“I suppose she is,” said Nadiya, though there was a dreamy quality to her voice when she said it. “A grand experiment.” She tore her attention away from her daughter. “I know you don’t like me.”
Lila cocked a brow. “I don’t like most people, Your Majesty. You, I don’t trust.”
“Why is that?”
“It might have something to do with you expressing a desire to dissect me over dinner.”
“I did say, after you were dead.”
A servant appeared, a pot of tea and two cups balanced on a gilded tray.
The queen poured, and handed one to Lila, and tempted as she was by the rich, dark liquid, the curls of steam, Delilah Bard still wasn’t about to drink anything offered by the queen. Oh, she took the cup, and turned it in her hand as if studying the pattern stamped into the porcelain’s side. Then, as she held Nadiya’s eye, Lila exerted her will, and the steam vanished, giving way to frost that cracked across the surface as the contents froze.
The queen’s mouth twitched. “What a waste,” she mused, lifting her own tea to her lips. “I’m not your enemy, Lila.” Her gaze returned to Ren, and Kell. “Everything I do, I do for my family. For their future. For our world. If you would only help me, let me study your magic while—”
“No.”
“I know it’s not ideal. But there aren’t exactly a wealth of Antari subjects, and I’m not about to risk Rhy’s safety by testing Kell. Especially not in his diminished state.”
“Your Majesty,” said Lila through gritted teeth, “I mean this with the most respect.” She turned to face Nadiya and said, “Go fuck yourself.”
The queen pursed her lips. “You are an extraordinary person, Delilah Bard. I’m surprised you are not more … progressive. Your magic holds the keys to countless doors. And yet, you choose to hoard it.”
“What can I say? I like being the strongest in the room.”
Nadiya shook her head. “It is not just about magic, though. Think of the knowledge locked inside your blood. Who knows what it could do? It could heal the kingdom.” Her eyes brightened. “Perhaps it could even heal Kell.”
In a step, the cup was gone from Lila’s hand, replaced by one of many blades, the edge pressed against the queen’s long neck.
“Do not lie to me,” she hissed, and then the guards were storming forward, weapons drawn, and Lila didn’t want to make a mess. She backed away, sheathed the dagger at her hip. The queen held out her hand to stay them, then touched her fingers to her throat, as if expecting blood. As if Lila’s hand weren’t steadier than that.
“I don’t know how to heal him yet,” said the queen, fingers falling, “but that doesn’t mean I’m lying. Progress takes time. And sacrifice.”
Lila had never liked Nadiya, but she hated her then, hated that there was a chance—even a sliver of a chance—that she was right, which made her hate herself as well. Lila drew her blade again, and the guards twitched in warning, armor scraping as they took a half step forward, but instead of turning the blade on the queen, much as she longed to, Lila dragged the steel across the delicate skin on the inside of her wrist. She tipped the ice out of her tea cup, and held her bleeding arm over the empty vessel, crimson painting the delicate porcelain. And when it was half-full, she wrapped a kerchief around the cut, and tied it tight enough to hurt.
“Happy?” she asked.
The queen nodded, and took up the bloody cup. “It’s a start.”
And because Lila had resolved not to make a mess, she walked away, turning her back on the queen, and the princess, and Kell, who still sat beside the little girl, his back to them and his head bowed forward on the steps.
III
Alucard hadn’t always been a morning person.
Growing up, he’d savored sleep, but life at sea had taught him to get up with the sun, and ever since trading the Night Spire for the soner rast, he’d kept the habit, rising at dawn to train the royal guards.
By the time he strolled into the breakfast hall at nine, he was wide awake, and sore from sparring. Perhaps Lila was right, and he was out of fighting shape. Or perhaps he was just getting old. Thirty-one. It didn’t sound like many years, but he swore, he felt each and every one of them.
He kissed the top of Rhy’s head before drawing out a chair, murmured thanks to a servant as they poured a stream of hot black tea into his cup.
The queen sat across the table, turning through papers, her pen flicking in the margins. She glanced up as he came in, but if she was thinking of his warning in the workshop, it didn’t show.
Kell was there, too, much to Alucard’s chagrin. The prince didn’t sit, but instead stood drinking his tea, as if to emphasize the fact he wasn’t staying. Ren, on the other hand, was busy looking at a book of birds and ignoring the toast that Sasha was trying to put in her hand. The nursemaid shot Alucard a weary look.
Just wait, he thought, until she can use magic. Ren was still too young, of course, to have an element, but she moved like his old friend Jinnar, a whirlwind, leaving chaos in her wake. Every day, Alucard expected to see colored threads unfurl around his daughter, to watch her magic bloom. But so far, the air around her was filled only with a halo of black curls and the occasional crow feather.
“Morning, Luca!” she said brightly.
Kell and Rhy both winced at the volume of the child’s voice.
Rhy had never been a morning person; he rarely found his stride before noon, but today, he looked positively miserable, his head in his hand. “The bubbles,” he muttered. “The cursed bubbles.”
“A little too much wine?” asked Alucard, leveling a heavy look at Kell. The prince said nothing, but Rhy dragged his head back up, the gold of his eyes foggy, tarnished.
“Why do we keep that silver stuff?” he asked.
“Because it’s wonderful in moderation,” said Alucard.
“And better than a tonic at drawing out the truth,” added the queen, turning a page.
“Burn it all,” hissed the king, indignant. “Tell me why I can heal from a knife to the chest faster than a bottle of spirits.”
No one had an answer for that.
Alucard swept an orange from the center of the table, and sat back, noting the empty place at their table. “Where’s the captain?”
“She left,” said the queen.
At which point Kell sighed and put down his cup.
“Better go fetch,” muttered Alucard into his tea, and Kell made a rude gesture with his hand as he left. Alucard looked to Nadiya. “When did you see her?” The captain and the queen were oil and flame, safe so long as they didn’t get close enough to mix.
Nadiya shrugged. “A passing moment in the hall.”
Her green eyes were half-lidded as her pen flicked across her work. If he didn’t know better, he might think she was just waking up, instead of winding down, making notes before retiring to her rooms at last to sleep.
“Kers la?” asked Ren, cheerfully slipping into the common tongue as she climbed the side of her mother’s chair, and jabbed a jammy finger at the papers by her plate.
“This?” said the queen, her voice softening as it only did for Ren. “It’s a design for an amplifier.”
Alucard tensed at the mention of the work, but he could see the page on the table, and it bore no resemblance to the Antari rings, or the golden chains.
“Amplifier?” asked Ren, sounding out the word.
“A way to make a person’s magic stronger.”
Her tone was gentle, patient, but her speech didn’t change. Since the girl had been born, Nadiya had spoken to her as if she were a grown adult, bound inconveniently but temporarily in a child’s form. If she said a word Ren didn’t know, the girl would ask its meaning.
Ren squinted at the page. “Why don’t I have magic yet?”
Rhy looked up. It was his greatest fear, he knew, that his daughter would be like him. And he always told Rhy the same thing that Nadiya now told Ren.
“You are young,” she said. “It will come.”
“Daddy’s didn’t.”
Alucard stiffened. Only a child could say something like that, stating the obvious without meaning or malice. Rhy met his wife’s eyes, waiting to see what she would say to that.