“Our survival has not come without sacrifice. Your sister, Giuliana, she married Emaurria’s Prince Robert to become queen, to help protect our kingdom and forge favorable trade terms when her time came. And she was killed. We lost not only our precious Giuliana, but the boons she would have granted our kingdom. And you failed to captivate the new king.”
Captivate? The king was in love with another woman; there had been little else to do but leave gracefully. “He was already—”
“Whatever the reasons, you failed. This is a responsibility you must accept and now account for. The terms are set, and fulfilling your duty now will mean no more paesani lives lost to battles with the dark-elves, no more money spent on it by signori for defenses against them, and it will mean a military ally against the other Immortali, knowledge of this new world, and valuable trade.”
Bianca approached and bowed her head. “Papà, please. Aless is taking my place, and the least that—”
Papà held up a hand.
There was no use trying to convince him. He’d already made up his mind; she and Bianca were no more than pawns.
Her library, a place where she could help anyone who wanted to learn and grow, nobiltà or paesani, human or Immortali—had it only ever been a dream, just like the courtyard of overgrown roses and its spellbinding perfume?
But she—she would do what was required to make peace between her people and the dark-elves. It didn’t necessarily have to be marriage.
I’m not useless. But I won’t let you define my purpose.
She’d agree to this arrangement, but as soon as Bianca and Luciano were married, she’d find a way to persuade this dark-elf prince to release her, to let their friendship show the peace between their nations. Marriages had solidified peace for millennia, but these were modern times. Surely consensual, honest friendship could demonstrate a partnership without resorting to a marriage neither party desired?
In fact, the entire kingdom could stand to see the point: it was time for a change.
She crossed her arms and lowered her gaze. “Fine.”
“Good.” He descended the steps and placed a hand on Bianca’s shoulder. “Your wedding will be three days after Alessandra’s. Congratulations, luce dei miei occhi.” He cupped her face in one hand. “You will make a beautiful bride.”
Bianca smiled as he dabbed at her tear-streaked cheeks. Her large, agate eyes were soft. “Thank you, Papà.”
He grinned back at her, then raised Aless’s chin with an abrupt finger. “Alessandra. Try not to destroy the peace. I know it is difficult. But try.”
She scrunched her face, and his eyes gleaming, he walked away, his guards trailing him.
Her life could be over, and he jested? Holy Mother’s mercy.
She’d agreed to wed the dark-elf prince, and to say nothing until their marriage vows, and so she would. No words to him, anyway. She would complete the wedding in Bellanzole and say no words until after that.
No words. She smiled. But there were other ways to get a point across.
Chapter 2
As the tree he perched in swayed in the raging storm, Veron held his bow at full draw, tracking the hind through the wind-battered foliage. He’d been here for hours and was not going home empty handed. Not today.
His people had been starving for several months, scraping by on small game and what sustenance they could find in the Deep before the crops could stabilize in a couple months.
He couldn’t afford to miss, but if he couldn’t get a good shot, he wasn’t about to let the animal flee and suffer until she died. A waste of a life.
There would be a good shot. Deep, Darkness, and Holy Ulsinael, there would have to be.
As the hind picked her way through groaning trees and fluttering shrubs, she paused every so often, swished her tail, swiveled her ears irritably. Not yet. So agitated, she’d jump at the snap of the bowstring. Not yet.
His arms ached as he held the excruciating full draw weight, twisting his position to keep her in his sights, and she emerged past the enormous trunk of an old oak, halting in the howling wind, and as his tree swayed, he timed the shot—
The distant, roaring call of his fellow volodari hunting team. Short, sharp—a warning.
He loosed.
She balked.
More calls from his team answered, their longer, acknowledging roars closer—Vlasta’s, Dhuro’s, Rút’s, and Gavri’s—
His arrow lay in the undergrowth battered by the storm. The hind was gone. He’d shot too late. Just a second too late.
And for that, his people would continue to starve.
The acknowledging growls repeated, and he roared back, listening to the calls return all the way to Vlasta’s distant one.
He stashed his bow, dug his claws into the bark, and rappelled down the trunk. His boots slopped into the mud—they still didn’t fit right, and now they’d slosh the length of the way home.
Other than the storm, all was quiet, with not a single person in sight, much less an enemy. But still, he drew his vjernost blade. Made from the magic-nullifying metal arcanir, it could also kill most Immortals, on the chance a basilisk or a wyvern had attacked.
But it wasn’t basilisks or wyverns that had been the most pressing threat recently. No, it was the human Brotherhood that had been hunting him and his people for months. Entire parties of volodari from other dark-elf queendoms had disappeared while hunting or foraging. A few from his home, Nozva Rozkveta, had evaded them with only injuries, but if nothing changed, it would soon come to deaths on one side or the other.
The echoing roars led south, and staying low in the concealment of the shrubs, he made his way through the stormy forest. A crack ahead, high in the canopy, and a long scratch—Gavri, his kuvara royal guard.
Like a living and breathing shadow, she splashed into the mud in her black leather kuvari armor, her long white braid sopping wet, and she shook out her hands, throwing scraps of bark off her claws. Her deep-amber eyes fixed on him, and she cocked her head south.
He nodded. Given her call, Vlasta must have sighted an enemy. If she was in trouble, they had to get to her.
They retraced their steps toward the tunnel Gate they’d emerged from—Baraza Gate, where Vlasta had taken the first hunting stand. They passed the second stand—where his brother Dhuro should have been—but it was already empty.
By Deep and Darkness—
Voices rang out, human voices calling out in Sileni—near Baraza. Gavri tugged his sleeve southeast, toward another Gate.
Wordlessly, he followed her lead, and as the shouts neared, he and Gavri quickened their pace to a run, leaping over deadfall. If they didn’t make it to a Gate before the humans caught up to them, there would be no re-entering Nozva Rozkveta at all. They’d be stranded…. and likely killed.
Gavri’s heel hit a pile of soaked leaves, and she slipped into the mud—he caught her arm and yanked her up. The humans’ shouts increased in urgency. They were gaining.
Ahead, a dark-elf bore another over his shoulder—Dhuro carrying Vlasta, a broken arrow shaft protruding from her side, buried in her gut.
No. Not one of his people. No.
She was still breathing, whimpering. Alive. A shot like that wouldn’t have killed her—at least not quickly. It was meant to end her slowly, painfully.
Goose-feather fletching. A human’s arrow. The Brotherhood.
He and Gavri caught up to Dhuro, who heaved a breath of relief as they continued to the nearest Gate—Heraza.
“The others?” he hissed to Dhuro as they ran.
“Already home,” Dhuro bit out from beneath low, drawn eyebrows, and bared his fangs.
Dhuro hadn’t agreed with Mati’s orders not to engage the Brotherhood, but he’d obeyed as a proper subject to the queen first and as a son second. A rage, however, had simmered in Dhuro from the first attack—a narrowing of his eyes, a clenching of his jaw—and now, while holding a bleeding huntress in his arms, that rage bubbled far too close to the surface.<
br />
It was a rage he knew as keenly as Dhuro did.
Just get home. Holy Ulsinael, just let us get home. Because if we meet the Brotherhood, orders or no orders, I can’t promise not to kill them. Just let us get home…
The Bloom thicket tangled ahead before Heraza Gate. He took Vlasta from Dhuro carefully, whispering to her as she groaned, as her face creased. The Bloom parted, letting them through to the locked stone door, then wove back together behind them.
Smearing wet hair from her face, Gavri frantically tapped the Nozva Rozkvetan knock on the stone door.
Nothing.
As she did it again, Dhuro stepped up next to her and joined her, both of their hands beating the rhythm.
No answer.
The human shouts closed in.
In his hold, Vlasta whimpered as her blood ran down his leathers, mingling with the mud while Gavri and Dhuro continued.
“We’re almost home, volodara,” he murmured to her, and she nodded weakly, raindrops rolling down her face, or tears.
The door creaked open.
They scrambled inside, and the two kuvari guarding Heraza barred the stone door after them. Danika and Kinga.
“Where were you?” Dhuro shouted as he cornered them.
Both Danika and Kinga immediately bowed. “Your Highness.”
“Dhuro,” Veron said, prodding him with an elbow, still holding Vlasta. “We need to get her to the mystics. Come on.” He headed down the tunnel toward Central Cavern with Gavri as she shook her head.
“Where were you?” Dhuro repeated, snarling the words at the kuvari. “The Brotherhood nearly caught us.”
Danika stayed bowed. “Captain Riza recalled the kuvari to reinforce Baraza, but when Your Highness and Prince Veron didn’t show up there, the Stone Singers sang it shut and we were ordered back to posts.”
“Dhuro,” Veron called over his shoulder, and Gavri took a deep breath next to him as they headed to the mystics’ lifespring with Vlasta.
Dhuro could hardly shout at Mati about his frustrations over the Brotherhood; as their queen, her word was law. But taking it out on two kuvari, especially when Riza had given the order—that wasn’t helping either. Dhuro could take it up with Riza later, who’d lay him out on the stone—with Mati’s implicit approval—if he so much as barked at her.
As they made their way, the lavender glow of the bioluminescent mushrooms high above on the stalactites lit the enormity of Central Cavern, tempered by the soft white light of the glowworms and the sprawl of flora that had always bloomed here, even without the sky realm’s sun.
Below, the blackstone dwellings spread among the interwoven pathways and shining streams high above the Darkness’s embrace. Stone Singers crowded smaller walkways, singing stalagmites into dwellings in their deepest and darkest bass tones, beseeching stone to meld together and form to their collective will.
Nozva Rozkveta was serene, even as the Brotherhood thirsted for dark-elf blood just outside the Gates.
He and Gavri had almost reached the mystics’ lifespring with Vlasta when Rút caught up to them, breathing hard, her face lined as her wide eyes fixed on Vlasta.
“No,” she breathed, reaching out to touch Vlasta’s hand, one of her claws broken. “When I heard the call, I-I tried to lead them away, so she could escape. But even then, I could feel her weakening, and—” She covered her mouth, running alongside them.
“Your claws,” Gavri said with a gasp, and Rút curled her fingers.
Damaged claws meant weakness, and the weak were seen as a disgrace to their families. But to mention that now? Really? He scowled at her.
Gavri cleared her throat. “She’ll be all right,” she offered to Rút. “And Queen Zara won’t let this go. You’ll see.”
Rút and Vlasta had made the Offering to each other and had been lifebonded for eight years; they shared anima. If one weakened, the other would strengthen her, and if one died, so would the other…
“We’re almost there.” He plunged through the dark entryway and into the mystics’ lifespring, where Xira—the oldest dark-elf among them at nearly four thousand years—ran to meet them, her dark-purple robe trailing, and apprentices huddling around her.
“Take her to the waters, Highness.” Her long white hair shimmering beneath the lavender glow, Xira led them to a brightly lit pool, and he climbed the shallow stairs to gently lay Vlasta inside while Xira checked her and removed the arrow, eliciting a pained cry from Vlasta. “She’s still breathing. Good.” Xira cocked her head to Rút. “You, too. In with her. You’ll both need the strength of the lifespring to fortify you.”
Because if Rút’s anima wouldn’t be enough, Vlasta would die. And if Vlasta died, so would Rút. Such was the danger of the lifebond.
Chewing her lip, Rút nodded several times as she held Vlasta close in the lifespring waters, stroking her short, wet hair and whispering words of comfort. Here, seated on a large Vein of anima, Nozva Rozkveta’s life was stronger than any other queendom’s, and the lifesprings were concentrated with anima, places they’d used for recovery since before recorded history.
This would work. It had to.
He braced on the warm, smooth stone while Gavri patted his back. Vlasta and Rút would survive—both of them. A lifebond was an act of absolute love, rare in its complete and utter devotion because with one death, it could claim two lives instead of one. Queens and their most valued kuvari among the Quorum elite royal guards rarely lifebonded, as their loss would leave a queendom weakened.
It was, in a way, fortunate that his own father, Ata, hadn’t been lifebonded to Mati when he’d betrayed his family and gone to his death. Gone with a kind, placating grin that haunted Veron’s memories as Ata had secretly left them for the last time, given his life away.
Veron lowered his gaze to the stone. He’d never weaken Nozva Rozkveta that way. Ever. At twenty-seven, he hadn’t even contemplated making the Offering to anyone, let alone the death sentence that was lifebonding.
Heavy footsteps echoed into the lifespring’s cave.
“Will she be all right?” Dhuro asked, half growl and half whine. “I swear by Deep and Darkness, if—”
“She will recover, Your Highness,” Xira said, meeting Dhuro face to face as he dripped rainwater and mud onto the gleaming blackstone. “But”—she turned back to Veron and Gavri—“they’ll need to have something substantial to eat to recover their strength.”
Something more than the individual rations of small game, cave fish, shellfish, and wild bits of edible flora.
The humans had the entire bounty of the sky realm while his people had to scrape and scrounge for the smallest of meals to share—and they couldn’t even hunt in peace.
“They can have my rations,” he said.
“Your Highness,” Rút breathed, sitting up, but he held up a hand.
“It’s done, Rút.” He’d just redouble his efforts hunting in the coming days.
“Mine, too,” Dhuro said, thumping a fist to his chest. “The Brotherhood will pay for this. They have to.”
Xira rested a gentle hand on Veron’s shoulder and directed a fleeting glance in Dhuro’s direction. “I’m certain Her Majesty will be relieved to know Vlasta and Rút are safe.”
In other words, Get this raging prince out of my lifespring.
He nodded. “Come, Brother. Mati will want to know what happened.”
“I’ll report to Captain Riza,” Gavri said, her eyes soft as she parted ways. After having loved his oldest brother Zoran for eight years before he’d left, she knew exactly how Dhuro could get.
Heaving a sigh, Dhuro left the lifespring with him, and they headed toward the black crystal spires of the palace in the heart of Central Cavern.
“The volodari of other queendoms are dropping like flies to the Brotherhood.” Dhuro forced a breath out of his nose and shook his head. “It won’t be long before they focus more of their attention on us.”
“Mati said she’s handling it. It is not our place to qu
estion.” A queen spoke and her subjects obeyed. Every last one. And Mati had said she would resolve the crisis, and to trust her.
“I know. I know.” Dhuro ran a palm over his damp mass of shoulder-length hair. “I just wish she’d trust us enough to tell us what’s going on.”
They passed the kuvari at the entrance and headed down the main corridor, their boots sloshing.
I just wish. That was Dhuro. Always Dhuro. Pushing for more, for privilege, instead of obedience. He’d spent some time among the humans before the Sundering, and had returned with I just wish and Why can’t she just and I think that instead of the stoneclad obedience he’d been born to.
More like Ata. Their father had thought he’d known better than Mati, and had betrayed her and given up his life for that rebellion.
He shook his head. Unthinkable. Unacceptable.
Dhuro strode toward the glaive-bearing kuvari guarding the doors to Mati’s quarters, but they barred his path.
“Prince Veron only,” one of them—Lira—said to Dhuro. “By Her Majesty’s order.”
Crossing his arms, Dhuro stood his ground, staring down at her a moment before grunting and stepping aside. “Figures. Share the knowledge, will you, Brother?”
He eyed Dhuro. Of the many things that could happen, sharing anything a queen said in private wasn’t likely. “How about a sparring session later instead?”
A corner of Dhuro’s mouth turned up. “That’ll do.” With that, he took off.
Lira and her partner opened the doors and stood aside. “Your Highness.”
Captain Riza emerged first, fixing him with sharp eyes that soon gentled. Resting a palm on his shoulder, she breathed deeply and gave him an encouraging nod. If Riza of all people was trying to encourage him, then whatever Mati had to say to him wasn’t going to be good.
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