“Returning?”
“The Etanians have taken the sky. And the Lalian Air Force is patrolling the eastern region, settling the city there.”
There’s a stir, everyone trying to figure out the change in events, and Father narrows his eyes. “On whose order?”
The man swallows. “The Prince’s order.”
Everyone stares.
“He issued a wireless address to Etania and the surrounding Heights,” the man explains nervously. “Every kingdom except Classit has responded. He’s already made arrests.”
Father’s frown turns to vague darkness. I’m sure he thought the Prince was locked tight with Sinora. We both underestimated him.
Then it dawns on me.
I look at Ali and find her wearing an almost invisible smile. Her whisper in her brother’s ear. She stalled for enough time with the photographs, luring Father here, away from his emergency address of lies, and her brother went and took the kingdom back from us.
I stand, exhausted by shame, and think the Isendare siblings might be better at this than we Dakars.
38
ATHAN
When the Prince arrives, he’s greeted like a damn hero. The plain brown and green costume he wears looks like something anointed, like he’s made of this mountain earth, the son of his father, wooing his kingdom with a single speech and saving his own mother from a wrongful coup. He strides the room, giving orders, patting shoulders, and the Etanian men no longer offer him simple obedience. They offer him admiration. True and pure.
Respect has a tangible quality, but so does anger, and I can feel that as well, radiating from Father and cinching my neck.
It’s Sinora Lehzar who gives him the perfect punishment.
She arrives in a show of trembling gratitude, embracing Ali tightly, thanking Father, praising her son. She plays the fragile flower, only a woman and mother.
How could she ever breathe a dark word?
“The Lieutenant saved me,” Ali explains, grateful weariness in her voice, as if to reassure Sinora, though it certainly has the opposite effect. Ali also leaves out anything to do with the photographs, the blackmail, the death of Lark.
She plays the fragile flower, too.
“Ah, Lieutenant,” Sinora says to me, sighing over my title. “You bring honour to your mother.” I bite the inside of my cheek to keep from glaring, from playing any less than her. “Now, Captain,” she continues, motioning at a uniformed Etanian man, “escort my daughter to her room. I want three of your men outside her door the rest of the night.”
Sorrow graces Ali’s face. The realization that this is our goodbye, here and now.
She comes near, offering me Cyar’s jacket, the edge of the pistol glinting from the pocket. “Thank you,” she says, and her voice is so perfect in its aching love, such a mirror of the thing I hold inside, that I want to kiss her again. I would, if it wouldn’t sign me a death warrant—from both Father and Sinora.
But Ali is braver than me. Her arms are suddenly around me, boldly, all of her nestled against my chest, and I feel her lips against my neck. It’s brief and secret, burning like wildfire.
A promise for me alone.
Then she’s away from me and following her captain out the wide doors.
Sinora watches me with a neutral gaze, less warm than a moment earlier. But she smiles. A flowering smile of polite interest. “General, might I have a private word with your lieutenant? I wish to properly thank him for saving my daughter.”
I don’t think he’ll say yes. He’s furious with me, true, but if someone is going to kill me, I think he’d rather it was him.
For practical reasons. Diplomatic ones.
But he says, “As you wish, Your Majesty,” and Arrin gives me a look that is partway between disbelief and delighted approval. He’s not going to defend me from her anymore—he’s going to urge it on its way.
“You’ve done an impressive job this evening, Lieutenant,” Arrin says to me on the way by. “Perhaps you’ve earned a promotion.”
And with that, everyone in uniform departs, Safire and Etanian alike, and I’m left behind, entirely alone in the throne room with Sinora Lehzar.
An empty feeling of betrayal echoes.
I wonder what I’m supposed to do.
“How quickly he abandons you,” Sinora says after a moment, the trembling gratitude gone, replaced by something raw. “That’s the one you wish to obey?”
I say nothing.
She walks nearer, moving in such a way it feels more like stalking, like narrowing in on prey, softly, and I think of the si’yah cats and their haunting cry. I think of silent, shadowy creatures that are rarely seen, yet painted in beauty to decorate halls.
I think of the frustration of doing one thing and being another.
“What will I do with you, little fox?” she asks, halting before me. Her accent is pronounced when not speaking formally, effortlessly lilting. She has to look up into my face. “That’s the trouble with foxes, you see. They’re pretty and clever. They frolic in the garden and make you forget they’re headed for the roost…”
“I never—”
“Who does your father say I am, Lieutenant? What did he tell you?”
The sudden shift throws my conviction off balance. I was on the defense, bracing for her claws, but now her questions—and gaze—are quiet daggers of honesty. She’s alert and tranquil before me. Breath from her lips, the heady scent of saffron from her hair. The lines of an aging beauty heavy around her eyes.
“You’re a false queen,” I say. “You’re from the dirt.”
“The dirt?” she repeats.
I realize I don’t know where exactly that is. In the South, somewhere, I assume. A name comes back to me, a sudden memory from Father’s council room. “Rummayan,” I say. “You bury hearts.”
She doesn’t speak for a long moment, dark eyes a veil. “I see,” is all she says.
It dawns on me this all sounds too vague when she’s standing before me, an enemy with thoughts and imperfections, with beauty and softness and an infinite world of memory behind her searching gaze. I feel, as always, a step behind.
“Do you want to know the truth, Athan Dakar?”
I’m not sure that I do. I’ve heard enough truths tonight, all of them stealing from me, darkening my past, destroying my present, condemning whatever’s to come. I’ve seen the game and it’s too large for me. She’ll only spin a false truth. I know that. And yet she’s waiting, patient as a cat, and I’m not sure I’m in the position to decline.
I nod.
The dark eyes hold mine, unafraid. “I was your age when my father was imprisoned. I was the only one left to care for my family. My elder brother was gone to make his fortune. My mother was dead. The younger ones could do nothing for themselves, so I did it all. I made something of us. I made certain we’d survive. My only dream was to ransom my father from prison—the man who should never have been there, who stole only to protect his children. When we’d managed the money to do it, I went myself, on horseback, and felt wonderfully victorious. I was seventeen. I thought the world might yet bow to my dream. But do you know what those Landorian soldiers did when I offered the exchange?”
I say nothing. I try not to think about the way this story is told, the way it’s pulled up through some ancient grief, forced in front of me like a card to play.
It’s all in her eyes. Her voice doesn’t change.
“They laughed,” she says, “and they took the money, took the horse. I adored that horse. The one thing I called mine. When I tried to protest, they threw rocks at me. They treated me like a stray dog that had pestered them long enough.” Her flint breaks on those last words. A flicker of a tremor. “Now let me tell you, Athan Dakar, I will not live my life like a dog. I will not be chased away by stones or threats or anything else. No man can frighten me.”