Con’s people formed a circle around him, listening intently as he related the essence of the vile missive from Anure. I marked the way he neatly summarized our extended conversation—probably the longest one we’d ever had—what he included, what he omitted. Staying silent allowed me to play observer, to note the emotional undercurrents among Con, Lady Sondra and General Kara. Calanthe had received refugees from all over the forgotten empires, and I’d made a study of people from many cultures, but these three posed new riddles.
Focusing on them kept me from dwelling on the jagged emotions that sliced at me from the inside out. And accommodating his request to speak with his commanders first both built goodwill between us and gave me a moment to get myself under control.
Shoving down the tumult of unexpected feelings with ruthless determination, I poured ice over the fear, anger, the gnawing pain of Tertulyn’s possible betrayal and my role in the prophecy. Ridiculous to feel stung over that. I’d always known Con only cared about revenge and that marrying me had been another rung on that ladder.
Emotion would get me nowhere. I found myself shamed that Con had seen it necessary to remind me of that. I needed to focus on being rational, analytical. Dispassionate. Now more than ever.
So, we both liked the sex. A perk. And yes, Con’s point that we could be good to each other instead of tearing at each other was only practical. I’d be a fool to think the passion and occasional understanding we shared meant anything more than that. I hadn’t gone into this wanting more than that.
Con had completed his summary, Kara and Sondra firing questions at him. Ambrose had tipped back his head to watch some lilac songbirds fly over. He remained a cipher to me, in keeping with a wizard’s nature. His playful attitude was as much a part of his disguise as the sunny curls, canny green eyes, and youthful face. None of that fooled me, as the glow of his power couldn’t be easily hidden from my sight. Even if the orchid ring didn’t react to his presence with the floral equivalent of girlish giggles and flirtation, I’d have sensed the ancient being disguised by the wizard’s boyish mask. I hadn’t encountered anyone with his level of power before. Studying him—and the orchid ring’s reactions to him—had given me new insights into magic in general, and my own nature. I wanted to ask the wizard questions, but hesitated to reveal the exact boundaries of what I did and didn’t know. Ambrose and I treated each other as allies, but—just as with Con—I reserved suspicion in case things proved otherwise. After all, the wizard had made no secret of his own fascination with the orchid ring, and he owed his loyalty to Con. He might be my court wizard in name, but he belonged to Con. Also, from what Con had revealed about the prophecy, I now knew Ambrose had manipulated me for his own ends. I’d do well to remember that.
Thus far Ambrose and I had executed a careful dance around each other. I felt sure he could see more of my own true nature than the non-magical could, but perhaps not the full extent of it. Likewise, he had to know I saw beyond who he pretended to be, but even I wasn’t sure what to make of what my senses told me.
All I had to go on was my father’s advice on the subject. Treat a wizard like a fish with a scorpion’s tail and with a jewel in its mouth. Grasp the fish too tightly and it might drop the jewel to be lost forever. Too loosely and the fish escapes your hold. Annoy it, and face the sting. That was all I knew. How I wished I had someone to give me advice.
Or someone to talk to that I could trust to be on my side. Con wanted me to confide my secrets and inner thoughts, but …
I didn’t know. I enjoyed his attempts at kindness, rubbing my aching feet—who’d have guessed the rough man had such an intuitive touch?—comforting me in my unreasonable fears. I also found myself wanting to open to that, like Ejarat turning her face to Sawehl’s sun, Her soil thawing under His nourishing rays.
But kindness could be a lie. I’d grown up around countless courtiers who employed apparent kindness as a tool in their social arsenal. When I was a girl, I’d been fooled a time or two, and discovered the manipulation too late. My father had simply pointed out the lesson and suggested I learn what he called the Rule of Suspicion. Be suspicious first, but especially of kindness. People rarely offer anything without wanting something in return, he’d say. The trick is learning what they want, then deciding if the trade is worth it.
I’d discovered that very rarely was I willing to give what they wanted, especially in exchange for a temporary and shallow kindness.
In all truth, I preferred prickly animosity like Lady Sondra’s. She and I had de-escalated from outright hostility, but not much beyond. Still, she was honest and I didn’t have to spend effort sorting beneath the surface for her true motivations. I didn’t begrudge Lady Sondra her resentment—she thought I didn’t have Con’s best interests at heart and she’d be correct. I couldn’t put my husband before Calanthe.
I thought I’d learned my lesson, learned the Rule of Suspicion well. Except for Tertulyn. I’d accepted her kindness to me at face value. Our friendship had been a clean well I drank from, because I thought she’d never wanted anything more than the affection we’d shared.
Con’s insistence that Tertulyn had simply manipulated me as everyone else attempted to do … Well, I prided myself on facing truth with unflinching and open eyes. I did not allow myself delusions. I couldn’t afford to.
I had to face the possibility that Tertulyn had never been my friend, not if she worked for Anure. All those occasions she’d encouraged me to laugh at the emperor’s horrible letters, to rest easy that he’d never make good on his threats to retrieve me—had that all been to lull me into complacency? Her kindness and caring, the small gestures of affection that had meant so much, all could’ve been designed to manage me, to discover more about my nature. How carefully she’d marked the changes in my body as I matured, the evidence of my elemental nature shifting and evolving. How interested she’d been—in me, and in the orchid ring.
For all my icy cynicism, I hadn’t seen it.
I suddenly felt as old as the creature that looked out of Ambrose’s eyes, and terribly alone. The temporary relief from Con rubbing my feet had faded almost as soon as I donned those shoes again, as fleeting as those few moments in the folly when I’d felt connected to him. The kindness he’d shown had served his purpose. When would I ever learn?
Con remained in intense conversation with his commanders, arguing about boats and soldiers in a shorthand developed over years of having such conversations. I could have stood there with them, listened in and offered my opinion, but that would have affected only the surface currents. This group of three swam through deep waters together. When Con had tried to explain why he called himself empty inside, he’d looked to these others who’d journeyed with him.
They would always have a stronger bond with him than I ever could. That was only to be expected. It shouldn’t make me feel more alone than I had before they arrived uninvited on my island.
Weary of it all—my feet aching fiercely—I left them to thrash out their details. I slipped my arm from Con’s and made my way to the bench in the shade. This one had been designed to accommodate my gowns, so I could seat myself unaided. Ridiculous, really, that I was the queen of all I surveyed, with the power to command everyone—with the salient exception of my husband—but I couldn’t simply sit down without help whenever I liked.
Ambrose ambled over after a moment, which came as no surprise since Merle hadn’t taken his keen eyes off me, indicating I had the wizard’s attention even though he seemed engrossed in the conversation. Since I could see through the eyes of the birds of Calanthe, I had no doubt Ambrose could do the same with his familiar. Only he didn’t seem to need meditative quiet to do it. The wizard even seemed to be able to carry on a conversation at the same time. An enviable skill I’d love to learn, if I could find a way to ask without revealing my comparative weakness in the art.
The wizard gracefully sank to the ground, then sprawled out on the bit of lawn to lean on one elbow. He laid the staff nearby, Merle hopping off to stalk about in the grass, cocking his head to eye what might lie hidden there. Ambrose’s robe—a very expensive one not meant for being rubbed on the ground—hiked up, revealing his bare feet and hairy, somewhat scrawny legs.
“Warriors,” he commented cheerfully. “They never tire of talking war.”
“Their nature, I suppose.”
“True. Whereas our nature leads us to discuss other things.”
I raised a brow. “And what shall we discuss until they do tire of it and deliver their conclusions?”
“I’m glad you asked. How about the stricture against blood spilled in violence on Calanthe’s soil and water?”
I controlled my shock, giving him a bland look as chastisement for attempting to startle an indiscreet remark from me. “Excuse Me?” I replied, letting my arch tone reflect my disapproval of his tactics.
Ambrose grinned, plucked a blade of grass and pointed it at me. “Come now, Your Highness. We’re allies now. Isn’t this something your court wizard should know?”
I declined to comment on his casual assumption of our supposed allied status. We shared a common enemy, but that didn’t necessarily make us friends. “It seems to Me that magic is more your arena than Mine. How could I possibly explain the arcane to an accomplished wizard? I’m no magic wielder.” I enjoyed pretending total ignorance, as he knew it was a lie, and it kept him in the dark about just how much I did know.
“No, because you are magic, aren’t you? Those who are magic seldom wield it, at least not in the same way, for example, that a wizard might.” He was clearly enjoying the game, also.
“I don’t know that much about wizards.”
“Then we are well matched, as I don’t know much about nature magic.”
I raised a brow. “Nor do I.”
He made a scoffing sound. “Calanthe’s magic is yours. Or yours is Calanthe’s.” He shrugged one shoulder. “Same and same, anyway.”
“Calanthe is but an island and I am only a woman,” I countered.
He fell onto his back, laughing heartily, bare feet kicking. Con glanced over, giving me a questioning look, and I waved him off. “Stop that,” I hissed at Ambrose.
Rolling onto his elbow to face me, he abruptly sobered. “I will if you will. This is a critical question, Your Highness. From what I gather the dread trio is planning, we’ll be looking at plenty of violence to come. Plenty of blood to be spilled and islands to be … enraged? Will Calanthe lift her spine from the water, perhaps, to rampage through the world like the giant monsters of old?”
I controlled my reaction to that far-too-prescient remark. So far as I knew, that ancient knowledge had never been written down, the stories told only in secret, in the sacred privacy of the temples on Calanthe, as all the other temples to the old gods had been destroyed when Anure shattered the kingdoms. I laughed, a silvery titter worthy of the silliest courtier. “What a story! Where did you hear such a fanciful tale?”
He regarded me very seriously, the deep forest looking out of his eyes. “Rumors. Fragments of ancient tales told by peat fires. Whispers in the dark.”
“Such a wild imagination you have. The stricture is key to life on Calanthe only because that’s how we preserve our paradise. We are a peaceful people. Violence is strongly discouraged.”
Ambrose shook the blade of grass at me. “‘Forces beyond your imagining,’ you said of it. I recall quite clearly. And just now you referred to it as arcane knowledge. The injunction goes far beyond custom, Your Highness. What happens when Calanthe becomes aware of blood shed in violence?”
I clearly wasn’t in the correct state of mind for verbal fencing, particularly not with this wizard who had his scorpion stinger poised. Needing the infusion of energy, I sat back on my perch just enough to touch my back against the tree, inhaling as if enjoying the serene garden. Calanthe’s nurturing essence flowed into me, a sweet relief. I’d once explained to Con that orchids can’t live on their own, taking their nourishment from the trees, the rain, the very air.
Of course he hadn’t understood that I was much the same. I don’t know why I’d even hinted at it.
Ambrose narrowed his eyes, his keen gaze looking through me—or at whatever he saw when he looked at me—and an uncanny prickle of foreign magic wafted over me. Straightening, I broke the connection and subtly deflected the wizard’s magic into a nearby bush.
Ambrose gave me a knowing smile. “I could test the theory,” he said.
With an effort, I sharpened my thinking. We were having at least two conversations—duels, truly—one verbal, one magical. I wasn’t winning either one. The wizard had chosen his moment to ambush me very well.
“You could,” I agreed, “though if there is a price to pay—from either Calanthe or Her denizens—then you would be the one to pay it. I’ve heard said that the cost extracted from an offender of the laws of magic is proportionate to the amount of magical power they possess.”
Ambrose looked positively delighted. “Have you heard that? How fascinating.” His magic returned, a softer touch, almost delicate, like birdsong heard from far away.
My turn to narrow my gaze. “You purport to have immense ability, Syr Wizard. Have a care, as a price of that size might well send you back to where you came from.”
He sat up, crossed his legs and propped his elbows on his knees, fingers folded to a point over his closed-lipped smile. His green eyes sparkled with humor. His magic sharpened into a needle, pricking me. “And where do you imagine I came from, Your Most Perceptive Highness?”
“Oriel,” I tossed out, allowing myself a slight smile at his hoot of laughter. I broke the needle, letting it shiver onto the stones beneath my seat.
“A clever deflection, but not enough to divert me.” He pressed his fingers to his lips, a calculating glint in his eyes. “Where I come from, we don’t have your kind,” he finally confided.
“Queens?” I asked in wide-eyed surprise. “Or women?”
“Elementals.” He shot the word at me, and in the same moment, a sensation like hot water brushed my skin. “I think you are a woman and an island.”
I pretended not to notice his magic this time, curious to see what he’d do with it. “The philosophers say that no man is an island,” I countered, as if we only exchanged witty repartee. He strengthened the wave of magic, and I drained it down through my feet, letting Calanthe have it. She murmured in her sleep, tasting the odd flavor, then subsiding again.
Ambrose frowned absently as he looked inward; then his brightly curious gaze flicked back to my face. “Ah, but we’re speaking of a woman, not a man. What do the philosophers say then?”
“They don’t,” Con inserted, striding over to us, Lady Sondra and General Kara following like the faithful troops they were. “Because women’s minds are unknowable.” He gave me a wry look, and I rolled my eyes, making sure he saw my disdain. Quite frankly, I was relieved that he’d broken the unsettling duel between Ambrose and me.
“You say that as if there aren’t women philosophers.”
Con opened his mouth. Firmly shut it again.
“He used to know better, Your Highness,” Lady Sondra explained with a disgusted look at Con, unexpectedly in harmony with me for a moment. “Our Conrí has been too long among men.”
“You’re not a man,” Con growled at her.
Lady Sondra batted her pale lashes, swaying and mincing with a refined grace worthy of any court lady—an odd sight with her sword at her side, and in her black-and-gold fighting gear, even the glamorous set she wore for court. She fluttered her fingers at Con. “Thank you for noticing.” She pitched her voice too high, so the coo came out rough, and Sondra dropped all playfulness as if it had burned her. The look she then flashed at me held only bitter malice, the temporary harmony gone as if it had never been. “Much good may it do me.”
“We have the beginnings of a plan,” Con said, watching me closely, “to run past you for approval.”
Kara’s face shifted subtly, and Sondra gave Con such an incredulous look that I knew this had been a surprise.
“All right.” I gestured at the grass around me. “Care to sit?”
“I prefer to stand,” Sondra replied, her gaze flicking to the grass at my feet with scorn. Kara said nothing, but remained standing also, with military rigidity.
“Excellent. Then you can ask the gate guard to admit My advisers.” I smiled serenely at her rebellious frown. She had no good reason to refuse to do my bidding, however, so she stalked away to the gate, stiff-legged, all hint of grace banished.
Con knelt on one knee, propping his forearm on the upraised one. The position put our eyes level, and he gazed at me soberly. “Was Ambrose badgering you?” he asked quietly.
I nearly blinked at him. Ambrose wasn’t near enough to hear—with human ears, anyway—but Merle certainly was. Did Con not understand the nature of a familiar like that? “We enjoyed a lively conversation. Why—don’t you trust the wizard?”
Ambrose, who’d rolled onto his back again to stare at the sky and chew on another blade of grass, smiled vaguely.
“It’s not that. Exactly.” Con frowned, searching my face. “I just don’t—”
“Your Highness!” Percy practically danced across the stones to my little lawn and bowed extravagantly. “You look leagues beyond gorgeous. As radiant as Sawehl, seductive as Ejarat, and with a positively lethal edge of Yilkay’s black teeth.” He grinned, showing his own teeth, and snapping them.
Con looked disgusted and I patted his hand, refraining from teasing him about well-executed flattery. Especially since I preferred his earnest, if clumsy words.
“Lord Percy.” I offered the hand with the orchid ring for him to kiss. “So good of you to attend Me on short notice.”
“Are You kidding?” He waved his hands in the air. “The court is aflutter with the news of the missive from His Imperial Horribleness. Since the messenger was so expeditiously returned to his sloop—” Percy paused to glare balefully at Kara, who might as well have been carved of obsidian for all he seemed to notice. “—no one has been able to extract any news.”
“We’re all keen to hear what the emperor’s next move is, Your Highness,” Brenda added gravely, coming up beside Percy, bowing in her perfunctory way. A square-built woman with short-cut silvery hair, Brenda had served in the wars in Derten and tended toward cursory manners. Not from lack of respect, but because Brenda preferred efficiency in all things. Really, she and General Kara had been cut from the same cloth.
Agatha arrived on Lord Dearsley’s arm. Thin and pale, she always seemed ethereal to me, forever cold and easily startled. Within that deceptive exterior, though, she possessed a spine of steel. I didn’t know her whole story, of course, but Agatha had survived where few others had. Strength comes in many forms and isn’t always visible. They paused before me, both bowing. Sondra followed behind, carrying two chairs.
“A man your age shouldn’t have to be kept standing or forced to sit on the ground,” she muttered at Dearsley, throwing me a fierce glance.
“Thank you, Lady Sondra. You are ever so thoughtful,” I replied with languid ease. My thoughts must be scattered to the stormy seas that I hadn’t thought of it. Tertulyn would have handled that, dammit all. “Agatha, would you care to—” Agatha gracefully sank to the grass beside Brenda, wrapping her colorful shawl around herself. Percy arranged his elaborate tails and settled in the chair beside Lord Dearsley, crossing his legs and folding his hands on his knee to properly display the long jeweled tips, much like my own.
“This is your Defense Council?” Con muttered in my ear.
“The core of it. These are the cleverest people in all the realms, refugees of the forgotten empires,” I informed him. “They helped me defeat you, after all.”
“You don’t have to keep reminding me,” he growled.
“Are you sure? You seem to keep forgetting,” I replied sweetly, then gestured for him to take the lead and raised my voice. “Conrí, you may proceed.”
He stepped away from me, surveying the gathering, the mantle of easy power settling around him. Here was the wolf in his element: at the head of the pack.
He began with a concise summary of Anure’s missive, sticking only to the salient information. “Anure is obsessed with capturing Her Highness the queen. We will—that is,” he corrected himself, with a glance at me, “I’m suggesting we lure him into a vulnerable position by making Queen Euthalia seem easily captured.”
“Out of the question,” Lord Dearsley burst out, long whiskers fluttering with his indignation. “Her Highness cannot be placed at risk. Her safety is of primary importance.”
“I agree,” Con replied gravely, with more gentleness for the old man than I expected. “Her Highness will never be truly unprotected. She will have layers of protection, including me.”
“I feel compelled to point out,” I inserted, not pleased at how quickly Con had reverted to assuming he’d have his way, “that I have layers of protection already. Calanthe is well defended.”
Con studied me. “And yet you’ve worked diligently all these years—you and your father before you—to keep Anure away from Calanthe.”
“Of course. The first layer of defense was to make Anure believe he couldn’t come here.”
“Why does he believe he cannot come to Calanthe?” Ambrose asked. He still lay on his back in the grass, the moons and stars of his robe sparkling like a handful of jewels scattered across the ground. With his hands behind his head, he stared up at the cloudless blue sky, a picture of indolence.
“My father enchanted him to believe as much.”
“Your father was a wizard?” Con asked.
“No, he was a king,” I replied patiently.
“A king married to the land,” Ambrose told him, helpfully, which earned him a scowl.
They’d forgotten so much, if Con knew nothing about the ties between the royal families and the lands they governed. It would harm nothing to remind them. “In the old ways, the true kings and queens were bound to the lands they governed.”
“As the king does, so does the land,” Agatha said, quoting the old song.
I nodded. “Exactly.”
Con looked from her to me. “You expect me to believe that? I loathe Anure with every particle of my being, but he proved that it didn’t matter to the land who rules. Life goes on no matter whose corpulent ass sits on the throne.”
So much bitterness there. I could hardly blame him, but I also wouldn’t try to convince him. Wasted breath. “Believe what you like, but yes, My father was married to Calanthe and She understood that. My father didn’t want Anure here, so She made him unwelcome. It’s quite uncomfortable, to be on an island that doesn’t want you there.”
“If this is something you can control, why didn’t you use this against us?” Con wanted to know, and I didn’t like the way he sounded as if he’d caught me in a lie.
“I didn’t have to,” I retorted. “I didn’t plan to keep you here, so there was no need to—” I broke off, deciding against saying I’d considered and discarded that plan in favor of trapping them. And that calling Calanthe’s power “under my control” would be a stretch. It would work to my benefit for them to believe that, and it would save me explaining that I more coaxed and cajoled—only without words—than anything. Imagine convincing a sleeping feline to do your bidding without waking it up—that comes close.
“No need to what?” he asked.
“To do more than I did. You’ve personally encountered some of the enchantments I have at My command,” I reminded him.
“How do they work? Show me one.”
“They’re more subtle than that. Complex, with many layers.” I cooed the word. How dare he grill me like this? I was about out of patience for it. “It’s not like piling up vurgsten, lighting a spark, and bringing the wall down a moment later.”
“At least explosions make sense,” Con retorted.
“Some of us understand more than bashing things with a rock hammer or blowing them up,” I snapped back.
“Yes, well, blowing things up gave Anure total power, and he did it without magic, so I wouldn’t underestimate that approach,” Con gritted out.
“Are you so sure about that?” I replied coolly, and he frowned.
“Everyone knows Anure doesn’t use magic. He says it doesn’t exist.”
“I’d be wary of falling into the trap of believing what ‘everyone knows,’” I said with a gracious smile.
Con glowered and General Kara held up a pacifying hand. “Let’s take this discussion in order. These … enchantments are all that’s kept Anure from sailing into your harbor and taking Your Highness back to Yekpehr?” he asked, sounding skeptical.
“All?” I asked him, raising my brows at the dismissive term. “They’ve been highly effective. Calanthe survived when the other kingdoms fell.” Dearsley nodded along with me.
Kara acknowledged that, an old, depthless grief in his dark gaze that made me sorry I’d plucked that nerve. “Can you rely upon these enchantments to keep the emperor away indefinitely?”
Ah, that was the question. Con had been studying Kara with a look of speculation, one he transferred to me. “No,” I admitted. “Not anymore. The enchantments were woven into our betrothal. When I broke that promise by marrying Conrí, it released Anure.”
Con stared at me, stricken, a flicker of guilt in his golden eyes.
“It wouldn’t have lasted indefinitely anyway,” I told him. “I weighed the odds. And other things have changed.”
“What things?” Con ground out.
I looked to Ambrose, who’d sat up, gazing at me with guileless green eyes. Time to find out what he might be able to tell me, since we were all giving up our secrets. “Not only does the emperor, in fact, believe in magic, he uses it. He has wizards working with him, doesn’t he?”
They all started talking at once, with various shouts and exclamations, and I rode it out. Waiting on Ambrose. The wizard pursed his mouth in doubt that slowly curved into a canny smile.
“Silence!” Con thundered, then rounded on Ambrose. “Is it true?”
“Oh yes,” Ambrose agreed cheerfully. “At least three or four.”
“Four,” Agatha said. Quiet and definitive. She didn’t look up from the considerable length of ribbon fluttering from her fingers.
“Is there a reason,” Con asked Ambrose, spacing his words with elaborate patience, “that you never mentioned Anure having wizards before this?”
“Yes,” Ambrose replied. Merle croaked his own confirmation.
When Ambrose said nothing more, Con’s fingers twitched, curling as if he’d like to strangle the wizard, so I intervened. Really, Con would have to learn how to ask the right questions. “In many ways, it doesn’t matter that Anure has his own wizards,” I asserted. “I’ve suspected it, but knowing that changes nothing. We know that no one has been able to withstand any attack of his, which is why he is now the imperial tyrant. He has broken kingdoms like a child with a toy. Now he’s coming after Calanthe, and I don’t expect to be the exception.”
Con focused on me, frustration simmering palpably. Perversely, it made me want to wind my fingers in his hair and soak in all his intensity. “Other than enchantments”—he still said the word with scorn—“you have no defenses?”
“There are layers of physical defenses, too,” I bit out, no longer finding his temper so appealing. “Only a foolhardy ruler relies upon one defense.”
“Your Highness, assuming the emperor brings overwhelming force capable of scouring Calanthe to bare rock, as he’s indicated he intends to do,” Kara reasoned, “are your physical defenses capable of withstanding that?”
Dearsley nodded with confidence, but I eyed Kara, considering. I’d been studying everything I could find on vurgsten, how Con and his people had deployed it, how Anure was likely to. “No, I don’t think so. We have no way to counter vurgsten if he gets close enough to use it.”
Con slammed a fist into his palm as if he’d been vindicated. Perhaps he had been. “Then a trap is the way to go. We lure Anure to the right place, play on his obsession with Lia, he brings the bulk of his forces, and we crush him. No more Anure.”
Brenda smiled with a bloodthirsty eagerness I rarely saw from her, while Percy examined his nails. Dearsley threw me a desperate look, and I held up a hand to stop his next words.
“Crush,” I repeated. “You’re talking about a full-scale battle. With bloodshed.”
Con set his jaw as he looked at me, but he spoke with remarkable patience. “That’s how battles typically work, yes.”
“Not here,” I said.
“Not possible,” Dearsley said at the same time.
Sondra made a sound, but Con lifted a hand to shush her. “Yes. Here. Not only possible, but inevitable. Anure is coming to Calanthe and we have to fight.”
Ambrose sat up and watched me with glittering intensity. I sighed for the inevitability of bringing this into the open. “Not on Calanthe or in Her waters,” I said, and Lord Dearsley nodded in agreement. “I forbid it.”
“What?” Sondra exclaimed. Kara closed his eyes, looking pained. Percy and Brenda exchanged knowing glances. They didn’t understand the full import of the stricture, but they’d helped me navigate a similar problem before.
“I cannot condone the spilling of blood in violence on Calanthe’s soil or in Her waters,” I clarified. Ambrose nodded to himself, Merle hopping over and making clucking sounds as if they conversed. Agatha produced a bit of bread from inside her shawl and offered it to the raven, who took it with a polite flutter of wings.
“No monarch of Calanthe ever has,” Dearsley added. “We are a peaceful people.”
Sondra threw up her hands, glaring at all of us. “What you are is insane!”
“Welcome to the Flower Court, darling Sondra,” Percy drawled.
“What do you think Anure will do if we don’t fight?” she demanded. “This isn’t some garden party where you can give him the cut direct and he’ll slink off in shame. We’ve established that you can’t stop him. He’s going to come here and—”
“Enough, Sondra,” Con said without rancor, his eyes never leaving my face. “Will you explain?”
Since he was making the effort to listen, I made the attempt to meet him halfway. “Do you understand the nature of blood sacrifice?”
He frowned a little. “You mean, like the old ways, ripping out a guy’s living heart and offering it to the gods?”
“So gloriously barbaric,” Percy crooned, admiring gaze on Con.
“Or a virgin girl’s.” I spoke over Percy’s flirtation. “Think of the Morning Glories.”
“The Glories?” Con frowned. “I thought that was an empty custom, a relic of your father’s days.”
“Just because our rituals on Calanthe seem meaningless to you,” Dearsley put in, unable to restrain himself any longer, “doesn’t mean they are.” He’d been the one to convince me, in the dark days after my father’s death, to continue the tradition of the Morning Glories, though I didn’t spill their virgin blood as a king would.
Con looked from him to me. “I still don’t get it.”
“We don’t shed blood in violence because we don’t care to wake that which feeds on blood sacrifice.”
Percy shuddered dramatically, and Brenda gave him a quelling look.
“If we sit here and do nothing,” he said slowly, “Anure will come, take the queen, and scour Calanthe. He’ll kill every living being on this island, which will be an ocean of blood shed in violence. If I’d wanted to sit on my ass and let Anure raze the world, I could’ve stayed in the mines.” His volume had climbed as he spoke, and I opened my mouth to retort, but Agatha spoke first, in her eerily quiet way that somehow cut through angry words.
“No, you wouldn’t have, Conrí,” she said, gazing at him with pale eyes. “Some of us can’t be caged.”
Con brought himself up short, then gave her a courteous nod that surprised me. “True.”
“No one said anything about doing nothing,” I said, taking control of the discussion. “We’re talking about ways to avoid violence. My sacred duty is to protect Calanthe. There’s an option we haven’t discussed that would stop the emperor from coming here. If he wants me so badly, I can go to Yekpehr and turn Myself over to him.” After all, I’d once thought that would be the logical end to my long détente with Anure. I’d seen a future where I’d have to marry him—which would at least give me the opportunity to kill him when he tried to take me to bed. I still could.
An aghast silence fell. Con put a hand on his rock hammer, as if I meant to go right then, and he’d hit me over the head to stop me. “Would it?” he ground out with quiet violence.
“No,” Kara said in his grave-dark voice. “Anure will destroy Calanthe anyway. If there’s a chance to win this, we need You here, Your Highness, with us and with Calanthe.”
Kara held my gaze. Con visibly seethed and Sondra gave him an uncertain glance, then looked to me. Pleadingly? No, I could see that, even if I could muster the courage to do it, Con would never hand me over to Anure. And Kara was right: Anure would destroy Calanthe anyway as punishment, and I’d sacrifice myself for nothing. The time for that gambit had passed.
“We have to fight,” Con said to me, adding to the argument, “but a trap gives us greater control of the situation. It will let me do everything in my power to minimize the blood shed in violence. If we do it right, then it will be less than what Anure would do otherwise. If Her Highness agrees to this much. Do you agree that we’ll fight?” He looked at me expectantly, the others following suit.
I wished I could see a way out of the looming disaster, but I couldn’t. They were right: Blood would be shed on Calanthe no matter what. All I could do was mitigate the damage.
The only wild card in all of this was Con. He’d been the unexpected element all along. I understood better now why the dreams of the manacled wolf breaking his chains had felt so pivotal to me. Con’s escape and revolution had changed everything. We had no choice now but to travel through the fire and either perish or emerge on the other side. If anyone could change the outcome of this conflict, perhaps my wild wolf could. If he couldn’t, well, doom was doom. I feared that I could do nothing to save Calanthe, no matter what choice I made. I conceded with a reluctant nod, and Con’s eyes narrowed as he perceived my unwilling capitulation. So I spoke to avoid another argument that would only lead us to the same dead end. “So you’ll draw Anure to the palace and trap him how?”
“I haven’t figured out that part yet,” Con replied, then looked to Kara.
General Kara glanced to Con for permission, then continued. “We need advice on that. Your Highness knows this island better than any of us.”
I restrained a sarcastic reply. So good of them to notice. “Do tell.” Oops, my sarcasm slipped out anyway.
Kara hesitated, having caught the bite in my tone. Con still stood back in all his caged-wolf wariness.
“When Anure comes here,” Kara continued, “if he’s determined to retrieve Your Highness, would he come to the palace?”
“That’s where I live,” I explained patiently, and Percy laughed.
“Lia.” Con’s voice held reproach, and I threw up my hands in exasperation.
“Yes. The palace is where the emperor would expect Me to be.”
“Her Highness is always in residence,” Dearsley put in. “As is right and good.”
“Always?” Con asked me, ignoring Dearsley. “You’ve never once left the palace? How do you even know what other parts of the island are like?”
“I saw them all on my initial tour of Calanthe when I ascended to the throne, and I have—”
“So you’re not always here,” he interrupted, pouncing on the point.
Only by locking down my eyeballs did I manage not to roll them—and then only because we had an audience. “For the last ten years, I’ve been on the palace grounds. As these people can confirm, it’s safest here.”
“And comfy,” Percy put in.
“Safest why?” Con pursued the topic like a hound on the hunt.
I sighed mentally. I’d have to show them Calanthe’s strengths—and Her weaknesses. Her weaknesses were mine, and it went against the grain to put those vulnerabilities on display.
Con blew out a breath in exasperation just as I opened my mouth. “Look, Lia,” he burst out in his wolf’s snarl, “we face overwhelming odds. The emperor has at least a hundred times more ships than we do, maybe a thousand. Tens of thousands of fighters. If they land on Calanthe, even knowing their objective is extracting you intact, we’ll still have to find a way to keep from being overrun. We need a place that will be an effective, and immediate, trap. We can’t just lounge around in the gardens and wait for them to feel sleepy or whatever.”
“Don’t you dare condescend to Me,” I said softly. I regretted now, breaking down like that in the folly. I knew better. Never reveal weakness before wolves. They don’t forget, and—when it suits their purpose—they exploit it.
Con visibly dragged his snapping temper back and tried for a more rational tone of voice. “We’re in this fight together—and we can’t win if you won’t trust us with the knowledge we need to plan strategy. You agreed to this plan. Help me to help you.”
“Oh, are we trusting each other again? I lost track when you were accusing Me of lying and lecturing Me on the defense of Calanthe.”
He opened his mouth. Shut it again.
“Better. Now I had been about to explain why the palace is the safest place on Calanthe. I can and will show you. Come with Me.”