No amount of bracing could’ve prepared me for that.
Hearing the name I hadn’t spoken—or heard anyone else speak—in over twenty years fall from Ursula’s lips shocked me as little else could. She’d timed her attack perfectly, distracting me by evoking the fear for her that plagued me, outmaneuvering me, then slipping under my guard to deliver that strike directly to my heart.
She watched me with keen attention, no doubt cataloguing every whisper of reaction. I’d had to fall in love with a woman with an intellect as razor sharp as her sword. I should’ve known she’d ferret out my secrets eventually.
Even those I’d vowed to keep, because they weren’t only mine.
“How?” I finally managed to ask, once I had the breath to sound reasonably in control of myself. “Kral told you,” I realized, my thoughts finally catching up.
My brother Kral had unexpectedly defected to our side of the war, becoming the only member of my family I didn’t have to dread facing on a battlefield. He also formed the third point of our lethal family triangle: Kral, Jenna, and me. The bad blood had festered between us for years until we agreed to put it away. Not that we’d actually dealt with it. I’d thought he didn’t care to discuss it any more than I did.
“Not Kral.” Ursula replied, confirming that. “He’s as tight-lipped on the topic as you are. Jepp told me.”
“Jepp,” I echoed, feeling thick and stupid. Former scout in Ursula’s elite troop of Hawks, Jepp had inexplicably fallen in love with my domineering and arrogant brother, and was the reason he’d left the Empire. She didn’t give up her footloose ways and settle down—she hadn’t changed that dramatically—instead she sailed the seas with Kral on his ship the Hákyrling. And Ursula had restored Kral’s title and status as General, but of our forces in the field. The Hákyrling was patrolling the magic barrier, watching for incursions from Deyrr and monitoring the build-up of the Dasnarian navy.
Surely Jepp hadn’t learned about Jenna from Kral. Ah… but, Jepp had gone to Dasnaria as a spy. She’d been to the Imperial Palace.
Acutely aware of Ursula’s scrutiny as I put it together, I sat, the weight of the past and the secrets I’d carried so long suddenly feeling too heavy to bear. “Jepp learned the story in Dasnaria.” I nodded to myself when Ursula’s expression confirmed it. “Who told her?”
“Your other sisters, Inga and Helva—more sisters I had no idea existed—told her the whole story. She reported it to me.”
I winced, rubbing my eyes with one hand, bracing myself on the wall with the other, as I felt oddly dizzy. Of course Jepp had reported everything to her captain and queen. “How long have you known?”
Ursula’s mouth thinned, not pleased with that response. Truly I was lucky she hadn’t cut my throat in my sleep. The last time she’d discovered I’d kept a secret from her about my family—that I was a former prince of the imperial household in Dasnaria—she’d drawn blood, then coolly cut me out of her life. Not that she’d had much luck with that. As she’d noted, I could be a stubborn man.
“I debriefed Jepp on the Tala ship while I was recovering from my injury.” She raised a brow, daring me to quibble with the term again. I wouldn’t. I needed to pick my battles with her very carefully now.
I nodded, assimilating all of it. That had happened months ago. All this time, Ursula had known and said nothing. I could take comfort that she’d continued to share my bed and welcomed me with her body, but I could see now that we hadn’t been quite the same—and that I’d been too preoccupied to notice.
“It seems then that the distance between us isn’t entirely of my own making,” I said, more of a feint than a strike, just to test her defenses.
Her jaw tightened, her thumb caressing the faceted ruby in the hilt of her sword. “I’m right here,” she said, tossing my words back at me. “And I’ve given you plenty of opportunities to tell me all of this. Including just a moment ago.”
She had, I realized, asking me all those leading questions about my family, about the bad blood between me and Kral. Asking me to confide my worries in her. And I’d deflected them all, out of habit, in part. Also out of the comfortable assumption that she didn’t know that history. Over time it had been easier not to talk about any of the sisters I’d left behind, when I talked about Dasnaria at all. That’s the great problem with lies of omission—over time, they begin to feel less like lies than an alternate truth, one that becomes a façade that weakens with age.
Because I hadn’t replied, she continued. “Jepp explained that these vows of yours are related to this family history, so I should give you latitude for that—in fact, she thought long and hard whether to tell me everything she knew—but I’ve had a lot of time, and enforced inactivity, to contemplate this and I think there’s a lot you could have confided in me, had you chosen to.”
I couldn’t argue with that. The fact that Jepp had considered not reporting everything she knew… that would’ve lodged in Ursula’s heart, and craw, as well. I’d well and truly fucked this up.
I spread my hands, making myself meet her penetrating gaze. “I apologize. I’m at fault and I don’t expect forgiveness.”
She stared at me, unrelenting. “You do that so easily, but I don’t think this is that simple for me.”
“I’m surprised you haven’t tried to kill me,” I ventured, trying for the joke.
“I thought about it,” she answered crisply, but without her usual fire. Then she looked away. “I don’t understand why you wouldn’t at least tell me about Inga and Helva. Brothers. You only ever mentioned brothers. You know everything about me—things no other living person does, because you wouldn’t settle for anything less—and you didn’t trust me with the smallest thing. All I can think about is what else I don’t know about you. I’m not at all sure where to go from here.”
“Court should be starting soon,” I offered, still hoping for levity. The other possibility, that I’d destroyed her trust in me, didn’t bear thinking about. Ursula didn’t trust easily. What another woman might be able to forgive and forget would feel like the ultimate betrayal to her.
She leveled an icy glare on me. “As you so love to say, they can hardly start without me.”
I braced my hands on my thighs, studying them. “Why today?” I asked.
“Excuse me?” She’d drawn her High Queen imperious attitude around herself like a protective cloak, the offense clear in her voice. When I looked at her, she’d indeed straightened her spine, looking every inch the warrior queen.
I barreled on, eager to at least extract myself from this corner she’d boxed me into. Standing, I gestured to the heights of Ordnung’s walls, arguably one of the very few places we could speak without being interrupted or overheard by the ubiquitous staff and anxious courtiers who plagued every moment of Ursula’s day. She’d picked this spot and plotted her attack, meticulously planned and devastatingly thorough.
“Why did you choose today to confront me with this, when you’ve known for months?” I clarified. “You could’ve told me you knew long before this, instead of asking leading questions, testing me. You let me hang as you reeled in the rope.”
“Don’t you dare try to turn this back on me,” she warned, quiet fury in her tone, her fingers sliding down to curl around the hilt of her sword. She stood just outside my reach, were I to draw my own broadsword on her—a distance she knew precisely from all the times we’d sparred.
“Will you draw on me?” I asked softly. I didn’t think she would. We’d come a long way with each other, and she’d promised never pull a weapon on me again. Not a physical one, anyway, or rather, not with lethal intent. But my Essla was a woman of strong passions and not always predictable. I could best her with my strength where she outmatched me in speed.
I, however, could never harm her. Not physically. In her righteous anger, she might have no such scruples with me.
“I’m tempted,” she replied.
“Then do it,” I dared her. Better to fight it out and get it done.
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” Then she sagged, releasing her blade and lifting her hands to her face. “It would be easier. I’m aware that’s one of the ways you manage me.”
Reflexively, I stepped toward her, to comfort her, to—
“Don’t.” Her hard voice cut me short. She dropped her hands and gazed at me. “To answer your question, two reasons why today. The first…” Her voice shook as it never did, and she firmed her jaw. “I think I couldn’t stand it anymore. I promised you a long time ago that I wouldn’t walk away again without letting you explain, but I waited every day for you to tell me about this—even pieces of it—and day after day you pretended it wasn’t there, carving a hole between us. Yes, it would be easier to call you out, to match blades and see who takes first blood, but that would be redundant. First blood is yours. This cut me, Harlan. Cut me to the quick and I’m still bleeding.”
“Essla, I’m sorry,” I said, fully realizing the weakness of those words, how ineffective to express anything at all.
“I’m sure you are.” She smiled slightly, but it didn’t touch the sorrow in her eyes. “And I wish that could be enough for me. Maybe it’s a flaw in my character, but it isn’t enough. There aren’t that many people in my life I can believe will always tell me the truth—now more than ever. You were one of those people.”
The past tense hit me like a knife to the kidneys, and I groped for breath to reply.
“You have a choice, I think,” she continued. “The second reason is that starting two weeks ago I received a series of messages from Dasnaria, relaying information supposedly leaked from the Imperial Palace.”
I grappled with that equally astonishing news—as well as the fact that she’d kept it from me. “How do you know that’s where it’s from?” I asked.
“I don’t have a way of verifying, do I?” She snapped. “The information is coded to make me think it comes from someone in your family. ‘From inside the fist,’ it said.”
The stunning blows kept coming. That would indeed imply from a Konyngrr—the silver fist being our family emblem—as Ursula knew, but few others would.
“If it’s legitimate, I think the messages come from one or both of your sisters.”
“My sisters?” I echoed, pondering the absolute implausibility of that.
“Aspects of the messages are decidedly feminine. What are the odds it’s them—or perhaps another female associate of yours?” she pressed. “What can you tell me without violating your vows?”
“I…” I didn’t know what to say. Mostly I wanted to fight back, to growl at her not to interrogate me like one of her subjects—especially that jab about some unknown female associate—even as I knew I deserved every bit of it. “It’s not easy to untangle those threads, what I can and can’t reveal. That’s why I never mentioned any of my sisters, because it was easier to put everything about them behind the same door.”
She nodded slightly, unsurprised. “I think you have to consider that your loyalties are divided. We face a war with your family and—”
“There is no question that my loyalty lies with you,” I interrupted her furiously.
She held up a hand, icily calm. Quite the reversal for us. “I’ve given this a lot of thought,” she reminded me. “You need to do the same. You’ve withheld information from me that’s arguably critical to this impending war. I know you want to believe that the Elskastholrr you swore to me makes everything clear cut, but you have other vows, too, ones you made before that to keep your sisters secret. Which vows take precedence, Harlan?”
Flummoxed, I had no reply. I didn’t need one, evidently, because she nodded again, smiling sadly. “There is no easy way out of this,” she repeated. “If you have to leave in order to reconcile your conflicting interests, I’ll understand.”
Leave? The thought of leaving her shredded my heart. “How can you even think I would?” I asked, my voice coming out ragged. “Or could?”
“We always knew our love affair might be short-lived,” she replied, softly, with deep sorrow. “That our differences might end at exactly this sort of conflict. I told you from the beginning that I belonged to the High Throne first, and because of that I’m a warrior for my kingdom, and only incidentally a woman.”
“And I told you that’s only because you don’t put the woman first,” I said with more bitterness than I’d intended.
“You’re absolutely right.” She inclined her chin, acknowledging the problem, but not apologizing. “I don’t put the woman first. I can’t, and I never will. I don’t want you to leave. You’ll tear my heart out and take it with you if you go. But I belonged to the High Throne from the day of my birth, and I can’t let you stay if you’re a threat to it.”