There’s a golden glow behind the western mountains as the Safire planes are fueled, the placid evening interrupted by urgent shouts and propellers spinning. Men smoke last cigarettes before a long flight. Within the palace, heated words whisper of a new uprising, panicked fears about the Southern troubles that only seem to be getting worse, a storm that hasn’t been this dangerous for half a century.
Seath of the Nahir—the man who came back from the dead.
I watch from the window, afraid to go outside to the wide steps with Mother and Reni and the other courtiers gathered. That would make this real, inescapable. There’s no last chance to give a proper goodbye to Athan, or Cyar. Gone, like cool water drying from my skin on a bright day, disappearing. As if they’d never come.
Engines stammer to a start and catch in the breeze.
Is he looking for me out there? Is he searching for my face beside Mother?
The thought of him hoping, and not finding, spurs me from the window. I hurry down the hall with desperation rising, out onto the steps, afraid I’ve missed my chance.
Far below on the tarmac, the General gives Mother a final nod while he stands near his impressive aeroplane.
I search the grey figures. There he is, illuminated by the western glow. Athan. His face is turned to the steps, waiting, and our eyes meet from a distance. He waves quickly. Even from here I can read the regret. Then he turns and retreats into the large plane, gone.
Gone.
The planes rise up into the burnt-ember sky, dark against light, towards the mountains, and I watch until they’ve disappeared, until I’m sure my sorrow will wrench my heart inside out.
I turn for the doors, and stop.
Havis stands in the entrance, leaning casually. A young man with sun-burnished skin waits beside him.
“Goodbyes are difficult, aren’t they?” Havis says. There’s a cigar in his hand.
I bury my grief and step round them without a word.
V
BLOOD TIES
24
ATHAN
Norvenne, Landore
Rebellion.
Revolt.
The words are thrown around the airplane as we fly for Norvenne. A failed uprising in the Thurnian city of Beraya, and the Nahir hung three Landorian officials just as they did in Hady. Then they burned a Safire flag on the city wall. It’s a taunt that won’t be ignored, and anger is palpable in the cramped air of 20,000 feet.
We stop to refuel.
We take off again.
But I have my own fear. The looks from Father gnaw at my certainty, the creeping exhaustion of two lengthy flights delivering the final blow. This past week was a spectacular mistake. I began with the upper hand, but somehow, now, I’m the one admitting defeat.
I miss her.
God, I do. My life is grey, straight-lined, an inevitable path of compass points and marching orders. All charcoal. But she’s spiraling colour. She’s fireworks. Sunsets. Dawn skies in flame. She could scatter like light and end up anywhere. My fitful sleep is broken by the image of her on that balcony, gold as sun.
Beautiful in a world of steel.
When we land outside Norvenne, the mountains are gone, only a distant cityscape beginning to wake as day appears. The runway is still lit by lamps, and Kalt’s standing by the narrow doors of the airbase. He looks tired. There’s a very good chance he’s been waiting there all night. Waiting for the moment of Father’s arrival so he can get another order and say another “Yes, sir.”
But Father only nods to him, cursory, then motions for me.
Here we go.
“What did you do?” Kalt mutters on my way by.
“Nothing,” I say. And everything.
Like a guilty dog, I follow Father into the airbase. This conversation won’t be pleasant. I have little to show for a week’s effort, only the purple around my left eye, but I have to be quicker than him. I have to talk my way out of this somehow. Words hover like fog in my mind, wavering.
I’m too exhausted for an interrogation.
Father claims a small office, locking the door behind us. We sit down across from each other in two brown leather chairs and he flicks the blinds open. Harsh light floods the window. I squint.
“That was an interesting predicament I found you in,” he says, the implication like a razor.
“It was nothing, sir.”
“Not according to Captain Carr.”
“Captain Carr,” I say, “spent every day with an Etanian girl in his bed.”
“And you didn’t?”
I blink for a moment, offended. “Me? No, Father, I’ve never even—” Then I stop, about to admit the one thing no almost-eighteen-year-old son should ever admit out loud. “I’m not Arrin,” I finish instead.
Father waves, like he doesn’t want to hear any more either. The earlier disgust on his face said enough. Not because of what I might have done, but because of who I might have done it with. Sinora’s daughter. A gross betrayal in his eyes.
“Then what’s your report, Lieutenant?”
I steady my hands on my knees. I have to make this good. “I’m certain Sinora’s lying to her children, sir. She’s protecting them from the stain of her crime. They know nothing.”
“The Princess isn’t aware of who you are?”
“Not as far as I can tell. I don’t think Sinora wants to answer those questions.”
He nods. “Sinora’s mastered her act well, hasn’t she? But she can’t play innocent forever. I always warned her not to get ahead of herself.” He crosses his arms and looks out the window. “Nothing else from the Princess, then?” I hesitate and he continues, “I must say, I did find Aurelia charming. Quite like Leannya. She doesn’t seem like the others.”
A sliver of hope squirms inside. He used her name. “No, she doesn’t.”
He looks back at me. “But she is like them. Nothing changes her blood ties, as I’m sure you know.”
The hope dissolves. “Of course, Father.” His stare pierces, scraping my soul, searching for treason or weakness, but I’m better at hiding. “She told me something interesting, actually,” I say, stifling a fake yawn. “She told me her father was murdered.”
It works, and I relish the satisfaction of seeing my father, the General of Savient, recover from obvious surprise. He leans forward, examining me like he thinks I’m lying. “She said this?”
“It was more of a confession, since she only just learned the truth this spring. No one else in Etania knows. It’s been hidden.”
“Murder,” he repeats.
“Or so they’ve told her.” I struggle to keep afloat. The almost-kiss he saw was convicting enough. But if I can make my connection to her purposeful, then he’ll tell me to continue it and he’ll never know the truth, and then I can protect her.
It’s a miserable logic, but all I have.
He cocks his head. “That explains what she told me.”
“You spoke with her?”
“Oh yes.” His lips twitch. “She had some impressive praise for you, in fact. And she told me her father died because he wasn’t a warrior.”
I wait. I don’t know where this is going.
“She sees him as weak,” he explains. “I’d wager she admires ambition more than Sinora would like. I’d also wager she listens more intently to their words than they believe. Perhaps you can continue to nudge her in the right direction?”
He means towards him, towards his army and ambition and the glorious sun of the Safire. An unknowing traitor in Sinora’s own home.
“I doubt that,” I say, trying to apply the brakes without stalling. “She’ll forget about me after this week.”
“You believe that?”
“I told you. I’m not Arrin.”
“I’ve never seen any girl look at Arrin the way she was looking at you,” he points out, and panic rises in my chest, but I’ve created this. “The Prince is a lost cause,” Father says. “He’s already set in his ways. Bought by Tanek Lehzar. But the Princess? She’s outside of it. Inconsequential to them, and the most perfect gambit for us.”