My hours have never been so full, my sleep never so sound. My mornings are full of lessons: in Syssalah, in court politics, in the customs and traditions of Syhl Shallow. Nolla Verin is often at my side, but she never feels like a companion, and instead feels like a spy waiting to report on my progress to her mother. I keep my guard up—and she does as well.
I share the midday meal each day with Karis Luran. Jake never leaves my side. When we dine, I am coolly distant, resentful of the way she’d so swiftly manipulated me: into proving my magic, into working against Rhen. Resentful of the way she’s hidden her daughter away after such a brutal display of vengeance against that guard.
“Every time she asks for wine,” Jake murmurs to me at one of our luncheons, “I expect her to cut some poor guy’s wrist open over a glass.”
Indeed. I do not like her. I do not trust her.
This is no secret. “You do not like me, Young Prince,” she says to me on the third day.
“Do I need to?”
“No.” She smiles. “To desire adoration is to make yourself vulnerable.”
I definitely do not adore her. Her subjects seem to, however. Her cruelty is seen as decisive and just.
And despite my resentment, she seems to be a fair ruler. She cares for her subjects. The people of Syhl Shallow are well fed and educated. Two years of military service are required of each family—leading to a sense of unity that takes me by surprise each time I join Talfor and Cortney in the city.
Her castle coffers may be running dry without the tithe once paid by Rhen’s father, but Karis Luran does what she can to support her people, and despite her brutality, they seem to love her for it. It makes me wonder how Rhen’s treatment of me was received. It makes me wonder how his subjects will respond when he sends soldiers to claim back Silvermoon Harbor.
As always, I wish my thoughts carried no concern for Rhen.
My afternoons are full of drills with the guards and soldiers as we prepare to leave—and they’re the only time I can relax, because I have a sword in my hand. They fight differently here, and I enjoy the challenge of learning their methods and weaponry. I don’t enjoy the challenge of the dinner hour, because every evening meal includes people of importance: generals and military leaders, as well as leaders of the Royal Houses. I am not Rhen, able to influence people with hardly more than the right glance, but it seems my steady refusal to be manipulated has worked in greater favor. No one challenges me to demonstrate magic. No one challenges me at all.
No one except Iisak, who all but drags me out of my chambers after dark, insisting that we must strengthen my magic. My skills seem so small and minor compared to what I know Lilith could do. She cursed me and Rhen, trapping us in an endless cycle of her magic. I can barely affect more than one person at a time.
On the night before we are to leave, we are on the deserted training fields in the moonlight. Iisak insists I can feed my magic into my swordplay for accuracy and damage—and once I learn that, I can potentially do the same for my soldiers.
It’s not going well. Jake and Tycho have volunteered to help, but I need no magic to guide my sword to best them. When we break apart for the tenth time, they’re exhausted. Sweat glints in the moonlight. I glance up at the palace. Sometimes I can catch a glimpse of Lia Mara, but tonight her room is dark, and no shadow fills her window.
Noah has been watching from the sidelines. “Maybe you should tie an arm behind your back,” he says.
I push damp hair out of my eyes and sigh. Our time to prepare grows short. I am hurtling toward an uncertain end, but I have no idea how to stop it.
“Perhaps you need a new opponent,” calls Nolla Verin.
I turn and see her striding out of the darkness, guards at her back. Instead of the robes that typically adorn her small frame, tonight she wears black leather armor trimmed with silver, her dark hair braided back with green ribbon. A sword and a dagger are already in her hands.
I raise my eyebrows. “Are you offering?”
“Yes.” She lifts her blade and attacks.
I’m not completely unprepared, but I’m barely able to block before she spins and parries. I try to hook her dagger to pull it from her hand, but she ducks and whirls to regroup. I watch her movement, looking for weakness.
She gives me no time. Her next attack is brutal and swift.
My response is, too.
She breaks away again, her breathing a little quick. She smiles, and it’s fierce. “If you draw blood, my mother will be displeased.”
“Then you should better guard your left side.” This time I attack first, putting my full strength behind it. Her sword is lighter, and she yields almost at once, but she moves quicker than thought. Her attacks seem to come from everywhere at once, and she’s relentless. I remember Lia Mara praising her sister’s skills—and she wasn’t wrong.
In another place and time, I’d be openly admiring, but I’m tired, and this feels like more posturing. Much like the morning we raced through the city, I see no path to victory here. She’s right—Karis Luran would likely have my head if I harmed her heir, alliance or not.
Her sword almost gets past my guard, and she nearly cuts a stripe across my arm.
“What was that you said about left sides?” she says.
She’s right, so I smile. “Noted.”
“I thought you were to be using magic to assist your swordplay. I hoped I would get a demonstration.”
“So far I haven’t needed assistance.”
“Try to kill him,” Jake calls. “That’s usually what works.”
Nolla Verin’s eyes narrow, and she leaps forward. She’s somehow even quicker. Our blades have become a blur in the moonlight. Every time she strikes, there’s more strength behind it, and when she slices open my shoulder in an attempt to disarm me, I realize she really might be trying to kill me.
I try to hook her sword, but she’s a fraction of a second too quick, and it leaves my side open. She dives in, aiming for my ribs. Those stars wait in my blood, fueled by the fight and the damage, waiting for my command. I try to send them into my weapons, hoping they’ll quicken my defense and stop her.
Nolla Verin goes flying back, landing so hard in the dust of the training grounds that she skids the final distance.
Her guards are immediately in front of her, swords drawn and leveled at me.
“No!” Nolla Verin coughs. “I told him to do it.”
“Told you,” Jake says.
The guards slowly lower their weapons. I feel as surprised as she looks, but I sheathe my sword and walk to Nolla Verin, extending a hand. She glances at it, then springs to her feet on her own. She regards me with obvious new interest—but greater regard. “As I said. A new opponent.”
“As you said.”
Her breathing is faintly quick now, her cheeks pink in the moonlight. “Again?”
I hesitate.
“Yes,” calls Tycho.
She draws and swings. I barely draw my sword in enough time to stop hers. Our blades clash and fly in the night air until I feel the stars waiting.
Gently, Lia Mara said in the woods.
I give those stars a subtler push.
Nolla Verin misses her next block by several inches, and she throws herself back. I take advantage and hook her sword to disarm her, but it knocks her off balance, and she goes down hard.
Her guards are there again, but Nolla Verin is grinning up at me. “That is a handy trick.”
I can’t help smiling back. “Magic takes too much thought. I prefer the swords alone.”
“It won’t take much thought with more practice,” says Iisak.
This time, when I offer my hand, Nolla Verin takes it. Once she’s on her feet, she looks up at me, her eyes coolly calculating. Her hand doesn’t leave mine.
“Walk with me,” she says.
I lose the smile, and I glance up at the dark wall of the palace. “I should retire.”
“Please?”
I inhale to decline, but emotion flickers in her eyes for a brief moment. For all of Lia Mara’s comments about somehow being lesser than her sister, she never once spoke ill of Nolla Verin. The girl in front of me presents a fierce demeanor to the world, but I wonder how much of that has been developed to please her mother—and what hides beneath it.
I nod and offer my arm.
Nolla Verin laughs and starts walking. “Do ladies in Emberfall truly need assistance to walk?”
“No. Keep your distance if you’d rather.”
She huffs in surprise, and I discover I was right. So much of her aggression is a front to hide insecurity. In truth, she reminds me of Rhen a bit. They likely would have made powerful allies.
Then again, one of them probably wouldn’t have survived the first week.
We walk in silence across the training fields, the shadows growing longer as we move away from the torches near the back wall of the palace. Her guards have followed at a distance, as has Jake, which surprises me.
Nolla Verin glances over her shoulder at where Tycho and Iisak remain. “Mother does not like that you’ve freed that creature from his tether.”
“He is not my slave.”
She glances up at me. “What did you threaten him with, then, to keep his obedience?”
“Nothing.” I want to ask if ladies in Syhl Shallow need threats or a tether to ensure a promise is kept, but I do not wish to fight with her.
We fall into silence again. It’s prickly and uncomfortable. I much preferred swinging swords. It felt like the first time she’d been open and honest with me.
Maybe because she was trying to kill me.
I consider everything I heard from Lia Mara, and everything I’ve gleaned on my own. Nolla Verin is quick to echo her mother’s desires, and I wonder how deeply that runs. I glance at her. “Do you want this alliance?”
“Yes. It will be a boon for our people to have access to the waterways at Silvermoon Harbor, and it will benefit Emberfall to have funds to assist with rebuilding after all that was lost.”
“All that was lost during the invasion by Syhl Shallow, you mean.”
“All that was lost while your royal family was ‘in hiding.’ ” She looks up at me. “Do not pin all your troubles on us.”
“I am not.” Though I am. A little. It’s impossible not to. “That was not my question, though, Princess.”
“What is your question?”
“Do you want this alliance?” I stop and turn to face her. “With me.”
“Of course.” That emotion flickers in her eyes again, but the longer I stand here speaking with her, the more I see it as uncertainty. Vulnerability. Lia Mara sang her sister’s praises during our journey here, and certainly everyone I’ve met is quick to speak of Nolla Verin’s talents on a horse, or with a bow, or with a blade. Well-earned, for certain, but maybe all her skills hide the fact that she seems so perfect for the throne because she has no backbone to defy her mother. Maybe all her skills and her parroting hide the fact that she is young, and untested, and uncertain.
After spending so much time with Lia Mara in the woods, I began to wonder why Karis Luran would choose her younger daughter to be her heir—to negotiate an alliance first with Rhen, and now with me. Lia Mara believes it is because she herself is quiet and longs for peace—that she lacks her sister’s ruthlessness.
I now wonder if it is because Lia Mara would stand against her mother.
And Nolla Verin will not.
I glance back at the palace, and I can see a flutter of color at Lia Mara’s window. “How long will your mother keep your sister imprisoned?”
She follows my gaze. “Lia Mara is in a royal suite in the Crystal Palace. She is hardly imprisoned.”
I can hear the uncertainty in her voice. It’s well hidden, but it’s there. “You worry for her.”
“Yes. I do.”
But she will not visit her. I know as much from Iisak and the notes he brings to me. Nolla Verin will not contradict her mother’s will.
Silence drops between us again, full of so many unspoken things.
Nolla Verin knows I gave Lia Mara my jacket on the terrace—but she has never mentioned it. I wonder what she suspects. What she thinks. What she worries about.
I am hardly one to complain—she likely wonders the same about me. I learned long ago how to hide every thought behind the stoic countenance of a guardsman. She likely learned the same as a princess.
Maybe I was wrong. Nolla Verin isn’t like Rhen at all.
She’s like me.
I think of Iisak, the night we fought. I needed a battle, too, he said.
I glance at her. “Are you rested, Princess?”
“Somehow I have managed it, without the assistance of your arm.”
I smile. “Good.”
Without warning I draw my sword, and she grins.
