The Fiery Crown

by Jeffe Kennedy

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  To my family, both that I was born to and that marriage brought together. Mom, Dave, Hope, Galen, Brett, and Henry: love you all!

  Acknowledgments

  Big love to my editor, Jennie Conway, who made this book so much better in so many ways. It’s truly a joy to work with you.

  To the team at St. Martin’s Press: Thank you for working so hard on behalf of this series. I’ve been so thrilled at all you do, the attention to detail and the joy with which you embrace the books you publish. To my publicity team in particular: Thank you so much for launching The Orchid Throne in such a wonderful way. Working with you makes everything so easy.

  Much love and gratitude to my agent, Sarah Younger, who is the absolute best. You are my rock and my guiding star.

  Many heartfelt thanks and love to my writer friends who are always there for me at the other end of the phone or internet connection. I’d be lost without you! Virtual hugs and chocolate to Amanda Bouchet, Grace Draven, Jennifer Estep, Thea Harrison, Darynda Jones, Leslye Penelope, Kelly Robson, and Minerva Spencer. Thanks in particular to Megan Hart for an emergency read.

  Special thanks to Sage Walker and Jim Sorenson for brunches, to Megan Mulry for cocktails, and to Emily Mah and Trent Zelazny for coffee.

  Many thanks to my professional writers organizations, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) and the Romance Writers of America (RWA)—especially my local RWA chapter, the Land of Enchantment Romance Authors—for being a port in the storm, a rising tide that floats all boats, and fellow travelers on the sea of publishing. Special shout-out to the SFWA Slack chat for daily advice and nonsense.

  As always, immense gratitude to my fantastic assistant, Carien Ubink, who does it all.

  Finally—first, last, and always—love to David, who is there every day.

  1

  “Good morning, Conrí! I must congratulate myself—how did I know I’d find you here?”

  I glanced at the wizard, not revealing that he’d surprised me and not bothering to return the empty pleasantries. I hadn’t asked him to find me. In fact, I’d come to the portrait gallery to be alone—not easy in the crowded and convivial court of Calanthe. “I don’t know, Ambrose. Probably one of the many dark arts you practice.”

  Ambrose, cheerfully undaunted, shook his head with a smile. He’d decorated his light-brown curls with a garland of flowers in the Calanthean style, and he wore a deep-blue robe lavishly embroidered with glittering silver moons floating in a field of stars in pinprick jewels of every color imaginable. Even his familiar, Merle, a very large raven, sported a silver chain about his neck studded with small jewels that winked even in the dim light from the glass-paned, narrow slits of windows. The raven, perched on the enormous emerald stone topping the wizard’s staff, cocked his head at me and opened his beak in a croak that could be interpreted as a laugh.

  “Ah, Conrí, I wouldn’t waste my prodigious magical talents on locating you when simple logic tells me you’d be lurking here in the shadows while Her Highness holds formal court.”

  “Shouldn’t you be lurking in your tower, muttering spells over boiling cauldrons?”

  Ambrose laughed. “You really know nothing at all of how wizardry and magic work.”

  I only grunted, returning my gaze to studying the portrait above me. It was too much to hope that Ambrose would go away, but maybe if I ignored him he’d get bored of poking at me and spit out whatever he wanted to say and then get gone.

  But no, he stepped up beside me, keeping his counsel for the moment, and gazed up also. The ornately framed portrait of Oriel’s last, doomed ruling family dominated this section of wall. That wasn’t just me, either. Anyone would be drawn to the portrait for its size and artistic execution, attracting the eye even among the many paintings that had been crowded into the gallery. The long arcade held hundreds, maybe thousands of drawings, etchings, and paintings. They hung shoulder-to-shoulder, like warriors out of history marching in frozen formation, relics of kingdoms scattered to ash.

  Lia—and her father before her—had collected these works of art, smuggled out of the many forgotten empires and kingdoms, saving them from the self-styled Emperor Anure’s destruction and greed, bringing them to the island kingdom of Calanthe, to hang quietly in the shadows. It made sense, on one level, to keep the paintings in the dark, preserving them from the tropical sunlight, but a morbid part of me couldn’t help comparing the place to a tomb.

  Of course, a tomb was the right location for interring this portrait among the others, along with the dead people it portrayed. My father, as broad-chested and vital as he’d been in my boyhood, stood behind my seated mother, both wearing the crowns of Oriel. He had one big hand braced on the back of her chair, the other on my shoulder. Or rather, on the boy prince of Oriel, a child who’d effectively died along with the rest of his family. That kid grinned with cocky confidence and the innocent joy of a stranger. Nothing at all like the man who looked back at me from Calanthe’s thousands of shining and unflinching mirrors.

  I’d visited the painting enough times now that I could make myself look at my mother’s face, her light-brown eyes holding laughter and warmth. The painter had been the best for several kingdoms around—and she’d exactly captured my mother’s keen intelligence, her lips curved in a smile as if she might burst out laughing at any moment. My sister and I had inherited her black hair and tawny eyes, not our father’s bold blond, blue-eyed looks.

  My sister … I hadn’t yet been able to make myself look at her face.

  I tried. I visited the portrait several times a day as a kind of penance, and to test my will. It was the least I could do, when I’d survived and they’d all been consigned to unmarked graves, my mother and sister moldering when they should’ve been cleanly burnt to ash. My sister stood between my father and mother, so I should be able to slide my gaze over a few inches from my mother’s face … but my will collapsed, the sick grief grabbing me, and I had to look away, taking a deep breath.

  “There’s no bringing back the dead,” Ambrose said philosophically, though with a note of compassion in his voice. “Not those who’ve been dead a long time, anyway. It almost never works out well. I could tell you about—”

  “Did I ask?” I retorted.

  “I just thought I should mention,” he replied reproachfully, more of his usual bite to it. “Since you seem to have such a high opinion of my wizardry. In case your brooding and obsessive study of this painting led your thoughts in that direction.”

  I set my teeth, resisting the urge to grind them. “I’m not brooding or obsessive. This is a good place to think. Normally no one bothers me here.” If I had to kick my heels in this oppressively cheerful paradise, growing softer with each wasted moment, I could at least contemplate next steps, anticipate Anure’s strategy to take his own revenge on Calanthe and her queen. “It’s not like I have anything else to do.”

  “You could attend court, as
consort to Her Highness,” Ambrose pointed out blandly, and I suppressed a growl of frustration. At least my throat hurt less, since Healer Jeaneth had been treating me—one positive of having time on my hands. My voice still sounded like a choked dog most of the time, however.

  “Court.” I snarled the word. “I don’t get how Lia can waste time on diplomacy and posturing when she promised to discuss defense.”

  “She does have a realm to govern.”

  “She won’t if Anure arrives to destroy it while she drags her feet. The woman is uncommonly stubborn.”

  “A perfect match for you.” Ambrose narrowed his eyes at my clenched fists. “Isn’t she gathering intelligence from her spies?”

  I didn’t answer that. That’s what we waited on, theoretically, but I knew there were things Lia was avoiding telling me. I also suspected that she hoped it would all just go away. Both of us knew that Calanthe couldn’t withstand a full-out, devastating attack. When nothing happened immediately after our wedding, it seemed that Lia began to hope that nothing ever would.

  I knew better. The painting helped remind me of all the dead waiting to be avenged—and what happened to those who fell before Anure’s might.

  Unfortunately, I was at a loss to find a way out of our current predicament.

  If Anure was smart—and the Imperial Tyrant might be greedy, arrogant, ruthless, and devoid of redeeming human qualities, but he wasn’t stupid—he’d simply surround the island with battleships loaded with explosive vurgsten and bombard Calanthe until nothing remained. He wouldn’t care about salvaging anything; he never had. Even with the ships I’d captured and Calanthe’s fleets of pleasure skiffs and fishing boats, we didn’t have anywhere close to the numbers to effectively surround and defeat Anure’s navy. Besides, our own supplies of vurgsten had to be vanishingly small compared with what the emperor would have stockpiled over nearly two decades at his citadel at Yekpehr.

  We had to deploy our few strengths with strategic care, and being trapped on an island while the Imperial Toad scoured us off it with superior force wouldn’t allow for that. Not only wasn’t I closer to destroying Anure and taking my final revenge, I’d put myself and my forces in an even more tenuous position than before. I’d followed Ambrose’s prophecy, and taken the tower at Keiost.

  Take the Tower of the Sun,

  Claim the hand that wears the Abiding Ring,

  And the empire falls.

  Claiming the hand that wears the Abiding Ring? I only wish it had been as simple as conquering an impregnable ancient city. Instead I’d had to find a way to convince Queen Euthalia of Calanthe to marry me. Against all probability, I’d succeeded. We were duly wed, though saying I’d claimed anything about Lia would be a stretch, and I sure didn’t see the empire falling anytime soon. The reverse seemed far more likely.

  Doing nothing while my enemy mustered a crushing attack was driving me out of my mind.

  “Lia’s spies can maybe tell her how much vurgsten Anure has, yes,” I finally replied to the wizard’s expectant silence. “She might find out exactly how many ships and troops he can send against us, how well fortified his citadel is, and we’ll know nothing more than we do now. We’ll be no closer to defeating Anure. I thought claiming the hand with the Abiding Ring would lead to the empire’s fall.” I leveled an accusing glare on him.

  “You claimed Her Highness’s hand in marriage all right, but the wooing doesn’t stop there,” Ambrose replied with mild reproof. “You can’t order about a queen like you can your soldiers.”

  “Don’t I know it,” I muttered. Since Ambrose had destroyed what little peace I’d found, I turned and strode down the long gallery. The wizard glided alongside me, making no sound though my bootsteps echoed on the polished marble of Lia’s pretty palace. Ambrose could move silently as a cat when he wished, which was how he’d managed to sneak up on me. No one else could. I’d learned early on in the mines of Vurgmun to duck the ready lash of the guards, a habit that had stuck—and served me well in the years of battle since.

  I’d have liked to say I’d gotten used to Ambrose’s strange skills, but even I didn’t delude myself that much.

  We emerged from the shadowed portrait gallery, a place thick with ghosts and the stale smells of hundreds of destroyed kingdoms, and into the bright, flower-scented sunlight of the main hall. Lia’s palace didn’t have much in the way of walls. With the eternal summer of Calanthe’s tropical weather, they didn’t need them. Open arcades of carved pillars framed the lush gardens, pools, and lawns surrounding the palace, with the gleaming turquoise sea beyond. Flowers bloomed constantly from lawns, flower beds, shrubs, and towering trees, with vines coiling over all of it. Butterflies of hues I hadn’t known existed lifted in clouds, then drifted on the breeze, and everywhere birds sang, all sweetly, of course. I hadn’t figured out yet if Lia had an army of gardeners to tend it all or if it just … did that on its own.

  I’d made a deal with myself that I wouldn’t ask. Not that Lia would laugh at my question—not out loud, anyway—but I didn’t like to remind Her Highness of what an ignorant lout she’d married.

  A stream burbled its way through the palace from a lagoon on one side to a pond on the other, meandering through in a trough cut into the marble floors and inlaid with little tiles in all shades of blue and green. Arching bridges crossed it in places, more for show than anything, because all but the most mincing courtier could easily leap across the narrow channel. I might not have much in the way of fine manners, but even I knew it would be rude to actually jump over the thing, however, and I didn’t much feel like changing my path to cross over the nearest dainty bridge. So I turned and followed the stream outside.

  Ambrose, of course, tagged along as if we were out for a companionable stroll.

  “What do you want, Ambrose?” I finally asked, capitulating to the inevitable.

  “Me? Oh, what a question.” He let his staff thunk on the path of crushed stone, leaning on it as we walked, Merle rising and falling with the movement, like the carved masthead of a ship on stormy seas. “I want different things now than when I was an apprentice wizard,” he continued conversationally. “Those ideas change over time, have you noticed? The expectations of youthful idealism give way to more mature dreams and goals. Not in a bad way. It’s just that what we thought we wanted comes from not really knowing what we could have. Once I learned more about what the world offered me, I discovered I wanted entirely different things. And you?”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Or how I’d gone from leading armies, with every conquest increasing the momentum of my vengeance, to strolling through a garden, having a conversation like the pretty lads and ladies we passed. Most of the courtiers were in court, naturally, kissing Lia’s gorgeously garbed ass and passing their fancily folded notes, but the other denizens of the palace seemed to spend most of their time looking decorative in the gardens. In my black garb—granted, finer than what I’d arrived on Calanthe wearing—and carrying my weapons, I felt like a scarred monster by comparison. Given the askance looks the courtiers gave me before they deflected into other directions, they thought so, too.

  “I’m talking about changing expectations,” Ambrose replied, lifting his face to the sun and smiling like that one painting of a saint back in the gallery. “You, for example, can expect very different things from your life now that you’re king of Calanthe and no longer the Slave King.”

  “The consort of the queen of Calanthe,” I corrected, hating the testy edge to my voice, already so rough compared with the wizard’s fluid tones. “Not the same thing. I’m not king of anything, never have been.”

  Ambrose waved that off as irrelevant. “My point is, it’s time for you to stop moping about in the shadows. You can’t afford to do nothing. Time to take action, my boy!”

  I stopped next to a tiered fountain of roses, glaring at it while I mastered the urge to throttle the wizard. The roses at the top were bright white, then they got pinker lower down. The bloom
s progressed through all shades of pink and red, until the bottom ones that were as dark as the blood that pours out when you strike a man in the liver.

  Tiny purple bees buzzed around them, making a hypnotic sound that somehow seemed part of the heavily sweet scent of the blossoms. I kept an eye on the bees to make sure they planned to stay occupied with the flowers rather than attacking us. “What action do you want me to take?” I asked, sounding more or less calm. “Lia refuses to convene her Defense Council and you agreed with her, saying we should wait to see how Anure responded when he received news of the wedding.”

  Ambrose sighed heavily, then settled himself on a stone bench that circled the flower fountain, heedless of the bees that investigated the garland in his hair, though Merle snapped at one curiously. “That’s what I’m telling you, Conrí,” the wizard said with exaggerated patience. “We did have to wait. Now we don’t. Must I forever explain these things?”

  I wrapped my fingers into my palms, making them into fists so I’d be less likely to forget that I needed Ambrose and accidentally strangle him. Also, he was Lia’s court wizard now, and she’d be put out with me if I killed him.

  Ours wasn’t a marriage of affection. Exactly the opposite, in fact, as we’d started out trying to kill each other before we ever met face-to-face. But the ritual had been done properly, tying us together for the rest of our lives, like it or not. Aside from the sexual consummation, where we seemed to get along just fine, we mostly seemed to piss each other off. Like two bulls in a small pen, one of Lia’s pet scholars, Brenda, had called us. Not a bad comparison, if unflattering. I wouldn’t mind having horns to wave at Ambrose in menace.

  “What changed?” I asked. My voice growled with frustration when the wizard got that sly look of his and raised a chastising finger as he opened his mouth. “And don’t say everything changes all the time.”