“Or I can stay here.” The prince’s smirk grew devious. “If that’s what you prefer.”
“Darren…” My protest was useless. The Black Mage was restless like me, trying to channel all his fear and doubt into something he could manage. He was turning to the one person he thought he could trust.
“Tell me, Ryiah,” Darren said, “have you ever wondered what it would be like in the room that started it all?”
A smile tugged at the corner of my mouth. “The palace library isn’t the Academy’s.”
“Oh, but it’s better.” Heat flared in his eyes, twin coals against a sea of endless black. “We have more tables. And chairs.”
Hours later the two of us fell into bed, breathless and flushed. It was only then I noticed the new charm hanging from his neck next to the hematite stone.
“What is this?” My finger curled around the object, and I started. Brass and heavy, not a charm. Almost like a—
“It’s a key.”
I tried not to sound too curious. “You didn’t have this before.”
“Blayne.” Darren shut his eyes with a groan. “He wants me to keep it on me at all times. Doesn’t trust… the ambassador… dragging out the negotiations.”
“Why? What is it for?”
The prince didn’t reply; he was already drifting off to sleep.
“Darren?”
For a second, I lay there weighing my odds. Then I shook the prince’s shoulders, unable to keep the question to myself, not when I was standing on the precipice of something new. Not when something told me this key was important. Not when Blayne had suddenly placed it in safekeeping. It could be the answer I needed.
The prince blinked several times before registering my face. “Love?”
“I was just thinking…” I bit down on my lip and then forced myself to finish. “This key, what does it do? Don’t you think I should know in case something happens?”
Darren reached out to catch my tapping fingers with his own—I hadn’t even realized I was doing it.
“It unlocks the Crown’s best kept secret.” His lips curved up as his eyelids fluttered shut.
“Best kept secret?” Why was I just hearing of this now?
“Perhaps you were too distracted.” He was smiling to himself. “You were always staring at me during Commander Ama’s lessons.”
“Perhaps I was imagining the best way to rid myself of an arrogant prince.”
“Well, I’m not going to tell you now—” Darren yawned, “—since you think I’m so arrogant.”
And so he drifted to sleep as I tossed and turned. Commander Ama? The desert?
What did she even talk about? Chariots and sickle swords and the best way to breach a defense. Hardly a secret to the thousands of regiment warriors.
Think, Ryiah, think.
I knew there was something important I was missing. Darren wouldn’t have made that comment unless he believed I already knew the answer.
Crown’s best kept secret? So the commander of Ishir Outpost knew, and clearly the original members of the Crown: Lucius and Blayne and Darren.
Maybe he doesn’t expect me to know the secret, maybe that’s what this is about.
I ground my teeth. That didn’t make the puzzle any easier, and I was sick of puzzles. Cassius already had me wringing my own neck trying to find a solution for his.
Would it be so terrible for the gods to give me an answer once in a while?
I imagined them laughing down from above. Foolish mortal, they were probably saying, you saw the key. We’ve already given you more luck than you deserve. If you can’t pick up the pieces from here, well, then you’re undeserving of our help.
Evil, omnipotent dictators with too much time on their hands.
I told myself the answer would come in the morning.
It didn’t.
*
“Paige…” I paused in my late afternoon drill, looking over at the knight on my right. She had the day off from her own duties, and she had still chosen to join me at the practice courts after my stint in the library. She should’ve been prowling the streets of Devon, bartering for that new chainmail she’d been eyeing for weeks, but she seemed to have given up for the moment.
No one wanted to go into the city now.
“Yes?”
“When you were a squire, did you train with four regiments same as the apprentice mages?”
“The best years of my life.” Her response wasn’t very enthusiastic; she was too busy concentrating on a lift.
I watched her muscles expand and contract, more than a little envious at the definition in her arms. She could give most men a run for their gold.
“Were one of those regiments a part of Ishir?”
“They were.” The knight set down her weights and proceeded to stretch. “Why?”
“Commander Ama spent a great deal of time going over strategy. I’m trying to remember if there was anything important I should remember from her talks?”
The guard squinted at me as she switched arms. “This has to do with that duke, doesn’t it? You are going to think up some miraculous way to convince him to join our cause? Again.”