I bite my lip. “Good luck with that.”
The tired jibe does nothing to calm him. In fact he draws me closer, putting his hands on my shoulders so I can’t look away. “We all did what we had to, Eve. They forced our hands.” They. Our. We’ve been in this together for so long, and Tolly never lets me forget. “They always wanted to make us survivors, and they succeeded.”
We survived them.
House Samos is not known for the ability to display affection, and Tolly and I are no exception. I remember watching Mare Barrow hug her family good-bye the last time she left Montfort. They were all arms and movement, clinging so tightly, making such a fuss in front of an audience. Not exactly my taste. But when I hug Tolly, I think of her, and I squeeze him just a bit longer than usual. He responds in kind, giving me an awkward pat on the back that nearly knocks the air from my lungs.
Still, I can’t help but feel a now-familiar burst of warmth. It is an odd thing, to be loved and know you are loved as well.
“Do you have your speech prepared?” I ask, pulling back to see his face. If he’s going to lie about the abdication speech, I’ll know it.
To his credit, he doesn’t dodge the question. Tolly offers a crooked smirk. “That’s what the flight is for.”
All I can do is roll my eyes. “You never could finish your schoolwork on time, no matter the punishment.”
“I seem to remember you cheating on many of your own assignments, Lady Samos.”
“But did anyone ever catch me?” I fire back, an eyebrow raised. Tolly just shakes his head and lets me go, refusing to give me the satisfaction. He heads for one of the nearby buildings, where both of us can clean off.
“That’s what I thought, Ptolemus!” I shout, eager to catch up with him.
When we reach the building, he holds open the door, letting me enter first. The changing room inside is narrow but tall, with airy skylights open to the pine boughs. Ptolemus bangs open one of the nearby closets and paws through a medical kit, looking for a bandage. I grab a towel from a neat pile and toss it over to him. He wipes off his face, staining the plush cotton with dirt, sweat, and a little bit of blood from his mouth.
I do the same, taking a seat to towel off the sweat at the base of my neck.
“I would have made a poor king,” he says suddenly, and with such a casual manner. As if it’s a foregone conclusion, the end of an easy equation. He continues hunting for something to bandage up his cut. “I think Father always knew that crown was going to die with him. No matter how much he talked about legacy and family. He was too smart to think the Kingdom of the Rift could exist without Volo Samos.” He pauses, thoughtful. “Or Evangeline.”
The bandage hunt is pointless. Wren Skonos can regrow hands. She’ll have no issue mending a tiny cut. He just needs something to do, another distraction now that we’re not trading blows.
“You think Father wanted us to rule together.” I try to keep my voice as calm as his. My court training does me well. Even Tolly wouldn’t know that the idea, the lost possibility of such a future, unwinds in front of me. Ruling with my brother, Elane between, a queen to us both. Subject to nothing and no one. Not even our parents when the time came. I could live as I wished, in all the splendor and strength I was born to. But no, that can’t be true. Ptolemus was always the heir, and I was always the pawn. My parents were ready to bargain me away for another inch of power. It’s a useless thing to think of, a rotten future that will never come to pass.
“Even then, who knows,” Tolly sighs. His eyes focus on the medical kit, still searching. I count no less than three bandages that I can see, but he ignores them all. “The war would have come for us eventually.”
“It still is coming for us.” The fear that always follows, the kind so small I can usually ignore it, bubbles to the surface. Despite the sweat and our training exertions, my flesh goes cold. The Archeon battle is still a close memory. And though it drove back the Lakelanders, the Scarlet Guard victory hardly ended the struggle still ripping through Norta.
It won’t be long before it reaches us here. The raiders on the border are getting bolder, their attacks coming more frequently down on the plain. Nothing in Ascendant yet, but it’s only a matter of time until they try the heights of the mountains.
Ptolemus seems to read my mind. “Elane mentioned you’re thinking about patrol.”
“It’s what I’m good at.” I shrug, tossing away the dirty towel. “That’s how you choose a job, right? Find something you’re good at and get paid for it.”
“I suppose professional insult thrower was already taken.”
“No, they’re holding the position until Barrow gets back from staring at mountains.”
I laugh at the thought. Mare Barrow greeting everyone who arrives in Montfort with a snappy observation or cutting remark. She’d certainly be good at it. Ptolemus laughs with me, forcing the sound. His discomfort is obvious. He doesn’t like it when I mention Mare, or the Barrows. He killed one of them, after all, and there’s no amount of penance he can do to make up for it. Even if Ptolemus Samos became the most stalwart champion of Red equality, even if he saved a boatload of newborn Red babies, it still wouldn’t balance the scales.
I must admit, they worry me still. The Barrows and General Farley. We owe them a life, and while Mare promised never to collect on the debt, I wonder if the others might one day try.
Not that they could. Ptolemus is a soldier as much as the rest of us. And he certainly looks it in his training uniform. He’s better suited to armor and weapons, not crowns and finery. This life suits him. I hope.
“What about you?” I prod.
He gives up on the medical kit quickly, happy for a change in subject. After the abdication, we’re all in the same boat. The premier and his government have no reason to keep us fed and housed if we aren’t dignitaries anymore.
“I wouldn’t mind patrol,” he says. My heart leaps at the prospect of serving next to him, but I can tell he hasn’t given it much thought. “I don’t have to decide too quickly.”
“Why?” I wrinkle my nose. “Do former kings get better treatment than princesses?”
The lost title doesn’t bother him as much as it bothers me. He lets it glance off and fixes me with an impish look. Mischievous, even. “Wren is a healer. She’s lined up for a job already. I can take my time.”
“Ptolemus Samos, house husband,” I crow. He only grins, a flush spreading over his cheeks. “You are going to marry her, aren’t you?”
The flush spreads. Not because he’s embarrassed. My brother could almost be described as giddy. “Springtime, I think,” he says, toying with one of his rings. “When the snows melt. She’ll like that.”
“She would.” Well, now we certainly have something to look forward to.
His smile ebbs a bit, softening with his voice. “And you?” he asks. “You can do that here.”
My heart skips in my chest, and I have to clear my throat. “Yes, I can,” I say simply, and to my great relief, Ptolemus doesn’t push the subject. No matter how much I think about Elane, how much I would enjoy marrying her one day, this is hardly the time. We’re too young, in a new country, our lives barely formed. Our paths far from chosen. Refuse Davidson’s offer, Elane, I plead in my head. Tell him no.
“What’s that look for?” Tolly says sharply, reading my face.
I exhale slowly. It isn’t the job that bothers me, not really. “Elane says I’m hiding.”
“Well, she’s not wrong, is she?”
“I wear metal spikes most of the time; I’m a bit difficult to miss,” I snap. For emphasis, I gesture to the still-bleeding cut over his eye. My brother is far from deterred, fixing me with a weary stare that makes me fumble for words. “It isn’t—I shouldn’t have to stand there and tell the world what I am. I should just be.”
Because Ptolemus has no skill in hiding emotion, or even in expressing it, sometimes he can be too simple. Too blunt. He makes too much sense. “Maybe in a century that will b
e true. People like you will just be. But now?” he says, shaking his head. “I don’t know.”
“I do, I think.” This is Montfort, an impossible country. A place I could have never dreamed of a few years ago, so different from Norta, the Rift, and any other reality I believed in before. Reds stand up with the rest of us. The premier has no reason to hide who he loves. “I’m different, but I’m not wrong.”
Tolly tips his head. “You sound like you’re talking about blood.”
“Maybe it’s the same,” I murmur. Once again, there’s that familiar curl of shame. For my cowardice now, for my stupidity before. When I refused to see how wrong the old world was. “Does it still bother you?”
“You?” my brother scoffs. “Eve, if anything about you bothered me, I would have said something by now.”
“That’s not what I meant,” I mutter, swatting him on the shoulder.
He dodges the blow with ease. “No, Montfort doesn’t bother me so much anymore. It isn’t easy, to relearn how things just are,” he says. “And I’m trying. I check my words. I keep quiet in mixed company so I don’t say the wrong thing. But sometimes I do. Without even knowing it.”
I nod, understanding what he means. We’re all doing the same, fighting against old habits and old prejudices as much as we can. “Well, keep trying.”
“You too, Eve.”
“I am.”
“Try to be happy, I mean,” he says, his voice sharp. “Try to believe this is all real.”
It would be easy to agree, to nod along and let the conversation end. Instead I hesitate, a thousand words caught on my lips. A thousand scenarios playing out in my head.
“For how long?” I whisper. “How long will this be real?”
He knows what I’m saying. How long before the Scarlet Guard loses ground and the Nortan States implode? How long until the Lakelanders decide to stop licking their wounds and return to fight? How long can these days last?
Patrol service is adjacent to joining the Montfort military. You get a uniform, a rank, a unit. You drill; you march; you make your rounds. And when the time comes, when the call goes out, you fight to defend the Republic. You risk dying to keep this country safe.
And Elane never asked me to consider anything else when I thought about joining patrol. She won’t push me away from it.
Slowly, I turn the re-formed bracelet on my wrist, shifting the metal to catch the light. I could make a dozen bullets from it easily. “Would you fight for this place, Ptolemus?” For Montfort, and for our new place in the world.
“I’d fight for you. I always have and I always will.” His reply is quick, without thought.
So is mine.
“I need to give you my letter.”
FOUR
Elane
The bath takes longer to fill here. Either because the water has to be piped up from the lake below in the city, or because I still haven’t mastered the art of doing it alone. It feels silly to call for servants these days, especially for something I should be able to do without help. And I must admit, knowing I am able to perform the task myself—it’s a satisfaction I’ve never had before.
I sit in the water long after it’s gone cold and the soapy bubbles have melted away. There’s no reason to rush. Eve will be back soon, trying to hide her regret, already wishing she’d gone with her brother instead of remaining here. I heave a breath, gathering the energy I’ll need to calm her down and soothe her enough to sleep. For someone so accustomed to physical pain, she has absolutely no idea how to grapple with emotional turmoil. No matter how much I tell her to lean on me, she always resists, and it maddens me to no end.
Shifting, I tip my head back, letting my hair splay out in the magnificent bathtub. It’s smooth, rippled with stones like a riverbed, and the water looks dark in the waning light. I doubt we’ll be able to afford something so grand once our time in the palace runs out. I should enjoy it while I can.
But before I can reach for the faucet to pour more scalding water into the cold, I hear movement in my chambers. A door bangs open in the salon, then the bedroom. Evangeline—and a companion.
Annoying.
She’s harder to deal with in front of an audience. Too proud to show her cracks.
The air is colder than the water, and I shiver as I step out onto the tile floor, almost flailing for my robe. I tie the fur-and-silk garment around myself, wondering if Davidson will let me keep it. I have a weakness for fine things, particularly ones in this emerald shade of green.
The voices in our bedchamber are familiar. Eve, obviously, and my own former husband, Ptolemus Samos. His deep timbre is difficult to mistake, and I relax a little. We shared something, he and I. Something neither of us wanted. A marriage of convenience, yes, but a marriage against our hearts as well. We did what we could to make it easy for each other, and for that I’m grateful. My father could have given me to someone so much worse, and I have never forgotten how lucky I was.
Lucky, my mind echoes, a taunting sound. Another might find no luck at all in the life I’ve led, in being forced against my nature, cast out of my family, fleeing to a strange place with nothing but the clothes on my back and a noble name from another country. But I survived it all and, what’s more, so did Evangeline. I’m lucky to have her with me, lucky to have escaped the future we were doomed to.
When I emerge, I brace myself for their bickering. Ptolemus isn’t one to raise his voice, not with his sister, but he might for this. He knows she should be abdicating with him as much as I do.
“Tolly,” I say, greeting him with a wary smile. He nods in return.
Both of them look unkempt, with new bruises blooming over their exposed skin. “Sparring?” I muse, running a finger over the purple spotting at Evangeline’s temple. “Who won?”
“Not important,” Evangeline says too quickly.
I smile in my soft way, squeezing her shoulder. “Congratulations, Tolly.”
Ptolemus doesn’t gloat. “She’s just eager for a rematch.”
“Always,” Evangeline huffs. She takes a seat on the edge of our bed and strips off her boots, leaving them discarded and dirty on the lovely carpet. I bite my tongue and refrain from scolding her about cleanliness again.
“And what exactly did you win?” I ask, looking between the two siblings. Both of them know exactly what I’m asking, no matter how much I dance around it.
Silence settles over us, thick as one of Carmadon’s huckleberry pies.
“Pride,” Ptolemus finally says, as if realizing that Evangeline isn’t going to speak. Or admit what she cannot face. “I should be going. I’m late as it is.” Even he can’t keep his voice from cracking with disappointment. “I’ll need the letter, Eve.”
Still quiet, Evangeline nods her head toward the salon. And the envelope still waiting, a white square on polished wood. I haven’t touched it yet. I don’t think I ever will.
“Right, thanks,” Ptolemus mumbles. I half expect him to mutter his annoyance under his breath as he strides into the next room, wishing Evangeline would follow.
I watch her instead of him. In spite of all the glamour and shine of the Nortan court, Evangeline is more beautiful in Montfort. Without her painted makeup, her needle gowns, gems ablaze on every inch of her skin. She’s easier to see. The sharp nose, the familiar lips, cheekbones to die for. And everything she keeps locked inside, the anger and the want and the pain. She has no armor here.
So I recognize the shadow passing over her features, the darkness being chased. It isn’t resistance anymore. It is surrender. And relief.
“Eve—there are two.” Ptolemus returns quickly, the open envelope in one hand. Two pieces of paper in the other. His eyes dart between us in confusion. “Two letters.”
She keeps her eyes on her bare feet, as if counting her toes. “Because I wrote two. It’s not a complicated scenario.” Her haughty tone sends me spiraling through time, and suddenly I’m sitting at a gala luncheon, watching her shred some poor suitor to pieces. But sh
e smiles at her brother in a way she would never smile at another man. “I like to be prepared for multiple outcomes.”
One of the letters is obvious. Her own abdication, to read before her country after Ptolemus refuses the throne of the Rift. But the other? I can’t say.
“Go ahead,” she urges. “Read it.”
Brow furrowed, Ptolemus does as she asks. He raises the second letter, covered in fluid handwriting, and opens his mouth to recite her words.
“‘Dear Iris.’”
My mouth falls open in shock, and Ptolemus hesitates, just as taken aback as I am. “You’re writing to Iris Cygnet? To the Lakelands?” he hisses, his voice suddenly dropping in volume. “Are you insane?”
“Eve, they’re our enemies. Montfort is funding and fighting a war against them right now. You could—you could jeopardize everything we have here.” I find myself sitting on the bed next to her, already clutching her hands in mine. “They’ll throw us out, send us into Prairie. Or worse, Evangeline, this could be seen as treason.” And I know what Montfort does with traitors. What any country would do. “Please, my love—”
“Read it,” she says again, her teeth clenched.
This time, her voice takes me to a different memory. A worse one. My marriage to Ptolemus, small and private as it was. Quieter than a union of the High Houses should have been. Probably because my parents knew I would spend the entire ceremony crying, and that Ptolemus would refuse to spend the night with me. Evangeline stood by my side through it all, as required. Sister to the groom, friend to the bride. We can bear it, she said then, her words coiling with desperation. As they are now.
Ptolemus glances at the windows, and even the door, as if expecting to see one of Davidson’s spies listening in. To satisfy him, I flare up, filling the room with blinding light for a second. Illuminating every corner and shadow.
“There’s no one here, Tolly,” I say. “Do as she asks.”
“Very well,” he whispers. I can tell he isn’t convinced, and probably thinks we’re both lunatics.
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