by Elise Kova
Vi had to fight back laughter the whole time during that conversation.
Navigating merely meeting with Andru made Vi appreciate her easy relationship with Taavin all the more… and underscore how necessary it was for her to keep him a secret. She couldn’t imagine the look on her tutors’ faces if they discovered she could summon a man to her room on a whim. Though thinking about it had her fighting a grin.
“How are you feeling?” he asked as the servants left.
“Better. I ache all over still.” Vi rolled her shoulders as she crossed to the table. She couldn’t help but notice a little bit of oil staining the wood where Jayme usually tended to her blade.
“Likewise.” Andru hurried over despite the ache, to pull out her chair for her. Vi eased herself down, feeling the seat hit the back of her knees and assure her she wasn’t going to land on the floor.
“Are your shoulders still giving you trouble?” Vi asked as he took up the seat to her right.
“They’re much better. Ginger does good work.”
“Doesn’t she?” Vi helped herself to one of the large leaf pouches on a platter in the center of the table. When she opened it to reveal the rice and poultry mixture inside, a billow of steam hit her face and went right to her stomach, reminding her that she was actually quite hungry. “Speaking of work…”
“Yes, I’ve been doing my best to secure and review trade notices and communications.” Andru followed Vi’s lead, though he struggled more unwrapping the leaf pouch. “Which hasn’t been entirely easy given my position here. But emissaries are arriving from the West for the solstice and I have found some information.”
Vi ate quietly, listening intently as he continued.
“It seems there are rumors that goods are still being bought and traded from the Crescent Continent.”
“Despite the trade ban?” Vi asked after washing down a particularly hasty bite with a gulp of water.
“Likely because of the trade ban. Nothing drives prices like scarcity and perceived rarity. It’s making tokens from the Crescent Continent even more valuable in the West, according to one trader I spoke to.” He paused, taking a sip from his own goblet. “Poor man, thought I was going to arrest him for selling illegal goods.”
“Did you?”
“What? No.” Andru looked at her, looked away, then looked back. “Even if I had the authority, do I strike you as someone who could apprehend anyone?”
Vi laughed at his apt self-assessment. “No, you don’t…” And she liked him more for the fact. “So how are these goods getting here?”
“That’s the question I had the hardest time answering. What we know is that it must be a network—people meeting on both sides, likely in neutral territories in the barrier islands. Nimble, well-guarded ships. Ever since official trade stopped, the barrier islands have become rife with pirate activity.”
“Do we know who might be leading these networks?” She could already speculate that the elfin’ra may have smuggled himself on one of these illegal trading vessels. Perhaps he had allies Vi could uncover. Or, at the very least, she’d know how the red-eyed monsters were moving to report to Taavin.
“Forgive me, all I know is hearsay, suspicions, and rumors.” He sighed, looking at his lap.
“Tell me,” Vi commanded gently.
“Perhaps… the Le’Dans.” Andru looked back up to her, gauging her reaction.
If he had been expecting her to be upset or offended by the notion, he was wrong. “It’d hardly surprise me.”
The Le’Dans were one of the oldest families of the West, only rivaled by Vi’s own lineage through her grandmother—the Ci’Dan family. They had warred across the ages in feuds that read as everything from thrilling adventures to tragic romances. But in modern times, the Le’Dans had become essential to the crown, holding the purse strings of the West through their jewelry empire and being an essential voice of confidence in the remnants of the Western Court.
Despite all that—no, because of it—Vi knew exactly what the Le’Dan family was: shrewd business people who never found themselves on the wrong end of a deal.
“There are rumors they’re still getting fresh stock. They claim any Crescent jewels entering the market are from their vaults, but in reality… well…”
“People aren’t convinced,” Vi finished for him. He seemed uncomfortable at the notion of accusing one of the most powerful families in the Solaris Empire of illicit deeds. Vi couldn’t exactly blame him.
“My father included.”
“Oh?”
“He had me look into some things while I was in the Crossroads on the way here. Jayme and I stopped there as a halfway resting point.” The Crossroads was at the center of the Solaris Empire—a large city housing the intersection of the two major roads that connected the major capitals of each of the Empire’s four regions. “It was Romulin’s idea that I should start with the Le’Dans, given their clout. So I went to investigate one of the Le’Dan stores for myself.”
Andru had stopped looking at her as he spoke. The casual, calm nature he’d had when he’d first arrived vanished completely. This was the shifty-eyed man she’d met at the stables weeks ago. What she’d taken then as suspicious behavior, she now recognized as extreme discomfort.
“What is it?”
“I found nothing there.” But he radiated too much anxiety for that to be true.
“There’s more…” Vi pressed as gently as possible.
Andru looked at her through his upper lashes. She leveled her gaze at him. For as friendly as they were becoming, he was not exempt from her command, and she wasn’t afraid to pull rank if necessary. She just hoped he’d tell her of his own volition instead.
“Your highness—”
“Let’s not go back to formalities, Andru. At least not in private.”
“Vi…” He was practically squirming with discomfort. She would have spared pity for him if she didn’t so desperately want to know what he was hiding. “Does Jayme know the Le’Dan family?”
Vi sat a little straighter in her chair. “Why?”
“Well, when I went to investigate… I found her already there. I… I’m sorry. But I followed her.”
“Go on.” Her food was entirely forgotten.
“She went around back. There was someone from the store there, unloading boxes off a cart—a Southern woman, by the looks of her long blonde hair. They exchanged some words. Jayme handed something to her. The woman handed her a small satchel in return. And then they parted.”
“Did you hear what they said?”
“No… I didn’t want to get that close.”
“Understandable. Thank you for telling me. I’m sure it was just a friend of hers.” Vi smiled, hoping to put the matter, and Andru’s clear worry, to rest.
Jayme had never spoken of the Le’Dan family. But Vi had never asked, either. In fact, she’d never inquired much about Jayme’s journeys from south to north and back. It wasn’t unreasonable to suspect she’d made some friends along the way—companions to share a table with in the Crossroads to make her travels less lonely.
“Well, I think that—”
The door burst open, interrupting her thought.
“Vi Solaris!” Ellene exclaimed, barging in without so much as a knock. “We have not seen you in—”
When Ellene and Jayme actually saw her, they froze mid-step. Both women looked from Vi to Andru, to the meal laid between them. Jayme, to her usual credit, kept her composure. Ellene, however, looked utterly shocked.
“We’re not interrupting something, are we?” Jayme asked slowly.
Vi could practically see the incorrect assumptions tallying up in their minds and she burst out laughing. “No, no you’re not.”
Andru sat rigidly in his seat, looking between Vi and her friends, and then focusing on anything else in the room
“Are you sure? Because we could come back.” A fox-like grin was creeping across Ellene’s lips.
“Andru and I are not having s
ome sort of clandestine affair under your noses.” Vi snorted again with laughter at the notion. “Not in the slightest.”
“Wait… What?” It seemed to have dawned on him all at once what the two were hinting at. “No. No we are not. Her highness is right. This was just dinner to… to go over things.”
“And what were you ‘going over’?” Ellene waggled her eyebrows as she sauntered over to the table and helped herself to one of the leaf-wrapped pouches.
Jayme continued to hover, looking between Vi and Andru. For one brief second, Vi was worried she’d somehow heard them discussing her. But she followed shortly behind Ellene, sitting at Vi’s left and picking at some of the skewers from a nearby platter.
“Something I need to go over with both of you, so I’m glad you’re here.” Vi leaned back in her chair, food forgotten for now. “Someone is trying to kill me.”
“More than the saddle?” Ellene asked through her food.
“Yes.” Jayme was the one to answer.
“How do you know?” Ellene asked with a mix of shock and hurt.
“Jax told me, as part of the investigation, since I’m Vi’s guard. He swore me and the other warriors to secrecy over it… He doesn’t want word spreading that the Crown Princess could be in danger.”
“You could’ve told me at least.” Ellene huffed and pressed her back into her chair. “You know I wouldn’t have told.”
“She was just trying to do her job,” Vi spoke for Jayme, hoping Ellene would listen. “It’s a recent posting and all.”
“Yes, yes, I get it.” Despite what she said, Ellene still folded her arms over her chest, clearly frustrated. “Though, that explains why there were so many warriors around the bridge and halls leading to it… To think, I believed them that they were merely looking for any other structural weaknesses!” Ellene turned to Vi, the full depth of the situation dawning on her. “Are you all right?”
“I’m still here,” Vi said gratefully.
“Speaking of being here…” Jayme turned to Andru. “You know something. That’s what this dinner is about, isn’t it?”
He gave a small nod, looking anywhere but the guard staring him down. “Yes… I saw him. The attacker.”
“Tell me what happened,” Jayme demanded. “I’m clearly missing something that wasn’t imparted to Jax.”
“I told Jax the truth,” Vi insisted.
“Just not the whole truth.” Her friend knew her too well.
“The man we’re fighting isn’t entirely… human.”
“What is he then?” Ellene was a mix of horrified and excited. The latter worried Vi slightly.
“He’s a monster, from far away—across the sea.”
“Like the Crescent Continent?” Ellene asked.
“Like that… Yes.” It was a miracle Andru had believed her. Vi didn’t want to push her luck with her friends by going too far into the details. How could she tell them the world was ending? “Andru is helping me investigate how such a creature may have arrived.”
“I’ll ask my mother, see if she knows anything,” Ellene offered. Vi was certain Sehra had already been consulted. But she knew her friend merely wanted to be of help. “And Darrus, he may have heard something in the city.”
“Don’t spread word of our investigation too far,” Vi cautioned, thrumming her fingers on the table. “We don’t want to alert my attacker to our movements… or Jax or my tutors—they’ll tell us not to worry over such things and put me under even tighter scrutiny for fear I’ll be reckless.”
“But you are reckless,” Jayme muttered.
Andru gave a snort of amusement at her final sentiment. Jayme and Ellene both turned their heads in shock at the noise. He coughed, looking away.
“That sounded like something Romulin would say, is all…” he mumbled.
“So we’re all in on this, then,” Jayme said finally, slowly, her eyes on Andru.
“Yes. All of us,” Vi affirmed. They would see Andru was a friend soon enough. She had to have faith in that. “Thank you all for it.”
“It’s what we’re here for.” Ellene squeezed her hand. “And in the meantime, when we need a break, we can focus on winter solstice activities!”
Vi gave a small nod and smile. She felt marginally better getting everyone on the same page. Even if they might not be able to do much, having some path forward was enough, for now.
Tomorrow, and every day between now and the solstice, she would be working with Taavin.
If she was truly going to survive the threat of an elfin’ra, he would be the one to equip her with the knowledge on how to do it.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Vi was with Taavin whenever she could find a moment alone, which was more often than she would have expected.
They spent time working on her technique. He guided her through finger placement, and how he formed the glyphs in his mind. Vi watched his hands, skilled and effortless, as they moved through the air. She listened to his words so carefully that they resonated in her sleep.
For the first time, it was as if she had a real magic tutor who knew what to do with her.
When Vi wasn’t with Taavin, she spent the hours scouring her maps and notes for the location of “Eye-owe.” And when that ultimately yielded no results, she sought out Andru, Ellene, Jayme, or all three. The ladies still expressed skepticism about Andru in private, but they made a good-faith effort to give him a decent chance. Vi took it as a good sign when Ellene felt comfortable enough to open up about the fact that she had finally agreed to dance with Darrus.
On the morning of the winter solstice, Vi woke early.
It was still dark when she got out of bed. The world had become chilly in the mornings and the floor was icy on her feet. But she knew it would warm significantly as soon as the sun crested the horizon.
Vi dressed in the clothes the tailors had made special for the occasion. Her Southern tailors had insisted that she should be in a dress befitting the Crown Princess on a ceremonial occasion. Vi knew she had to look the part, but she also enjoyed the winter solstice and wanted to be able to participate in the festivities. She’d won everyone over by pointing out that while it was important to pay homage to her Southern roots, she should also show respect to her Northern hosts.
What was crafted was a compromise of the two fashion sensibilities.
On top, she wore a golden shirt fitted to her torso with a tall, wide neck. The shirt split at her hips into a front and back piece that draped down to below her knees, reminiscent of the tabbards the Northern warriors wore. A tightly fitted white undershirt had long sleeves that reached a point over her hands, hooked to her middle fingers with small rings. Her legs were covered with a patchwork of lynx leather, tucked into knee-high boots.
Underneath it all, the watch was warm against her skin. She’d grown so accustomed to its weight that the idea of removing it now seemed virtually impossible. In her mind, it had become synonymous with the newfound confidence she was still working on building in her magic.
Around her wrist was a glowing glyph. Vi had learned how to make and sustain narro hath so well that she could now slide it from her fingers to her wrist like a bracelet, that way she could move her hand with it staying in place. Which was good for a morning like this, when she couldn’t lose time.
“Juth,” Taavin said from over her shoulder.
Vi paused, closing her eyes. She summoned the symbol in her mind, drawing every line with precision. When she opened them again, her hands continued to move through her hair, carefully weaving braids.
“Calt.”
She repeated the process, summoning a new symbol to her mind. Taavin had stressed how summoning the glyphs needed to be second nature. Not only did she need to know them as they appeared in her book. But she needed to know how they changed, slightly, to adapt to her own internal voice—that was where mastery came from. Or so he claimed.
“Mysst,” Taavin said from over her shoulder.
Vi paused, watching as circ
les formed and lines intersected them behind her eyelids. Mysst, to craft.
“That one you’ll find useful…” Her eyes flicked up, looking at him in the mirror. He hovered in his otherworldly way, not quite solid, not quite ghostly, right at the edge of her closet. “We should focus there more. You can use it to make shields and weapons of light. Now that you have a better handle on juth, it’s a logical progression.”
“In theory,” she corrected for him. Taavin arched his eyebrows. “I have a better handle on juth in theory. We haven’t been able to do much practice…”
“Yes, well, you said you’d find a training ground for that soon.”
“I’m trying,” Vi mumbled, tying off a braid. Luckily he didn’t press. Vi had a suspicion that Taavin didn’t doubt how hard it was for her to concoct reasons to do anything in her structured life.
“What is it you’re getting ready for?” Taavin’s voice audibly shifted when he was no longer asking as her tutor but her friend.
“Today is the winter solstice. It’s a big holiday here in Shaldan.”
“What do you do?” He walked over to her side.
“It starts with a ritual to Yargen at dawn… then merriment—singing, dancing, performances, shopping—until the final ritual of the day at dusk.”
“That sounds like heaven.” Taavin’s eyes fluttered closed as he spoke.
Vi’s hands stilled, falling from her hair. She turned to look at him. The room was dim, a few candles her only light to see by. He radiated light that couldn’t seem to touch her world. It didn’t reflect off her mirror or the shine of her wooden walls.
It was as though he only existed in her mind.
“Do you like to dance?” he asked, opening his eyes again.
Vi looked quickly back to her mirror, pretending she hadn’t been inspecting him in his moment of thoughtful longing. “I like it well enough, I suppose.”
“Is it difficult?”
“You don’t know how?” She turned back to him, surprised.
“I’ve never had a partner.”