Eton persisted. “But you’re the prince.”
“No, my menacing friend, I was the prince. Now I’m the disgraced, banished, ex-prince, who is useless, not to mention supposedly dead.” I felt myself begin to gather steam. I should have probably been quieter or more circumspect, but for some reason, it felt satisfying to enumerate everything terrible. “And good thing too, because if Solara knew I was alive, she would consume us with fire. At best, I might start a civil war, incite a rebellion, and still watch Alaxak burn. And then she’d crush the rebellion and we’d all die, or Treznor-Nirmana would interrupt the fight and mop up the remains. Not to mention what fighting would do to Qole even before that point. Using Shadow like that would kill her ahead of any of us. It’s all. Just. Bad.”
“All right, you’ve convinced me.” One-handed, Eton bent and casually picked up a rock roughly the size of my head and threw it out into the darkness. Instead of a splash, something metallic caved in. “Fighting is a stupid idea. So the only real option is to not fight, right?”
I nodded. “But Qole is going to convince everyone otherwise. She almost convinced me. Being around her is kind of like being in the grip of some gravitational current—everything changes.”
“Then listen to me.” Eton grabbed my shoulder and pulled me to my feet as easily as if I were another rock. He brought his face close to mine, his voice growing quieter. “That means that Qole needs to change her mind. And I know better than anyone that doing that for her is almost impossible. But.” The word was heavy in the air as he paused. His grip fell away. “You and I both know that Qole cares about you…well, a lot. She’ll listen to you. So talk to her. Convince her.”
And here it was, how I could be useful. What I had been avoiding and dreading all along—that it would fall to me to tell Qole the last thing she wanted to hear, the words that could make her despise me, undo everything that I’d been trying to build with her. I’d ruined my relationship with my family by telling them the harsh truth, and yet now I hesitated when it came to Qole. Even after everything I’d lost, I felt I had even more to lose, with her.
My hesitation was cowardice.
Eton looked angry now. Even if he was using me—and he was right to—such an admission must have cost him. But he took a step away, crossing his arms instead of pulverizing me. “Make sure Qole loses to Hiat. If we’re going to keep her safe, then you need to make her give up.”
The music as I walked down the aisle sounded like release. It was a sigh escaping my soul. I didn’t make a peep myself, because this was, after all, a solemn occasion.
Even so, I wanted to snatch the liquid silver crown from the Unifier Bishop as he lifted it as slowly as a crane raising a spire atop a newly completed tower, and then even more slowly lowered it on my head. The red jewels—blood tears, they were called—glinted in the equally solemn lighting. They would be the brightest thing adorning me, aside from my hair, which tumbled in a gilded cascade down my back. I didn’t wear red or gold, the colors I preferred. I wore the white of mourning.
After all, even though I wanted to grin with the fierceness of a rising sun, this wasn’t cause for celebration. The only reason for my coronation was that my parents were dead. No one liked to mention Nevarian in my presence, but I wasn’t a fool. They mourned him too.
People could mourn him all they liked. They just couldn’t miss him as a living, breathing threat to both our family and my freedom.
I closed my eyes as I felt the weight on my brow. The crown hadn’t gone unnoticed after I’d commissioned it and returned to Luvos. Practically the first thing Devrak, my head of family security and self-appointed babysitter, had said to me when he saw it a few days ago was, “Don’t you think you should have chosen blue, Your Highness? The Dracorte colors are blue and silver.”
“I like red,” I’d said, keeping my voice serene, like a queen’s should be. “Don’t fret, I’ll pair it with plenty of blue gowns.”
His eyes were lined with grief. “Your parents would have preferred—”
My parents, and their preferences, could rot. They’d not only tried to ensure I would live out the rest of my days in captivity, but their gentle hand in dealing with our enemies had nearly brought about the ruin of the Dracortes. “It symbolizes the blood and tears that I’m willing to shed for our great family.”
“It’s a wonder you aren’t crying,” he’d murmured. “How are you holding it together so well? Your poise is…commendable.”
I wasn’t sure if that was quite the word he wanted to say.
“I didn’t say it would necessarily be my blood or tears.” I touched his cheek, my hand pale against his dark skin. “Ruling well requires every level of sacrifice, my own and others’, to keep us strong. Something Nevarian and my dear mother and father didn’t understand.” I let my voice drop in an approximation of sorrow. “Perhaps if they had, they would still be alive. Oh, and Devrak?”
“Yes, Your Highness?”
“From now on, call me Your Majesty. Might as well get accustomed to it.”
Devrak had blinked at me, as if seeing me for the first time. Which was true, really. He wouldn’t have noticed me before, the girl I had been. Dracorte princesses weren’t meant to be noticed, unless it was for their witty repartee or their latest fashion. And I had played my role well. I was nothing if not a loyal member of the family.
Now, with the crown settled on my brow, I couldn’t help but smile, solemn occasion or no.
They will all see me soon enough.
When I turned around to face the crowd at my back—thousands of royals and dignitaries from across families and systems—I felt more on display than ever before, but the crown on my head was a comfort. It was a key.
In the middle of a ceremony filled with pomp and tradition, I suddenly remembered one of Nev’s earlier birthdays, a casual occasion for once, when our parents had taken us to visit Dracorva’s menagerie.
The officials had closed the park for us that sunny afternoon, and while Nev was obsessed with the larger beasts with huge teeth and claws—and was the center of attention himself, of course—I gravitated to the shadowy grottos that held sealed aquariums. In one, I found a feathered serpent called a volassa. It couldn’t fly, but it could bunch its coils, spread the feathered membranes along either side of its body, and glide with startling speed at one’s jugular. It was the most venomous creature in the entire system.
I looked at it, and it looked back at me with bloodred eyes. I felt seen.
And then I jumped when Nev came alongside me and knocked on the glass. “Why are you in here, Sol? There are way more interesting creatures outside.”
The serpent looked at him then, with the seething, acidic hatred that one could only possess for people tapping on your aquarium every day. The look that said, Someday, this lid will open, and then the screaming will commence in earnest.
The memory was appropriate, since the temple walls around me now were transparent, falling like water to the river far below. I could see the Dracorte citadel across the city, standing even taller. People thought these shining glass structures could contain me, or worse, that I happily fit within—a pretty bird in a cage, a less interesting creature than my brother. They had assumed such my entire life, tap-tap-tapping on my walls and smiling to see a reflection smile back at them, to hear me laugh at their jokes and then respond with my own. They couldn’t sense my burning hatred, nor the way my eyes went to their necks.
But now, my lid was open, through the circular crown on my head. And soon they wouldn’t be laughing.
The Unifier Bishop had been talking for some time. I’d hardly heard what he said in his boring monotone, only echoing the words I was required to say. But his next line caught my full attention: “And do you hereby swear to do all in your power, granted by the Unifier, to keep this family great?”
My true, silent response was redder than
the jewels of my crown. The words were blood on my hands, but also that beating in my veins: I already have.
I said aloud, “I swear it.”
* * *
Devrak wasn’t the only one who tried to correct my behavior, who didn’t yet understand “the new me,” as the fashion vids liked to caption someone who’d merely given themselves a makeover—as if a face, let alone makeup, showed what truly lay underneath.
While I mingled with the many guests in the temple’s reception area after the coronation, several of my own generals approached me, Gavros Dracorte among them. I wondered if he’d been aware that my father had wished for us to marry, or if he would understand why I would soon send him away—the better to never see him again.
“A word, Your Majesty.” At least he was learning my new title fast enough. He was military, so I supposed he had an acute regard for rank. Tall and sturdy in his dress uniform, Dracorte-silver eyes set in a handsome face, he gestured to the side of the hall, where there was a secluded alcove. I followed, resisting a sigh. Men in suits were still diverting me from my goal…but not for long.
Once we were separated from the crowd, out of earshot of others, the next person to speak was a woman. General Talia, if I recalled correctly. She was one of the few who’d managed to exceed Dracorte expectations of women and climb to such heights usually reserved for men—by men, of course—despite not being royalty herself. “We’ve become aware that you’ve ordered one of our carriers stationed near Aaltos to head for Alaxak. I’m afraid you can’t technically give such an order—”
I laughed, as if it were a joke. “Your carrier? Do you own it?”
“No, Your Majesty, but—”
“Well, I do. So I can order it where I please.” I tried to walk past them, but Gavros stepped in front of me. He had silver at his temples, too. I met his eyes, and he took a step back.
I also had silver in my hair, in the form of a crown, and mine meant more than his.
“Apologies, Your Majesty,” he said, his tone steady, despite his retreat, “but the Dracorte king or queen isn’t the commander of the military by default.”
“What are you talking about?” I said, feeling an unwelcome ripple of uncertainty in my new queenly serenity. “My father was, his father was.”
“Yes, and they all passed the trial of the Dracorte Forging to earn the right to command the military. You’ll still have control of your forces, of course, but it should be in consultation with a commander, who will best interpret how to fulfill your wishes.”
Dracorte Forging. Another ridiculous family ritual meant to keep someone like me in a cage. Nev had sometimes complained about the hoops he had to jump through. But he hadn’t understood. Complaining didn’t help. You had to jump through—or dodge—all of them until that final hoop was a crown. And then all the rest could burn.
I had done just that, and I’d be damned before I even considered another test of my abilities. And I would be damned before I let someone like Gavros try to argue where I put my fleet.
“And this ‘Forging’ will no doubt be some needlessly archaic, strenuous, and complicated ritual to prove I’m capable of leading a military, specifically designed to favor a certain type of desiccated relic with a skill set belonging to a bygone era?”
“Um, actually, Your Majesty—”
“I’m not interested, and as queen and sovereign of the Dracorte family, I hereby declare it unnecessary, a subject worthy of mentioning no longer.”
“But—”
“Did you mistake me?” I moved closer to Gavros and murmured in his ear like a beloved might. “Get out of my way before I make you regret ever setting one foot in front of the other.”
He hastily stepped aside, and I swept past him. I couldn’t help smirking as I strode away.
Finally. The path to my goal was clear.
Or not. Back in the crowd, I spotted Heathran through a group of royal offspring, aloof, as usual…except for the girl at his side.
Daiyen Xiaolan. I couldn’t believe she had the gall to move on Heathran here, at my coronation, after I’d made it abundantly apparent to anyone who had eyes that I was interested in him. I had to pause to take a deep breath, reassure myself. Like many individuals who didn’t realize it yet, she was subject to my will. And it was my will that they weren’t going to happen.
It didn’t matter if she was the heiress of an entirely different family and system that technically wasn’t answerable to mine. Or that Heathran, who might well have an opinion on the matter, was the heir to a family arguably greater than mine, who had invented the faster-than-light drive that kept us all connected and thus under their thumbs. He was the future head of the empire that we ostensibly bowed to, but the Xiaolan family, with this little budding royal romance, wasn’t going to usurp my family as Belarius’s right hand.
“Heathran, darling.”
With the thrill that came with displaying brazen familiarity in public, I stepped right up to him and brushed his cheek with a royal kiss of greeting. Light flashed behind my closed lids from the direction of the media cameras. I couldn’t blame them. We made quite the pair: me, pale and golden in my white gown, him in a black suit that was only a shade darker than his inky skin. An iridescent purple stone the size of my thumb pinned the white cravat at his neck—the white worn as a gesture of mourning for me. Otherwise, the Belarius colors were purple and gold.
My movements forced Daiyen to step back, and it didn’t hurt that she would be in the pictures too. People would only see me, standing between Belarius and Xiaolan. She was decked out in full Xiaolan colors, a floor-length gown of alternating links of green and bronze, like scintillating chain mail. The ensemble looked lovely with her tawny skin tone and long black hair, but I reveled in the fact that I complemented Heathran rather better.
I used to amuse myself by thinking that the metallic counterparts of our family colors illustrated where we stood in the galaxy: Belarius gold and purple, Dracorte silver and blue, Xiaolan bronze and green, Nirmana copper and turquoise, Treznor chrome and charcoal. The other royal families didn’t quite rate on this scale: orange and yellow for Enterio, which was really a co-op of smaller independent systems led by a family that could barely be considered royal; and white and teal for Orbit, which was a corporation first, family second, and proud of it.
But then Treznor and Nirmana had combined to become a family with power to rival Belarius, and changed their colors to platinum and black. I’d grown less amused by the thought.
Treznor-Nirmana was still a worthy threat to us, but less of one now. Makar, their king, was nowhere in sight in the crowded hall. Some would perhaps view that as a slight to me, but others would know it for the truth: his standing within his own family was precarious at best, laughable at worst, and all because he’d opposed me.
It was time for Princess Daiyen to learn the danger of crossing my path.
“Daiyen, you’re here in Dracorva alone again. I would sympathize, but I know it’s a powerful Xiaolan statement. I so admire how you’re above it all—the romance, the entanglements, the gossip—showing interest in no one. It paints a rather forbidding picture. Not that you couldn’t turn heads if you ever wanted to, of course.”
Daiyen’s face tightened at the implication that she wasn’t interested in Heathran, nor he in her. The broader assumption was entirely untrue too, since I knew from my spy network that she’d recently engaged in a relationship with a young woman on her planet, Genlai, and a man before that. But, for once, the secrecy of Xiaolan was working against them.
I sighed in Heathran’s direction. “I don’t have the same fortitude. I’ve been ever so lonely.”
“There have been rumors that you haven’t been alone,” Daiyen said with a hard smile, “but those are just vicious, of course, since you are in mourning, after all.”
Point for me and a point for her. My own smil
e could have cut the marble pillar next to us.
“I hardly think it’s appropriate to bring such rumors up, then.” Heathran’s surprisingly soft voice—one expected something more resonant from someone so tall and broad-shouldered—was chiding and as humorless as usual.
I frowned. “Would that the timing was appropriate for such fun, because that would mean my parents were still alive. Why, this will be the first Dracorte coronation with no true celebration…but it is a privilege to honor them so,” I added, reminding Daiyen that I was a queen, while she was still a princess. Now for some intimidation. “It’s been ever so busy with the ordering of a completely new star fleet from our friends the Treznors…”
An inaudible vibration at the comm in my ear caught my focus.
“Oh, if you’ll be so kind as to excuse me.” I wanted to continue, to deal her a few more solid blows, but I couldn’t ignore this. Still, I curtsied slightly—very slightly—to Daiyen and stood on tiptoe to kiss Heathran’s cheek in farewell, my lips lingering longer than strictly necessary. My mother would have been scandalized.
Heathran, on the other hand, had heat in his eyes as I pulled away. I counted that a major victory. Any spark with that one was as challenging—and as rewarding—as lighting a fire in an icy wasteland.
Maybe that was how Nev had felt with Qole.
I brushed the thought aside as I slipped through the crowd. Now was not the time to try to relate to my dead brother, since I didn’t actually care about Heathran beyond thwarting Daiyen and squeezing from him what I needed, and especially not since I had killed Nev.
I found myself in front of a small side chamber, flanked in floor-to-ceiling fountains. The pious frequented such rooms to pray in solitude to the Unifier, but they were often empty here, in this temple, since royals usually put their piety on full display.
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