Let the mountain crack where it may and the molten ore flow to the shape of its fortune. But keep your hammer and tongs always at hand to cast what comes your way.
~ Rokyn proverb
I DREAMED OF DARKNESS—serene in a way I never was—but woke to the skreetch of curtain rings along their rod, squinting as sunlight glared abruptly in my face. Ugh, awful. The black tower had won me over with its darkness.
Groaning, I rolled to my side in the trundle bed, tucking my face under the blanket.
“Get up,” Lisel said in her soldier voice. “We have an audience with the king.”
“He doesn’t care about me,” I mumbled. “Go on without me. Leave the kavé.”
“No’Maru specifically mentioned you.”
I groaned again. “Definitely go on without me.”
Instead, the blanket whipped off me.
Whimpering, I rolled into a tighter ball. “Zik wakes me with kindly words about how pretty I am and what a good day we’ll have.”
“Since he’s trapped in the dragon’s lair with demon-drained Chosen, I’d say you brought this on yourself, like most of your problems. So get up.”
I glowered at her from under my elbow. “You wouldn’t talk to Ani like this.”
“She’s awake, cleansed, dressed, and blessed. And you already told me twice you’d get up soon if I let you sleep a little longer.”
Since that did sound like a promise I’d make, I let my long-suffering sigh lift me from the padded trundle while Lisel stood there, glaring harsher than the winter sun and tapping her boot.
“I am up,” I whined.
“Will you fall back into bed if I turn around?”
Since that also sounded likely, I didn’t answer, just slouched out to the sitting room. Dyania was at the window desk, writing something, and glanced back with a smile on her lips but somber eyes when I grunted a good morning.
The breakfast tray looked mostly untouched, and I cast a quick glance at the lady then back at Lisel. The hartier shrugged, her gaze hooded so the clear blue looked clouded.
The crystal darkness of my dreams cracked in the light of a cruel day.
I helped myself to a hearty selection, added a few more things to a second plate, and wandered over to the window seat. Plunking myself down as I slid the second plate toward Ani, I muttered, “Put the portable items in your pocket, just in case.”
She finished her line and looked at the plate, then me. “Has this become your task since Zik isn’t here to slip me a slice of speridia?” Sighing, she sat back and took one of the thumb-sized pastry cups of cheese and egg. “Hopefully he can do more for Morowyn and the others.”
I glanced at the parchment under her other hand, not that I could read it. “I saw the prince last night.” Quickly, I told the two about going back for the scrolls.
I did not tell them about my moment in the alcove with Aric.
Lisel, who’d taken a seat at the other end of the window, let out a low curse. “I’ve overheard my father discussing the disagreements—even quarrels—between the king’s advisors, the army, and the haloria, but if we are to be entangled into those difficulties along with everything else…” She shook her head. “I don’t know how we are to hold our own.”
“We have the prince,” I said.
Dyania grimaced. “He brings a chaos and shade that makes the way more fraught.”
It was the first time she’d disparaged him, and as an accused troublemaker myself, I wanted to defend him, but… “He said he has someone else he can ask about luminarci.”
Lisel snorted. “Not sure if having that will help or hurt our cause with the king, his advisors, my father, or the haloria.”
“Not fair we have to fight them as well as the demons,” I muttered.
“One at a time,” Ani said. “Are there any more of those little egg tarts?”
Hopping off her seat, Lisel hustled over to the tray.
Gazing after her, Ani murmured, “This letter is to my younger sister, Fei. Not my brother, mind. I want you to keep it someplace safe.”
I blinked. “What—?”
“As you said, just in case. It may be an opportunity for you and Zik, maybe Lisel, should she choose it.”
Scowling, I pulled my feet up onto the seat and hugged my knees. “And you? Where will you be?”
Her dark and light eyes shifted to me. “Don’t play innocent. It doesn’t suit you. And doesn’t serve, either.”
I hesitated. “I don’t think he’ll be able to do it.”
Joining us again, Lisel asked, “Who won’t be able to do what?”
“I think Prince Aric will refuse the Devouring.”
Lisel frowned. “Can he do that? Won’t the dragon just…?” She stopped herself with a guilty glance at Dyania.
Who also frowned. “But he’s sacrificed so much for the Living Lands. He won’t refuse now.” She stiffened, turning that frown on me. “Fei, did you sway him?”
Lisel choked. “You can’t corrupt the Dragon Prince.”
I glared at both of them. “Wait, how could this be my fault?”
Lisel lifted one hand and began ticking off on her fingers. “Sneaking into the lady’s carriage. Talking back to everyone. Stealing Ormonde’s relic. Eating it—”
“I didn’t,” I wailed.
“Disappearing into the dark tower,” she continued as she ran out of fingers. “Where you could’ve likely corrupted the prince any manner of ways.”
I sighed. “I only kissed him once, really.”
Lisel flinched away, her blue eyes wide with horror. “You… What?”
Dyania only giggled.
When we both glared at her, she laughed again. “Don’t look at me. I would never kiss the Dragon Prince.”
“I should hope not,” Lisel said tartly before turning her censorious stare on me again. “And neither should you, not anymore anyway.”
Recalling the way he’d reacted as I kissed his hand, giving him something to hold onto and reach for, I muttered, “I probably won’t.”
Ani snickered again. “Fei, you have a way of making things seem better while definitely worse. If the Dragon Prince will only eat you—”
“Stop!” Lisel closed her eyes. “At any moment, we are to be summoned before the highest powers in this land. I can’t have speculation about the Dragon Prince’s amorous adventures with a street-sneak be our last conversation.”
“Heyo,” I said. “It’d make a lovely bit of verse.”
“True enough.” Still smiling, the lady sealed her letter and handed it to me. “Let’s be ready to go.”
Making one note in my head that Lisel didn’t even ask what the letter was and another note that I should learn to read, I tucked the letter away. And when the haloric guard knocked, I was ready.
Before we walked out among them, Dyania whispered to me, “I’m glad Zik is safely away. If you need to take Lisel and run—”
But I shook my head. “We’re past that,” I told her, and then we were surrounded by blinding silkha.
They marched us with solemnity but speed through the corridors. Unlike my usual midnight wanderings, there were people about—nobles and courtiers, more guards and even those palace servants whose tasks took them beyond the back hallways. They all cast quick sideways glances at our white guard, and I caught the sibilance of a few whispers, but nothing other than that. We might as well have been ghosts.
I wished I hadn’t thought that.
Our little party was sadly reduced without Zik and even Imbril. But Aric had said he would find me.
My pulse skittered. We were taken not to the grand galley or the more intimate study where we’d met with the king, Marshal Vreas, and no’Maru, nor the haloric audience chamber. We found ourselves in the most imposing place in the High Keep: the throne room.
Neh, the most imposing place except the obsidian tower, of course. And I’d already been there.
I took a steadying breath as our phalanx of white guards brought us to a halt facing King Mikhalthe on the Radiant Throne of the Living Lands. Not too close, I noted. Why would he take such pains of distance, both physical and formal, when he’d been so nonchalant before? It didn’t bode well.
Unlike his relaxed stance in his own study, here in the throne room, Mikhalthe sat tall and straight, his hands curled around the heavy, carved arms. It was encrusted with gemstones in the many hues of the spectrum that represented the amaranthine light everlasting. Resisting the urge to wrinkle my nose, I wondered how many of those stones would fit neatly into the old throne in the obsidian tower.
Considering my failed career in Sevaare, perhaps I shouldn’t be so judgmental.
Marshal Vreas and Petro no’Maru stood behind the throne and to one side, both of them with that balanced, ready stance of swordsmen. With a furrow between his brows, the king drew a breath to address us just as the flourish of a brasswind burst through the room.
Numinlor Kalima strode in from behind us, in full ceremonial dress with her long white silkha robe slashed in colorful ribbons. The rest of the haloria were in an arrow wedge behind her, similarly adorned. Imbril was at the end of one wing, clad in ceremonial white but his gaze downcast. And was that a bruise on his cheek? Pity wouldn’t help us now, of course, nor even a clearer insight into the politics of the palace, but I did feel sorry for him that he was getting such a close-up view—just beneath his right eye close-up, apparently—of what was at stake.
Even if I wasn’t exactly sure yet what that was, other than all our lives.
Another dais was set up to one side of the elevated throne, somewhat lower, and Kalima stalked that way to take a seat on the cushioned divan while the rest of the lors fanned out to either side.
The throne room doors closed with a clang, shutting out the few curious nobles brave enough to peer through the doorway as they pretended to pass, slowly, on their various errands.
Apparently this was not a public audience.
“I summoned you here—” Kalima began.
“Who sits on the Radiant Throne of the Living Lands?” The king’s voice boomed in the huge room, louder than any brasswind, seeming to find all the empty corners to bounce back with renewed force.
“You, Your Illuminance,” Kalima said smoothly, not at all perturbed by his volume or his position. “Who put you there?”
Furious, ugly color flooded his face. “My father,” he grated out. “By right of the Lyrac Accords. Who had it from his father, who had it from his all the way back to Ormonde who saved the Living Lands during the Great Gorging.”
Kalima lifted an eyebrow, her gaze catamount-cruel. “And who gave it to Ormonde?”
The king thrust to his feet, and I blinked in surprise. Maybe none of this was going to matter to us at all.
The white guard stiffened as the palace guard in their vortix motif finery brought their pikes to attention at the king’s new stance.
I made a little “huh” noise of interest, and Ani hissed out an even smaller shushing noise.
Into the tense standoff, one of the throne room doors creaked open, and a hapless guard peered through, gaze darting questioningly in all directions but settling nowhere. “Ah, Your Illuminance… Numinlor… Ah, the Dragon Prince…”
Mikhalthe let out a harsh bark of laughter. “Oh, and why not, brother? Join our merry gathering.”
I was taken before I could drink merrily. Aric’s forlorn recollection pierced me. He’d been sacrificed to the dragon too young for the pleasures of flesh, just the pains. Yet in that time he’d mastered the discomforts of these swirling politics.
He strode forward, the hard thud of his boot heels ringing.
Though he’d been formally dressed for the pre-Devouring gathering in the grand galley, there’d been an air of dissolution and morose reluctance to him. Now, I imagined Nenzo and Zik had adorned him to the very highest of their ability. And that was the difference now between the bastard half-brother and the royal prince.
His tunic was the gray of the mountain fog, but threads within glimmered faintly metallic, as if cut with lightning. His trousers were a shade darker, and his black hair was brushed straight and bound back with a silver circlet around his brow. That bright gleam made the frost of his eyes colder.
The numinlor sighed. “Child, these proceedings don’t concern you.” The king and the haloria seemed united at least in their disdain for the prince.
“I haven’t been a child since you gave me to the dragon, Kalima,” he said. “But these are matters of the future of the Living Lands. And I am one of its people, so here I am.”
Hearing the words I’d told him echoed back at the numinlor made me want to cheer, but that would bring attention I didn’t want or need.
“Get on with it, Kalima, if you want to lead this farce,” the king growled. “Unless you only mean to chide us like children, in which case, as my brother has noted, it’s been a very long time since we’ve had to sit through our lessons.”
She gazed at him steadily. “Unless it is from your advisors, eh?” She tilted her head. “That failed marshal and your upstart uncle you seem to listen to like any boy in knee breeches. Why is that, I wonder.”
I expected the king to explode at that, but instead he just scoffed and sat back on his throne. Behind him, his guards relaxed, but their pikes stayed pointed pointedly. “I’ve always taken advice that seemed sound to me, whatever the source, whether it’s someone who carries only the name of their lightkeep or someone who’s made a mistake which can only teach us more.”
When he bestowed a favoring smile on his two advisors, the expression was tight. Marshal Vreas nodded back, but Petro no’Maru shifted his gaze from the king to the prince to the numinlor then back again.
“And you’d follow their unproven words leading you into an unknown strategy, against all the best practices of your forbearers?” She shook her head. “You would set these foolish lessers to reading verse meant for tavern tales, you of all people who’s seen—nay, more than that, fought against the horde with all the strength imbued in you with the brilliance of our blessings?” Her voice rose, not in pitch or even volume but power, so that it filled the corners not only of the room but of our hearts.
Even I, one of those foolish lessers, wavered in my beliefs at the ringing force of her accusation.
But the king only let out that bitter laugh again. “I have seen and I have fought, and that is exactly why I am willing to lose no more if there is any other way.”
It was her turn to shoot to her feet, pacing a few impetuous steps toward him, ignoring the aim of the pikes. “And you’ve seen nothing—nothing!—compared to what’s coming,” she seethed. Her vehemence tightened the stern lines of her face, and it seemed to me she’d slept worse than I had lately. “Our auguries hint at a devastation such as we’ve never known. Do you think we called for a Devouring out of some perverse delight in the loss of our most pure and noble?” She aimed a sneer sharper than any pike at the prince. “If there was a way to end the slaughter, I would do anything—anything—and sacrifice everything to save the Living Lands.”
“Then why won’t you take this chance?” The king had said he wasn’t a child anymore, but for just an instant, his bafflement made him look young and confused—and frightened. “Why do you keep sending us out, me and my soldiers, my brother and his dragon, the poor Chosen Ones who are offered one taste of glory only to have their living essence ripped away to feed the monster, their auras never again to weave with the light everlasting.”
His words took on the ring of righteousness, and I found myself once again reassured at our task.
As if he sensed the swaying opinions, the king smirked. “See, Kalima? I might wield a sword in most battles, but I can hold forth with the oratory too. I did listen to your lessons, even if you didn’t credit it at the time.” Another one of those little smiles, seemingly fond and genuine, flickered across his lips, before he turned stern again. “But in the end, I am king of the Living Lands, and I need neither sword nor blessings to rule by the Lyrac Accords and my auric right. You are one of my advisors—valued, but only one.” He flicked a finger, and he was right that although that hand had neither a weapon nor a holy wish, I felt the gesture like a blow when he continued, “And so I say that whatever catastrophe we are facing, we’ll face it with the courage of a freshly forged blade, the brilliance of a new-cut diamonde, with blessings as true and pure as light.”
Despite the certainty in his tone—not to mention his poetical splendor—her face paled. “You have no idea. You haven’t…” Her red-rimmed eyes widened, and her gaze snapped to Aric. “But you know. You’ve glimpsed the heart of the horde. All the weapons in the world will dull and shatter on that relentless tide. Tell him. Tell your brother”—she jeered the word—“who sits where you might’ve been that we must stay the course if we are to find our way to victory.”
Aric stared back at her through icy eyes. “The night after you took me from the royal scion chambers, you told me you would take my tongue if I kept screaming. Imagine that I had kept screaming, and that you had indeed silenced me then, and that I have no tongue now to speak on your behalf.” He faced the king. “I do not forget that you had no mercy for me after I was sent to the monster—and little enough before, for that matter. And I remember all too well that your sword and your blessing were both used as weapons against me. But if I am not to become more a monster myself, I would reject the Devouring given any other choice.”
“Fools, fools,” the numinlor whispered. “When the horde strikes again, even the Devouring won’t be enough. And the next Great Gorging will take us all.” Her rolling eyes fixed on Lady Dyania. “You. This is your doing, your profane beckoning in Velderrey lured the horde…and beguiled the prince into blasphemy. I see how he hungers for you, not your aura but your flesh—”
“No,” Aric said. “Clearly you don’t see a bedamned thing because my rebellion is not the lady’s doing.”
Did his scarred gaze flick to me, just for a heartbeat? My heart was beating so frantically, that count would’ve been too swift for anyone else to note.
With a choked sound, Kalima spun away. As she did, the dagged slashes of her white robe flared with all the colors, though my worried eye seemed to lock on the ones as scarlet as spilled blood, the vivid purple-blue of a bloated corpse, and the sulphur yellow of a lit match waiting to burn our world to ash.
The other lors fell into step behind her, except for Imbril, whose bruised cheek was a dull echo of the numinlor’s sanctified jewels. He gave one wild glance around the entire throne room as if there were anything to see or anyone to save him. Unfortunately for him, his gaze fell last upon me, and I widened my eyes just a little and gave the tiniest shake of my head with a final tilt in the direction of the departing haloria. He might not be sure what to do next, but I’d always found that having someone to open doors from within was an opportunity not to be squandered.
I’d have to seek him out and test his choice later, but for now he seemed helplessly swept up in the flow of white robes, and he left with them.
Which left the remaining three of us with the king and his advisors—and the Dragon Prince, of course. We all stared at each other warily.
“What does she fear?” the king murmured.
“Oblivion,” the prince said, “with the blemish of every choice marked on her aura when she stands in the amaranthine light.”
Mikhalthe huffed out a breath. “Is that the poetry she was complaining about?”
The prince shook his head. “She took the scrolls we were researching, and I wouldn’t put it past her to have destroyed them lest we try to wrest them back.”
I stiffened. He hadn’t told me of that worry; we should’ve tried to sneak them back when we had the chance.
The king shrugged. “Years too late, to my mind. I hated all the memorizing of those dusty old things.”
Dyania cleared her throat. “The verse we found referenced a way to collect and concentrate auric purity, to be turned against the horde. As a weapon, it seems much more powerful than the bloodfire rune I used in Velderrey.”
Leaning forward with his elbows braced on his knees, the king stared at her. “Could you make this weapon? Your blood destroyed the horde at Velderrey, so you could do it again?”
She bit her lip. “Your Illuminance, it wasn’t quite—”
“We need a reliquary first,” Aric interrupted. “A vessel strong and pure enough to hold a tremendous, annihilating power.” His eyes sparked, and I thought of the ominous lightning in the silent auric storm. “You’ll have to give up some of the High Keep’s treasure, brother, gemstones and gold for smelting.”
Mikhalthe grimaced but waved his hand again. “Take what you need. And you’ll need a blacksmith or a jeweler, likely both.”
Aric shook his head. “I have a Rokynd who knows the ways of stone and metal.”
I noticed he didn’t mentioned his mysterious contact who might know more about this mysterious weapon we’d maybe discovered.
“What are you going to do about Numinlor Kalima?” I asked.
Everyone looked at me, and Mikhalthe frowned. “Do what about her?”
I held back a sigh. “You humiliated her—just questioned her demands, really, but that’s not how she saw it—and sent her away. She’s not going to forget that.”
“Feinan has a point.” Lisel shifted uneasily when the king and his advisors turned to her. “Your Illuminance, you rule the Living Lands and command the armies against the horde”—she glanced at her father—“but the haloria safeguards the auras of the people. And some won’t be willing to risk going against the haloria if the numinlor speaks against us.”
“True,” the prince drawled. “There are many who would rather let others take the risks.”
Since everyone in the room, everyone in the kingdom had let the Chosen Ones and the Dragon Prince lose the most, we all kept silent at his accusation.
“Kalima knows her place,” Mikhalthe said. “I am her king.” As if that were enough.
Hoping for some brotherly intervention, I slanted a glance at Aric
But he only shrugged. “The haloria has power to burn and no mercy, but they’ve never been known for haste. By the time they debate a response, we’ll have our luminarca…or we’ll have failed.”
I’d grumbled to myself before about his fatalism, but in this case, I didn’t see any other likely path. “The Devouring has already been announced for tomorrow night. That gives us a night and a day to save you and the world.”