Maxim forced himself toward the front of the palace, carrying the weight of his spell with every step, even as his heart called for Rhy. If only his son were there. If only Maxim could see him one last time.
As if summoned by the thought, the prince appeared in the doorway, and suddenly Maxim wished he hadn’t been so selfish. Grief and fear were painted across Rhy’s features, making him look young. He was young.
“What’s going on?” asked the prince.
“Rhy,” he said, the short word leaving him breathless. Maxim didn’t know how to do this. If he stopped moving, he would never start again.
“Where are you going?” demanded his son as Osaron’s voice shook the world.
“Face me, false king.”
Maxim tugged on the threads of his power and felt his spell pull tight, cinching like armor around him as steel hearts came to life within steel breasts.
“Father,” said Rhy.
“Surrender, and I will spare those within.”
The king summoned his steel men, felt them marching through the halls.
“Refuse, and I will tear this place apart.”
He kept walking.
“Stop!” demanded Rhy. “If you go out there, you will die.”
“There is no shame in death,” said the king.
“You are no god.”
“You can’t do this,” said Rhy, barring his path as they reached the front hall. “You’re walking right into his trap.”
Maxim stopped, the weight of the spell and his son’s stricken face threatening to drag him down. “Stand aside, Rhy,” he ordered gently.
His son shook his head furiously. “Please.” Tears were brimming on his dark lashes, threatening to spill. Maxim’s heart ached. The palace trembled. The steel guard was coming. They reached the front hall, a dozen suits of armor spelled into motion with blood and will and magic. Royal short swords hung at their waists, and through their helmets, the soft light of their spelled hearts burned like coal. They were ready. He was ready.
“Rhy Maresh,” said Maxim steadily, “I will ask you as your father, but if I must, I will command you as your king.”
“No,” said Rhy, grabbing him by the shoulders. “I won’t let you do this.”
The arrow in his chest drove deep.
“Sol-in-Ar,” Maxim said, and, “Isra.”
And they understood. The two came forward and seized Rhy’s arms, pulling him away. Rhy fought viciously against them, but at a nod from the king, Isra drove her gauntleted fist into the prince’s ribs and Rhy doubled, gasping, “No, no …”
“Sosora nastima,” said Sol-in-Ar. “Listen to your king.”
“Watch, my prince,” added Isra. “Watch with pride.”
“Open the doors,” ordered Maxim.
Tears spilled down Rhy’s face. “Father—”
The heavy wood parted. The doors swung back. At the base of the palace stairs stood the shadow, a demon masquerading as a king.
Osaron lifted his chin.
“Face me.”
“Let me go!” cried Rhy.
Maxim strode through the doors. He didn’t look back, not at the steel guard marching in his wake, not at his son’s face, the eyes so like Emira’s, now red with anguish.
“Please,” begged Rhy. “Please, let me go….”
They were the last words Maxim heard before the palace doors fell shut.
VIII
The first time Rhy saw his father’s map room, he was eight years old.
He hadn’t been allowed past the golden doors, had only glimpsed the stone figures arrayed across the sprawling table, the scenes moving with the same slow enchantment of the pictures on the city’s scrying boards.
He’d tried to sneak back in, of course, but Kell wouldn’t help him, and there were other places in the palace to explore. But Rhy couldn’t forget the strange magic of that room, and that winter, when the weather turned and the sun never seemed to come out, he built his own map, crafting the palace from a golden three-tiered cake stand, the river from a stretch of gossamer, a hundred tiny figures from whatever he could get his hands on. He made vestra and ostra, priests and royal guards.
“This one’s you,” he told Kell, holding up a fire-starter with a red top, a dab of black paint for an eye. Kell wasn’t impressed.
“This one’s you,” he told his mother, brandishing the queen he’d fashioned from a glass tonic vial.
“This one’s you,” he told Tieren, proudly showing him the bit of white stone he’d dug out of the courtyard.
He’d been working on the set for more than a year when his father came to see. He’d never found the stuff to make the king. Kell—who didn’t usually want to play—had offered up a rock with a dozen little grooves that almost made a ghoulish face, if the light was right, but Rhy thought it looked more like the royal cook, Lor.
Rhy was crouched over the board before bed one night when Maxim entered. He was a towering man draped in red and gold, his dark beard and brows swallowing his face. No wonder Rhy couldn’t find the piece to play him. Nothing felt large enough.
“What’s this?” asked his father, sinking to one knee beside the makeshift palace.
“It’s a game,” said Rhy proudly, “just like yours.”
That was when Maxim took him by the hand, and led him down the stairs and through the palace, bare feet sinking into the plush carpet. When they reached the golden doors, Rhy’s heart leapt, half in dread, half in excitement, as his father unlocked the doors.
Memory often bends a thing, makes it even more marvelous. But Rhy’s own memory of the map room paled in comparison to the truth. Rhy had grown two inches that year, but instead of seeming smaller, the map was just as grand, just as sweeping, just as magical.
“This,” said his father sternly, “is not a game. Every ship, every soldier, every bit of stone and glass—the lives of this kingdom hang in the balance of this board.”
Rhy stared in wonder at the map, made all the more magical for his father’s warning. Maxim stood, arms crossed, while Rhy circled the table, examining every facet before turning his attention to the palace.
It was no kettle, no cake tray. This palace shone, a perfect miniature—sculpted in glass and gold—of Rhy’s home.
Rhy stood on his toes, peering into the windows.
“What are you searching for?” asked his father.
Rhy looked up, eyes wide. “You.”
At last, a smile broke through that trimmed beard. Maxim pointed to a slight rise in the cityscape, a plaza two bridges down from the palace where a huddle of stone guards sat on horseback. And at their center, no larger than the rest, was a figure set apart only by the gold band of a crown.
“A king,” said his father, “belongs with his people.”
Rhy reached a hand into the pocket of his bedclothes and pulled out a small figure, a boy prince spun from pure sugar and stolen from his last birthday cake. Now, carefully, Rhy set the figure on the map beside his father.
“And the prince,” he said proudly, “belongs with his king.”
*
Rhy screamed, and thrashed, and fought against their grip.
A king belongs with his people.
He begged, and pleaded, and tried to tear free.
A prince belong with his king.
The doors were closed. His father had vanished, swallowed up by wood and stone.
“Your Highness, please.”
Rhy threw a punch, catching Isra hard across the jaw. She let go, and he made it a single step before Sol-in-Ar locked him in a viciously efficient hold, one arm twisted up behind his back.
“Your Highness, no.”
Pain flared through him when he tried to fight, but pain was nothing to Rhy now and he wrenched free, tearing something in his shoulder as he threw his elbow back into the Faroan’s face.
More guards were arriving now, blocking the door as Isra shouted orders through bloodstained teeth.
“Stand aside,” he demanded, voice breaking.
“Your Highness—”
“Stand aside.”
Slowly, reluctantly, the guards stepped away from the doors, and Rhy surged forward, grasping for the handle just before Isra pinned his hand to the wood.
“Your Highness,” she snarled, “don’t you dare.”
A king belongs with his people.
“Isra,” he pleaded. “A prince belongs with his king.”
“Then be with him,” said the guard. “By honoring his last request.”