There, we covered our travels in between meetings of swollen lips and coquettish hands, until finally, too tired to continue, we relaxed into each other’s arms.
It’s the best I’ve slept in years.
“Caden.” There’s a gentle prod in the vicinity of my cheek. “Caaaaden.”
Blearily, I open my eyes to find Bree’s blue ones peering back at me. Her hair is tousled about her features, and I seize her errant hand in mine as she goes in for another poke.
A devilish gleam lights her eyes, and they flick to my lips. Grinning, I oblige, meeting her halfway.
Bree is not the gentle sort. There’s a sort of savagery to her as she nips at my lower lip. I roll her onto her back and pin one of her arms above her head. She breaks away, expression serious.
“I’m going to need that hand back,” she says. She pants a bit. “I have plans for it.”
“By all means, Lady Breena.” I release her and stifle a groan when her hand seeks out the planes of my stomach. Here, she is gentle. Here, she takes her time. Heat courses through me, and a warped sound escapes.
Not one to be outdone, I wind my hand beneath her tunic. I encounter the firm muscle I became acquainted with last night, but don’t remark upon it. In between bouts of similar activity the previous evening, she’d mentioned training with Sir Liam’s men.
That line of thought vanishes abruptly when Bree draws my earlobe between her teeth with her tongue, and I hiss, hips bucking forward involuntarily.
“If your mission is to render me speechless, you’re doing an excellent job,” I say. I close my eyes, pulse like hoofbeats in my ears as her cool hand blazes a trail of heat across my skin.
“Not good enough, apparently.” She drags her lips torturously across my jawline, breathing “shut up, Caden” against my mouth.
And, as she captures my lips with hers, I obey.
Sometime later, when our breath is exhausted and our flirtation with line-crossing has come to an end, I sigh, pillowing my arms behind my head. “And a good morning to you, too,” I say.
Bree laughs, sprawled comfortably over my chest, and I lean forward to drop a kiss onto her forehead.
“A very pleasant morning, it is,” a voice from the doorway says, sounding amused.
Bree’s reaction is instantaneous. She hurls herself off of me and leans forward, elbows on her knees, trying for all the world to pretend that the scene Lilia walked in on never existed.
“Good morning, Lady Lilia,” she says coolly, but her red face betrays her.
“Likewise, Lady Breena,” Lilia returns. At ease, but with mischief glinting deviously in her eyes, she perches on the end of the bed.
Bree wriggles next to me, straightening her clothing enough to stand without any embarrassment. She flicks strands of hair from her eyes. “I should be going. I can already hear Aleta when I get back to our inn.” She adopts a credible impression of Aleta’s tone. “‘That must have been quite the walk, Lady Breena. Got lost, did you?’“
“In our defense, it was quite the walk,” I say.
Lilia looks at Bree and raises an eyebrow. “Shall I smack him or would you like the honor?”
“By all means.” Bree waves a permitting hand, and I’m treated to a sharp clap on my ankle.
“Ow,” I deadpan.
“Don’t be an ass,” Lilia says.
“But I’ve such a nice—Oo!” That slap comes from Bree and it leaves a red mark on my forearm. I rub it, looking at her, betrayed.
“Sorry,” she says, not sounding apologetic in the slightest. “But you had that coming.” She bends to adjust her boot, stomping to get her foot to slide into it the rest of the way, cursing her bad arm under her breath. She shoots me a wicked look. “Even if I don’t necessarily disagree.”
We lock eyes and grin.
“Children,” Lilia drawls. “You’ve only just put your clothes back on.” I give Lilia my full attention, and she sighs. “Makers, put a pretty girl in his bed, and he thinks he’s a blessing on this land.”
Now that I’m looking at Lilia and truly seeing her, I see signs I didn’t notice when she first walked in. Her tone is light, but worry tugs at the corners of her lips. She turns from my scrutinizing gaze, eyes narrowed on the door like it’s the cause of her frustration. Her hand clenches over two scrolls of parchment that have seen better days, wrinkled by the force of her grip. Wordlessly, I hold out a hand for them.
She hesitates. Bree’s hands still over the laces of her boot as she stares at us. “What’s happened?”
“Yes, Commander Masonstone,” I say softly. Lilia’s head snaps to me at the title. I’m not a friend teasing a friend now, but a prince addressing his soldier. “What’s happened?”
“I don’t know.” Her voice is soft, her grip loosening over the scrolls. She eyes them like they’ll bite her. “Our man who delivered the messages wouldn’t look me in the eye when I identified myself. Dropped them in my palm and ran like the earth would swallow him up if he wasn’t fast enough.”
The scrolls settle in my palm, deceptively light for items I already know hold weighty news. The dry parchment chafes against my fingers as I turn it over, delaying the moment.
She exhales a quick, girding breath. “Well, go on. What does it say?”
Bree scrabbles to get behind me, one hand on my shoulder as I swallow and unfurl the parchment. Quickly, I skim it, and my eyes dart up to Lilia’s. “Parliament is refusing us an audience. This can’t be right.”
She’s as stiff as a statue, but her shoulders relax by a fraction. Whatever she worried the letter might contain, this clearly isn’t it.
Bree, though, raises her eyes slowly, expression bleak. “They won’t see you?”
Angrily, I throw down the polite refusal from the Clavish Parliament and the other message as well, the scrolls fluttering to the floor. I run a furious hand through my hair. “They’re treating it as a favor that their city watchmen haven’t arrested my paltry forces already. They say they can’t afford to be found in violation of their treaty with Egria if my father views any attention as an alliance with rebel forces.” I skewer Lilia with a glare. “I don’t understand. Have we failed to impress upon them that my father is coming? Do they understand the full consequences of the actions of their refusal?”
She raises a brow, kneeling to retrieve the unopened parchment and cracking its seal. “If I recall, that was your mission, Your Highness,” she says absently.
“If they were reasonable people—”
“They’re not reasonable,” Bree interjects. “They’re afraid. People who are afraid are never reasonable.” She crosses one arm over her torso and cuts her eyes away from me, taking a deep breath.
My brow furrows, momentarily distracted. There’s something more there. Something she’s not saying.
I open my mouth, but am cut short by Lilia’s cry. Chills colonize my entire body as the letter falls from Lilia’s limp fingers and my warrior friend collapses to the floor, angry sobs tearing from her throat. I break from my frozen state to rush to her side, a hand hovering over her back, unsure how to lend comfort.
“Lilia, what is it?” Panicked, I look at Bree as she picks up the letter.
A small sound escapes her. A hand flashes up to her mouth in horror as she reads the letter and then lowers it, unmistakable pity in her eyes as she looks at Lilia on the floor.
Father, what have you done? My stomach hurtles around unpleasantly, but I don’t allow that to reflect on my face. “What is it? What’s he done?”
“Masonstone estate,” she says. On the ground, Lilia chokes over her tears. “It’s gone.”
“Caden. Caden!”
Bree pulls at my arms as I storm through the inn, pounding down the stairs and exploding into hallways. Blindly, I shrug her off. And off. And off, tension mounting with each of her attempts to halt me.
“Leave it, Breena!” I finally snarl. “The senators will listen to me now. I will give them no choice.”
A woun
ded expression flits across her face, but she recovers quickly. “Maybe they’ll hear you, but they won’t listen. Not when you’re like this.”
“You—I am the crown prince of Egria. They will do as I say. I will be king—”
Bree’s eyes harden, something shifting at my words. “You,” she says coolly, “are a little boy pissed off at his daddy.”
How dare she.
I crowd in on her, finger pointedly in her face. “I have known the daughters of Masonstone since I was a child. Lilia and I learned swordplay together. Elsbeth played chess with me. Dorna was only twelve. Don’t equate my feelings with a young boy’s temper tantrum. Yes, I am furious with my father. I will never forgive him. But right now, I care far more about the fact that I will never see Elsbeth or Dorna again. I care about the fact that Lilia’s heart is in pieces back there.” I stab my fingers in the direction of the room.
Regret twists in her expression. “I am very sorry for that,” she says simply. “I’m sorry I put things that way. I’ll leave the two of you to mourn.”
I stand back, sweeping my arm in front of me and inviting her to do just that.
She brushes past me and turns on the inn’s doorstep to deliver a parting remark. “I hope you will be king one day, Caden. But just then? Talking about how you would be obeyed? You sounded an awful lot like the one we’ve already got.”
My rage doesn’t vanish as she walks away, but it does ebb. The gaping maw of grief waits in its stead.
She’s right. Makers help me, she’s right. I trudge back upstairs and find Lilia where I left her, curled into a ball on the floor.
Numb eyes flick up to me. “Where’s Lady Breena?”
“Gone.”
Her eyes move away.
I lower myself down to lie beside her and cover her hand with mine. “I am so sorry, Lilia.”
Her fingers grasp mine, desperate. “I can’t be in my head right now, Caden. It’s too…” Her breath hitches. “Give me something. To do, to think about—I don’t care. Anything.”
I’m quiet. Ordinarily, I wouldn’t bring my personal struggles into things, but… “Bree said I sounded like my father,” I say. I massage my temples, unsteadied by the comparison. “That’s not the sort of ruler—not the sort of person I want to—”
She sits up, rubbing at her cheeks and sniffling. “You’re not.”
“But—”
“You’re not,” she says more forcefully. “You wouldn’t have—” She shakes her head. “And I think she knows it, too, it’s just…”
“What?”
“It’s a bit disconcerting, even for me sometimes,” she says. “And I had little face-to-face contact with your father. Just a few court events throughout the year that Father and Els—Elsbeth forced me to go to.” She takes a deep, shuddering breath before she can go on.
“If he’d uprooted me, used me against the only family I’d ever known…” Her voice wobbles, unsteady, and I tighten my grip on her fingers. She favors me with the hint of a smile. “If the king had threatened me…? Sometimes it’s just… Your eyes are so similar. It takes a moment to reconcile. That’s all.”
I worry about sharing anything with my father. I worry it won’t end with eye or hair color. With intelligence or leadership abilities. My father, after all, had been practically human once. He’d had friends—Bree’s father had been his friend. He’d had loved ones. Until one day, that had stopped mattering to him.
Lilia gets closer and grasps my shoulders. “I could tell you that you’re not your father, and that’s true. But worry over your immortal soul later, Your Martyrness. We have bigger things to concern ourselves with.”
She can’t hold the smile on her face. It wavers and dissolves, and I pull her into me, rocking back and forth. “I need to say a prayer for them,” she chokes out. “And we need to talk about the Reaping.”
I guide her over to a bed. “Say your prayers, Lilia. We’ll talk later.”
I leave her cocooning herself in blankets and exit the inn, intent on developing a plan.
The Clavish capital is different from my Egrian home. Where we have turrets and balconies, they have towers topped with faded globes that once were bright. Where our air is thick, hot, and humid, Clavins is crisp, with the bite of cold in it. Fur collars are turned up to protect vulnerable skin from the chill. I bristle at a particularly biting breeze and hunch my shoulders unhappily, making a mental note to outfit the rest of my people for the weather at the earliest opportunity.
Before long, I find myself in front of the Parliament building. A gate bars my way from the spiral domes that top its towers, but I stare up at it anyway, deep in thought.
Parliament’s reaction to the news of the Reaping is deliberately obtuse, but it’s simple: they don’t want to believe anyone would invite the terror of Ruin’s Reaping back into the world. Not even my father. Their fear blinds them. And if they don’t fight back, Clavins will fall.
There are options. A soil analysis for instance. There’s a difference in the ash that ordinary fire and Reaping fire leaves behind. I know of a lord representative on the Clavish Parliament who rivals the late Tutor Larsden in his expertise and learnings on Torcher Adepts; he’d be able to scientifically prove the difference between the two samples. I could send a rider for the site where Masonstone once stood and—
It’s not enough. They may be swayed about the use of Ruin’s Reaping with an analysis, but not that my father is involved with it.
But I know what will convince them.
After the sobering news of Lady Lilia’s family and my quarrel with Caden, it’s difficult for me to fall asleep that night. And when I do, the sleep is fitful. I wake when a door slams behind Elena and struggle to come to alertness, my blankets falling into my lap.
Kat’s twin walking into the room brings me fully awake more quickly than I would under other circumstances. I dart a glance to the corner to see our packs sitting there safely and my friends still asleep, their chests rising and falling easily. Meddie’s foot protrudes from her covers. Tregle lies on the floor below Aleta’s bed, a last line of defense. Everyone’s fine.
“How did it go?” I ask Elena, voice low, a wary eye on her. I haven’t seen enough of her to gauge her character yet. And her bloodline is distinctly not in her favor here.
She jumps, turning to locate me in the dim light of the room. “Sorry,” she says in a whisper. “Didn’t mean to wake you. I thought I’d find Liam in here.”
“It’s fine. How did it go?” I repeat.
She sighs, unfurling a scarf from her neck. “How these sorts of things usually do. Got a few answers, got the runaround. One name leading to another to another. I’ll keep asking, but most people shut right up when they hear the word Nereidium. Or King Langdon for that matter.”
“Can’t blame them,” I mutter. But that will make our hunt more difficult.
“You sure?” she asks. She rolls a coin between her thumb and index finger. “I do, sometimes. I just think if more people bothered to stand against him, it wouldn’t matter that he was the king. It wouldn’t matter that Clavins’s loyalty was contracted to him. He can’t have the whole continent, the seas, and the islands, too. If more people…” She trails off. “But then you have folks like Ekaterina, who think that taking something from someone else makes you strong.”
“She and the king were of cut of the same cloth, that’s for certain.” I’m only half-listening, watching that coin go from the tip of her finger, toward her palm, and back again. “What’s that?” I nod to it. But as Elena gives it a flick of her finger toward me and I snatch it out of the air, I already know. It’s an Underground token.
My throat swells. It’s been too long since I thought of Da. I almost forget about the coin under my shirt these days. I cradle the token’s twin in my palm. The feel of the chain around my neck and its outline against my skin is warm. I fish it out and smile wryly, holding it out to Elena. “Same,” I say.
“Might have expected,” she s
ays, holding out her hand. I toss the coin back. “Liam gave it to me. Said it may come in handy in a tight spot. So this whole Nereidium business is something to do with the Underground then?”
“It’s…definitely something.”
She accepts my non-answer and changes the subject slightly. “Nereidium,” she sighs. “I’ve not been there in years.”
My breath catches. “You’ve been there?” How? Travel there has been nearly impossible for years.
She nods. “You know I was in the Elemental forces before I fled to Clavins. Before everything went to hell, I was part of a special contingent that travelled with the king to meet the Nereid rulers. They were trying to negotiate a peace treaty.”
“The rulers?” I nearly spit the words out in my haste. My birth parents. My eyes drift over to Aleta, still asleep. She’d want me to wake her…
No. It’s selfish as all get-out, but I need to hear this without her. Without her wondering why I’m so interested in the people she thinks were her parents. Just for this moment, I don’t want to pretend.
“You met them?” I ask. My voice is softer, dancing on the tightrope of a whisper. “The King and Queen of Nereidium. You knew them?”
“We were introduced,” she says. “That’s about where it ended. They were courteous. Respectful. Afraid I don’t remember much about them.”
My heart sinks back down in my chest where it belongs.
“Except,” she says, like she’s startled by the recollection, “she had blue eyes—about the same shade as yours, come to think of it. And she was tall. I remember that. Not uncommonly tall, but taller than the king. And the way she held herself, she seemed even taller.” She shrugs. “That’s about all I’ve got. A few years later, I heard about their deaths and I was sorry for it. That trip was years ago, though. Before they had their daughter. Before you were even born, I expect.”
I have a nearly overpowering urge to laugh when my birth and the Nereid Princess are mentioned in the same breath.
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