Her sword sheathed at her hip, tri-point crown glinting, and a phalanx of her personal guard trailing, Ursula strode through the outer gates, sharp gaze fixing on me for a long, inscrutable moment before she scanned the scene. Without a flicker of surprise, she took in the unprecedented sight of the enormous blue-black dragon gently wafting to settle on the expanse where tradesfolk and visitors to Castle Ordnung typically pastured their horses. Defying all common sense, the immense creature hovered like a hummingbird, setting itself down precisely and gently, though the great leathery wings stirred dust into whirlwinds.
“Who is it?” Ursula inquired, as if receiving an ambassador in court.
“Marskal, Jepp, and Kral, on an unidentified dragon,” I replied, with some bemusement, shaking my head for the absurdity.
“What kind of world are we living in that we even use phrases like ‘unidentified dragon,’” she muttered, sliding me a look.
I laughed under my breath, glad to connect with the woman behind the regal mask. “You got here fast,” I noted.
“I followed our agreement,” she countered.
“The letter of it, anyway.” I said it mildly enough. Had she remained in the throne room until I sent word, it would have taken her twice as long to arrive, even at a dead run. I’d timed it.
She elected not to reply, apparently absorbed by the spectacle of Marskal sliding down the dragon’s extended leg, followed by Jepp and Kral. My brother wore fighting leathers in the Hawks’ style, rather than the Dasnarian armor he’d affected for longer than he’d kept his loyalty to the Empire, though he carried a broadsword as I did. He caught my eye, gestured at the dragon, and shook his head.
I dipped my chin. We lived in interesting times.
Marskal turned to look at the dragon and held out a hand, as if to a lady love, and the immense creature vanished, replaced by Zynda. Clad in a simple, pale-blue silk gown, her long, black hair streaming down her back, the Tala shapeshifter smiled radiantly, and placed her hand on Marskal’s arm.
Ursula let out a short breath, too quiet for anyone but me to hear, and too subtle for anyone who didn’t know her as well as I did to understand it as sheer vexation. Even knowing shapeshifters could perform such tricks didn’t make our minds assimilate such impossible-seeming transitions. Never mind the additional headaches that receiving friendly but gigantic monsters at Ordnung would cause.
With Marskal and Zynda in the lead, Jepp and Kral following behind, the foursome strolled up to us. Arm in arm, they might be honored guests arriving for a ball.
“Your Majesty.” Marskal bowed, then saluted in the Hawks’ fashion, fist over heart, Jepp echoing the salute. Kral inclined his chin, an expansive gesture of respect for him, while Zynda smiled easily. Extracting her hand from Marskal’s arm, she embraced Ursula, kissing her on the cheek.
“It’s good to see you, Cousin,” she said.
“Likewise,” Ursula replied, smiling with warmth, unbending for the first time in hours. “Though I rather didn’t expect to see you on two legs again. Or possibly at all.”
Marskal made an odd choking sound and cleared his throat. Zynda shot him an amused look over her shoulder. “Things went better than we hoped,” she said, “though it takes a bit of explaining.” She arched her finely etched brows in significance, and Ursula took the hint.
“Let’s retire to my council chambers,” she declared, loudly enough for all to hear. “Court is postponed until afternoon.” She caught my pointed glance, but ignored my unspoken opinion that this would be a good opportunity to cancel court entirely for the day. Determined to work herself into the ground.
We passed through the deep outer walls of Ordnung, the gated entrance tunnel casting a deep, cold shadow, a reminder that the warm summer was still tentative and new. There hadn’t been enough time for it to fully banish the winter chill. Zynda strolled beside her cousin. Jepp and Marskal, likely out of long habit, marched side by side, conversing quietly, which left my brother and me to bring up the rear.
Hlyti seemed determined today to demonstrate that I couldn’t leave the past behind. Though hlyti isn’t a deity so much as the force of destiny in Dasnarian thinking, it is capricious, so I sent up a prayer that it would treat us as kindly as possible.
Kral had aged since that last night that all three of us were together. Of course, we’d both aged in the ensuing years. Jenna, however, remained locked in my mind looking as she had that night, forever a girl of eighteen, the last time I laid eyes on her. Unbelievably lovely, even with her ivory hair cropped short—an attempt at disguise—her deep blue eyes enormous in her delicate face, she swam in my clothes. Though four years her junior and nowhere near my adult bulk, I’d already outweighed her by half again as much.
The long sleeves of my shirt at least covered the raw wounds on her wrists and the other injuries she bore on her willowy body. Nothing could hide the haunted look in her eyes.
She’d been happy, though, as much as she could be. We both were, giddy with the prospect of imminent escape, and we’d been ravenous when we’d ordered the meal—food we never ended up eating, because Kral had found us.
I’d learned many lessons that night, all of them deeply painful, and just as deeply embedded.
“You’re quiet, rabbit,” Kral observed in Dasnarian, and I looked over at him. The age difference between us had vanished over the years. Four years meant little for men our age. Back then, it had meant everything. Though he was a bit younger than Jenna, barely more than a boy himself that night, he’d been far harder than either of us, already chiseled with the cutting edges our parents had carved into him with relentless purpose.
“You’re the garrulous one, shark,” I replied in the same language. The language of home, bittersweet to me, with its twin threads of cruelty and nostalgia interwoven.
He snorted, eyes lingering on Jepp in front of us. She’d softened him considerably. Immeasurably, really, as I’d never have predicted Kral would turn his back on the ambitions he’d given up his humanity to pursue. He wasn’t the same viciously triumphant young man who’d held me at sword point and gloated over his victory.
Nor was I the weaponless fourteen-year-old boy who’d faced the devastating failure to save his sister from her terrible fate. Though Kral and I had made amends when we encountered one another again, it had been more of a tourniquet to stop the mortal blood flow that threatened to taint the present as well as the past. We’d agreed to move forward, as the men we’d become.
But that night hung between us still, hampering easy conversation. I’d think he didn’t feel the pain of that unhealed wound as I did, except for the way he searched for things to say to me.
“I’ve had word from our sister,” Kral said, jolting me out of my thoughts. He’d spoken quietly, as if we could be overheard though he still spoke in Dasnarian. All of our companions had picked up varying degrees of our language, so his discretion was well deployed.
Kral’s mouth twisted as he gauged the look on my face. “Not that sister. Inga.”
Ah. “And?” I prompted.
He gestured ahead at Ursula’s straight spine. “You’ll hear in the debriefing.”
“Then why mention it now?”
“Maybe I wanted to see if you’d think I meant Jenna.”
Twice in one morning. Hlyti had taken a broadsword to me, done with playing. I said nothing. Could say nothing.
“Silent as a boulder, peaceful as a tree,” Kral observed with some cheer, probably pleased at having drawn blood. “The Skablykrr does all those dour monks claim, making you silent as the grave that Jenna likely found—”
He didn’t complete that foul sentence, breath knocked out of him by the stone wall slamming into his back, his head clapping against it hard enough to daze him. Face pale, icy eyes for once lacking arrogance, he gaped at me over my broadsword laid against his throat.
I could kill him. Silence his mocking superiority for all time.
“Harlan.”
Ursula’s implacable voice cut through the snarl of my thoughts and jagged emotions. I became aware that Jepp held a dagger to my throat. Marskal on my other side, calming hand on my shoulder. Ursula stepped beside Kral, catching my eye, flicking a warning glance at Jepp, whose dagger point pricked my skin uncomfortably.
“You’ve gotten faster, brother,” Kral wheezed from a tight throat, straining back from my blade, palms raised in surrender.
“Don’t speak of her.” I said it in Dasnarian, using words of command and warning.
Kral opened his mouth and I sank the blade against his throat, still the flat, but enough of an edge to draw a trickle of blood.
“Harlan,” Jepp said evenly. “Don’t make me choose between my lover and my queen.”
I ignored her. And Ursula, calm and steely as she stared me down.
“Understood?” I asked Kral.
He closed his mouth. Nodded as much as my blade would allow.
I dropped the sword, releasing him, stepped back and sheathed it. Jepp moved immediately to his side, a dagger in each hand, big dark eyes hard on me. She also assessed me with some surprise, a new caution. Finishing the dance, Ursula moved to my side, Marskal still on the other, hand on my shoulder.
“Not speaking of her changes nothing,” Kral said to me, still in Dasnarian, rubbing a hand over his throat and inspecting the blood on his fingers. “Some day you’re going to have to face the reality that she is—”
I lunged at him, barehanded, but Ursula and Marskal were ready this time. He caught me in a hold—a Dasnarian one I’d taught him, Danu take the man—and though I could’ve broken it, given a moment more to muster my superior strength, Ursula interposed herself between me and Kral, knowing I’d die before I hurt her.
“What in Danu’s freezing tits has gotten into you?” she hissed at me. Beyond her, Jepp kept a wary eye on me, but conferred in furious whispers with Kral.
I took a breath, reaching for the Skablykrr calm Kral had mocked. “It’s been a thrice-cursed trying day,” I muttered at her.
Her expression softened and she laid a hand on my cheek, a rare gesture of public affection. Especially considering that her retinue of guards, along with a good portion of the gate guards, now surrounded us, weapons drawn.
“I apologize,” I said to her, and stopped there, hoping she’d understand all the words I couldn’t say. Marskal, feeling the killing rage leave my body, relaxed his choke hold and, with another firm and reassuring clasp of my shoulder, stepped back.
“We’ll talk later,” Ursula promised. She moved back enough to take in both Kral and me at once. “General Kral, please accept the High Throne’s apology for violating a truce of hospitality.”
Surprised, he looked to her. “Your Majesty.” He inclined his head. “No apology needed. I should apologize for baiting my brother. An old argument that elicits… unpredictable reactions.”
“Get more predictable, both of you,” she replied crisply.
“Yes, your Majesty,” I bowed to her, then straightened. Habitually, my hand moved to give her the Elskastholrr salute, a promise and reminder, a grounding return to center—and for the first time since I’d made her that promise, I hesitated.
I didn’t know if she realized I’d stopped myself, that the conflicts and doubts had seeded themselves in me so deeply that I wasn’t sure of myself anymore. She might not have observed it since she’d turned away, dismissing the guards and thanking them for their alert attention. A duty that should’ve fallen to me, had I not been the cause of it all.
“As we were then,” she declared, gesturing Jepp and Kral to precede us. “Perhaps you should attend to other duties,” she said quietly to me. “Burn off some steam.”
Marskal lingered close, ready to enforce her commands, no doubt.
“Your Majesty,” I said, accepting the implicit judgment. As much as I wanted to affirm—perhaps have her confirm—that my place was at her side, I was in no shape to be in the same room with Kral. “I’ll be working out in the training yard if you need me.”
I left before she could tell me that she didn’t.