by Sarah Dalton
Raphael nodded slightly, as if he was relieved. “I see.” As if an afterthought, a remembered piece of etiquette, he added, “I am sorry for your suffering, Princess.”
“Can it be called suffering?” Serena asked lightly. “I still lived in luxury.”
He looked at her, just looked, and there was a silence while she bit her lip and turned away from those dark eyes. They unsettled her. No one tended to stare at a princess that way, at least not when the two of them were alone in a room.
Where was Lord Tinian?
“You should come with me into the city,” Raphael said suddenly.
“What?” Serena stared back at him, wide-eyed.
“On my rounds.” Raphael was smiling. “You could nurse some of those who are afflicted. You could see how the medicines are used.”
“Oh, I do not….” Serena’s voice trailed off, and she cleared her throat hastily. “That would not be proper at all.”
“Why not?” His brows lifted curiously, as though he could not think of a single reason.
“I am a princess,” Serena said, frustrated again. Did this man not have any idea what he was asking? “It is not safe to go into the city.” When his frown of confusion deepened, she felt her annoyance grow. “There are people who might want to hurt me. There are people who might….” Gods, she had heard enough of her father’s lectures over the years. She should be able to come up with something to say. Why was her mind so blank? “I might get sick,” she said finally. That was an unassailable fact.
To her surprise, the Brother nodded. “You might,” he agreed.
“Good,” Serena said after a moment. This seemed too easy somehow, but she would take the victory. “So you understand.”
“Not at all.”
She closed her eyes briefly. This man was infuriating. “I cannot get sick,” she told him. “I cannot put myself in danger. I am—”
“One scion of the royal family.” He dismissed her status easily. “Your brother Luca stands to claim the throne, is that not so? You will not inherit the throne.”
Serena’s fingers tightened to fists in her lap.
“I am sorry.” When she looked up, surprised, she saw a level of understanding she had not expected to find in the Brother’s eyes.
“Why are you sorry?” she asked.
“Because I have heard of your efforts to bring the medicine here,” Raphael told her. “To create such a treaty, reaching out to a country that might have been Estala’s enemy, was a work of quite accomplished statecraft—as I understand such things. You would have made a good ruler, Princess. When I said what I said, I saw the look on your face. You believe you would benefit Estala if you sat on the throne.”
“I—” Serena glanced around, suddenly aware that anyone could be listening to this. “I am loyal to the throne,” she said carefully. “I would never seek to supplant Luca.” Especially not now, when he was ruling with the same good heart that Matias had possessed. Luca would be a better king than Stefan, no matter how overwhelmed he felt. Serena could see that already.
Raphael’s lips curled upwards as he gazed down at his lap.
“But you must see that I still cannot accompany you into the city,” Serena told him. “It is far too dangerous.”
“Those are dangers faced by my Brothers every day,” he told her. “Is your life so much more important than theirs, that you would leave them to face the danger alone? Would you arrange for the medicine to be brought, but give the task of distributing it solely to those you deem expendable?”
Serena flushed again. Guilt twisted in her chest.
“It would do the common folk good to see their princess,” Raphael added. “And it would do you good to see them. What do you truly know of your people?”
“That is quite enough.” She lifted her head. “Brother Raphael—”
The door opened behind them, and Tinian came inside with a regretful bow. “I am so sorry. I was detained after the council meeting.” A quick flick of his eyes took in the scene before him. “I hope I have not missed very much.”
“No,” Raphael answered as Serena rose to say the same thing. She only barely avoided giving him an annoyed glance as he continued, “Please, my lord, join us.”
Serena sank back into her seat, hating the Brother and yet very aware of Tinian’s watchful gaze. She could not let him see that she was unsettled. He was like a hunter, she thought, circling and looking for weaknesses.
“I hope there are no crises that detained you,” she told Lord Tinian.
“Ah, no.” He shook his head. “A small matter. Brother Raphael, pray tell us. What would be your strategy to combat the plague?”
“The first aspect is containment,” Brother Raphael said gravely. “It is important that the sickness not keep spreading between our towns and cities. We should close the gates.”
“And shut our people out?” Serena asked in horror. In a smaller voice, she added, “Or shut them in.”
“Frankly, yes.” Tinian looked over at her. “The plague has already reached some villages, but Reyalon is the centre of the infection in Estala. Everyone who leaves might bring it to the outer villages.”
“It would not be necessary to keep the medicines back,” Raphael assured Serena. “We could use priests who have not been exposed to the plague and bring them down through the caves under Nesra’s Keep. When they leave the city, they can bring relief to various places within Estala. We can even have the ships from Xantos land at different points on the coast, so that the medicines need never filter through Reyalon at all.”
“It will not be so complicated, actually.” Tinian was smiling.
“Why not?” Serena felt uneasy. Something about Tinian’s smile set her off-balance.
“I spoke with Prince Luca after the council meeting,” Tinian said casually. “Brother Raphael, would you agree that it would be wise to have multiple places within Estala that could produce and distribute cures for the plague?”
“Of course.” Brother Raphael looked interested.
Serena narrowed her eyes a fraction before hastily making her face clear and open as Tinian’s gaze fell upon her.
“We have infrastructure already in place that can accommodate that,” Tinian said triumphantly. “The Gardens of Anios produce the herbs that are needed to make the medicine. If we simply give them the supplies they need to bottle it, they can begin sending medicine very shortly.”
Serena felt cold. “The Gardens of Anios are closing.”
“Princess, I understand that—”
“What are the Gardens of Anios?” Brother Raphael interrupted delicately. Though he was not a noble, he instantly captured the attention of both Serena and Tinian.
“They are slave camps,” Serena said strongly. She saw the Brother’s surprise and swung her head to look at Tinian. “And Luca quite rightly said he would have them shut down.”
“It is not quite so simple,” Tinian explained to Brother Raphael, as if Serena were not even there. “You see, the camps were established by King Davead as a method of…secluding the Menti.”
Brother Raphael went quiet.
“And working them to death,” Serena said crisply. “It was an execution without the guilt.” Never before had she felt so sickened by her father’s memory.
“This way, they still served the interests of your nation, while not being able to work against them,” Tinian said as though he were lecturing a child. “Princess Serena, your father was not well-loved by the Menti. It was a wise precaution.”
Serena looked away from him. Since she was little, the Menti had been Estala’s enemies. It was difficult to find herself arguing for them—much less following a king who had Menti powers. But the camps were wrong.
“Perhaps we should discuss this another time,” Tinian suggested.
“No,” Serena said. “No. We should, of course, discuss distribution of the medicines without delay. The plague will not rest. Neither should we.” She steadied herself, controlling her emo
tions. “Brother Raphael, what do you need in terms of bandages? How many people will you need to aid you within the city and out in the countryside? What else should we know?”
As he spoke, though, she could not bring herself to focus on the words. All she could hear was one thought, circling and circling: Luca went back on his word.
Reva
As the fire crackled and spat sparks, Reva drew in her breath sharply. Though it was raining outside and the roof of the barn most certainly leaked, the majority of the place was still dry and dusty: a few stalks of hay, the stalls leaning and warped, a broken wagon wheel that someone must have planned to fix and then did not. All of it could go up in a moment.
But the sparks faded to nothing, and she let out her breath.
“I wonder who owned this place,” she said softly, “and where they went.”
“The house burned,” Carlia said. She looked up to meet Reva’s gaze. “We went by yesterday, before the rain started.”
“It was probably a tavern,” Sam said. “So close to Reyalon. There are not any fields.”
That made sense. Reva nodded. There was no dark story here, then. Just a tavern that had burned down and a proprietor who had not wanted to face the expense of building it back up.
She still wondered where they had gone. Any landowner near her family’s castle could expect to be taken in by her father if they suffered such a tragedy. The house would be rebuilt, a joint effort of their neighbours, perhaps paid for from her family’s coffers, and then the family would go back home.
So close to Reyalon, however, the owners of this tavern would have no lord to turn to, and she sensed that they could hardly go to the king and ask him to save them. She frowned as she held out her hands to the flames. So many people in Estala were facing tragedy, and they had no one to guard them from it. The Menti were actively hunted. The common people faced the plague, and Stefan had not helped them with it.
“So, where do you intend to go?” Sam asked finally.
Reva looked up silently.
“You have to have somewhere.” His words were uncompromising. “We will not—we would never—I am not my father.” He held her gaze even as a chill ran down Reva’s spine. He looked uncomfortable but resolute. “I would never do what he did, but I cannot just let you go, Reva, not if you do not have anywhere to take shelter.”
Reva turned away. She could not look at him without seeing Aron.
“Nesra’s Keep,” she said finally. It was the only answer. “Luca has returned. Stefan is on the run. Luca is no longer my betrothed, but he will protect me.” She wished she had felt more confident when she said that. She finally met Sam’s gaze and found Sam staring at her oddly. “What?”
“I forgot who you were,” he said after a moment. He sounded bitter. “Daughter of a lord. You would have been a princess, then.” He paused and then added, even more bitterly, “Now you could be queen.”
Reva felt an unexpected wave of anger. “You forget that your own family were high-born once.” She shook her head and tried to control the heat of her anger. “Do you know how I came to be engaged to Luca?”
Carlia’s gaze flitted between the two of them, worried. Sam hesitated, then shook his head.
“I was brought to Nesra’s Keep after my parents were murdered,” Reva told him harshly. “A little girl, alone and scared. Davead took pity on me. I thought he cared for me then, betrothing me to Luca. Of course, now I can see that it was not like that at all. I was such a good reminder to the court of why the Menti needed to be killed, was I not? And he did not expect Luca to survive, so he did not have to give anything to do it.” Her breath was coming hard, and then the anger left her in a rush, as quickly as it had come. “But for a little bit, I was happy there,” she finished quietly.
“What was Luca like?” Carlia asked. Her brother glared at her, and she glared back. “We need to know. If we’re going there.”
“I am going there,” Reva said at the same time that Sam said, “We are not going there.”
The air thickened with tension as Reva’s words hung between them.
Carlia opened her mouth to speak, then seemed to think better of it. “Tell me anyway, then,” she said finally.
“He was kind.” Reva smiled. “But he was not well. They were always worried that he might die, but he never got bitter about it, or mean. He idolised Matias—I suppose we all did. Matias was the heir, and everyone saw his potential to be a great king,” she explained to Carlia. “He was Luca’s half-brother—well, it’s not important. Luca never thought he would be king. He did not even expect to live into adulthood. No, he had no ambition to be king, but Stefan did. Luca was happy. He was kind. He was nothing like Stefan.”
“Being a king cannot be an easy job for a kind man,” Carlia said.
“I cannot be sure of his kindness now,” Reva pointed out. “A lot can change with time. Stefan was sent into Xantos with an army to defeat the Menti. There were many rumours that Luca was one of them, that he killed Matias. The Luca I knew would never do that,” she added when she saw Sam’s expression.
“Who can say?” He raised an eyebrow at her. “The crown is a big prize.”
“The last time I saw Luca, the only prize he coveted was to live.”
Sam only shrugged, infuriatingly, and Reva looked away, trying to calm herself.
“You are worried that he might be different now?” Carlia asked.
“Of course I am,” Reva snapped. “King Davead sold me to Francis like a cow. Francis used me like a brood mare and beat me when I failed to give him sons. Aside from Luca, my experiences with the royal family were not happy ones.”
“Reva.” Carlia came to sit beside her. Reva expected comfort, but Carlia’s face was serious. “If Luca is the kind boy that you remember, then he will shelter you. Maybe us, too. If he is a Menti, it can only benefit us to have a Menti sitting on the throne. You can tell him about the ones who held you captive. I would wager he does not know about them. And if he is not Menti, and he is not as kind as you remember, then you need to be there to remind him of how he used to be. You say he was sweet to you?”
Reva nodded warily.
“Bring that boy back,” Carlia said. “If he changed once—and we do not even know he did, but if he did, he can change again. When he sees you, he will remember how things used to be.”
Reva bit her lip. It was a good point. It still felt like an awful risk, however.
She turned to Sam. “What do you think?”
She hoped he would poke holes in Carlia’s argument and give her an excuse not to go back, but Sam only shrugged. “She makes a good point. Between the Ulezi and Davead, our family was nearly crushed. Your family was favoured, but they still had to hide what they were. You could persuade King Luca to be kinder to the Menti, I suppose.”
You suppose? Reva bit back the childish retort. Sam was just trying to do the right thing.
A gust of wind hit the side of the barn, and all of them flinched. Reva’s eyes searched the areas of pure black she could see through the broken walls. Perhaps a fire had been too much of a risk. What if there were more Ulezi than Carlia and Sam knew?
Carlia must have been thinking along the same lines, because she said suddenly, “I had never seen one before. An Ulezi, I mean. I was terrified.”
Sam reached out a hand to take hers. “I was, too,” he admitted.
Reva did not speak. This moment was for them. They had lived their lives so constrained, fleeing from the Ulezi, and now, when they had just lost their parents, they were suddenly facing the very thing they had run from for so long.
“They know there are more of us,” Carlia told Sam now, and her voice was worried.
“I know,” he said. “But it was worth it.”
They had searched for her and saved her. Their circumstances were complicated. After everything that happened between them, Reva would not have been surprised if Sam had chosen to blame her for his father’s death. Instead, he and Carlia had risk
ed everything to save her life. No matter how infuriating he was being, she was alive because of him.
He met her eyes, and she saw his grief—but it was secondary to his fury. “I am sick of hiding,” he said. “What did we gain from it?”
“All those years together—” Carlia began, but Sam cut her off.
“It was a prison! Reva was right when she came. I just refused to listen. The Ulezi were going to find us sooner or later, and what if more dragons were born in the wild? They would be hunted down. No.” He formed one hand into a fist and pounded it into the palm of the other hand. “The Ulezi need to be wiped out.”
“They are in such pain,” Reva murmured. “I can see why they are angry.”
“They should hate the dragons that bred them,” Sam said strongly. “Not us. We had nothing to do with it. If they do not want us to have any more children, they could at least ask us before killing us.”
Reva gave him a little half-smile. “I had not thought of that.”
“Apparently, neither have they.” He shook his head. “So, what do you think? Both of you. How do we stop them?”
“We have to start with somewhere safe,” Reva said. “Somewhere we can plan without fear of their attack.” She squared her shoulders. “We should go to Nesra’s Keep. Or…I should go, and see if it is safe.”
“No. Where one of us goes, all of us go. It is safer to stick together.” Sam shook his head. “If you go, we are coming.” He did not look very happy about it. “Then what?”
“Then we figure out the Ulezi’s vulnerabilities. There must be something. We have to find out what powers and weapons they have. Only when we know what we are dealing with can we hope to defeat it.”
“She makes a good point,” Carlia said. She bit her lip and laughed in disbelief. “Are we actually doing this? Are we going to fight them?”
“Yes,” Sam said fiercely. “We have spent our whole lives running. When the next dragon shifters are born, I want the world to be safe for them. Carlia, any children you have. Any children I have.” There was a pause during which he did not look at Reva. “The Ulezi are monsters. They are driven by hate. We need to put an end to them.”