The Fiery Crown

by Jeffe Kennedy

  Ambrose closed his mouth again and raised his brows. “Well, everything does change. Change is the one dependable element of the world,” he pointed out, almost primly, then hastily added as he caught the look on my face, “but I’ll address the question I believe you meant to ask, which is why now is the time and not yesterday, or even earlier today. That’s a complicated answer, because there are many factors you won’t understand, even if I had time to explain them all.”

  “Ambrose.”

  “Patience, Conrí. What I’m saying is that Queen Euthalia has received a message from Anure.”

  “It took you this long to tell me that?” I snapped, incredulous. My blood surged hot, but not with anger and frustration as usual. Excitement and bold purpose filled me. Enough of delays and arguing in circles. At last I could embark on the final phase of my mission to destroy Anure, everything he’d built, and everything he cared about. If the Imperial Toad was capable of caring about anything at all.

  And the empire falls.

  “What did the message say?”

  “Oh, I don’t know exactly. But the currents of possibility and probability have shifted. It’s fascinating to see.”

  I bit back my impatience. “How have they shifted—have you seen how we can counter Anure’s certain attack?”

  A chorus of music blasted from the direction of the palace proper, along with cheers and shouts. I knew that fanfare well enough, as it always heralded the approach of the queen. Her people behaved as if her every appearance was a cause for joyous celebration. Ambrose stood, using the staff to pull himself up, a delighted smile on his face. “Aha! Here comes Queen Euthalia. She’ll be able to tell you what the message says. Then you’ll see.”

  “Something you could have told me long since.”

  “If you’d bothered to attend court, you’d have known already,” he shot back, dropping all hint of playfulness, his words short and full of disapproval.

  I didn’t reply, setting my teeth together with a satisfying bite instead. Lia’s court drove me out of my mind with their fancy dress and pretty posturing. I’d gone to court with Lia that first day, thinking that we’d get actual work done. We did have a war to plan, right? But no—she’d expected me to dress up and then sit there while fancily dressed idiots simpered and offered fake compliments, begging for favors in the guise of offering congratulations on our marriage.

  When I lost all patience and suggested—politely, I thought—that we call the Defense Council into session, all hell had broken loose. How was I supposed to know Lia’s Sawehl-cursed Defense Council was a secret? With everyone in an uproar, Lia had adjourned court and accused me of sabotaging her authority and precipitating panic. I’d had to point out that the threat of incipient attack by an overwhelming force should upset people. The argument went downhill from there.

  We’d more or less gotten back on friendly, if formal, terms since. But I also hadn’t gone back to court. And she still hadn’t convened the Defense Council.

  The music and cheering grew closer, so I stayed where I was. No doubt the purple bees had told Lia where to find me—or however her elemental magic worked. I only knew a few things about her for sure. One was that Lia was as much flower as flesh. She kept her head shaved because if she didn’t, her hair grew out like vines. So she told me—I hadn’t seen that part, though I’d seen the plantlike patterns on her skin, surprisingly erotic.

  She possessed magic, too, but I didn’t know how much, or what she could do. Lia had a lifelong habit of concealing her nature, so she didn’t discuss the specifics easily, certainly not in public. And when we were alone … well, we didn’t talk much.

  She came around the bend of the garden path, preceded by two spritely children tossing flower petals in the air to flutter down and decorate the rocks before her. Smooth, colorful stones already gleamed throughout the rougher white gravel, so the petals seemed especially redundant. But the Calantheans never saw anything they didn’t try to make even prettier.

  Lia led a phalanx of attendants, five ladies-in-waiting instead of her former six—she also refused to discuss replacing Tertulyn, who’d suspiciously disappeared on our wedding day and had yet to be found—along with Lord Dearsley and a few others of her various advisers. Two of my own people, Sondra and Kara, accompanied the entourage, gazes alert for trouble. They were dressed for court, too, though more severely than the extravagant Calanthe styles, so they also stood out as invaders among the blossoms.

  I hadn’t seen Lia since I’d vacated the bed we shared, leaving her to dress for the day. A weird Calanthean ritual dictated that the “Morning Glory,” a young virgin, should assist the queen from her bed. Apparently Lia’s father, old King Gul, had also divested the glories of their innocence. When Lia had arched a brow and asked if I’d like to take up that tradition, my answer had been an easy and immediate no.

  So, since our marriage, Lia had changed the years-old routine by having Lady Ibolya assist in getting me gone before Lady Calla brought the Glory in and pretended to wake the queen all over again.

  After that, the Glory helped Lia’s ladies complete the extended ritual of dressing her for the day, something I was fine with escaping. I preferred my wife—uncanny still to even think those words—without the adornments of her rank. I knew most noble ladies used their clothing and makeup as a kind of armor in their battles with the world, but Lia elevated dressing to a full-scale war. A lot of the costume and makeup served to disguise her nature. She had to shave her head, so she wore elegant wigs to hide that fact. The elaborate gowns and thick paste covered everything else.

  One useful aspect of her complicated attire: Though she rarely revealed much emotion otherwise, her choice of dress absolutely announced her mood. Today she was lethal.

  She wore a stiff-boned corset, which pushed up her breasts to distracting levels and narrowed her waist to a wisp I could span with my hands. The underpart of the gown exactly matched her skin tone, with an overlay of sheer material with angular black lines of gleaming black beads in spiky patterns. The skirt sleeked over her hips then flowed long and full behind her, a ruff of black at the bottom that scattered the petals as she walked. Even though there was a lot of it, the gown overall gave the impression that she was mostly naked, wearing only thin black lines of tiny beads. In fact, the more I squinted at it, the better I could see that some of the skirt was sheer, giving glimpses of her long, slim legs, made even longer-looking by the sparkling high heels on her feet.

  She’d forgone her usual high collar, leaving her shoulders bare, the covering of her breasts more thickly beaded than the rest, though they hardly needed to be any more emphasized. Another ruff of lace coyly feathered over her cleavage. Even though I knew she’d have her exposed skin covered with thick makeup, the sight of her exquisite bosom tantalized me with memories of how she tasted. Gleaming black silk sheaths covered her arms from wrists to shoulders, her fingers tipped with sharp-looking nails, white with gleaming black at the ends, as if she’d dipped them in ink.

  On her left hand, the orchid ring—the Abiding Ring I’d supposedly claimed along with her hand in marriage, for all the good it did me—bloomed in splendor, ruffled petals somehow sexual and magical.

  The wig she’d donned to match the outfit was also ebony black—possibly the same one she’d worn for our wedding ball—but elaborately styled so that a long curl draped over one shoulder, the rest forming a coiling nest for the glittering crown of Calanthe. Lia’s makeup was all in stark black and white also. Even her lips had been painted glossy black, diamonds glittering at the corners of her mouth, at the two top points, and with a larger one centered in the full lower lip. The crown of jewels in the blues and greens of Calanthe’s gentle seas was the only point of color, besides the orchid on her hand.

  Well, and the blue-gray of her eyes, a color that should have been misty but came across as crystal-shard-sharp as the beads on her gown when she assessed me from beneath diamond-tipped black lashes. Lia moved with swaying grace towar
d me, apparently unhurried, her expression as coolly composed as always. But I didn’t miss the tension simmering in her.

  She paused a decorous distance before me, and I restrained the urge to bow. Yet another reason I’d hated court—or being with her in formal settings—was that I didn’t know the rules for how to behave. When it was just us, man and woman, me and Lia, preferably naked, I knew how to handle her. With Her Highness Queen Euthalia …

  “Good morning, Conrí,” she said, her smoothly cultured voice sweet as flowers. “I trust you’re enjoying My gardens? It’s a lovely day for it.”

  I barely managed not to wince, or apologize—especially not for refusing to waste time in court when it would only lead to another argument between us. Instead I gave in to the urge to acknowledge her beauty by taking her hand, the one without the orchid ring, bending over it and pressing a kiss to her fingers. As always, she smelled of flowers or the inside of a leaf, as if her petal-soft skin emanated the scent naturally. She curled those nails, sharp as thorns, against my palm in subtle warning. I straightened and gave her a long, cautious look.

  “Good morning, wife,” I replied, not above needling her in return. Her eyes narrowed in smoky ire. “I understand there’s news from our illustrious imperial overlord?”

  That narrow gaze flicked to Ambrose and back to me. “Indeed, Conrí,” she replied with decorous boredom. “His Imperial Majesty Emperor Anure has sent Me a letter.” She lifted her free hand, flicking the black-tipped nails with languid demand, the orchid ring’s petals billowing with the movement, and her lady Ibolya set an envelope in the cage of them. The light-gray paper had been folded in intricate lines, then embossed in darker gray with an image of Anure’s citadel at Yekpehr, the rocks jagged and menacing.

  She spun the envelope to extend it to me, as Sondra might flick one of her blades. Lia’s expression remained opaque, eyes guileless. “While I hate to interrupt your idyll in the garden, perhaps I could trouble you with your attention to this.”

  Oh yeah, Lia was pissed as hell. I could only hope it wasn’t all aimed at me.

  2

  With a wary look, Con took Anure’s envelope from me. I had to control the impulse to scrub my hand against my skirt to rid myself of Anure’s taint. Even though I’d kept his letter pinned in my nails and not touching my skin, I’d loathed having the vile thing near me, and I’d been hard-pressed not to show how much its contents had shaken my already tenuous composure. The ice I’d been carefully layering around my heart all these long years of ruling alone had begun to fail me. Too much stress. Too much Con and his hotheadedness.

  Too many feelings I didn’t know how to control.

  Thus, I was more than happy to hand the letter into Con’s keeping. If only I could as easily rid myself of Anure’s words. I’d been reading his crazed and cruel missives for years, but this one had exceeded them all somehow, crawling under my skin like a filth I could never remove. They corroded my already fragile barriers, making me feel weak.

  I hated feeling weak.

  And now Con just stood there, holding Anure’s letter instead of instantly reading it—assessing me as if he expected something more. Why wasn’t he reading the cursed thing? He’d been waiting for this moment, practically frothing at the mouth for action since our hasty wedding. Now, when he could act, he did nothing, staring me down.

  I kept my chin high and expression composed, refusing to let him intimidate me. My wolf king hadn’t tamed much in the days since our marriage. Not that I’d expected him to, really.

  As my consort, however, he could damn well spend a few hours in court to demonstrate he cared about Calanthe and respected my rule. Or at least give the appearance of doing so, to silence the snickers of the courtiers who already spun tales that I’d been coerced into this marriage and used by the erstwhile Slave King as surely as Anure had planned to do.

  As Anure still planned to do. For every moment you make me wait …

  If I had to be married, I should at least have the comfort of feeling a little less alone. There had been moments, brief glimpses here and there, when it seemed possible Con and I could be a team. When we actually understood each other. Those flashes of harmony shone with bright promise—usually during sex, admittedly—but vanished in the harsh light of morning.

  In the final analysis, the two of us came from different worlds and I should have realized Con wouldn’t fit into mine. Even now he stood out in the gardens like a bloody sword thrust through a garland of jasmine. Scowling and seething, dressed in unrelieved black, and as always with his rough rock hammer strapped to his back and his bagiroca hanging heavily from his belt, Con was a warrior spoiling for a fight.

  I could tell by the look in those golden eyes that he’d happily take that fight with me if I offered the opportunity. I toyed with the idea. I could needle him further to draw him into the argument he so clearly wanted.

  No, I wouldn’t give him that satisfaction. He had no business acting like the wounded party. He’d made me have to come to him, so it was up to him to make it up to me. As he’d yet to reply to me, I waited him out with cold expectation. He might have the strength to break me in half with those big hands if he chose, but politics were a familiar battleground for me and I knew how to wield my silences like a master.

  “Perhaps, Your Highness,” Con finally said in his smoke-ruined voice, gravelly and deep, “we should discuss the contents of this letter in private.” He still held the envelope, not moving to open it, steady gaze on mine.

  I jilted to a halt in my mental dance of triumph. I’d gained the upper hand by forcing him to speak first, but something was off. The beat of silence extended awkwardly while everyone waited on my reaction, their avid interest practically a scent in the air. Con and I were still new enough together that our protocols weren’t well worked out. It didn’t help that he’d turned out to be so obstinate about appearing in any formal capacity with me. Our public interactions were rare, frequently contentious, and apparently, endlessly fascinating to those around us.

  When he’d first entered my court—had it only been a week? It seemed like forever ago—he’d requested a private audience and I’d used that impertinence as a weapon against him. No one had forgotten it, naturally. Then there’d been the very public argument over the Defense Council, which had added new fuel to the gossip wildfire. My court, ever lustful of new entertainment, watched all interactions between Con and me with gleeful anticipation of more juicy tidbits. I was loathe to fuel their hunger further.

  The silence extended, this one not at all under my control.

  Con still returned my gaze with wariness, the leashed violence in his posture betraying his agitation. That was nothing new. How much was aimed at me, however, I couldn’t be sure. Great green Ejarat, why wouldn’t he—With a sour crush of chagrin, I realized my error.

  Con didn’t read well. In my terrible mood and upset at Anure’s promised retaliation—which was arguably entirely Con’s fault—I’d forgotten about that. An unforgivable error, really, as Con couldn’t read because he’d been ripped from life as crown prince of Oriel and forced to labor in the mines of volcanic Vurgmun.

  Did he think I’d intended to humiliate him as payback for his various transgressions? Not that I was above such tricks, but I wouldn’t use his past against him. I doubted Con knew that, however. I needed to resolve this détente immediately.

  “Of course, husband,” I said, as if no lapse had occurred. I added a coy smile and a flutter of lashes to distract our observers. The anticipation sighed out of my entourage, a breath of disappointment that there would be no fireworks to describe at the festivities of the Night Court.

  I drew nearer to Con, watching his gaze fire with the hunger we had yet to sate between us. At least there was that. “You know I treasure time spent in private with you.” I reached up and trailed my nails over the short, surprisingly silky hair of his dark beard, partly to make a show, partly to indulge myself—and partly to feel the thrumming tension of hi
s response to me. A moment of perfect harmony shimmered into place. He closed his hand over mine in shared understanding, the hot, rough skin a reminder of his touch in more intimate places. I suddenly felt much better. Yes. Only sex, but at least there was that. “Leave us,” I airily told the others.

  We wouldn’t be fully private, of course. Not unless we retired to our rooms, and even there I couldn’t be certain. Anure’s spies were everywhere, and even those loyal to me couldn’t resist feeding their curious interest in us when they thought they could escape notice. As Calanthe’s crown princess since my birth, and confirmed Her queen in my teens, I was accustomed to the constant attention. Con … not so much. The pervasive crowds made his skin twitch like a hunted animal’s, his golden gaze going feral as he constantly scanned every movement for potential danger. Giving him the illusion of privacy would help calm him.

  Indeed, he relaxed fractionally as my ladies politely herded everyone away, until only my adviser, Lord Dearsley, and Con’s people remained. Kara and Sondra hung back, as if unsure if they should post a perimeter guard. I hadn’t yet gotten a good read of General Kara. He hailed from Soensen, a realm that had fought more fiercely than most kingdoms, held out longer against Anure than many, and fallen the hardest because of it. The tall, dark-skinned, and rawhide-thin man had barely spoken two words to me without Con present.

  Sondra would speak to me, though she didn’t like me much. The warrior woman wore her pale-blond hair long and straight, always washed and brushed to a shine, although she paid no attention to any other part of her appearance. Ambrose did the opposite, making up for them all with his adoption of elegant attire. He stood beside Con, smiling genially, forest-green eyes alert with amusement, power shimmering around him with nearly palpable heat. The orchid on my hand shimmied its petals, as if coquettishly waving at him.

  “You look very well in your garb as court wizard of Calanthe,” I told Ambrose. I’d stepped back slightly from Con, to give us some polite distance, but he retained hold of my hand, and I was unwilling to make a show of tugging it away, even if only in front of our closest advisers.