The Fiery Crown

by Jeffe Kennedy

  He was quiet. I opened my eyes to find him studying my face thoughtfully. “How can a piece of dirt speak to you?” he asked slowly, and I knew he’d been thinking how to ask it.

  “I told you it was difficult to explain.”

  “I know. Don’t get huffy.” He cupped my bottom with a big hand, nestling me back against him. “I’m just trying to understand. Are you saying the land is … alive?”

  “Of course it is.”

  “Don’t say it like that. I’ve never heard anyone say that before.”

  I sighed, pressed my forehead against his chest. “I apologize. It used to be that everyone knew. The royal bloodlines, they weren’t only hereditary rulers, but born of the land itself. The true kings and queens share blood ties to the land.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “They are intertwined on a deep level. The rulers give their lives for the land, and the land gives them life.”

  “This is like that thing you were saying in the carriage, about everything having life force.”

  I nodded. “All life is connected.”

  “And before that—about blood sacrifice.”

  “Yes.”

  “Hmm.” His thoughtful hum rumbled through his chest beneath my cheek. “What happens when you take the royal bloodline from the land?”

  And there, he’d gone straight to the heart of it. “The land only answers to its bloodline. Bereft of that, it’s orphaned. It dies or goes wild.”

  “So Anure knew what he was doing, killing off the royal families.”

  I tipped my head back to look at him. “Or enslaving them.”

  He gazed back with dawning understanding. “If he owns the royal, he owns the land. Because he can’t on his own.”

  I nodded. “Anure is not from any royal bloodline. He stole the rule of the land by taking prisoner the people connected to it.”

  “All those former rulers he keeps with him at Yekpehr.”

  “Yes.”

  “So why do the lands cry to you?”

  I shrugged a little. “I don’t know, exactly. Maybe it’s just that I can hear them.”

  “Maybe they’re calling for their rulers. But if those people are alive, isn’t the connection there?”

  “They’re not on the land, Con. It’s not the same.”

  “Blood ties,” he murmured.

  I felt it in him when he realized the implication, his entire body thrumming with it. “Oriel,” he breathed.

  13

  Oriel wasn’t dust, but it was dying. Or dead. Because I had never gone back. I looked down at Lia, her eyes bright with the knowledge she’d woken in me, as surely as if she’d taken a stick and stirred the banked coals of old despair in my heart. “Why didn’t you tell me?” I demanded.

  She gave me an impatient look, then wriggled away. This time I let her go, watching her glide naked to the washbasin, petite ass twitching in her irritation. A new vine twined over her skin, thick with budding leaves, so lifelike, it seemed they might burst into being at any moment. I wanted to trace it with my tongue, to taste and feel her skin. How I could be pissed at her and crave her at the same time escaped me. It made no rational sense. Except that it seemed to be the story of our relationship.

  “When should I have told you?” she asked in the same tone, fastening a pretty scarf over her bald scalp. “Should I have told you when you failed to tell Me you were the crown prince of Oriel, even though the knowledge would have improved your marriage proposal? Or when you told Me that who you were didn’t matter because Oriel was lost to dust and ash and you didn’t owe any allegiance to the land?”

  I sat up in the soft bed, rubbed my hands over my face, willing myself to think. “I didn’t know,” I said into my hands, but then … Some things my father had said to me over the years rumbled in the back of my brain. Always in the mines he’d protected me, given me a share of his food, shielded me from the worst cruelties of the guards. For Oriel, he’d said. And Sondra … did she know? I ask only to hold the torch.

  Lia’s hand touched my shoulder, light as one of her butterflies. “Hey,” she said softly, gentle with unexpected compassion now. “You didn’t know.” She blew out a breath, then retrieved her silk dressing robe and shrugged it on. “I wasn’t sure you wanted to; you seemed so determined to leave Oriel in the past. I’m still not sure it changes anything.”

  I understood better now, how someone like Lia would view a man like me, a crown prince who turned his back on the land he’d been born to. And she was the one who had to hear its piteous, lonely cries. Maybe that’s part of why Lia walled herself off with ice. If I had to listen to that shit every night, it would drive me crazy.

  Oriel, calling to me. My father tossing and turning, asking about my nightmares. Saying he had them, too. Had I heard the land in my dreams, too? All this time I thought it had been the ghosts of my family, my dead and imprisoned people, howling for vengeance. All this time, it might have been Oriel demanding blood. Conrí.

  “Conrí?”

  For a confused moment, I thought Lia’s voice was Oriel’s calling me by my title.

  “I think maybe my father tried to tell me,” I said, thinking back over things my father had said, things I’d refused to hear. I’d been so angry, so full of hopeless despair.

  She sat on the bed, her slight weight moving it no more than the breeze from the window, her green essence soothing. “He would have been very careful. No one has ever been sure how much Anure knows and how much he’s guessed, or blundered into via blind luck. This is sacred knowledge, passed from kings and queens to their heirs. I had My father longer than most, and he died before telling Me everything I needed to know. He was secretive, cagey like that.”

  “I guess you come by it naturally then.”

  She didn’t immediately reply, and I thought maybe I’d annoyed her. But I looked up to find her watching me with concern, that line between her brows that the makeup normally covered. “What happened to your family?”

  The question seemed out of context. Not something I wanted to talk about any more. “I told you—my father died in the mines with me.” My voice came out hoarse, grinding with the grief, and I glared at her for making me say it again.

  “You implied as much, though you’d never said exactly,” she replied, though without rancor. “What of your mother and sister?”

  I flinched, and I knew she felt it. “Dead,” I said shortly—and with enough finality to get her to drop the subject.

  “All right. I’m not asking you to say more now. But I am asking you to give this thought—lest you come back to Me at some point and demand to know why I didn’t tell you this sooner.” She smiled slightly, without any humor. “Why did Anure send you and your father to Vurgmun?”

  “To mine his rock for him,” I spat back.

  She raised her brows at my tone, but spoke patiently. “Oriel was the first to fall and—”

  “I know that part.”

  “Don’t get huffy.” She threw my words back at me with some satisfaction, pleased when I winced. “Arguably, Anure didn’t have his system worked out yet, but if he figured out how to control the lands by keeping royals captive at his citadel in Yekpehr, why didn’t he at least retrieve you, a crown prince of the Oriel bloodline he already had in chains?”

  “Because I escaped before he could?”

  “Maybe.” She inclined her head at the possibility.

  A light knock came on the door. “Your Highness?” Ibolya called through it.

  “A few moments, please,” she called back.

  I caught her wrist as she rose. “What are you thinking, Lia?”

  She laid her hand over mine. “Are you sure you want the truth? It might hurt.” Her eyes looked silvery framed by the shimmering scarf, and they weren’t hard, but full of sympathy.

  “I can take the truth. Spit it out.”

  “I think the toad had plenty of time before you escaped to bring you to join his stable of captive royals. In fact, My best g
uess is that Anure doesn’t know that Conrí, crown prince of Oriel, is the Slave King who’s plagued him. If he’d put that together, he wouldn’t have been so lackadaisical in suppressing your rebellion.”

  Offended, I frowned at her. “A great many people fought hard and died in those battles.”

  “That’s beside the point. Strategically speaking, you were lucky,” she replied evenly. “You were smart, too, sure. I’ve studied the reports. You took advantage of Anure’s inattention and arrogance. He’d sent the dregs of his forces to the fringes of his empire, and he grew fat and lazy. It was clever of you to exploit that, but we both know that if the emperor had taken your rebellion seriously early on, he could’ve crushed you. If he’d known who you are, he would have moved swiftly and decisively.”

  I couldn’t argue with her assessment. Lia saw things with a cool dispassion, dissecting events with clear logic. She’d easily grasped exactly how I’d seen it. It surprised me, though, that she’d studied our battles. “What reports did you review?” It wasn’t like we’d had a gaggle of academics following us around.

  “Ambrose has been keeping a diary, didn’t you know?” Her lips quirked at my astonishment. “He intends to write a history someday. I asked to know more about you and your conquests, and he gave me the relevant pages to read.”

  “When?” I demanded. I couldn’t imagine when she’d read this stuff that I hadn’t seen.

  “In the days after our marriage. I don’t squander all of My time in formal court, or spend it on inane meetings.” She raised a brow at me. “But you wouldn’t know that, would you?”

  “I already apologized for that,” I replied stiffly. “Doesn’t seem fair for you to continually bring it up.”

  She regarded me with a hint of consternation, then inclined her head. “You’re right. I suppose that’s a good marriage rule to observe: argument, resolution, then it’s done and we don’t resurrect it unless there’s a recurrence of the problem. Fair?”

  “I can live with that.” I grinned, awfully amused by how she tried to run our relationship like she did Calanthe. “You didn’t use that knowledge against me,” I pointed out, “in the strategy meeting when I said I knew what I was doing.”

  “No, I didn’t.” She examined her nails, picking at something. “I thought about it. But I didn’t want to undermine your authority in front of our people. And while I don’t like this plan, I don’t have a better idea. Besides, despite all odds, you did succeed where no one else has. I only hope you can pull off the same when faced with Anure’s full might and attention.”

  “I can,” I told her. “I know we can win.”

  “I believe in your confidence,” she replied.

  “Your Highness,” Ibolya called again, knocking. “I’m sorry to interrupt, but should we tell Your hosts that You won’t be at the breaking of the fast?”

  “I’m coming,” she called back, then looked at me.

  I held out my hand and she took it, smiling when I kissed her palm. Green leaves, sunshine, and a sweet taste of the sea. “Thank you for believing in me.”

  She started to say something, then closed her mouth and squeezed my hand, before starting to let go.

  I held on, remembering our conversation before I got distracted. “Wait. You never said why, according to your theory, the toad didn’t drag me to Yekpehr when he had me?”

  She met my gaze, regret in her eyes. She’d hoped to distract me, to avoid telling me this, I realized. “I think he didn’t need you because he had someone from Oriel’s royal family already.”

  “No, that can’t be it.” That was a relief. I’d been braced for something terrible to contemplate. “My mother died. Early on. I saw her corpse.”

  “And your sister?”

  The breath caught choking hard in my chest. “She—” I couldn’t say it.

  “Did you see her body, Con?” Lia asked, her voice and posture compassionate, but with insistence, as if she knew I couldn’t stand to think of her.

  “I—” I couldn’t think. The memories crowded up, fierce, ugly, and stinking. Blood and screams. I wiped my free hand over my face and found it clammy with cold sweat.

  “Your Highness?” Ibolya said through the door. “I’m so sorry, but if You’re to be on time, we must begin dressing You.”

  Lia looked at me in question. “Should I stay or would you rather be alone?”

  “No.” I glanced at the light-filled sky out the window. I’d meant to be gone by now. I had things to be doing. Important decisions to make about the present instead of dragging through the ashes of the past. “Sondra will be waiting for me.”

  She nodded then called out, “I’m coming now.” She let go of my hand. Moving to open the door, she paused there. “I could be wrong. Just give it some thought.”

  I would be thinking of nothing else.

  Still, she hesitated. “Will you be all right if I go?”

  I nearly laughed at her, except that I did feel so raw. All the shit I’d been through, and here I was tempted to ask this woman I’d somehow married to come and hold me. “I’ll be fine,” I said. “I have things to do.” With my voice so rough with emotion, my words came out terse enough that she smoothed her expression into her usual cool poise.

  “Very well. Have a productive day, Conrí.”

  The door snicked shut behind her with a quiet finality. Exhausted with the day not yet begun, I made myself get out of bed and find my clothes, resolutely pulling them on. I did have things to do. A fucking war to fight. All the rest didn’t matter. Focus on the here and now and I’d be fine.

  I didn’t even believe myself.

  * * *

  Sondra met me at the stables with horses saddled and ready to go. She cast a glance at the sun, well into the sky, then arched a pale brow at me. “Good morning, Conrí. I thought you wanted to be out at the point earlier than this.”

  “We have time,” I said, mounting the gelding. Nicely arched neck, fine, intelligent eyes, and an alert mien. Excellent steed. So was Sondra’s, the mare she’d ridden the day before. Beautifully refined, like everything on Calanthe.

  “An hour until high tide,” Sondra agreed as we set off. “I verified with the locals. Did you sleep well—or not at all?” She smirked.

  “Shut up, Sondra.”

  She cast me a second glance. “You look a little rough this morning. The hellcat take her claws to you?”

  “And lay off Lia. She’s not your enemy.”

  “Nor would she thank you for protecting her, I bet,” Sondra retorted. “Certainly not from little ol’ me who’s so far beneath her.”

  “Jealous?” As soon as I said it, I regretted it. Not for Sondra’s sake, but because I really wasn’t up for a conversation. I wanted peace and quiet, to think over Lia’s revelations and their implications. But time and tides wait for no man, as some philosopher said.

  “Me? Jealous of Her I-Smell-Like-Flowers Fancy Ass Highness?” Sondra made a rude noise. “Not hardly. It’s just not like you to be distracted from the cause is all I’m saying.”

  “I’m not distracted.” Except by sex. That happened all too easily. “Lia and I were discussing important things.”

  “‘Discussing important things,’” Sondra mimicked in a whiny burr. “Listen to you. I never thought I’d hear you talk like that.”

  “Like what?” If Sondra was spoiling for an argument, she’d get one.

  “All soft and misty-eyed over a woman.”

  “You’re the one who pushed me to marry Lia. You even gave me advice on how to woo her,” I reminded her.

  “Yes, for the cause! Because the prophecy demanded it, because our vengeance required it. Or have you forgotten that part?” Sondra wrinkled her nose. “No one needs you to fall in love with her.”

  I coughed, choking on my own spit, and swallowed hard. “Who said anything about that?”

  Sondra gave me a pitying look. “You’re soft on her. And getting softer by the day.”

  “Fuck you,” I rep
lied, but without much heat.

  “Well, not me, because I wouldn’t have you, but yeah, maybe you should.”

  “What?” I wasn’t even following her.

  “You should have sex with someone else. Someone not Her Highness,” she clarified, tossing her hair over her shoulder.

  I threw Sondra a black glare. One that would have instantly cowed anyone else. Not Sondra, though. “What do you know of it?” I growled at her. “Suddenly you’re an expert on sex.”

  She made a disparaging sound. “Absolutely not. But I do know she was your first sex, and that has power over a person.”

  I scrubbed a hand over my face, wishing I’d taken time to bathe. Or grab some food. But it had been later than I thought when I got my shit together, and we wouldn’t have many chances to check these currents. Today, maybe tomorrow. Then we’d have to trust to luck, and mine had always been bad, no matter what Lia said.

  “If Anure finds us here before we’re ready, stuff like sex won’t matter,” I pointed out, sounding reasonably calm.

  “If you say so,” she replied. “If you can keep your head straight.”

  “Spit it out already.”

  Sondra gave me a long look. “Come on, I know you’ve thought of it. Using the Queen of Flowers as bait—and don’t get me wrong, it’s a good plan, so far as that goes—but you can’t forget the critical component of fighting Anure. You can’t care about what he expects you to care about.”

  I knew that. Hell, I’d figured that out and taught it to Sondra, along with the others. “I know.”

  “Do you?” She stared out at the sea as we followed the path out to the point of rocks. “Because it seems to me like you’re starting to care about her.”

  “She’s my wife,” I ground out.

  “A marriage of convenience in every sense,” Sondra retorted. “Last week she would have seen you executed. That bitch has a cold heart, Conrí. Just because her pussy is hot doesn’t—”