A River of Royal Blood

by Amanda Joy

  Isadore’s face flashed through so many emotions. Disbelief and regret, I thought, and then anger. Finally, grim determination settled on her face. “Why is it you never wrote me back when you went to Asrodei?”

  Because I spent all that time waiting for her to apologize just once in those letters, and she never did. “Why is it you decided to hate me when I came home?”

  “It wasn’t difficult once I realized that you could keep me from what I deserve.”

  Except Myrean Queens didn’t deserve crowns—they earned them.

  “And you’ve never regretted it?” I added.

  Isadore straightened her spine. “Maybe I did once. But now that I know who you are, I’m grateful. You’re not fit to be a Queen, Eva. You never were.”

  My heart felt cracked in half—one half hating her and the other half trying to understand.

  But she was wrong. She was so wrong. I could be a better Queen than Isadore. I had to be.

  I’d expected to feel anger at Isadore, for all the rage I’d been feeling these last weeks to rise up in me until I was burning inside. And there was that. But there was also pain. An ache had settled into my bones the moment I saw her. I didn’t want to kill her. I wanted to dig every bit of her out of my heart and mind, and just forget.

  How cruel was my heart, that it still loved her?

  I leaned forward, cupping her cheek. “Isa, I have given up nothing and you will not have Myre without a fight.”

  She jerked away and stood. Her eyes were sharp glittering jewels as she glared at me, the fire of them bearing down on me. “I look forward to it, little sister,” she said. The smile she gave me felt as deadly as a razor’s edge pressed to my neck, but my flesh wasn’t hers to cut.

  I felt no fear of her, only certainty. It hit me like a punch to the stomach. We were lost to each other now and we always would be. As many times as I thought it, it had never felt truer. We were rivals and would never again be anything but that.

  She was half to the doorway when I spoke. “Do you care that Papa is dead? Do you care at all?”

  I couldn’t see her face, but I watched her shoulders draw together. For a long moment, Isa hesitated. “You have your pain and I have mine.” Her voice was thick, like she could hardly say the words. “Just because I don’t wear it like an accessory, demanding that everyone see it, doesn’t mean it isn’t there.”

  I was certain she lied, but I still felt ashamed somehow. Of what, I couldn’t fathom. “Until my nameday, Isa.”

  “Yes, until tomorrow. Goodbye, Eva.” She swept out of the room, all silver, emerald, and gold.

  She looked like a Queen, shining and sharp as a diamond, and without flaw. But I knew better now. Papa’s death had taught me no one was unbreakable.

  Isadore could die just like anyone else.

  CHAPTER 29

  THE NEXT AFTERNOON, I let Mirabel pretty me to her satisfaction, and once she was done, I had her leave the dress on my bed. I marveled at the wonder of it once the door shut behind her.

  I hardly remembered sitting down with the dressmaker months ago to discuss what I wanted, so it was mostly a surprise. I’d chosen a kinsah, a dress with a long, layered silk skirt and a detached and elaborately embellished bodice. The skirt held all the colors of the horizon, orange, gold, palest pink and lavender, pale and dark blue. The detached bodice was all night sky; black pearls and tiny diamonds. They clashed, and made sense. They fit, but also didn’t.

  It was perfect.

  Before she left, Mira gave my hand a squeeze. “It is queenly. As,” she whispered, “are you.”

  It was the best thing she possibly could have said, as I hadn’t known anything queenly could seem like me at all. I would look more than beautiful in it; I would look powerful—like a force of nature. And it would be the first thing I’d worn outside of mourning white since Papa’s death.

  I slipped out of my robe. Though this dress was so much more ornate, its bodice was similar to the tops I wore to the Patch, and even more revealing—baring my stomach and cut wide around the straps to show a glimpse of the sides of my breasts. The bodice didn’t close fully across my back, just a lacing of gold ribbon, and the way the beading was laid over sheer fabric made it impossible to wear anything beneath. I stepped into the skirt and spun around once, the hem lifting off the floor in a bell shape.

  I stared at my reflection in the standing mirror in my dressing room and a breath came rushing out of me. I ran my hands over the beading, the chain of firestones I’d hung low on my stomach, and the sturdy wings of my hips—both intrigued and impressed with myself. My hair was a frothy cloud of curls—Mirabel having spent hours making sure each spiral fell perfectly—and my nails were sharp and bright as blood. Even my summer-dark complexion held a glow. I looked a bit thinner and sad, somehow, though. Tired. But the dress made up for it, I hoped. Still there was something missing.

  I picked through a few chests of jewelry. Nothing satisfied me—everything either too encrusted with jewels or too plain—until eventually my eyes fell on the horns, hanging on the back of the door. I blinked and was standing before them, my fingers just an inch away from their sharp ridges. I hadn’t touched them since returning to Ternain.

  I wrapped one hand around the base of each horn and energy pulsed through me. I felt a pressure behind my eyes and the longer I held them, the more insistent the pain became. I held on until I could feel consciousness slipping away.

  I let go, bending over to catch my breath.

  I closed my eyes and my bare feet were pressing at the damp edge of the lake. It was utterly calm, no ripples, no movement.

  I jumped in and sank like a stone.

  I gasped and water sucked up through my nose, choking me.

  Just your mind.

  It’s all in your mind. You can do this—you have to do this.

  Panic burned within me as I coughed and sputtered, fighting the water, trying to drag myself back to the surface. A tendril of something wrapped around my wrist, pulling me to the bottom. I screamed and thrashed, swallowing more water.

  I came back to my body, took a deep breath, and then closed my eyes again.

  My toes pressed into the damp dirt. Just dive.

  I jumped. My arms cut through the water and I kicked toward the bottom, reaching, stretching until I was sure I would feel it in just a moment. The water pushed back at me, but my arms cut through it like blades. The water started to thicken, but I was close. I could feel it, from the hot knives stabbing at the base of my neck, and impossibly I just knew. I felt power, the pressure of it—a weight like nothing I’d ever known.

  I reached out and my fingertips brushed the bind. A shock went through me. It felt as light and delicate as gossamer. I opened my eyes to the dark of the lake and found it spreading out below me, a shimmering film over the glowing embers beneath.

  My hand curled around the bind and my vision went white. I couldn’t feel the lake or my body. Only pain spreading from my mind into every part of my body, licking flames burning me down to a column of ash.

  I dropped the binding and the pain fell away. I reached for it again. If I could just tear it before the pain blew through me, I could be done with it. But when I grasped the binding again, the pain hit me like a wall of fire. Not spreading, but all encompassing. There was no beginning or end to it—it just was.

  I floated, too stunned to do anything, and the binding became just a glimmer in the distance. I screamed in frustration, choking on the water again. The tendrils from earlier pulled me away from the binding—my magick, trying to save me from this pain. But I thrashed again, fighting them.

  I had to end this.

  But the pain left me stunned and sluggish. And the memory of it floated just at the edge of my thoughts. No more.

  Evalina. Baccha’s voice was sharp, like he was right next to me, breathing down my neck. Come back.r />
  My eyes snapped open, expecting to find Baccha standing over me. Instead, I found that I had slid down to the floor, the beautiful skirt in a tangle around my legs.

  I climbed to my feet and snatched one of the pillows off my bed. I pressed it to my face and screamed until tears were smarting in my eyes, until I could pretend the rawness in my throat had come from this, instead of from the impossibility of drowning in magick.

  I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t even close my eyes and think of the lake; the residue from that pain still lingered in my body and the thought of returning to it made me want to vomit.

  I couldn’t do it. It was impossible, that pain.

  I just couldn’t.

  A knock sounded at my door and then Mirabel’s voice came through, asking if I was well. I called out some excuse.

  But if I let my mind focus on this failure, I would never leave. Mirabel would find me still standing here, screaming or worse. I couldn’t let this stand. I couldn’t be some fragile, foolish thing. I had to be Princess Evalina now. Princess Evalina, who Papa and Baccha believed would be Queen. Or Princess Evalina, who would never be anything more than this?

  I dropped the pillow and started toward my dressing room, but my eyes fell to the table near my bed. My music box, an old gift from Papa.

  I cracked open the delicate crystal casing and spun it in my hands. Isa’s music box held only the Palace, but inside mine spun the entirety of Ternain, made from tiny bits of gold and brass and diamonds. He’d sworn to have one created for every great city in Myre, but never made good on that promise. The Palace was there in the center, rendered in exquisite detail, but if I looked closely I could also find the Patch, the Sorceryn Temple, and all the fashionable fey shops on the edge of the Red River. I curled my hands around it protectively, the sharp edges digging into my palms.

  Seventeen is of age, I heard in Papa’s voice. I could remember the first time he said it—when I arrived at Asrodei with Mirabel and he was forced to finally explain everything being a Rival Heir entailed.

  Seventeen is old enough to kill, I’d said years later. And old enough to die.

  I put down the music box and walked to the dressing room to see if this dress might have some places to hide knives.

  CHAPTER 30

  I STOPPED AT the threshold of the antechamber leading to the balcony where I would be presented. Isadore’s name had already been called. Mother stood just a few feet away, waiting for the crier to announce her.

  I hadn’t seen her since a few days after Papa’s funeral. It was my longest and most successful attempt at avoiding her.

  “Mother,” I said.

  She gave a start when she saw me.

  I walked farther into the room and stood beside her, the cloud of her sea-salt perfume reaching my nose. Once I had loved the scent, how it somehow carried the bracing feel of the ocean, but somewhere along the line my mouth had started twisting whenever I caught the edge of its corrosive salt.

  She gave me a cold look. “Glad to see you’ve finally grown out of that tantrum you were throwing. I had some worry that you might miss your ball.”

  “A tantrum?” I leaned back, too shocked to curb my reaction. “That’s what you call grieving? Forgive me for not following your lead by pretending that nothing had happened at all.”

  She sighed. “I know it hasn’t always seemed this way to you and your sister, but you’ve always been more like me than Isadore is. And she’s always been more like Lei—a great deal more charming and much more pragmatic. We, on the other hand—”

  “I am nothing like you.”

  “Evalina, I do not care how deeply you grieve your father. You will not disrespect me.” She started to spin the big blue bauble on her finger. I stared at the ring, too large to fit her. It was Papa’s. “When I was your age, I almost always reacted according to my heart and not to the wisdom of my mind. Fortunately, I learned that the heart is not to be trusted and that emotion, while telling, can often lead you astray. You haven’t learned that lesson, sadly. I regret it.”

  If her feelings were so profound, how could she keep them so orderly? How had she severed herself from them? I almost—almost—wished I could do the same. “You know nothing of the emotions in my heart and the wisdom of my mind. You’ve never inquired as to either.”

  “Alas, I do not have to. I see you and I see them.” She closed her eyes for a moment and it was pain that met me when she looked up again. “You know your child even when you do not wish to.”

  “Papa told me about the omens, Mother.”

  She shook her head. “And what of them? Did he tell you to hate me for doing nothing when I learned of them, instead of meddling like he did? Which do you think served you better?”

  I squeezed my eyes shut, willing back my tears. Gods, how could she insult Papa like this, today of all days, when he should have been here with us? “I wondered if that was why you chose Isadore over me. Because you already knew I was fated to die.”

  “How could you think that? I . . . chose Isadore because she was first.”

  “And what about me?”

  “You had your father.”

  I laughed bitterly. “And now he is dead.”

  My breath caught. There were tears dampening her cheeks. How strange a thing it was, to see my mother crying. I reached toward her, but she snatched her hand away. She looked down at it, as if it was poisoned. “You . . . you look just like him—just like him.”

  “Mama?” I whispered, the word foreign on my lips. I hadn’t called her anything but Mother or Queen in so long.

  “Mama,” I whispered again.

  “I’ve been waiting for you to come out of hiding so that I could give you this.” She pulled off Papa’s ring and offered it to me, but something about the way she held it wasn’t quite right. She held it toward me pinched between two fingers, like she wanted it as far from her as possible. I couldn’t understand why she’d been wearing it in the first place, but it was clear she didn’t want it. She didn’t want anything to do with my father; she hadn’t for years, so I couldn’t say why it still hurt me.

  The booming voice of the crier came as I pulled the ring from her hand. “Her Majesty Queen Lilith, her magick of air and sea.”

  Queen of Storms, they’d called her when she was first crowned, for the tempests she called up from the sea. When and why had that stopped?

  Mother wiped her face clean. “Finally.”

  * * *

  “Her Highness Evalina Grace Killeen, her magick of marrow and blood.”

  I stepped through the doors onto the balcony overlooking the ballroom. I smiled as shocked silence swept through the room. Isadore stood a few feet away.

  As the attention of everyone in the ballroom focused on me, my chest tightened with nerves. I wanted to flee. Nothing, nothing was right about this moment.

  I slipped Papa’s ring onto my thumb. The warm, heavy gold was inlaid with small blue stones for Mother—it was the ring she’d given him when they wed.

  I knew I looked magnificent. My eyes were the color of bright poppies and lined with kohl, and my lips were bare but full. I hoped my smile looked exactly like my father’s. I hoped I reminded them of him.

  I was like Mother, pretending I was fine even though I ached inside. I couldn’t even regret it. This skill that I’d learned from Mother kept me on my feet, but knowing Papa believed in me was keeping me alive.

  I stretched out my hand in greeting, like I’d seen Mother do hundreds of times.

  A sigh of rustling fabrics eased through the room as row after row of courtiers, nobles, and guests fell to one knee. Time slowed. This was the first time the entire Court had bowed before me. Suddenly the weight of what would begin tonight hit me with renewed force.

  I gestured for everyone to rise and my eyes slid to my left, where Isa and Mother stood.

  “
We will begin,” Mother said in a sharp whisper, then gestured for us to step forward.

  I searched the crowd from the edge of the balcony. There was only a sea of faces, expectant, scrutinizing, watching like hawks.

  Only Mother’s sharp glance in my direction drew me away.

  She had a trick of using her air magick to make her voice carry. Sound erupted from Mother’s throat, echoing through the ballroom. “Today we gather for a momentous occasion. Today my daughter Evalina comes of age to become a true Rival Heir. From today on, Princess Evalina and Princess Isadore will engage in combat.” She paused. “As a mother, I have come to dread this day. I cherish the lives of both my daughters more than any of you know, but as your Queen, I revel in the contest of heirs. Not for bloodthirst as the Dracolan Kings accuse, but for Myrean strength. The Rival Heir who takes my place will be stronger for the things she has had to endure—strong enough to defeat whatever threat Dracol presents. Though all of Myre is still mourning the loss of our King, I ask you to celebrate tonight. Celebrate Princess Evalina’s nameday foremost, but also celebrate the strength born from our daughters, and await the ascension of a powerful Queen.”

  I held my breath. Though I could see Isadore beaming, I couldn’t smile. There was some smattering of applause, but mostly tension filled the room.

  “To Evalina! To Isadore!” Mother called. “To Myre!”

  Her words echoed in my head as the Court lifted their glasses to me.

  Two Sorceryn stepped out of the antechamber— Sorceryn Tildas, chosen by me, and Sorceryn Arinel, Isadore’s choice. I owed a debt to the lawmaker who had established that two Sorceryn, one chosen by each Rival Heir, would complete the spell. Because I had felt sure Isadore and two Sorceryn loyal to her could come up with some simple way of killing me right here and now. Arinel might’ve been Isadore’s co-conspirator. The only reason I trusted Tildas was that he and my father had grown up together.

  “Welcome, Sorceryn Arinel, Sorceryn Tildas.” Mother’s lips thinned. “Each Sorceryn has been chosen by one of the Heirs to complete the Entwining.”