the hind, and Havis like a fellow creature scrambling to keep up and see what happens next. It’s almost amusing, the pair of them, until Uncle says, “General Dakar’s wife has been murdered! We just received the cable. It’s set for the broadcasts this evening.”
Mother and Reni freeze with their cutlery mid-air. I do, too.
As Uncle explains how it happened two days ago in a city of southern Savient, and everyone else, including Landore, only received the news this morning, and the General’s wife has already been buried in the ground while Savient mourns, Mother grows pale and I feel a sudden panic growing deep inside.
“Who would dare do this?” Reni demands.
“No arrests have been made. The culprits disappeared, but the General says it has the fingerprints of the Nahir upon it,” Uncle replies. “Certainly those men know the General is eyeing the South and trying to put his army there. They would take the gamble and make their warning clear.”
“And it was a gamble,” Mother says, an edge of sorrow to her voice. Her red nails are bright against the silver spoon she holds.
The panicky shadow inside me swells further, smothering my heartbeat, drawing the warmth from my cheeks.
“I’m concerned for what’s next, with Dakar, but I have a proposition.”
Did Havis predict this dark thing?
He’s still waiting behind Uncle, his gaze unreadable, a wicked harbour of trouble, and I can’t conceal my fury. He meets my eye—and pauses. In that wordless, unnoticed moment, he realizes the truth. Tension flickers along his half-shaven jaw, eyes narrowing.
He knows I read the letter.
I wish I were better at hiding things.
“I suppose the General won’t be coming to visit anymore?” I ask, turning from Havis, hiding a tremor by stirring sugar into my tea.
“It seems doubtful,” Uncle says.
“We should at least send him a letter of our regrets,” I suggest to Mother. “Wouldn’t that be proper?”
Uncle huffs a small laugh.
Mother studies me, then addresses Uncle. “Yes, I’ll offer the General a letter at once. He’s still quite welcome to visit if he chooses.”
“But we shouldn’t pressure him to—”
She extends her slender hand. “Compose the letter, brother, then I’ll sign it. I want it sent by morning.”
“Sinora—”
Her night-sea gaze turns quietly fierce, that silent spark that negates her outer calm, and Uncle holds his tongue.
It’s not until later in the morning that Havis finds me. The palace halls are bright with sun, yet heavy as nightfall, servants tiptoeing quickly like their heels are being chased. We all know the truth of this murder, and today, perhaps, it’s silenced every royal palace. Something dark has reached our shores. The Nahir have made it into the North. They’ve murdered an innocent woman and reminded everyone that their uprising will burn and burn, no matter what power rises in the east, threatening to challenge them.
Mother says every person has a reason for why they fight—but what reason could ever justify this terrible act?
I hurry up the grand staircase, feeling Havis’s shadow behind me.
Once in the privacy of Mother’s quiet wing, I spin to face him. “What do you want, Ambassador?”
His expression holds no mercy. “Don’t think I’m stupid, Princess. I saw the way you looked at me. You read my letter.”
“That’s your own fault, Ambassador. Why did you give it to me anyway?”
“I told you—your uncle forbids me from the Queen. He keeps me at his side from dawn to dusk, invites himself to every meeting. He’s a fool grasping for power, but I think you already know that.”
“You are a snake and a danger to my family.”
For one cramped moment, his cruel stare bears down, devouring my certainty. I’ve pushed too far with the letter. I should never have tried to play his games. Now when he tricks Mother into allowing our marriage, he’ll know I betrayed him right from the start, and he’ll pretend to adore me all while seething with a vicious hatred, a hatred that could keep me from my family forever, locked in a place on the edge of hell.
He steps back, though, throwing his infuriated gaze onto a nearby painting. There’s a tense tremor beneath his stubble, and it takes a moment to lessen, his eyes absorbing the scene—vibrant flowers and narrow green leaves, colours of amber and brick and ginger. In the middle, a young girl sits on a hill. Dark-haired, a hint of a smile on her lips, a sleek cat curled at her feet.
“It’s Resya,” he says eventually. A statement, not a question.
I don’t want to answer. He’s distracting me. But he’s right, because the painting was a gift from Father, commissioned for Mother’s birthday long ago, and it’s the only thing in the palace she calls her own with a jealous fervor. Too many times she’s stood here, as if she might leap inside and feel the cat’s fur. As if she might catch the scent of Southern wind if she waited long enough.
And too many times I’ve also waited here, wondering, deep down—far away and out of sight, like a shameful secret—if Mother loves that place more than she loves us. Father was her bright sun, her greatest friend. But now he’s gone, and the winters here are still bitter, and this kingdom is still an elaborate Northern gown she’s never quite fit into properly.
What if she passes the crown to Reni and then quietly retreats home? Why else would she think of giving me to Havis?
I hazard a glance at him. He’s still staring at the picture, lost in his secret thoughts. His black shirt is stitched with spirals of gold and red, distinctly foreign, its elegant patterns like the rug on Mother’s floor. I realize I don’t know him.
Not at all.
He turns, looking down at me with private skepticism. “You know so little of the world, Princess.”
Our brief stalemate dissolves to fury. I know enough. “You’re wrong, Ambassador. I’ve seen your letter and we’ll never do what you ask. You can
tell that to Seath. You can tell him I said it myself!”
Havis seizes my arm, and the thought of screaming comes to mind, but the cold alarm in his gaze silences me. “Don’t you dare say his name aloud,” he hisses. “You don’t talk about that man, not here! Not after the dark events of today.”
“Do we have trouble with the Nahir? Tell me. I demand to—”
“Hush!” His grip tightens, pinching skin. “After what’s happened in Savient, I don’t think my letter much matters anymore. Nothing can stop what will happen next. Though if you’re so insistent on meddling where you shouldn’t, ask your mother yourself. Are you brave enough for that?” Sudden, twisted pleasure appears on his face. “Yes, you should ask her everything that burns inside you, Princess. Ask her about me. About the wedding in Resya she’s already spoken of. She wishes it when you’re of age. Seventeen, isn’t that right? At the end of the summer?”
“She doesn’t!”
He brings his face too close to mine. “The truth is, Aurelia, I’m on your side. I’m headed back to Resya for a month, but when the Safire arrive, remember—”
“You’re lying! Mother doesn’t want me to marry you. You’ve nothing you could ever offer us.” I pull out of his grip desperately, panicked. “You humiliate yourself here. I’ll have a duke, a prince even, and everyone knows this except you!”
For one horrid moment, I’m sure he’ll spit at me or kiss me, but instead he says, “Too bad I’m only an ambassador, isn’t that it? We sit round tables and talk, and what good does that ever do?”
“I’m asking my mother for the truth,” I declare, spinning from him, “and then I’ll tell her to send you back where you came from.”
“She won’t.”
“Wait and see.”
“She’s not your father, and in days like these, that’s a very good thing.”
I stop.
“Boreas Isendare was a romantic,” Havis says. “He couldn’t see things as they were, only as he wished. He never deserved such a woman as Sinora Lehzar.”
His words sear me with the sharpest sense of loss and sorrow. For a moment, I think I’ll surrender to misery right there, in front of Havis. But I rally whatever part of my mother is in my blood. I turn to face him. “Don’t you ever mention my father’s name again, Ambassador.”
A shameful tear still warms my eye.
I don’t wait long enough for him to see it.
9
ATHAN
Valon, Savient
On the third afternoon after Mother’s death, I sit alone folding bits of paper. It’s a stupid game. Make some little shape—a plane, an animal, whatever—then try to repeat the whole thing with eyes closed. A pointless challenge for my brain. A way to pass time. I’ve already emptied and smashed enough brandy bottles, and Cyar’s forbidden me from drinking any more. He says I’ll become Arrin.
Mangled papers surround me when Kalt appears in the doorway.
“Pull yourself together,” he orders. “Father’s got something to say.”
I stand, unsteady. “To me?”
“Don’t be a selfish ass. It’s bigger than that. I’ve been looking everywhere for you.” I stare at him and his bland face. Nothing visible, no grief. That same stupid, monotonous voice. He takes a long breath. “Just come. It’s not my order.”
Of course it isn’t. It never is. It’s always going to be Father saying and us doing and never mind how we feel about it. And now that Mother’s gone, there’s no one left to question his sanity in our defense. No one left to plead our case after too much wine and promise things that can’t be.
She’s gone.
It’s gone.
We’re all gone, burned up with the dreams and the hope and the rest of it.
I crush a paper plane between my hands and follow after Kalt.
* * *
Father’s council room—windowless and encircled by heavy oaken walls, like a buried ship—is a place I’ve never been allowed before. The carpet is stitched with the Safire crest, large beneath our feet, and a square fireplace sits cold and grey, its mantel bearing framed portraits of Arrin and Kalt in uniform. They look like strangers in photograph, stiff and serious. Vacant.
Father stands at the long table, hunched over it in the low lights, while six top officers in Safire uniform sit waiting, clearly on edge. Silence with Father is always terrifying. Maybe especially for these men, since they’re not even blood, and if he needs to pull his pistol on someone—which I know he’s done before, on the frontlines—it’s more likely to be them than Arrin.
Probably.
Arrin is opposite us, leaning back in his chair, arms crossed and face perturbed. His left hand ticks away like it’s on a trigger.
“Keep your mouth shut,” Kalt mutters to me.
I don’t think I’m the one who needs that warning.
When Father clears his throat, everyone straightens, Malek and Evertal the quickest. “The murderer who committed this heinous act has been waiting a long time to pounce,” he says. “I swear to God and each of you here today that when I’ve finished with her, she will wish for hell.” He raises his eyes, darkened by exhaustion and fury. “Sinora Lehzar is the devil I will crush. She is a viper. A liar. A cheat. She’s everything despised in the North, a false queen, and I won’t stop until she burns before the world.”
Of course.
Blood and fireworks. The woman he hates.
A queen?
Arrin’s still ticking.
“It’s early,” Malek says carefully. “More investigation might be needed.”
“More investigation?” Father snarls. “It was an assassination in broad daylight, practically on the anniversary of Boreas’s death! She never made her shots in the dark. She was brash. By God, I gave her that first rifle! She always said—” He stops abruptly. His gaze sharp, reckless. “That wretched woman has burned a long time for her revenge, but this won’t end here. I will destroy her.”
The Admiral pauses. “Yes, but Sinora would have targeted you, not Sapphie.”
Father laughs, a cracked sound. “She said she’d never kill me, only bury my heart. One of her damn Rummayan proverbs. Well she hasn’t buried mine yet, and I’ll have hers between my fist.”
“Of course,” Malek says, wisely retreating.
“The traitorous bitch deserves to hang,” Evertal offers, “for more crimes than this.”
Something unsettling lurches me back into the present, out of the fog of grief in my head. Father’s hatred of Sinora Lehzar has always been a whispered fact. An indistinct rage that stretches back long before I was ever born. A name never spoken—unless you want a nose shattered, or a bullet in the brain.
But no one ever mentioned she was a queen.
That sounds infinitely more complicated.
Arrin shakes his head. “Suspicion around our small table doesn’t equal tangible proof. Without actual evidence against Lehzar, we can’t make a move. It’s stupid to even think of it.”
No one breathes. Now is about the moment when a pistol might appear. If it’s going to happen, this would be it, and everyone at the table looks terrified except for Arrin.
Father glares at him. “Evidence? She’s from the dirt, and that’s where I’ll put her again.”
“She’s a goddamn queen of the North, Father.”
Father gives a derisive snort. “Far from it.”
Beside me, Kalt looks impassive to the dangerous revenge brewing in front of us, nodding along with everything Father says. Evertal, too. Her lips hold a wicked smile. So Arrin’s our only hope for reason? That’s alarming. If we go after a ruling royal, and we fail, it will be Savient burning instead of Sinora Lehzar. She has a crown.
How does only Arrin see this?
“We should trust Father’s judgment,” Kalt puts in. He addresses Father. “I’d support a strike against her, sir.”
Arrin rolls his eyes. “Of course you would.”
“We’re bringing justice to our murdered mother,” K
alt says sharply. “Why are you being difficult?”
He’s not being difficult, I want to snap. For the first time in his life, he’s being smarter than anyone in this damn room.
But all that comes out is, “He sure as hell isn’t, Kalt!”
Everyone turns in their seats, stunned, Kalt the most. Arrin raises a brow at me. He waits for more, sensing an ally. But Father’s looking at me too, and my throat constricts.
Arrin strikes on alone. “Father, I’m not saying I won’t bring her down. Believe me, I will. But Mother’s murder is a charge no one in the North will buy. They want to believe it’s the Nahir, not one of their own. How would we ever convince the Royal League of her guilt?”
Father circles Arrin, hawk-like. “Do you think I got to where I am by being as foolish as you’re suggesting? When I finish Sinora off, every royal will applaud my good work. The League itself will carry out the verdict. I swear it.”
Arrin finally stops his ticking. “What I thought. And that’s the problem, Father. You want to do it by their rules. You want their approval for it. But we don’t have the luxury of time. We need something better than this impossible murder charge. Something irrefutable. And we need it before we reach the South—God knows her camp will be waiting there to pounce.”
“You’re scared of fighting a real war?” Kalt taunts.
Arrin throws up his hands. “Yes, that’s it, Kalt. You’ve caught me. Though I suppose I’ll have to hide back here with you, since your boat won’t be very helpful in a landlocked kingdom like Etania.”
“I was talking about the South,” Kalt clarifies indignantly.
Father slams a fist on the table. Everyone jumps. Malek, Evertal, and the rest drop their eyes. Arrin and Kalt shut up. Father’s anger has built like a storm, and suddenly, for some horrible reason that doesn’t even make sense, he jabs a finger at me. “You. Let’s hear what you think about all this. Clearly you have an opinion. Won’t you say it to my face?” He waits a fraction of a second—hardly enough time to answer—then snorts. “No, of course you won’t. You never do. You just carry on and avoid the real work.”
Dark of the West (Glass Alliance) Page 9