A pot. Water in the pot. A handful of peelings, fresh or not. Be glad of the pot.
~ Osri recipe for yombark tea
I’D JUST FINISHED splashing all over when Zik’s anxious rap sounded at the privacy chamber door. “What are you doing in there?”
By the amaranthine light, I had no idea. “There’s this situation with hart spit and fingernails—”
“Feinan,” he groaned. “You can’t go before the king with dirty fingernails.”
“He’ll not look at my hands,” I said with some asperity. “He’ll not look at me at all.”
“We can’t be late,” he fretted. “We’ll meet you in the grand gallery for the blessing before we eat.”
“Just wait. My hands aren’t that dirty.”
But I emerged to empty chambers. They’d left me!
Grumbling, I bolted for the dressing room where Zik and I had organized our clothing and other supplies. I stopped short. A knee-length tunic and trim hose in the smoothest gray yaxen wool I’d ever touched were laid out on my cot with clear intent. Beside lay a belt and two bracelets braided from spectrum threads with colorful knots shaped into symbols of Sevaare’s summer fruits. When had Zik found time to do this? He might not speak aloud without stuttering, but he would nevertheless remind the High Keep of the sweetness Sevaare brought to their lives—and, as I peered closer at the design to admire the small black threads woven within, also its thorns.
I yanked the tunic over my head, wrapping the weavings tight at my waist and wrists. Zik could find high demand among the courtiers for his craft when he was done being a Chosen One’s attendant.
Hopping around awkwardly while pulling on my boot, I hesitated, one foot up in the air. If I walked into the king’s presence with a weapon…
Reluctantly, I removed one knife from my boot and tucked it into a gap underneath the cot frame. My other knife—the dull, old one from my father—shouldn’t draw any more suspicion than it could draw blood.
Then I remembered Prince Aric’s reaction. What had he called it? An anomaly, anonymity…no, an animdao blade.
But I didn’t have time to wonder and I didn’t trust enough to be completely defenseless. I shoved the smaller knife to the very bottom of my boot. I’d just have to not find myself in a situation where I had to run away.
Fortunately, I’d snuck around the palace enough to dash to the grand gallery via the least number of steps. The huge room had been empty during my late-night explorations, and maybe I’d had a silly moment of impossible dreams where I imagined myself there with the lords and ladies and music and lights, but… Heyo, who would’ve guessed it would actually happen?
Tapestries and torchieres and tables overflowing with the riches of the kingdom turned the cavernous space into a place of overwhelming beauty and delight. And though I was no lor or demon myself to perceive auras, pure or not, even I sensed the power thrumming in the room, unseen but brighter than all the lamps, weaving more intricately than the silkha pennants.
The source of that power: the nobles of the High Keep, clad in every color—sometimes all the colors at once—with their hair and parts of their skin tinted to match. The grays of the staff and attendants made a backdrop for their fancifulness.
And the food! On a huge table were plates and platters and piles and plenty such as I’d never seen, even during Sevaare’s harvest festival. So dazzled, I needed a moment to realize that the display was laid out like a map of the Living Lands, each region represented by its signature cuisine. My gaze went first to Sevaare’s familiar bounty, but it was the centerpiece of the table, too distant for even the longest arm to reach, that made me gawk like the unfortunate urchin I was.
It was a mechanism of little towers, the High Keep in miniature. Liquor poured from the spires and splashed into pools, wafting the sharp, sweet, and smoky aromas of alcohol across the replica lightkeep. Such a spectacle! As someone who was merely clever, I felt a little dazed though none of those spirits would ever pass my lips.
I faded back into the main hallway, my heart hammering and my breath left somewhere behind me. Had I truly believed I might sneak the lady away from this? No wonder Osiroon’s unlucky Chosen One had resigned himself to his fate, even looked forward to this celebration before he was Devoured.
No wonder the lady had discounted my ideas for escaping such opulent power.
I paced the empty hallway, trying to steel myself to walk in among them. I was all in gray; the nobles would not even see me, much less look at my fingernails, and the other dullards like me had their own concerns. This was just a slightly fancier market day with more food and deeper pockets. Not that I was going to pocket any of this plenty—
“Feinan no’Sevaare.”
With a strangled yelp, I wheeled around. “Prince Aric,” I gasped. “Your Radiance, I didn’t…” I gulped back the rest of whatever I’d been about to say.
Standing alone, he watched me out of those eerie eyes. “Didn’t see me? Didn’t take anything? Didn’t realize that the ritual of merriment before the massacre would feel so wrong?”
“All of that, I suppose?” I took a cautious step back toward the open doorway behind me.
Because somehow I’d forgotten how big and daunting he was. Even more so than the grand gallery and all the rest of the nobility. Adding to his intimidating presence, behind him stood a little person wrapped in a dark gray mantle. From the deep hood protruded a mottled gray beard, the wiry strands braided and knotted with black beads. Of course a demon-damned prince would have a mysterious minion garbed like a mage of yore.
The prince waited in a warrior stance, shoulders squared, legs spread, heavy boots braced, his jaw equally set. I’d seen him dressed in armor and in uniform at the tribunal; now he was clad in finery to match the evening’s occasion. But instead of the brilliant hues within, he was all in blackest black.
How much pigment did it take to maintain such shades? Maybe he only wore everything once? Was there a nocturnal herd of midnight yaxen in Osiroon with such deeply dark fur that never faded beneath the sun? Only one subtle piping of glossy thread—it had to be silkha, though I hadn’t known silkha could be black—outlined the high neck of his tunic and arrowed diagonally across his broad chest.
My finger twitched, wanting to trace that shining line.
None of the colors or lights from the grand gallery reflected in his icy eyes, but I was watching him so closely I saw the faintest shiver course through him as he stared toward the celebration.
“All those auras,” he whispered.
A deeper trembling went through me at the yearning in his voice. “It’s not that kind of feast. Not yet.”
His head whipped toward me, so fast, the sharp glint in his eye so incensed, I took another step back. “I know when it’s my turn to sate the beast,” he grated. “And myself.”
I had a yearning too—to run away. But the moment I left, he was going to walk into that hall where Lady Dyania was having her last moments, where little Zik was defenseless, his pretty weavings as wispy as a cobweb against the sweep of the Dragon Prince’s dark hunger.
“Where is your Chosen One?” he asked, voicing my fear.
“Within,” I said, which had the advantage of being both true and uselessly vague.
“Did you try to leave?” His chin dipped then rose again, and I sensed he was looking me over, none too kindly. “You smell of the harts.”
Heat rushed through my face. “No I don’t. See, my hands are clean.” I thrust my hands in his direction—what was I even thinking?—to display my nails, ragged but spotless. Although I had to wonder why he was late to the party and lingering in the corridor just to chastise me.
“Not the dirt,” he said dismissively. “You smell of sunshine and the wind through the pass—and stone of glass.”
The rush of blood in my cheeks plummeted into my heart and out to all my limbs, prelude to fleeing. “I don’t…” I stammered. The obsidian shard tucked beneath my tunic suddenly weighed like half a mountain. “Those things don’t have a scent.”
“They do. To the beast.”
“But the dragon isn’t here, just you.”
The corner of his mouth twisted. “You don’t know how close she is.”
I was a little annoyed at his not-so-veiled menace when I had entirely enough to terrify me. “I know she is quite large even without her wings spread,” I said tartly. “If she were here, she would fill up at least a corner of the great hall, and there would be much more scrambling and likely screaming.”
A tinkling sound came from the minion as the beads rattled together while the hood shook back and forth in disapproval.
The other corner of the prince’s mouth curled upward to match. “That is…true.”
I huffed. “Picturing it shouldn’t amuse you.”
“Also true.” He brushed his thumb across his lips, as if erasing the smirk, and the pathways where all my blood had gone tingled with a strange rush as my gaze followed the idle gesture.
Even in his dark finery I couldn’t forget the warrior standing just beyond the pyrelight or the rebellious prince confronting the haloria, and yet he seemed different here in some way I couldn’t quite pin down.
Dare I ask what no one but he could promise: to spare my lady?
I opened my mouth—not sure what was about to come out; I never really knew, after all—but instead a brusque, basso voice called out, “Aric.”
The prince stiffened. And so did I, since whatever perturbed the Dragon Prince should probably send me into hysterics. I twisted around to follow his blank gaze to a man striding toward us. Handsome enough, I supposed, also tall and sturdy to bear the heavy silkha mantle belling behind his wide shoulders. Followed by a retinue of nobles. With a crown on his head.
I gulped back an oath. King Mikhalthe l’Thine of the Living Lands, here in front of me, a starveling street-sneak who should’ve been anywhere else.
Belatedly, I dropped to one knee. Should I have bowed? Or curtsied? I couldn’t remember if there were rules of address for an urchin meeting a king. Making myself very small seemed like the best of questionable choices.
Thankfully, and perhaps not surprisingly, no one paid attention to me. The king scowled, and had that furious expression been leveled at me I would’ve made a mouse-like sound and fled. He was the king after all. “What are you doing here?”
Odd how everyone always asked the prince that, considering this was his home. Not right here in the grand gallery, of course, but the black tower, which was part of the palace complex and close enough. “This is likely the last meal for my victims,” the prince drawled. “I wanted to see they are properly stuffed for the slaughter.”
Casting a sidelong glance at him, I wrinkled my nose. Lady Dyania had said much the same, but it was unkind coming from him.
I brought myself up short. He was the Dragon Prince; nothing more need be said about his benevolence.
The king looked similarly nonplussed, the furious scowl on his face twisting to something more complicated, almost like regret. “You never come to the blessing before the Feast.”
“I’ve never been to a Devouring either.” The prince tilted his head slightly, the angle making it clear his attention had swept across the royal retinue, as if marking them.
More than a few of the retainers behind the king shuddered or even took a step back. I would’ve snickered.
But I didn’t blame them.
“Why?” The king’s voice lowered. “Your presence here isn’t wanted. You’ll just remind them of what’s to come when this is hard enough already for all of us.”
“All of us?” The prince’s lip curled in a taunt. “Does it so curdle your fine wines to dine with the doomed? Do your slippers bumble when you cavort with the dancing dead?”
A shocked whisper swept through the small crowd behind the king. But he didn’t flinch. “They don’t deserve your bitterness, brother.”
“How about the serrated edge of the dragon’s fangs?” The prince flashed his own white teeth in a cruel smile. “You can keep the beast locked in her tower, and you might even chain me in the dark again. But you’ll still know I’m here, and the Chosen Ones will still scream in their dinzah dreams.”
From the expression on the others’ faces, these insults and horrid secrets weren’t anything any of us wanted to hear, but…maybe the truth was worse. The prince’s words couldn’t be ignored because such ugliness was all that kept the Living Lands from sliding into the dark. We might drink and take what delights we could this evening, but some would watch the dawn knowing it would soon be their last.
An awkward throat clearing dragged my gaze over to the huddle of white beyond the king’s shoulder. Lor Imbril blinked rapidly. “Your Illuminance, it is nearly time for the blessing.”
The king was still glaring at his brother. Half-brother, if the stories that I’d heard and not really listened to were true. I thought we might all be stuck there until they came to blows, but Prince Aric snarled, “Nenzo, Feinan, with me.” He strode toward the wide-flung hall doors.
I jolted straighter. “Me?” As if there might be some other street-stray nearby named Feinan.
His little minion, who must be Nenzo, poked my elbow hard.
“This isn’t my place,” I muttered even as I fell into step next to the minion who was behind the prince who was behind the king.
“That isn’t for you to say.” Though not incorrect, Lor Imbril’s remark made me bristle. Why shouldn’t I be the only one to say?
I narrowed my eyes at him. “Shouldn’t you be in the hall, giving solace to the Chosen?”
“There are many who need consultation and consolation.” His gaze shuttled between the king and the prince. “Why are you not with your lady?”
“For some reason, no one checked with me about scheduling a grand party,” I said with some asperity, “so I was otherwise occupied and running late.”
Nenzo’s beard rattled disapproval again, and even I cringed; I could be circumspect when the situation warranted, and this situation did. Why oh why was my tongue running when the rest of me wasn’t?
Instead of putting me in my place, the lor furrowed his brow. “The timing is inauspicious. This should be a farewell before the Feast, but we don’t have the right balance of auras according to the ancient blessings and last augury.”
Nenzo’s hood was canted toward the lor; the prince’s valet must be shocked that Imbril was revealing secretive haloric matters to us. But he didn’t speak.
So of course I did. “If the haloria believes the Devouring is a bad idea, why are we here?” I wanted to stomp my foot but the knife hidden in my boot made that a bad idea too.
“Lor Berindo, who forecasts the weave of auric intensity needed to control the dragon, says the indications are wrong,” Imbril explained. “But the numinlor…” He gave himself a little shake, the ponderous white robe settling around him like a perturbed chook’s nervously ruffled feathers. “She says the threads may be fraying but the Chosen must stay. Berindo has been a lor too long and I not long enough to question Numinlor Kalima.”
“You’re telling me,” I pointed out. “Except I can’t do anything about it.”
“If I might speak to Lady Dyania again…” Maybe he would’ve had another excuse but our group moved into the main hall, and we all fell silent as the king was announced with a flourish of dulcichordias and brasswinds.
“His Illuminance, King of the Living Lands, Mikhalthe the Numinous, third-facet master of the diamonde light…”
I lost track of the honorary titles listed behind his name, and it seemed the king himself was hardly listening as he glowered at his half-brother. King Mikhalthe was an impressive specimen of nobility in his own right: broad shouldered, thick chested as the finest swordsman, tall, with richly tanned skin, his golden-brown hair profuse and coiled under his crown—and it was a beautiful crown, the faceted stones shimmering with cat’s-eye fire in every hue. Just one of those stones would be a lifetime of good eating for, say, a poor orphaned street waif.
And yet beside his darkling kin, the king faded like a ghost. I noted every other eye was on the Dragon Prince as well, the brooding, black-clad, bastard half-brother who held the fate of the Living Lands in the rapacious claws of his barely tamed demon.
Even Numinlor Kalima was forced to acknowledge him with a nod, though her expression was so flat and emotionless I knew she must be seething inside at his presence. She stepped forward to lead the blessing, and when she opened her arms, the white folds of her gown split apart to reveal all the rainbow hues within. The crowd exclaimed, a sound of delight and awe that made me think this spectacle was beyond even their jaded taste.
“May the amaranthine light everlasting embrace us,” she started, and then she went on much longer than the king’s honor titles and about as stultifying. The light had plenty of opportunities to save us from the demons, and it hadn’t yet. How many more Chosen would give their lives to the dragon before the last of the auric light faded into shadow?
Despite the beauty and brilliance and bounty beyond anything I might’ve ever imagined, anger clogged in my throat. I wanted to yell that Zik had risked more than any noble here and brought more beauty into the world with his own hands, but what was the point?
When the blessing was finally over, Lor Imbril jerked his chin toward the remaining Chosen, their faces washed in a mix of bemusement and barely concealed panic. Except for Lady Dyania, who looked almost as untouchable as Numinlor Kalima. Slouching across the hall, I led the lor to my lady.
A flicker of emotion brightened her dark eye. “Feinan. I wondered if you’d…gotten lost.”
If I’d run away, she meant. That glimpse of her fear and relief stabbed at me sharper than the blade in my boot. “I won’t get lost again, my lady.” If only I’d been able to procure a hart to make our escape. If only she would’ve been willing to go.
Lor Imbril shuffled beside me. “Good evening, Lady Dyania. You look so…” I glared at him as he hesitated, clearly stumbling for a word. Pure? Doomed? “So lovely in the light. I hope your rest was…restful.” He winced at his own awkwardness, as well he should. Even Zik rolled his eyes again, freckles scrunching on his nose.
The lady clasped her hands in front of her. “Did I look so poorly before?”
Imbril jerked. “No, oh no. That’s not—”
Taking pity on him—which was why her aura was pure and mine was hopelessly sullied—she said, “I tease, Lor Imbril. I am ready for what comes next.”
“Yes. Next. About that…” The lor slanted a glance at me, as if I should be the one to say her sacrifice might be for naught. “May I escort you all to the feast?”
Coward. He ushered the Chosen Ones to the long table. Despite my ire, the glitter of tableware distracted me. The knives were sharper than my inherited blade, and each silver serving spoon was worth more than me and Zik put together. Palace servants steered the Chosen to seats interspersed among the High Keep nobles.
Overcoming my unseemly fascination with the cutlery, I took my place next to Zik behind our lady. I kept an eye on the other companions, trying to emulate their attentive service, but my gaze kept snagging on the scions gathered for this feast. Considering they were—as the prince had snarled—dining among the soon-to-be dead, the High Keep nobles seemed at ease, pleased even. They looked at the Chosen the way I looked at the spoons: something just beyond their reach, something to covet.
Something that would keep them alive a little longer if offered in exchange for the right bargain.
Which of course was true—this was the sacrifice of the Chosen. But did it need to be so…thieving?
Zik jostled me out of my thoughts as he wedged to my other side, putting me at the lady’s left—and next to Prince Aric as he took the empty seat beside Lady Dyania. Nenzo’s beard waggled in my direction before he stepped back toward the wall, leaving his master to pull in his own chair. The prince thunked a brimming flagon of wine next to his empty plate; taken from one of the liveried servers, maybe, or snagged from Ormonde’s library? I wondered if he often overindulged. From my time with my innkeeper, I’d dealt with such problems, and while the prince didn’t show the signs…
Heyo, what was I thinking? His cravings were worse.
A pool of stunned silence swept out from the black presence forcibly reminding the High Keep nobles of the purpose here—just as the prince had said to the king out in the corridor.
But Lady Dyania nodded at him. “Good eve, Your Radiance. Have you brought enough to share?”
His grunt was not quite assent or amusement, more like she’d elbowed him in the gut.
I jolted forward. “Let me.” He didn’t need to give her anything, not when he’d be taking so much. Anyway, hadn’t she been the one to warn me not to accept anything from the demon-touched prince?
Though he was seated, the chair was substantial enough and the prince so tall on his own that his icy gaze was leveled with mine as I reached past his shoulder for the decanter.
“Just make sure you put it back.” His breath felt hot against the side of my neck.
It rattled me, which made me perhaps more brash than was prudent. “A bit large for my pocket, Your Radiance.”
Despite the opacity of his scarred eyes, I knew he was looking at me. “And you’ve never needed wine to loosen your tongue.”
And I knew—felt—how his focus shifted to my mouth. Despite my best intentions and the usually repressed memories of my worst intimate encounters, I ached with the urge to lick my lips. Blight and spite, no, I would not lick my lips in front of him while my fingers were wrapped around the thick neck of the decanter.
Instead, I curled my lips inward and bit until I tasted blood. I should’ve had something to eat before now; that was why I was feeling unsteady.
“Feinan.” Lady Dyania’s summons brought me back to myself, and I poured the wine and returned to my post.
Which wasn’t all that far from the prince, leaving me with a quarter view of his stark profile. But he seemed to take her reprimand as it was intended, toward us both. “My lady. The numinlor hasn’t threatened you with any more tribunals, I hope.”
“No more threats. At least none worse than the one you yourself present.”
A little rattle of beads told me Nenzo was shaking that beard again. But the prince only leaned back in his chair. “Is there something in the water in Sevaare that inspires such truth speaking?”
The lady took a sip of her wine. “Perhaps it is more the clarity of light at the end that counterbalances the advantages of subterfuge.”
“We all face the same dark, and yet in some of us it elicits only more shadows.” His pale gaze went around the gallery in a restless circle. For all their fascination with the prince, most of the High Keep nobles were seated too far away to eavesdrop, and the noise in the room and the sweet perfume of the wine cast a strange illusion of privacy over our small grouping.
Lor Imbril leaned around Lady Dyania from her other side. “If we might all speak clearly—”
Prince Aric blew out a hard breath. “Can you? That has not been my experience of lors.”
Imbril flushed but didn’t retreat. “Apologies if the centuries of confusing auguries and all our efforts against a forbidding enemy have not been triumphant. Believe me when I say that we too wish for more clarity in these difficult times.”
I huffed out a breath of my own at his earnestness if not his eloquence.
“Feinan,” Lady Dyania said again, with more warning this time.
But the prince twisted halfway around to face us. “Ah no, let her speak. Who knows from whence the light might shine?” The twist of his lips was mocking.
“Exactly,” I blurted. “Yet for some reason, the haloria summons the brightest lights of the Living Lands here…just to die.” I slanted a glance at the prince who reached for his wine. “If not for Lady Dyania’s knowledge and bravery, every aura in Velderrey might’ve been torn to shreds along with our corpses. But now you would sacrifice our second chance? For what?”
Rolling the goblet stem between his long fingers, the prince arched one eyebrow. “To keep the dragon from savaging us all?”
“You’ve held her this long without a Devouring,” I reminded him before glancing back at the lor. “And you told us the sacrifices now might not be enough anyway. There has to be another way.” I gestured around the grand gallery. “All these auras, all these lives of experiences, certainly someone here—maybe the other Chosen or one of your nobles, maybe someone else entirely”—I thought of Zik’s beautiful weavings—“might have a trick of their own.”
“A song or a dance?” the prince mused. “A disappearing coin? That sort of trick?”
I glared at him. “Does the word matter?”
“For someone who’d never seen a demon until a few nights ago, you have a lot of words to say about them now.” The prince pushed aside his glass, sloshing a bright red stain onto the silkha runner.
Crossing my arms, I refused to cower at his pulsating anger. “For someone who’s slain them for years, you don’t seem to say enough.”
This time the shocked silence wasn’t so much a pool as a deluge. Even Nenzo’s beard was quiet.
After the longest moment, the prince said, “True.” He shoved his chair back, a harsh screech on the polished floor. “I have nothing to say.”
Towering above us, he inclined his head once toward the lady, spun on his boot heel, and stalked away. Nenzo finally rattled those beads at me.
The rest of the gallery too watched him go. Only the dulcichordias and brasswinds—tucked up into a recessed balcony where they couldn’t see what was going on—kept playing. Without the buffer of voices and glassware, the haunting sounds were like the voices of past Chosen saying what the Dragon Prince would not.
I cleared my throat. “Would anyone like more wine?”