The Fiery Crown

by Jeffe Kennedy

  Con knelt on one knee, propping his forearm on the upraised one. The position put our eyes level, and he gazed at me soberly. “Was Ambrose badgering you?” he asked quietly.

  I nearly blinked at him. Ambrose wasn’t near enough to hear—with human ears, anyway—but Merle certainly was. Did Con not understand the nature of a familiar like that? “We enjoyed a lively conversation. Why—don’t you trust the wizard?”

  Ambrose, who’d rolled onto his back again to stare at the sky and chew on another blade of grass, smiled vaguely.

  “It’s not that. Exactly.” Con frowned, searching my face. “I just don’t—”

  “Your Highness!” Percy practically danced across the stones to my little lawn and bowed extravagantly. “You look leagues beyond gorgeous. As radiant as Sawehl, seductive as Ejarat, and with a positively lethal edge of Yilkay’s black teeth.” He grinned, showing his own teeth, and snapping them.

  Con looked disgusted and I patted his hand, refraining from teasing him about well-executed flattery. Especially since I preferred his earnest, if clumsy words.

  “Lord Percy.” I offered the hand with the orchid ring for him to kiss. “So good of you to attend Me on short notice.”

  “Are You kidding?” He waved his hands in the air. “The court is aflutter with the news of the missive from His Imperial Horribleness. Since the messenger was so expeditiously returned to his sloop—” Percy paused to glare balefully at Kara, who might as well have been carved of obsidian for all he seemed to notice. “—no one has been able to extract any news.”

  “We’re all keen to hear what the emperor’s next move is, Your Highness,” Brenda added gravely, coming up beside Percy, bowing in her perfunctory way. A square-built woman with short-cut silvery hair, Brenda had served in the wars in Derten and tended toward cursory manners. Not from lack of respect, but because Brenda preferred efficiency in all things. Really, she and General Kara had been cut from the same cloth.

  Agatha arrived on Lord Dearsley’s arm. Thin and pale, she always seemed ethereal to me, forever cold and easily startled. Within that deceptive exterior, though, she possessed a spine of steel. I didn’t know her whole story, of course, but Agatha had survived where few others had. Strength comes in many forms and isn’t always visible. They paused before me, both bowing. Sondra followed behind, carrying two chairs.

  “A man your age shouldn’t have to be kept standing or forced to sit on the ground,” she muttered at Dearsley, throwing me a fierce glance.

  “Thank you, Lady Sondra. You are ever so thoughtful,” I replied with languid ease. My thoughts must be scattered to the stormy seas that I hadn’t thought of it. Tertulyn would have handled that, dammit all. “Agatha, would you care to—” Agatha gracefully sank to the grass beside Brenda, wrapping her colorful shawl around herself. Percy arranged his elaborate tails and settled in the chair beside Lord Dearsley, crossing his legs and folding his hands on his knee to properly display the long jeweled tips, much like my own.

  “This is your Defense Council?” Con muttered in my ear.

  “The core of it. These are the cleverest people in all the realms, refugees of the forgotten empires,” I informed him. “They helped me defeat you, after all.”

  “You don’t have to keep reminding me,” he growled.

  “Are you sure? You seem to keep forgetting,” I replied sweetly, then gestured for him to take the lead and raised my voice. “Conrí, you may proceed.”

  He stepped away from me, surveying the gathering, the mantle of easy power settling around him. Here was the wolf in his element: at the head of the pack.

  He began with a concise summary of Anure’s missive, sticking only to the salient information. “Anure is obsessed with capturing Her Highness the queen. We will—that is,” he corrected himself, with a glance at me, “I’m suggesting we lure him into a vulnerable position by making Queen Euthalia seem easily captured.”

  “Out of the question,” Lord Dearsley burst out, long whiskers fluttering with his indignation. “Her Highness cannot be placed at risk. Her safety is of primary importance.”

  “I agree,” Con replied gravely, with more gentleness for the old man than I expected. “Her Highness will never be truly unprotected. She will have layers of protection, including me.”

  “I feel compelled to point out,” I inserted, not pleased at how quickly Con had reverted to assuming he’d have his way, “that I have layers of protection already. Calanthe is well defended.”

  Con studied me. “And yet you’ve worked diligently all these years—you and your father before you—to keep Anure away from Calanthe.”

  “Of course. The first layer of defense was to make Anure believe he couldn’t come here.”

  “Why does he believe he cannot come to Calanthe?” Ambrose asked. He still lay on his back in the grass, the moons and stars of his robe sparkling like a handful of jewels scattered across the ground. With his hands behind his head, he stared up at the cloudless blue sky, a picture of indolence.

  “My father enchanted him to believe as much.”

  “Your father was a wizard?” Con asked.

  “No, he was a king,” I replied patiently.

  “A king married to the land,” Ambrose told him, helpfully, which earned him a scowl.

  They’d forgotten so much, if Con knew nothing about the ties between the royal families and the lands they governed. It would harm nothing to remind them. “In the old ways, the true kings and queens were bound to the lands they governed.”

  “As the king does, so does the land,” Agatha said, quoting the old song.

  I nodded. “Exactly.”

  Con looked from her to me. “You expect me to believe that? I loathe Anure with every particle of my being, but he proved that it didn’t matter to the land who rules. Life goes on no matter whose corpulent ass sits on the throne.”

  So much bitterness there. I could hardly blame him, but I also wouldn’t try to convince him. Wasted breath. “Believe what you like, but yes, My father was married to Calanthe and She understood that. My father didn’t want Anure here, so She made him unwelcome. It’s quite uncomfortable, to be on an island that doesn’t want you there.”

  “If this is something you can control, why didn’t you use this against us?” Con wanted to know, and I didn’t like the way he sounded as if he’d caught me in a lie.

  “I didn’t have to,” I retorted. “I didn’t plan to keep you here, so there was no need to—” I broke off, deciding against saying I’d considered and discarded that plan in favor of trapping them. And that calling Calanthe’s power “under my control” would be a stretch. It would work to my benefit for them to believe that, and it would save me explaining that I more coaxed and cajoled—only without words—than anything. Imagine convincing a sleeping feline to do your bidding without waking it up—that comes close.

  “No need to what?” he asked.

  “To do more than I did. You’ve personally encountered some of the enchantments I have at My command,” I reminded him.

  “How do they work? Show me one.”

  “They’re more subtle than that. Complex, with many layers.” I cooed the word. How dare he grill me like this? I was about out of patience for it. “It’s not like piling up vurgsten, lighting a spark, and bringing the wall down a moment later.”

  “At least explosions make sense,” Con retorted.

  “Some of us understand more than bashing things with a rock hammer or blowing them up,” I snapped back.

  “Yes, well, blowing things up gave Anure total power, and he did it without magic, so I wouldn’t underestimate that approach,” Con gritted out.

  “Are you so sure about that?” I replied coolly, and he frowned.

  “Everyone knows Anure doesn’t use magic. He says it doesn’t exist.”

  “I’d be wary of falling into the trap of believing what ‘everyone knows,’” I said with a gracious smile.

  Con glowered and General Kara held up a pacifying hand. “L
et’s take this discussion in order. These … enchantments are all that’s kept Anure from sailing into your harbor and taking Your Highness back to Yekpehr?” he asked, sounding skeptical.

  “All?” I asked him, raising my brows at the dismissive term. “They’ve been highly effective. Calanthe survived when the other kingdoms fell.” Dearsley nodded along with me.

  Kara acknowledged that, an old, depthless grief in his dark gaze that made me sorry I’d plucked that nerve. “Can you rely upon these enchantments to keep the emperor away indefinitely?”

  Ah, that was the question. Con had been studying Kara with a look of speculation, one he transferred to me. “No,” I admitted. “Not anymore. The enchantments were woven into our betrothal. When I broke that promise by marrying Conrí, it released Anure.”

  Con stared at me, stricken, a flicker of guilt in his golden eyes.

  “It wouldn’t have lasted indefinitely anyway,” I told him. “I weighed the odds. And other things have changed.”

  “What things?” Con ground out.

  I looked to Ambrose, who’d sat up, gazing at me with guileless green eyes. Time to find out what he might be able to tell me, since we were all giving up our secrets. “Not only does the emperor, in fact, believe in magic, he uses it. He has wizards working with him, doesn’t he?”

  They all started talking at once, with various shouts and exclamations, and I rode it out. Waiting on Ambrose. The wizard pursed his mouth in doubt that slowly curved into a canny smile.

  “Silence!” Con thundered, then rounded on Ambrose. “Is it true?”

  “Oh yes,” Ambrose agreed cheerfully. “At least three or four.”

  “Four,” Agatha said. Quiet and definitive. She didn’t look up from the considerable length of ribbon fluttering from her fingers.

  “Is there a reason,” Con asked Ambrose, spacing his words with elaborate patience, “that you never mentioned Anure having wizards before this?”

  “Yes,” Ambrose replied. Merle croaked his own confirmation.

  When Ambrose said nothing more, Con’s fingers twitched, curling as if he’d like to strangle the wizard, so I intervened. Really, Con would have to learn how to ask the right questions. “In many ways, it doesn’t matter that Anure has his own wizards,” I asserted. “I’ve suspected it, but knowing that changes nothing. We know that no one has been able to withstand any attack of his, which is why he is now the imperial tyrant. He has broken kingdoms like a child with a toy. Now he’s coming after Calanthe, and I don’t expect to be the exception.”

  Con focused on me, frustration simmering palpably. Perversely, it made me want to wind my fingers in his hair and soak in all his intensity. “Other than enchantments”—he still said the word with scorn—“you have no defenses?”

  “There are layers of physical defenses, too,” I bit out, no longer finding his temper so appealing. “Only a foolhardy ruler relies upon one defense.”

  “Your Highness, assuming the emperor brings overwhelming force capable of scouring Calanthe to bare rock, as he’s indicated he intends to do,” Kara reasoned, “are your physical defenses capable of withstanding that?”

  Dearsley nodded with confidence, but I eyed Kara, considering. I’d been studying everything I could find on vurgsten, how Con and his people had deployed it, how Anure was likely to. “No, I don’t think so. We have no way to counter vurgsten if he gets close enough to use it.”

  Con slammed a fist into his palm as if he’d been vindicated. Perhaps he had been. “Then a trap is the way to go. We lure Anure to the right place, play on his obsession with Lia, he brings the bulk of his forces, and we crush him. No more Anure.”

  Brenda smiled with a bloodthirsty eagerness I rarely saw from her, while Percy examined his nails. Dearsley threw me a desperate look, and I held up a hand to stop his next words.

  “Crush,” I repeated. “You’re talking about a full-scale battle. With bloodshed.”

  Con set his jaw as he looked at me, but he spoke with remarkable patience. “That’s how battles typically work, yes.”

  “Not here,” I said.

  “Not possible,” Dearsley said at the same time.

  Sondra made a sound, but Con lifted a hand to shush her. “Yes. Here. Not only possible, but inevitable. Anure is coming to Calanthe and we have to fight.”

  Ambrose sat up and watched me with glittering intensity. I sighed for the inevitability of bringing this into the open. “Not on Calanthe or in Her waters,” I said, and Lord Dearsley nodded in agreement. “I forbid it.”

  “What?” Sondra exclaimed. Kara closed his eyes, looking pained. Percy and Brenda exchanged knowing glances. They didn’t understand the full import of the stricture, but they’d helped me navigate a similar problem before.

  “I cannot condone the spilling of blood in violence on Calanthe’s soil or in Her waters,” I clarified. Ambrose nodded to himself, Merle hopping over and making clucking sounds as if they conversed. Agatha produced a bit of bread from inside her shawl and offered it to the raven, who took it with a polite flutter of wings.

  “No monarch of Calanthe ever has,” Dearsley added. “We are a peaceful people.”

  Sondra threw up her hands, glaring at all of us. “What you are is insane!”

  “Welcome to the Flower Court, darling Sondra,” Percy drawled.

  “What do you think Anure will do if we don’t fight?” she demanded. “This isn’t some garden party where you can give him the cut direct and he’ll slink off in shame. We’ve established that you can’t stop him. He’s going to come here and—”

  “Enough, Sondra,” Con said without rancor, his eyes never leaving my face. “Will you explain?”

  Since he was making the effort to listen, I made the attempt to meet him halfway. “Do you understand the nature of blood sacrifice?”

  He frowned a little. “You mean, like the old ways, ripping out a guy’s living heart and offering it to the gods?”

  “So gloriously barbaric,” Percy crooned, admiring gaze on Con.

  “Or a virgin girl’s.” I spoke over Percy’s flirtation. “Think of the Morning Glories.”

  “The Glories?” Con frowned. “I thought that was an empty custom, a relic of your father’s days.”

  “Just because our rituals on Calanthe seem meaningless to you,” Dearsley put in, unable to restrain himself any longer, “doesn’t mean they are.” He’d been the one to convince me, in the dark days after my father’s death, to continue the tradition of the Morning Glories, though I didn’t spill their virgin blood as a king would.

  Con looked from him to me. “I still don’t get it.”

  “We don’t shed blood in violence because we don’t care to wake that which feeds on blood sacrifice.”

  Percy shuddered dramatically, and Brenda gave him a quelling look.

  “If we sit here and do nothing,” he said slowly, “Anure will come, take the queen, and scour Calanthe. He’ll kill every living being on this island, which will be an ocean of blood shed in violence. If I’d wanted to sit on my ass and let Anure raze the world, I could’ve stayed in the mines.” His volume had climbed as he spoke, and I opened my mouth to retort, but Agatha spoke first, in her eerily quiet way that somehow cut through angry words.

  “No, you wouldn’t have, Conrí,” she said, gazing at him with pale eyes. “Some of us can’t be caged.”

  Con brought himself up short, then gave her a courteous nod that surprised me. “True.”

  “No one said anything about doing nothing,” I said, taking control of the discussion. “We’re talking about ways to avoid violence. My sacred duty is to protect Calanthe. There’s an option we haven’t discussed that would stop the emperor from coming here. If he wants me so badly, I can go to Yekpehr and turn Myself over to him.” After all, I’d once thought that would be the logical end to my long détente with Anure. I’d seen a future where I’d have to marry him—which would at least give me the opportunity to kill him when he tried to take me to bed. I still co
uld.

  An aghast silence fell. Con put a hand on his rock hammer, as if I meant to go right then, and he’d hit me over the head to stop me. “Would it?” he ground out with quiet violence.

  “No,” Kara said in his grave-dark voice. “Anure will destroy Calanthe anyway. If there’s a chance to win this, we need You here, Your Highness, with us and with Calanthe.”

  Kara held my gaze. Con visibly seethed and Sondra gave him an uncertain glance, then looked to me. Pleadingly? No, I could see that, even if I could muster the courage to do it, Con would never hand me over to Anure. And Kara was right: Anure would destroy Calanthe anyway as punishment, and I’d sacrifice myself for nothing. The time for that gambit had passed.

  “We have to fight,” Con said to me, adding to the argument, “but a trap gives us greater control of the situation. It will let me do everything in my power to minimize the blood shed in violence. If we do it right, then it will be less than what Anure would do otherwise. If Her Highness agrees to this much. Do you agree that we’ll fight?” He looked at me expectantly, the others following suit.

  I wished I could see a way out of the looming disaster, but I couldn’t. They were right: Blood would be shed on Calanthe no matter what. All I could do was mitigate the damage.

  The only wild card in all of this was Con. He’d been the unexpected element all along. I understood better now why the dreams of the manacled wolf breaking his chains had felt so pivotal to me. Con’s escape and revolution had changed everything. We had no choice now but to travel through the fire and either perish or emerge on the other side. If anyone could change the outcome of this conflict, perhaps my wild wolf could. If he couldn’t, well, doom was doom. I feared that I could do nothing to save Calanthe, no matter what choice I made. I conceded with a reluctant nod, and Con’s eyes narrowed as he perceived my unwilling capitulation. So I spoke to avoid another argument that would only lead us to the same dead end. “So you’ll draw Anure to the palace and trap him how?”

  “I haven’t figured out that part yet,” Con replied, then looked to Kara.