Sphaira, the crystal city, was a magnificent sight to behold, yet Xander felt empty as he stared through the translucent wall of the guest accommodations. Every house had their own domed building, arranged around the center palace in the same way their islands were, which put his near the northeastern edge of the bustling metropolis. His view of the entrance to the palace, which faced east to welcome the sun, was clear. Small figures zipped in and out of those towering doors, and he scrutinized them all. Tan wings. Ash wings. Speckled feathers. Patterned feathers. On and on it went. Nearly every dove in the House of Peace had a few white plumes. It would be impossible to find the owner of the ivory feather crushed within his fist.
Impossible.
“Lysander?” a suave voice called.
He didn’t move. “I’ve told you not to call me that a thousand times, Mother.”
“Why?” Queen Mariam asked, wings carrying her swiftly across the room to land by his side, her ruby gown vivid against the snowy landscape before them. “It’s your name. Lysander Taetanus, Crown Prince of the House of Whispers. And you’ll be hearing it quite a lot over the course of the next few days.”
Xander sighed. His wings drooped so low that his primaries dragged along the floor, but they sank further still when he turned to look into her brilliant violet eyes. “I’m not giving up on him.”
“I’m not asking you to.”
His laugh was a sad, dark sound. “Please, Mother. You think I didn’t see the way your face lit with the briefest spark when I told you of the dragon’s attack, when you saw the blood for yourself? You wanted Rafe gone the moment he was born, whether he was my brother, my best friend, or not. You’ve only ever seen him as a bastard.”
“That’s what he is,” she said simply, but Xander heard the undercurrent of hatred in her tone—the undercurrent that was always present when she spoke about his brother. He understood why she spoke of his father in that tone, but not of Rafe, who had been nothing but an innocent child at the time and a loyal companion to her lonely son ever since.
“Well, if you’re not here to tell me I’m on a fool’s errand, what are you here for?”
“I’m here to tell you to believe in yourself.”
Xander switched his attention to the world outside the room, which suddenly had become suffocating. “To believe in myself? That’s what I’m doing.”
“No,” she countered, her voice never rising, though it felt as if she were shouting all the same. “You are depending on him, relying on him, and you don’t need to.”
“We've already discussed this,” he muttered through gritted teeth.
“No, you spoke to the advisors behind your queen’s back and turned them all against her to get your way. The two of us have never spoken about this.”
Xander rolled his shoulders, unable to deny that he’d gone around his mother in this one thing. She was queen, yes, but the courtship trials were about him, and for once he wanted to have the final say. The only say. “You’re right, Mother. And I’m sorry for that. But I knew you wouldn’t understand.”
“Why don’t we sit?” she asked, motioning toward the chairs on the other side of the room, away from the window, away from the view, away from thoughts of Rafe. “And discuss it as two sovereigns should.”
Again, he didn’t move. “You’ll never understand, Mother, no matter how many times I try to explain. Rafe and I? We’re two sides of the same coin. Where I’m patient, he’s rash. When I plan, he acts. If I smile, he frowns. At home, I possess every trait of a king. Here, on the other side of the coin, in this foreign land, Rafe has everything I need for success. We balance each other. I can’t do this without him.”
“That’s not true,” she insisted, and lifted her wing, brushing her obsidian feathers against his, trying to soothe him. But he stepped out of reach.
In truth, his mother had given him every opportunity and every choice in life. She’d had special weapons made—shields that attached to his forearm, swords that strapped to his wrist, hooks, wooden hands, and metal fingers. Anything and everything that could be conceived, she’d ordered to be fashioned.
He’d hated them all.
The uncomfortable way they dug into his skin, the blisters that formed along his forearm, the way the sight of them made him feel somehow diminished, especially when his studies required no special tools or craftsmen. The books accepted him into their folds, their pages, and he in turn loved them. Mental exercise had always been his favorite thing. And even if he’d had ten fingers instead of five, Xander didn’t think he would have been any different. If anything, his disability just made it easier to follow his passions by providing an excuse people were too afraid to challenge.
Rafe was the fighter, gifted with a raven cry.
Xander was the prince, the peacemaker, the scholar.
Unfortunately, the trials were a battle, and they required a warrior.
“Not all of the trials are about physical strength,” his mother pressed, reading his thoughts.
Though he knew they weren't fair, he couldn’t prevent the next words from spilling through his lips, because fair or not, true or not, he needed his mother, his sovereign, to understand. “The first trial is archery, correct? What would you have me do, Mother? Step to the line and pull a bowstring with my teeth?”
“That’s only one of the tests,” she said, but not fast enough—not before her gaze dropped to his right hand, or his lack thereof.
His phantom fingers were curled into a fist, holding all his anger, keeping it out of sight. Sometimes he liked to believe that was what had happened—not that he lacked a limb, but that all his hate and fury and pain were balled into a fist so tight, he couldn’t undo it. That his fingers were wrapped so forcefully they’d molded into his skin, they’d trapped themselves, but trapped all those emotions there as well. For the most part, he was happy and positive and cheerful. Only at times like this, when he remembered the fist, did those dark thoughts creep out of hiding.
“What of the navigation trial? What of that?” the queen asked, trying to find his eyes. Xander faced forward, stubbornly refusing to look at her. “You’d be far superior to your brother at that. He may be a fighter, but he lacks the endurance of the hunt.”
“He might not win all the trials,” Xander conceded before he went for the kill, an argument his mother wouldn’t know how to refute. “No one can. But there’s a difference, Mother. A huge one. Rafe might not win all the trials, but when he loses, he will do so with dignity. He won’t turn the ravens into the laughingstock of the seven houses. He won’t be a joke.”
“Lysander!” Queen Mariam snapped, no longer dancing around her son as she grabbed him by the shoulders, spinning him toward her. “Is that what you think? Don’t for a second. You would never, never—”
“Stop it,” he interrupted, pushing her away. “I’m not saying it out of shame or vanity. I’ve come to terms with my strengths and my weaknesses. And our people have, too. But you cannot expect that from the rest of them, from the world outside our sheltered, secretive island. People can be cruel, as you yourself know.” She bit her tongue at that, luminous eyes dimming with silent pain for them both. Xander softened his tone, “It’s not about me, Mother. It’s about our people. There will be five crown princes competing in the trials, but only four second daughters. One house will be left unmatched in the end, and it can’t be us, not again. Our people need a good omen. They need to stop worrying we’ve lost favor with the gods, that we’re being cast out. They need a win. And I’m not too proud to admit that I can’t give them that. But Rafe can.”
His mother lifted her slightly wrinkled palm to his cheek, rubbing her thumb along its ridge. As her hand fell away, her features hardened. “Not if he’s dead.”
Xander stepped back as though he’d been struck, off balance and off kilter even as he knew in his soul it couldn't be true.
The door to his room slammed open.
“My queen, my prince, pardon the intrusion,” the guard stammered as Helen forced her way through the door, face grim.
Xander had never been more grateful for an interruption in his life. He nodded to the guard before addressing his captain, “Do you have news from the House of Peace, Helen?”
“They’ve given us a day,” she said, spitting that last word as though it were a curse, not bothering with titles or pleasantries. “The king says it would be an affront to Aethios to postpone the courtship trials any further. They plan to squeeze the tests into smaller time increments so we can still hold the matching ceremony on the summer solstice, as is tradition.” She collapsed into one of the chairs, grabbed an apple from the table, and turned to the queen. “I didn’t realize you’d be in here, but it makes my life a little easier.”
“I’m trying to convince my son that the delay isn’t necessary,” his mother said, raising her tone at the end in a silent question.
Helen’s gaze moved to Xander.
When he had first raised the idea of switching places with Rafe for the courtship trials, she’d been his biggest supporter, helping to convince his mother’s older, more rigid advisors to loosen their adherence to the rules. Helen never held her tongue. She didn’t worry about hurting his feelings. Her focus was on the house. On keeping it safe. On keeping it strong. And it was the thing he appreciated most about her—it was the reason he’d appointed her as captain of the guards and unofficial advisor to the crown prince when his mother had told him to step in and start taking charge of the kingdom he would one day rule. They were of like minds and not afraid of making tough decisions.
But in this instance, Xander used the oldest technique in the book to save Helen from the unnecessary wrath of the queen. He changed the subject. “Are the patrols back yet? Did they find anything?”
“There’s no sign of your brother, aside from what we found at the bridge,” Helen said matter-of-factly, not even attempting to lessen the blow. “No more bloodstains, no more feathers, no body. Nothing. The teams came back completely empty-handed.”
“What’s our next move?”
She lifted the apple to her lips and sank her teeth into it, ripping out a bite. Xander narrowed his eyes as she chewed.
She’s delaying.
Why is she delaying?
Before he had a chance to ask, Helen swallowed and sat up. “I think in this instance your mother might be right. You need to prepare for the trials.”
Xander’s invisible fist clenched so tightly, his right arm started trembling. “I refuse to believe that’s the case.”
And Helen refused to back down. “We searched the area—”
“Search it again. Someone was there. I saw the print in the blood. You did too.”
Her eyes softened the slightest bit.
Xander hated to see it, hated the concession, because he saw it for what it really was—pity.
“Even if someone was there, even if someone recovered his body,” Helen continued, voice forceful despite the subtle shift in her expression, “Rafe will be in no shape to compete in the courtship trials, which are being delayed only a single day. You saw the blood, same as I did. If he’s alive somewhere, he’s hanging on by a thread. He’ll have no time to recover. I’ll keep sending search parties day and night until you order me to stop, but that doesn’t change the fact that you, my prince, will be representing the House of Whispers in the courtship trials, whether you want to or not.”
Xander opened his mouth but shut it quickly, swallowing his counterargument. Revealing the truth would be even more dangerous than letting them believe his brother was dead. In fact, it would most likely kill him. And Xander knew in his heart that Rafe was alive somewhere out there on that frozen tundra, waiting for him.
“I’m going to join the search party tomorrow.”
“You’ll do no such thing,” Helen said. “You have one day to prepare for tests we never thought you’d face. Leave your brother to me.”
Holding his captain’s gaze, Xander didn't blink or back down. “You were right. I am the Crown Prince of the House of Whispers. And I will be joining the search party tomorrow.”
Helen folded her lips into a thin line but kept them shut.
Xander glanced to his mother. There was a mix of pride and frustration on her face, but mostly of love. She dipped her head, granting him permission to do what he would have done with or without the royal seal of approval.
I’m coming, Rafe, he thought, returning to the glistening city on the other side of the crystal wall. Hold on. I’m coming.