My eyes sting with the light. The clock says ten in the morning.
Fifteen hours?
“We’re going home,” Kalt says, “to bury Mother and have a proper funeral.”
No, it’s too soon. She needs to be buried in the mountains by the sea, the place she loved best. She doesn’t want to sleep forever in that city Father bought with blood. She needs the sea before they shut her away.
But no one listens to me. Or maybe I don’t even speak.
Leannya curls against Arrin during the flight, refusing to let go, a tiny white-knuckled fist around his arm. Kalt stares at his boots. Father looks out the window, his spine iron-straight. I want someone to say her name. I need someone to break the numb silence and admit what’s happened. I want to fall apart into a thousand sharp little pieces and feel pain.
But nothing comes.
Nothing, nothing, nothing.
Cyar’s waiting on the tarmac in Valon, and his arms are around me before I can protest.
“Look at me,” he says through his tears. “More of a mess than you. Sorry.”
He’s rooted in familiar honesty, nothing held back, and I let him hug me. Then I pull the still-fresh lemon from my pocket and give it to him.
They bury her in the evening, everything the wife of the General deserves, the stunned city brought to a standstill. Down the casket goes, into the hollowed-out ground. It looks like a cold and lonely place. Trapped forever. Caged in the suffocating earth.
“Wake me.”
But I can’t.
She’s covered by chamomile and dirt. I offer the crushed hibiscus, the last beautiful thing she held, and Leannya shudders, crumpling back against Father, sobbing. He places a stiff hand on her tiny shoulder.
His silent face holds all the fury of hell.
8
AURELIA
Hathene, Etania
It’s morning, the mountains outside still lit with dawn mist, when Uncle Tanek and Havis burst through the parlour doors and interrupt breakfast. Uncle looks like a panicked deer shot in the hind, and Havis like a fellow creature scrambling to keep up and see what happens next. It’s almost amusing, the pair of them, until Uncle says, “General Dakar’s wife has been murdered! We just received the cable. It’s set for the broadcasts this evening.”
Mother and Reni freeze with their cutlery mid-air. I do, too.
As Uncle explains how it happened two days ago in a city of southern Savient, and everyone else, including Landore, only received the news this morning, and the General’s wife has already been buried in the ground while Savient mourns, Mother grows pale and I feel a sudden panic growing deep inside.
“Who would dare do this?” Reni demands.
“No arrests have been made. The culprits disappeared, but the General says it has the fingerprints of the Nahir upon it,” Uncle replies. “Certainly those men know the General is eyeing the South and trying to put his army there. They would take the gamble and make their warning clear.”
“And it was a gamble,” Mother says, an edge of sorrow to her voice. Her red nails are bright against the silver spoon she holds.
The panicky shadow inside me swells further, smothering my heartbeat, drawing the warmth from my cheeks.
“I’m concerned for what’s next, with Dakar, but I have a proposition.”
Did Havis predict this dark thing?
He’s still waiting behind Uncle, his gaze unreadable, a wicked harbour of trouble, and I can’t conceal my fury. He meets my eye—and pauses. In that wordless, unnoticed moment, he realizes the truth. Tension flickers along his half-shaven jaw, eyes narrowing.
He knows I read the letter.
I wish I were better at hiding things.
“I suppose the General won’t be coming to visit anymore?” I ask, turning from Havis, hiding a tremor by stirring sugar into my tea.
“It seems doubtful,” Uncle says.
“We should at least send him a letter of our regrets,” I suggest to Mother. “Wouldn’t that be proper?”
Uncle huffs a small laugh.
Mother studies me, then addresses Uncle. “Yes, I’ll offer the General a letter at once. He’s still quite welcome to visit if he chooses.”
“But we shouldn’t pressure him to—”
She extends her slender hand. “Compose the letter, brother, then I’ll sign it. I want it sent by morning.”
“Sinora—”
Her night-sea gaze turns quietly fierce, that silent spark that negates her outer calm, and Uncle holds his tongue.
It’s not until later in the morning that Havis finds me. The palace halls are bright with sun, yet heavy as nightfall, servants tiptoeing quickly like their heels are being chased. We all know the truth of this murder, and today, perhaps, it’s silenced every royal palace. Something dark has reached our shores. The Nahir have made it into the North. They’ve murdered an innocent woman and reminded everyone that their uprising will burn and burn, no matter what power rises in the east, threatening to challenge them.
Mother says every person has a reason for why they fight—but what reason could ever justify this terrible act?
I hurry up the grand staircase, feeling Havis’s shadow behind me.
Once in the privacy of Mother’s quiet wing, I spin to face him. “What do you want, Ambassador?”
His expression holds no mercy. “Don’t think I’m stupid, Princess. I saw the way you looked at me. You read my letter.”
“That’s your own fault, Ambassador. Why did you give it to me anyway?”
“I told you—your uncle forbids me from the Queen. He keeps me at his side from dawn to dusk, invites himself to every meeting. He’s a fool grasping for power, but I think you already know that.”
“You are a snake and a danger to my family.”
For one cramped moment, his cruel stare bears down, devouring my certainty. I’ve pushed too far with the letter. I should never have tried to play his games. Now when he tricks Mother into allowing our marriage, he’ll know I betrayed him right from the start, and he’ll pretend to adore me all while seething with a vicious hatred, a hatred that could keep me from my family forever, locked in a place on the edge of hell.
He steps back, though, throwing his infuriated gaze onto a nearby painting. There’s a tense tremor beneath his stubble, and it takes a moment to lessen, his eyes absorbing the scene—vibrant flowers and narrow green leaves, colours of amber and brick and ginger. In the middle, a young girl sits on a hill. Dark-haired, a hint of a smile on her lips, a sleek cat curled at her feet.
“It’s Resya,” he says eventually. A statement, not a question.
I don’t want to answer. He’s distracting me. But he’s right, because the painting was a gift from Father, commissioned for Mother’s birthday long ago, and it’s the only thing in the palace she calls her own with a jealous fervor. Too many times she’s stood here, as if she might leap inside and feel the cat’s fur. As if she might catch the scent of Southern wind if she waited long enough.
And too many times I’ve also waited here, wondering, deep down—far away and out of sight, like a shameful secret—if Mother loves that place more than she loves us. Father was her bright sun, her greatest friend. But now he’s gone, and the winters here are still bitter, and this kingdom is still an elaborate Northern gown she’s never quite fit into properly.
What if she passes the crown to Reni and then quietly retreats home? Why else would she think of giving me to Havis?
I hazard a glance at him. He’s still staring at the picture, lost in his secret thoughts. His black shirt is stitched with spirals of gold and red, distinctly foreign, its elegant patterns like the rug on Mother’s floor. I realize I don’t know him.
Not at all.
He turns, looking down at me with private skepticism. “You know so little of the world, Princess.”