7

Don’t Scream

Achlys tweaks my gown into place, the other servants in the room oblivious that she’s dressing me and not their true mistress.

“Do you miss Tropikis?” I ask. Her home dominion. I’ve never asked before, and suddenly that seems wrong.

Achlys’s hands still, and she glances up, then resumes what she’s doing. “I miss the rivers and how green everything is,” she says. “It’s so dry here—”

A tsk from one of the other servants cuts her off. Because, of course, most are from Aryd.

“It is dry,” I agree, and they bury their noses in their work. No one would dare argue with the soon-to-be queen.

She shoots me a grateful look, but otherwise we fall into silence. Tabra is hiding in our garden with Eidolon’s gift. She has barely looked away from it today.

I shift on my feet, uneasy with that. Something is off with her, but I can’t put a pin in what exactly.

“Stay still, domina,” Achlys scolds gently. “If I don’t get this dress right, you’ll fall out of it.” She directs a pointed look at my breasts, but really the problem is with the dress itself. Not appropriate given the situation, and I make a mental note to have Achlys talk to the seamstress.

My dress tonight goes on in layers, each piece a tribute to one of the six dominions. A visible display that royalty is ordained by all the goddesses. The crowning piece is the beaded overdress with an intricate collar made of colored glass from each region of Aryd—blue, black, green, red, and white. The trinkets tinkle with delicate sounds every time I move.

Maybe not the best choice, given how I’m trembling.

My hair has been pinned up in intricate knotting—a guaranteed headache by the end of the night. My makeup is applied last: glittering dust from the Salt Towers in all colors of the rainbow around my eyes, rouge for my cheeks, and red ocher for my lips. A dusting of copper flakes decorates the bare skin of my shoulders. Finally, two glittering, flat-edged onyx chips have been glued to the inner corners of my eyes.

No crown. Not before the coronation.

The funeral will come after Tabra’s coronation, never leaving the throne without a queen, even a dead one.

“There we are, domina.” Achlys carefully turns me to face the tall obsidian slab that stands in a corner of Tabra’s chamber, acting as a mirror.

By law, no glass larger than the palm of a hand is allowed anywhere in the dominions except the temples. Too dangerous. Even though the glass portals in those temples haven’t been able to be replicated, the law guarantees that an Imperium can’t turn the glass into their own secret portal.

Invasions or worse could be started that way.

Our walls are different, and maybe the goddess designed them that way. With no reflection, they can’t work as a portal. People have tried. Myself included.

I stare at my muted reflection.

The girl staring back is beautiful—lips that to my critical gaze are too full, ebony hair gleaming in the shine of the many oil lamps and braziers lighting Tabra’s room, eyes that can be deeply mysterious but also as fiery as embers—this woman is beautiful, but she is not me. Will never be me.

Yes, Tabra and I have the same face. But except for the strong chin with the delicate indent in the center that smacks of stubbornness, the woman who stares back now is more my sister, true royalty through and through, than I will ever be. I’m just bait.

Please don’t let him kill me.

At Achlys’s raised brows, concern pursing her lips, I turn away from the reflection.

“Lovely,” I say, acting the part of Tabra at her sweetest for everyone else in the room. “You’ve outdone yourselves.”

“I’ll tell the viziers you are on your way,” Achlys says with a satisfied nod, then ushers everyone out with her.

“Let me take a look at you.” I turn my head to find Tabra peeping out from our garden. Eidolon’s gift sparkles from around her fingertips. She tried to put it around her neck, which got a hells no from me, so she’s been holding it. I don’t like it, but I don’t say so. We’ve already argued about her wearing it once, and I won that one. Sort of.

Instead, I turn to face her for the final check. Something we always do. Tabra runs her gaze over me, pausing at my right hand as always. Her lips twitch. “Where’s your signet?”

We both wear a signet ring with the royal crest of Aryd—a striking cobra in dunes—but rather than pass one back and forth and risk misplacing it, Grandmother gave us each one. I always “forget” mine so I have an excuse to return to my chamber and hide a knife or two on me, which I can’t exactly do with all the servants around.

In my room, after arming myself, I find the dress I arrived in and fish out the ring, which I had left in the pocket. Then frown, feeling something else.

I pull my hand out and find Omma’s amulet resting in my palm beside my ring.

My heart drops to the soles of my feet. Holy hellfires, what are the odds, given what’s in my sister’s hands right this minute?

It glitters at me as I run my thumb over the jagged white glass that is unexpectedly smooth to the touch. Omma has worn this necklace for as long as I can remember, though usually under her clothes where no one can see. I stare at it, realizing she must have slipped it into my pocket at some point. Also realizing why she did.

That was goodbye, that last time at the hovel. What she does next now is up to her, as long as she is never recognized. Death, disfigurement, or living in a remote part of another dominion are the usual choices, but she never told me what she planned if it came to it.

Regardless, she’s gone. I’m her now.

Goddess save me.

If I’m her now, this amulet has something to do with the queens. What does that mean, then, that Eidolon has a similar one? Do all the sovereigns have one? If so, why did Omma have it instead of my grandmother?

“Are you coming?” Tabra asks from the doorway.

I shake myself out of my spiraling thoughts and slip the necklace around my neck, tucking the amulet between my breasts and the gold chain under the collar of the dress, then put on my ring and turn to face her. Somehow, its weight comforts me. I am not the first to be in this position, and goddesses willing, I will not be the last. Tonight, when it’s just the two of us, we’ll need to figure out what the amulets mean. But for now… “All set.”

The hallway is empty when I come out of the room. Normally, I would be escorted, but arriving alone to the pre-coronation presentation is tradition, signifying the passing from princess to ruler. I must enter the throne room on my own.

Why’d I sign up to be the princess for this one again?

Behind me, Tabra quietly closes our door with a barely audible snick. The beads of my dress softly chime as I take the annoyingly mincing steps Omma taught me. “Princesses walk daintily,” she always insisted. “They do not tromp around like great, hulking boys.”

“Who says so?” I’d asked as a child. But to Tabra, this is second nature. I have to concentrate.

As I enter the long hallway that leads to the courtyard, I ignore every obsidian wall decorated with painted carvings of the history of our people. Minus a few odd, forgotten princesses.

“Meren?”

I turn my head without thinking about it. Then stumble a little as it sinks in. My name. Not Tabra’s.

Familiar eyes in an achingly familiar face stare at me from the darkness. A man, not a boy any longer, dressed in the ornate, fitted ceremonial clothes of the Wanderers.

Cain steps out of the shadows in an alcove. “My queen?”

Was that what he’d said before? Not my name? I glance around, heart sputtering. What in the circles of the hells is he doing in here?

He stops suddenly with a heavy frown, his gaze searching my face. Does he recognize me through the glamour of becoming my sister?

Oh goddess.

A horrible realization hits me in the chest, squeezing the air from my lungs. Tabra. Is that why he’s here? His father wanted to arrange a marriage with a highborn, and no one is higher than my sister.

I scrape my brain for any idea of what I should do, what I should say. But I’ve got nothing. That useless lump inside my head needs to work harder.

“Can we talk?” he asks.

“I…” Burning brimstone. I force myself to tip my head at a regally commanding angle. “You should make an appointment for an audience.”

I go to brush past him, but he takes me by my wrist, tugging me close. He smells of sand and the spices the Wanderers bake into their bread. I raise my gaze to his and still as he suddenly smiles. The kind he’s always given me—amusement and acceptance and a sweet sort of protectiveness.

“By the goddesses… It is you,” Cain says, utterly sure of himself as always. “I saw you walking toward me, and I wasn’t sure, but—”

Panic makes my motions jerky as I take a step back, then one more. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

The words are tar in my mouth. Before he can react, I pick up my skirts and rush away. Again. Maybe I’m destined to always run away from him.

In seconds, I’m through the buttressed entrance leading into the central courtyard of the palace grounds, then past the massive well in the center of the garden, with its staircase that winds down to where the clearest, purest water in the kingdom flows.

But guilt slows my steps. Maybe I should just tell Cain the truth…and let him go. My friend deserves that much. Before I can turn back, though, a man steps out of the darkness into my path, and everything inside me goes quiet.

“You.” I’m not sure if I whisper the word or just think it, my lips are so stiff.

Recognition is instant—a full-body rush, as if all of me knows him. The stranger from last night. Goddess, my mind hadn’t exaggerated the harsh beauty of his face or the heavy aura of dangerous command that lingers around him.

He’s dressed in black again, only this time the cut and material of his clothing tells me he has to be one of the authoritates. A lower courtier, maybe, though one I’ve never seen in the palace. And nothing about this man suggests lower anything.

Criminal or authoritate? Which is it?

Authoritate would be much worse. Because, despite my face having been covered that night, I met this man as Meren. As the real me, dressed as a waif, sneaking through the streets of Enora, out of the city and into the desert.

The queen has been dead all of one day, and I’ve fouled up twice. It’s bad enough I’ll have to deal with Cain—if this man recognizes me, no way in hells can I explain why Princess Tabra had been doing any of that.

I should demand who he is. We can’t risk anyone else knowing about us.

Only his gaze stops me. That same intentness as before strikes me silent, along with the same odd sense that he sees beyond the trappings of royalty and truly sees me.

Sees me and wants me.

Just like before, I can’t seem to untangle myself from his gaze. Iron bands tighten around my lungs with every passing second, every breath. I hesitate for…I don’t know what.

“Hey!” Cain shouts from behind us.

The stranger’s eyes go hard, predatory, as he jerks his gaze from my face to over my shoulder.

Then suddenly, impossibly, he’s gone.

I jerk around only to shriek as a shadow rears up behind Cain like a wall of heavy smoke. It slams him hard against the nearest column, and Cain’s head hits with a crack that reverberates through the courtyard.

He crumples, out cold.

I should be screaming, helping, running, something, but I’m frozen, like flash-heating sand only to instantly turn it to hard glass. My mind doesn’t accept what it’s seeing. As if I’m watching from a distance or from other eyes. Confusion swirls through me because my senses are telling me this man is scary—like Enfernae scary.

Cain’s hand drops to the tiles, and something he was holding rolls across the pathway—the golden cuff he’d offered me before. For me? Or was he planning to give it to his new bride? It takes me another beat of pure disbelief to yank my gaze from the bracelet to the man who now stands over my friend.

Anger burns through the shock holding me immobile. Anger at myself.

What the hells am I thinking, standing here staring? Self-preservation finally kicks in. “Guards!” I call out, frustration sharpening my voice. On that single shout, I bolt, hampered by my dress.

“I’m sorry,” that delicious voice whispers into my ear, a lover’s caress.

So fast. He got to me so fast.

My heart is doing its best to break through my chest and leave the rest of me behind.

“I can’t let him have you,” he says.

Can’t let who have me?

The thought has barely formed when shadows snap out from the night. The darkness pins my arms to my sides and swallows us, wraps around us like a cocoon.

I scream.

“Don’t waste your breath, princess.” No more lover. His voice is bored now. And brutal. “No one can hear you.”

By some magical force, I am dragged along in his wake as he runs past Cain’s unconscious body and back through the empty palace. He’s right—no one can hear me. No one is coming for me. They’re all waiting in the throne room for me…for the new queen.

Through the swirling vortex of shadows holding me hostage, I catch only quick glimpses of our surroundings as he takes us through the grounds, past guards already dead at the outer gates, and into the cobbled city streets beyond.

My stomach heaves a protest. They’re dead because of me.

No, not me…because of him.

He says nothing as we go, so dark he almost becomes the shadows himself, moving with the prowling grace of every predator intent on a kill.

A single name repeats in my mind over and over.

Eidolon.

He has to be. It explains the moment of recognition—connection, even. I’ve never seen the king in person, but while he notoriously allows no paintings of his face, his profile can be found on Tyndran coins, and Omma had made sure to show me. He is said to be as handsome as the goddesses’ consorts once were.

Before Cain showed up in the courtyard, I thought I’d seen wanting in this man’s eyes. And I was stupidly, horribly right. He wants the girl he believes to be the next Queen of Aryd so he can get rid of her. Kill her.

Just like he got rid of so many of the queens who came before us.

Terror must have kicked my warped sense of humor into a near frantic level, because suddenly I’m laughing. Bitter, cringing laughter. But there’s a much bigger problem than my embarrassment at being momentarily captivated by an evil king. Twice.

It looks like I’ll get to fulfill my purpose as Tabra’s decoy sooner than I’d planned. I have no doubt whatsoever that Eidolon intends to wipe out yet another queen of Aryd.

Only he’s got the wrong girl.