by Emma Fenton
“Normally I would agree with you, my Queen,” Paavo said, smiling sadly. “But waiting for a proper trial would only give the assassin time to escape. We cannot risk him getting free and making another attempt on your life.”
She breathed heavily through her nose. A child was going to be killed for Lord Izan’s crimes and she was powerless to stop it. Ria had never been more aware of how little the crown on her head meant. Without personal power, her title meant nothing. And without either their respect, their love, or their fear, she had no personal power. Nothing short of breaking the poor boy out of the dungeons herself would spare him.
“It is also time to consider that this is not the attack of an individual, but of a country,” Vili said. “The Pesh have as good as declared war.”
“That’s reaching, Councilman,” Ria said as coldly as she could manage. She should have known this was all about war. They were going to use this to start another unnecessary conflict with the Pesh, and for what? Because the Council disliked them? Because war could be profitable, so long as you won?
“We all know how averse you are to war, your majesty,” Nasir said. “But—”
“You will not make unfounded accusations,” she said, speaking over the other man. She could not save the boy—Tiv—but she would be damned if she let them take her country to war over fabricated evidence. “I want to see proof before you start throwing around words like war, Councilmen.”
“You are too young to remember what the last war was like, Ria,” Vili said. “You do not understand—”
“Perhaps not.” She stared him down. “But I have studied our country’s history extensively, and I am equally well-versed in international politics, Vili. Unless you wish to contest my capabilities as Queen of Helhath, you will heed my directions.”
“Her majesty is right,” Izan said. Ria narrowed her eyes at him. “We cannot be too hasty. Helhath is not well prepared for war, and we would be fools to act solely on suspicion.”
He’s covering his own ass, Ria realized. Makes it look like he supports me, but also ensures that I’ll have no reason to deny him war when he inevitably fabricates more so-called evidence.
“Fine,” Vili grumbled. “We’ll find you your proof. But I won’t delay preparing the troops. If war does come, Helhath will be ready.”
It wasn’t ideal—especially because she knew that readying the soldiers would be a slippery slope to confrontation—but Ria couldn’t deny that it was a strategically smart move. It was a move she would’ve made herself if she didn’t already know that her Council was being manipulated into starting a war with Pesh.
“Onto other matters,” Paavo said. Ria nearly groaned; she had hoped that the Council was done. But this surely meant even more bad news. “My Queen, in light of the attack last night, the Council feels it is imperative that you choose a husband sooner rather than later. Helhath cannot be left without a ruler, and your near-death made us all the more aware of how precarious the order of inheritance is at present.”
“You will have until the end of day today to make a decision,” Vili said perfunctorily. “Or we will choose one for you.”
This is it, she thought bitterly. This is how they trap me. From the beginning, her plan was to find fault with every suitor and send them all home, further prolonging the process. But the Council wouldn’t let her get away with that now, when they were under Izan’s compulsion. If she didn’t choose someone, they would assign Izan to her, and there would be no getting out of that.
It was almost clever. The Council knew how little she wanted to marry anyone, and they were counting on that. Because she would never be able to convince them that Izan wasn’t a suitable candidate either. They might be a little worried that she would pick Feodor—because she had spent a significant amount of time with him and would even admit to liking him when asked—but Izan had already proven how easily he could get rid of his competition. They were probably confident that they would get their way no matter what.
Well she wouldn’t give them the satisfaction. Anything was better than being married to Izan. And if she had to tie herself to anyone, at least it would be an ally. Someone whose counsel she could trust. Someone who wasn’t afraid of violence or underhanded tactics. Someone her enemies would never be able to kill.
The Councilmen and her suitors were already standing, no doubt expecting her to put off giving a decision as long as possible. Ria drew herself up, chin high, and tried to give as imperious an air as possible.
“There’s no need to wait,” she said, and every man in the room froze at her declaration. She avoided looking at Peryn altogether, but Feodor’s mouth was twitching as he fought back a smile. “I have already made my decision.”
“Ah,” Vili said, looking very much caught off guard. “Are you certain?”
“For some time now, actually,” she said, and something in her chest twisted at the truth of the words. There was never any other choice, not really. If she had to marry someone, then it would be him.
“Well, don’t keep us in suspense,” Nasir drawled. At his side, Izan stared intently at her.
Probably wondering if I took his threats to heart, Ria thought. Wondering if his gamble will pay off.
“Lord Hollbrook,” she said simply. Then, without waiting to see their reactions, she stood and walked from the room. She would not justify her choice to them. She just hoped Peryn would not be too upset with her. He was, after all, only supposed to be a fake suitor.
***
“I’m flattered you want to marry me, Ria, but where’s the romance, darling?” Peryn said, smirking as he appeared out of the shadows in her room late in the evening. “I like to be wooed a bit.”
Ria barely glanced up from the book she was reading. Since the Elder Scholar’s death and the subsequent discovery of the man’s secret study, Ria had found that getting in there was impossible. The Council had blocked off the room entirely and were cataloguing the books, which meant that Ria’s resources for finding a means of protection against Izan’s mind control were limited. The main library hardly had anything on magic of any kind, and what books on the topic she’d been able to find had more to do with the history of witchcraft and less to do with actual casting.
She’d even risked a peek at the demon-summoning book hidden under a loose stone under her bed, hopeful that with all the twisted magic contained within its pages, there might be some sort of hint at how to protect herself. But there was nothing. She had managed to learn that long-term mind control required the victim to wear a totem which was tied to the spell. It was a small comfort, at least, that Izan wouldn’t just be able to whisper an incantation and have her bend to his every whim. But she would have to keep an eye out.
Peryn, not appreciating being ignored, plucked the book she was currently reading from her hands and skimmed the pages.
“In the year 1019, Sir Gawthorn of Aeldomayre pled innocent to the charges of murder in the village of Dent, claiming he was not of his own body or mind,” Peryn read aloud. “No evidence of witchcraft was ever found, and Sir Gawthorn was sentenced to death for the brutal slaughter of twenty-seven villagers.” Peryn turned back to her with a raised a brow. “Planning a murder spree and need a scape-goat?”
“No.” She took the book back from him, snapping it shut with a tired sigh. “I think Lord Izan spelled the assassin to do his bidding. Possibly the Council too.”
“It’s never good news with you, is it?” He sat down in his favorite chair, which she had developed a habit of leaving cleared-off for him. “Is this anything other than your suspicions?”
“I can’t prove it, if that’s what you’re asking.”
Which was the most infuriating part about this whole magic business. She knew Izan was behind it; he’d all but confessed last night at the ball. But most people couldn’t sense magical residue, apparently, and so the only two people who would believe the “evidence” she found were Peryn and herself.
Of course, none of that mattered. E
ven if she had tangible, irrefutable evidence, Izan would never be convicted as long as the Council remained under his control.
“The Council wouldn’t believe you even if you could,” Peryn said tiredly, echoing her own thoughts. “We’d need to break the enchantments on them first.”
“Simple in theory,” she grumbled. “Break the totems binding the spell to them. But I have no idea what those could be.”
Ria closed her eyes. At moments like this, she almost wished she hadn’t made it past Jaya. It certainly would have been easier to die in the fighting pit. Back then, she had been so certain that death was the worst thing that could happen to her. She had been certain Jaya would devastate Helhath. She’d thought she was the better choice, that living was the better choice, that fighting her sister would be the last of her problems. She had always hated being wrong, and now was no different.
If only she could go back and warn her younger self. This is only the beginning, she would say. Killing Jaya will only bring you to enemies you won’t defeat so easily. Ria could’ve laughed; she remembered thinking Jaya was insurmountable. Now she knew better. Compared to the threat Izan posed, Jaya had been but a splinter in Ria’s thumb, an inconvenience.
“You told the Council and Izan that you were going to marry me,” Peryn said slowly, almost as if he was still trying to wrap his head around it. “He’ll be even more dangerous now that he knows he can’t count on taking the throne legally.”
“I didn’t have a choice. You know they would’ve made me marry Izan, and they’re eager for a wedding, so I wouldn’t have had any time to contrive a way to get out of it.”
“You could have picked Feodor,” Peryn said. Before Ria could repeat what she’d told him the other night, he continued, “I know you said you don’t want to get married, but I wondered if the Council was pressuring you…well, he’d make the most sense.”
Ria frowned at that. Why would Feodor make the most sense? Because he’s a prince? Good for politics, maybe?
“Feodor would never survive Izan,” she said. “And besides, it wouldn’t be fair to him. He’s half in love with me.”
“Most people would consider that a good thing,” Peryn pointed out.
“The last man who claimed to love me abandoned me because he wasn’t going to get paid enough.” She smiled bitterly. “If he had married me like he was supposed to, I never would have had to fight Jaya.”
As much as she blamed the Council—and Izan, certainly, for controlling the Council—she sometimes felt she hated Mikhael the most. It had been well within his power to save her, and he had chosen not to. And unlike the Council, he didn’t have the excuse of someone mind-controlling him.
“I don’t need love to rule this country,” she said, carefully not looking at Peryn’s face. She didn’t know what she would see there, and she didn’t care to find out. “I need an ally, someone I can trust to help me take down my enemies. And when the threat is gone, I’ll find a way to unbind us. I won’t trap you here forever.”
He smiled at her, a glint of amusement his eyes. “I know, Ria.”
She took a deep breath and held out her hand. “We have a deal, then?”
Peryn laughed. “I don’t know why I keep making deals with you,” he teased. “It always seems like you get the better end of the bargain.”
But he took her hand anyway. And if it lingered a bit longer than a normal handshake, neither of them commented on it.
Chapter Sixteen
Saying goodbye to Feodor had been more difficult than Ria wanted to admit. Perhaps it was the fact that she’d had so few friends in her lifetime that the thought of letting one go—even if doing so was the only way to keep him safe—made her heart ache. They’d promised to stay in touch, but Ria knew that would be difficult. Rüm Bokai was far enough away that a sending a single correspondence between them could take as long as a full moon cycle. And the chances of ever seeing each other again were slim.
Ria had smiled through his departure, even as his carriage disappeared into the distance, headed for the harbor where he would meet his ship. She hadn’t wanted to give the Council any reason to question her commitment to her choice of husband. But with the Elder Scholar’s death and Feodor leaving, the palace felt strangely empty. If she hadn’t had Peryn, Ria would’ve felt entirely alone.
She was not, however, sad to see Lord Izan return to his manor on the southern border. She had been surprised that he was willing to leave court—to Peryn’s disappointment—without trying to kill off her husband-to-be. But Izan claimed he was off in search of sufficient evidence against the Pesh. Ria knew she should have been more concerned; if Izan returned to court with proof, no matter how fabricated, she would have no grounds to deny the Council the right to declare war on Pesh. But there was too much relief attached to Izan’s departure for her to be overly worried. And besides, she planned to free the Council from Izan’s magic before the man returned, at which time she would have him tried and sentenced for treason.
As she had predicted, the Council was eager to push forward with the wedding. It had been set for two weeks’ time; Ria had no doubt they’d been able to pull together the arrangements so quickly because they had planned on having her marry Izan. At first, she had argued with the Council to try and push the date back. The idea of marriage still filled her with dread—even though she and Peryn were agreed that it was a temporary arrangement—and she wanted to keep her freedom a little longer.
“Of all people, Ria, I thought you would be averse to long engagements,” Nasir had said unkindly. “After all, we’d hate for history to repeat itself.”
After that, she had stopped pushing. Instead, she used her hours spent with the Council searching for the magical totems. She and Peryn were increasingly spending most of their days inside the Council’s meeting room going over the fine details of the wedding. The whole thing was ridiculously expensive and too ostentatious for Ria’s taste, but since she had no opinion on her wedding aside from the fact that she didn’t want one, she let the Council do what they wanted.
But with Peryn in the room, it was hard to single out magical signatures. The first three days, she hadn’t been able to tell if the Councilmen even had traces of magic on them. On the fourth day, she’d finally been able to distinguish Peryn’s buzzing, warm magic from the singed, stinging magic faintly emanating from the Council’s general direction, but there was too much of it in the air for her to pinpoint the exact item it was coming from.
After a week of trying, Ria had to admit that she was no closer to freeing the Councilmen than when she started. Peryn was equally frustrated.
“You’d think I’d be able to figure it out,” he’d said, trying not to pout and failing.
“The great demon, stumped by mere mortals,” Ria responded dryly. She had laughed when he chucked a book at her head.
Now, with only a week until the wedding and the looming inevitability of Lord Izan returning in the near future, they sat once again in the Council meeting room, both of them trying their hardest to focus on the source of the magic. If we can just lift the damned spell, the Council can be reasoned with. Surely they’ll understand the need to put Izan on trial after that, she thought. She didn’t imagine that they’d take too kindly to being manipulated like that.
“Now, we’ve talked all about the wedding, and I think it’s safe to say that we’re in agreement on most things,” Vili said.
Ria did not bother pointing out that they were not, in fact, in agreement on anything at this moment in time. Instead she nodded. This whole wedding was a sham, really, so what did it matter if she liked it?
“Then the only thing left to prepare for is Lord Hollbrook’s coronation ceremony,” Vili continued. “Which will take place the night after the wedding. It’s much more efficient to hold both the ceremonies when most of the nobility will already be in the palace rather than invite them for two separate events or, gods forbid, give them reason to stay longer than necessary.”
Wel
l, perhaps she and Vili did have one thing in common. For all that he loved tradition and ceremony, he liked the quiet peace of the castle quite a bit more. The nobles were as much an inconvenience to him as they were to her.
“Helhath’s coronation ceremony is steeped in tradition,” Vili said. “There are three parts. The staff, the shield, and the cloak, each resembling the roles you will play in protecting our people as their king.”
“Shepherd, soldier, and shelter, if I remember correctly,” Peryn said with a pleasant smile. The Council members turned to him, surprised.
“I see you are somewhat familiar with the concept,” Paavo said. “Good.”
“Helhath has such a rich history,” the demon said. “It would be negligent of me to be uninformed on the place I will soon call home.”
Ria resisted the urge to roll her eyes. He was laying it on a bit thick, though she supposed that was exactly what the Council wanted. Vili and Nasir in particular were always appreciative when people pandered to them. Of course, none of them knew that Peryn had witnessed her own coronation. Still, strange that he should have remembered that, Ria mused. Even she had difficulty remembering the specifics of that day. You had a lot on your mind. You had just killed your sister.
“Helhath will be more than just your home,” Nasir said derisively. “It will be yours to protect, to guard in all ways.”
Something about those words triggered her memory. She had talked about the coronation with Peryn, hadn’t she? Later that same night, when he’d come to collect on his end of the deal. Yes, when he threatened you, she thought. And when you realized you were bound to each other. It was funny how far they could come from that. Back then, she had been terrified of him. And now they were sitting with the Council, allies, discussing their marriage and Peryn’s coronation.
“This is not like your manor back in Etheri,” Nasir continued, the sound of his arrogant, pompous voice dragging her out of her thoughts. “You will not be lord over a few farmers; you will be king, the guardian of all the people of Helhath. It is no easy task.”