Storm from the East

by Joanna Hathaway

  I slap my forehead.

  I’m actually entertaining the idea of marriage to Gref Havis!

  With a sigh, I slide out of bed, throwing on a robe and dragging a brush through my messy hair, then drinking from the water pitcher.

  “You pretty fool,” Havis’s voice snaps suddenly, and I whirl, realizing Athan left the door wide open. “I didn’t intend to find that boy fleeing here like a dog with its tail between its legs!”

  Of all mornings, this is the one Havis chooses to return? I’ve wondered often enough where he’s been, knowing all the possibilities are ones I’d like to ignore. The illustrious fantasy of my mind.

  “You promised to use your good sense when I gave you this gift, Aurelia.”

  I tighten my robe. “I did.”

  He slams the door shut, and for the first time in a long while, I feel uneasy standing before him. “You know I don’t give a whip what fun you have, but you’re not just any girl. You’re a princess, and I hope to God the two of you at least acted safely, because a child would truly heighten this drama to a matchless level!”

  I raise my chin. “We did. Now leave me alone. I need to ready for the day.”

  “You need to ready for your damn mother! She’s at Rahian’s palace and will be furious to discover her only daughter was just deflowered by a Safire lieutenant under my roof. You’d better have an answer prepared, because I sure as hell won’t be stepping into the middle of this.”

  I stare at him, stunned. “She’s here?”

  “Yes. Though she should have come a day sooner, evidently.”

  My palms begin to sweat, an apprehension I didn’t expect. My mother has come at last. With no warning, not even a cable to me. Stars, perhaps I’m the one she’ll arrest, to drag home. No care for Resya or my mission. She’ll simply protect her own crown and her own standing in the North. Once, that made sense to me. Not anymore. It’s no longer enough, not now that I’ve seen the extent of what unchecked violence can do. If Reni were responsible for even a fraction of what Seath has spurred, then nothing would keep me from confronting him—not a thing!

  Reni isn’t Seath, a logical voice reminds me.

  But I don’t want to imagine that right now. I don’t want to imagine that Seath might be so dangerous even my mother would refuse to cross him.

  I need to feel we have a chance at making things better.

  “Where the stars have you been?” I ask Havis instead, to put him on the defense. “Did you see Seath? What does he—?”

  “Stars, girl! You can’t talk like this. No one can ever hear you breathe his name out loud. I’ve told you that before.” He marches closer. “Every secret your family holds is one luckless step away from being thrown before the entire world, which means you need to keep your cards close for as long as you can. You have to play for everyone, because that’s what your mother does, and it’s why she’s still alive. They all think she’s on their side.” He pins me with a pointed glare. “And never trust the General. Not one damn word.”

  “I’ve learned very well who can’t be trusted here,” I say sharply.

  “Are you so sure about that?” Havis holds out his hand towards me. “The Lieutenant forgot these in his room, and I think you should be the one to return them.”

  They’re Athan’s metal tags, the ones he wouldn’t let me wear. Hesitantly, I take them, seeing in them the chains of his life, these tiny things that want to keep him from me, the things he doesn’t even want to wear. I feel their weight, rubbing my thumb over the smooth metal, the embossed name.

  ATHAN DAKAR.

  For a moment, I simply read. Over and over, a useless rhythm of words as my head tries to make sense of why on earth Athan would agree to bear the General’s name in battle. What help would that be? Why would he be so special? It makes no sense. He wouldn’t be given a tag like this unless he was—

  “I told you last summer,” Havis says, interrupting my pitiful rumination, “never trust a thing until you’ve inspected it closely.”

  But it can’t be.

  He never once …

  He didn’t …

  Heat floods my face, and I shove them back at Havis. “This isn’t true. This is a lie.”

  I’m caught between disbelief and anger, unable to reconcile the fact that the chest I kissed last night, the heat of his perfect body, could share anything at all with the ungodly Commander. I still feel his gentle lips ghosting across my skin. His soft voice in my neck, so careful and warm and earnest.

  But Havis doesn’t take the tags. “For once,” he says wryly, “this isn’t a lie at all.”

  “I don’t understand,” I reply, trembling now. “Why the stars wouldn’t he tell me?”

  “You have all the clues you need. Use that clever head of yours.”

  The shock is draining away rapidly, wrestled down by something else.

  Hurt.

  Tender and bruising. The tags are still in my left hand, and I clench them a bit harder, as if I might interrogate them into admitting an explanation. “For … safety?”

  “Or?”

  “To be undercover?”

  “Better.”

  “But why?”

  Havis says nothing, and as always, his silence is telling. My brain flashes through everything Athan has ever said to me—where and when and why, the warnings, the coup—and every tapestry tells the same story. It’s suddenly all right there before me. I just never imagined to look.

  Why should I have?

  Last night, he tried to tell me something before the fire’s glow. The secret haunting every kiss between us, caught behind his eyes, the deeper shame in him I couldn’t reach.

  This was it? He didn’t want to tell me the truth of his name? It’s incredibly infuriating, his lie, but it also makes no sense. Why did he think I’d care? Yes, I hate the Commander, but they’re two different souls, and surely I know as well as any how important that distinction is. I’m angry that he didn’t trust me. Angry because I hate the falseness of it, the fraud of our beginning, the power in his hands.

  “I’m sorry,” he whispered during the coup.

  He apologized.

  He has always apologized, over and over and over.

  Then what has he used his power for?

  Sweat begins to dampen my neck. Perhaps I’m looking at this wrong. Perhaps it has nothing to do with Athan at all, and everything to do with me.

  My family, hiding Nahir blood.

  My uncle, Seath.

  My mother, a person I don’t even know anymore—sitting with the General in a time long ago.

  All at once, I’m struggling for a shore I don’t want to land on. The hurt becomes wild, panicked. “Havis, you said this war was about vengeance.” I force myself to look at him. “Where is the person who betrayed the General?”

  He smiles. I’ve found the right scent. “The North. And the South.”

  The world sways, my heart a wingbeat in my chest. “My mother.”

  “Yes. Which is why I hope you’ve never said anything to that boy you regret.”

  He apologized.

  “I’m sorry.”

  The palace was on fire because those protesters discovered the secret that my father was murdered. I only ever told Athan. He’s the only one. And not long after, Hathene burned with rage, the buried history no one else knew. My own rage now overwhelms my horror. It destroys my despair, my hurt, and I think of that rotten bad luck flower. The fact that a lowly officer could “find” me in the garden, become my friend, all the while knowing his father had designs for revenge.

  I want to shatter something into a thousand pieces.

  Anything.

  Everything.

  “How?” I demand.

  Havis doesn’t need to ask what I mean. How could any of this happen? It’s the complexity of the entire game, a game that feels unfathomable, impossible, yet terribly personal. And now it’s become my own. “That’s never the important question,” he replies firmly. “The only thing th
at matters is what you’re going to do about it. And right now, you need to pretend you know nothing until we determine the better path forward.”

  “I can’t do that!”

  “You can, Aurelia. You must, because your mother does it every day. You can’t simply go before the world and announce the General is your enemy. Nor can he do it to your mother. It’s only a story. A private myth. No one will believe, or care. You need evidence—something the world’s invested in.” He draws a breath. “Look, I’d really hoped the Lieutenant would do the decent thing and tell you the truth these past days. I believe the two of you together could be a powerful match. A princess and a general’s son who—”

  I slap him.

  Hard.

  The sound echoes in the room, and there’s a long stretch of disbelief, Havis staring at me, my hand still held in front of me, tingling with the bright pain of it, the most satisfying sensation I’ve ever felt.

  “That wasn’t without warrant,” he admits finally.

  Tears sting my eyes, but I don’t let them fall. “You have lied to me at every turn, Havis. You’ve deceived me, kept your secrets, let me walk into this entirely unaware and hoped to gain some twisted reward from it. But from you I expected it. From him…” My voice chokes, strangled. The pain is so fresh I can’t even begin to fathom how deep it runs yet, how bottomless it might be. “I hate you, Havis.” I smother the tags between my fist. “Yet even you, rotten as you are, can be glad your name isn’t Athan Dakar today.”

  Dakar.

  I see this kingdom going up in smoke. The rotten Commander and his fatal smile. All of it so far from good—so far from guiltless—and the anger reaches beyond my personal pain, into an endless night of stolen joys, days that will never be recaptured, peace squandered by this family who puts their own victory before anything else.

  I’m going to hold on to my anger like a hot trigger.

  I’m going to hold him to account.

  “Stars.” Havis rubs his cheek. “I truly do like you.”

  “Get the hell out!”

  He does.

  40

  ATHAN

  Airbase

  Cyar’s face is the first indicator of my fate. It’s furious.

  He doesn’t say anything, though—just points across the compound to the main base, directing me to where I need to be, and I offer him the desserts Ali found in the market. Somehow, I remembered to grab them on my way out. He looks down at the little cakes, and softens a fraction.

  Good enough for now.

  I run for the base, sprinting through the doors, down the hall, and a Safire officer pushes me in the right direction. It’s a half-sympathetic, half-alarmed kind of shove. I’m late. Or am I? I’m not even sure as I hurtle through the private office door and slam it shut. I drop into an empty seat, out of breath, my hair matted with dust. I’m a mess from having stolen the Havis motorbike and raced back. But I’m here.

  Seven thirty-six.

  I’m here.

  It’s silent in the room. The worst kind of silence. All three faces stare at me from around the table—Kalt confused, Father annoyed, and Arrin slightly astonished.

  “Were you in a whorehouse?” Arrin enquires after a moment.

  “A what? No! I wasn’t—”

  “Nothing wrong with it,” he says, astonishment switching to a smirk. “I just never expected this from you.”

  My hatred flares beneath his dark amusement. After five perfect days with Ali, being near his bleak energy feels worse than ever. He can make all the jokes he wants, sitting here and pretending he didn’t rearrange my nose in that outpost headquarters, that he didn’t put these dragons in my head, but I won’t forget. I won’t let him win.

  He can’t touch Ali.

  “Enough,” Father says sharply to Arrin. “You sure as hell aren’t one to talk about abandonment of duty. Running ahead and losing those bridges is the worst tactical decision you’ve ever made—and it was nearly your last. God help the mothers in Savient weeping thanks to your stupidity.”

  Arrin’s amusement snuffs out. At the other end of the table, Kalt taps a pen, conveniently uninvolved, and I’d like to know what the hell he’s been doing all this time.

  “Let’s assess where we’re at,” Father continues, his pointed gaze still on Arrin. “You’ve managed to put yourself in a trap and lose eight thousand lives in the process.”

  “Also won a war,” Arrin mutters.

  Father moves to Kalt. “You’ve done mostly nothing.” His eyes swing to me. “And you’ve been God knows where since the surrender. Right now, there’s only one child I’m pleased with, and she’s not even here to see it.”

  Kalt stops tapping.

  Arrin and I freeze.

  “Yes, that’s right,” Father says. “Leannya got herself to Thurn and joined the codebreaker team. Figured out the cipher that gave Evertal the victory she needed at Irspen. I wish I had a damn photograph right now. You three think you’re so clever, but you’d better think again.”

  I glower at Arrin across the table. He put these ideas in Leannya’s head. He groomed her into wanting to be like him. Now she’s following in his footsteps, storming into the middle of this, seizing her own glory.

  “And now,” Father finishes, “we’ve got the capital, we’ve got Rahian, but the war here isn’t over until Seath is dead. That goddamn traitor will sabotage us any way he knows. Mark my word.”

  He doesn’t need to mark anything. We each know it. This battle isn’t over, not here in Resya or anywhere in the South. Father’s phantom game has been toppled over, the pieces scattered, and he can’t get them all back overnight. Seath is doing exactly what Father would do, which is why he terrifies me.

  He’s brilliantly dangerous.

  “Yes,” Arrin tries, “but the Ambassador just brought—”

  “I don’t give a damn about Havis,” Father interrupts. “Havis is finished. He’s as much a con as the rest of them. The next time I see him breathing in front of me, I’ll be sure to rectify the situation immediately.” He swats at the map on the table. “Any air engagements around Madelan?”

  Havis betrayed us.

  Havis betrayed us.

  I’m busy processing that obvious fact, how stupid I was to wander into his house, lured along by Ali, when I realize Father’s talking to me. “Oh. One, sir.”

  That I know of, of course. I’ve been gone five days at the traitor’s estate.

  “First one since the surrender?” he presses me.

  “Yes, sir. Two unmarked planes scouting southeast of the city. Might have come in from Thurn.”

  “The first?” Arrin repeats.

  “Yes.”

  “Did they seem experienced?”

  “They were a bit nervous, staying out of range.”

  “Nervous? That’s normal. And did you come from above or below?”

  “Above.”

  “Above?”

  “Yes.” I glare at him, since I don’t know why he cares about any of this.

  “I’m just trying to understand the logistics,” Arrin explains, “since this was the first time. Big cannons at least?”

  Kalt makes a slight snort, pinching the bridge of his nose. I realize, in one very startling moment, the trap I’ve walked myself into. But it’s too late. Arrin’s laughing so loud it lights the earlier tension right on fire, and Father growls at him to get the hell out and stay out.

  Kalt’s hiding in vain behind his hand.

  “You can get out too,” Father snaps at him.

  He doesn’t hesitate. He’s gone.

  Silence again, my face feeling like someone’s stuck a scalding iron to it. My goddamn brother. He’s the master of turning his own failure into someone else’s humiliation. Who cares about the cauldron or the crimes?

  His war is over—and he’s putting me back where I belong.

  As the minute inches by, painfully slow, I feel Father’s stare on me, silently judging. I pray he really does think I’ve spent fiv
e days in a brothel. I pray that Cyar and Garrick and the rest didn’t rat me out.

  He can’t know it was Ali.

  Ali, who I long to sleep with again—not only for the obvious reasons, but because I’m desperate to be known away from this. Away from this family. To be seen as a naked soul with only our touch between us.

  I want to hide there forever.

  “I’m very impressed,” Father says at last, and I hear him set his pistol on the table.

  My eyes stick to my boots. Here it is. The slow burn into Father’s wrath. The inevitable path I’ve always been meant to tread—too much, not enough, destined for a bullet.

  “I’m very impressed that you could do worse than losing me a coup. That you’d defy me on the frontlines, then disappear for days into the enemy’s bed and forget your own mother’s death.”

  I might actually die this time.

  “You’ve finally conquered yourself, Athan. You found your true potential.”

  For a moment, I can’t move. Then I hazard a glance up, convinced it’s a sick game. He’s going to make me shoot another horse. He’s going to make me shoot myself.

  But he’s … pleased?

  The gun sits untouched between us.

  “Where do I begin?” he says, and I’m really not sure. “Captain Carr told me that Sinora’s daughter showed up looking for you on base, thinking she could play you some more. He said you refused her and went elsewhere instead. I don’t need to know where, but your fortitude is telling.”

  I stare at him.

  Why the hell would Garrick lie for me? Cyar confessed the truth of where I was. That’s what Trigg said. But Garrick still covered for me? Against Father?

  He pauses, looking at me. Actually looking, something like pleasure at the edge of his granite expression. “Not only that, I’ve heard nothing but commendations for you this entire campaign. From Torhan. Carr. Malek. All of them praise your incredible performance in the air and amongst the squadron.”

  I can barely find my voice. “Thank you, sir.”

  “They’re saying what I’ve believed all along, that you’re not only an excellent pilot, but also an excellent leader, with unbound potential.” He smiles then—tired and wan, but real. “We’re going to have to see about getting you that squadron. Sooner than I might have thought, Captain.”