Citizenship—whether by birth or petition—guarantees the right to live and work in Pavan under the protection of the Stormling crown. Rights may be revoked in the event that a citizen is found guilty of a criminal action or fails to surrender the required taxation.
—The Governing Tenets of Pavan, Article 2: Pavanian Citizenship
8
Rora spent the day pretending, which was not that different from her usual day, except this time there was hope beyond the lies. As she made preparations, she couldn’t quite admit to herself aloud what she was planning.
She was a princess without the power to keep her kingdom, a girl whose future had been decided for her. That was the cold hard truth. But it didn’t have to be. If she had learned anything last night, it was that the world wasn’t as clear-cut as she had always believed. And between the bad choices and the worse choices, perhaps there was another road that she had never known existed until last night.
She expected to change her mind as the day went on, that she might come to her senses. Instead the world seemed to be affirming her reckless decision.
She overheard a conversation between the queen and one of her advisers: “It’s the Rage season, Lord Delrick. If he wants a Stormling guard to take him to Finlagh again, it will cost him. He agrees to my price, or he takes his chances on his own in the wildlands.”
Rora spied a pile of tax documents on the queen’s desk, the top one of which read OVERDUE in big, bold letters. When she flipped through the stack, a few papers had a large red x covering the entirety of the page. Did her mother really banish defenseless people to the mercy of the wildlands if they could not pay?
Rora found a massive pile of petitions for citizenship—those who currently lived outside Pavan but wished to make it their home. There were too many people for too little space and too few jobs. What had her mother said to her only days ago? I wish that we did not have to make such hard choices.
The royal seamstress Mistress Carrovain and her assistants, including Nova, were being worked furiously to finish alterations to her wedding gown. And when the seamstress accidentally pricked Rora with a needle, she noticed the way the older woman’s face went taut with fear and her hands trembled. Even the queen’s longtime seamstress appeared to live as if on a blade’s edge. As if banishment waited for her over a meaningless drop of blood.
Queen Aphra had always been stern—she had to be as a woman in her position—but Rora had never seen her be cruel. But she had been kept in the dark about so much, perhaps Rora did not know her mother as she thought.
Aurora had seen enough. She donned her disguise again. On a whim, she collected her brother’s twister ring from the Stormheart box that remained in her rooms and threaded it on a long necklace that she wore hidden beneath her cloak. And then, using the storm shelter exit, she left.
The dark night pulsed with silence, and Rora heard echoes that were not there as she navigated her way down the streets toward the Eye. She was afraid she had forgotten the way, but a familiar swinging lantern affirmed her path. Her blood rushed fast beneath her skin as she squeezed through the hidden entrance and down the long tunnel that separated the dark street from the market on the other side. This time Rora felt no apprehension. No fear. Only wonder and want.
Quietly she drifted along the path between stalls, taking it all in, enjoying the sound of people haggling over price and stall owners’ sales pitches to wandering buyers. And then she saw whom she was looking for.
“Duke?”
The old man’s hair was long and loose tonight, and some of it fell over his wrinkled forehead when he spun to face her. She had gone over and over her memories of the Eye throughout the day, and finally she’d realized why she found Duke so familiar the night before. When she’d been talking to Locke, she’d seen Cassius at a vendor behind him. Through the commotion that followed and her fainting ordeal, she hadn’t immediately remembered that the vendor Cassius had been speaking to was a thin old man with long, braided hair. Seeing the hunter again now, she was certain it was him.
“Well, I’ll be damned. You came back after all. Locke is around here somewhere.”
Rora stepped up to the table he was tinkering over, refusing to let herself get distracted by all the interesting baubles and artifacts before her.
“Actually, I wanted to speak with you.”
His eyebrows lifted, stark lines of white on a weathered, tanned face. “And what can I do for you, Roar?”
Her heart thrilled at the sound of that nickname. It was blank. Unfinished. Filled with so much possibility. Aurora had kingdom-sized baggage attached, but Roar was whomever she wanted her to be.
“Last night. Before we met, I saw you talking to a young man at your stall. Nearly as tall as Locke. Broad shoulders. He wore a wide-brimmed black hat that shadowed most of his face.”
Duke’s brow furrowed. “I remember him.”
“You do?” Her question came out too loud, too excited.
“It’s not every day that an unknown walks into my stall with Stormhearts to sell.”
“He … what?”
“Three of them. I can count on one hand the number of times someone has had even one to sell. Three? Let’s say I won’t be forgetting that lad for a while.”
Stormhearts were sacred. She had been shocked when Cassius had left the skyfire Stormheart for her as a gift. But to sell three more? Why would he give those up? It didn’t make any sense.
“Did he say why?”
Duke shrugged. “Gold, as far as I could tell. I didn’t have enough on hand to pay the heavy sum that three Stormhearts are worth, but he took my offer anyway. Seemed eager to get the money and get gone. I thought maybe he was trying to con me with fakes, but two out of the three came to life as soon as I touched them.”
Why would Cassius need money? If the rumors were true, the Locke family’s riches were vast. “And the third?”
“Firestorm. Not one of my affinities. But I took the chance since he was selling cheap, and Locke confirmed this morning that the Stormheart was real.”
Rora gasped. “Locke has an affinity for firestorms?”
Duke nodded, scratching at the white and gray stubble along his jaw. “He does. He has the most affinities out of anyone on the crew.”
“So, you use the Stormhearts you buy to help you?”