“That doesn’t matter, Your Highness.”
The prince shook his head, and his heartsglass shone a somber blue. “It does. First Drycht and then this situation with Likh and now my engagement… Father’s been impossible all week.” He stopped, his eyes unfocused.
“Your Highness?”
He snapped out of his strange reverie, blinking rapidly. “What was I saying?”
“I think you need to excuse yourself from the celebrations, Your Majesty. You’re not well. You haven’t been well since before the aeshma hunt.”
“You’re right. Perhaps after greeting the rest of the guests.” He sighed. “I haven’t even talked to Inessa tonight.”
“Do you love her, Your Highness?” I asked softly, fearing what he might answer.
He hesitated. “I think I could grow to love her.”
That was a consolation. “If you truly believe that she can make you happy, talk to her about your engagement. You owe each other that much.”
Prince Kance smiled wryly. “I agree. I should.”
“And I have something that could help you with your exhaustion. Khalad made it.” I reached into the folds of my robe. The prince’s birthday was in three days but now seemed as good a time as any.
The prince brightened at the sight of the small glass pendant sparkling under the bright lights of the throne room. “I’ll keep it with me at all times.” He bent his head and pressed his lips against the back of my hand. “Thank you, Tea. You helped me understand that there’s more to a kingship than sitting on a throne.”
“It’s nothing, Your Highness.” My throat constricted. “And my best wishes on your engagement, Prince Kance. I hope you and the princess will be happy together.”
A melancholic smile appeared on his face. “Thank you. I wish I could—”
“Your Highness?” A courtier materialized by his elbow. “The king wishes to speak to you.”
“Let’s talk later, Lady Tea,” Prince Kance said, exhaling. “Please excuse me…”
I watched him stride to where King Telemaine and Princess Inessa waited and turned away. Polaire and the others were busy entertaining, something I was also supposed to be doing. This was a nobles-only event, so Fox was somewhere else in the palace with the rest of my family. I was on my own.
“You look like a little thundercloud hovering in the middle of a field of sunshine.”
I bit back a sigh and faced Kalen. “I’m flattered you made all this effort to keep the thundercloud company.”
“I was in the middle of a boring conversation with the Earl of Heides. You were an escape.”
“There’s something else eating at you.” I nodded at his heartsglass. “Do you want to talk about it?”
He paused, nodded.
I followed his gaze to his father, the Duke of Holsrath, who sat at the farthest table from the crowd, a drink in one hand and a small smirk on his face. Everyone pointedly ignored him, and the large coterie of guards around him was proof he was still a prisoner. He looked gaunt, undoubtedly from his time in the dungeons, though his hair and beard were freshly trimmed. He resembled Kalen on a superficial level, but I disliked him at first sight.
“I want him out of here,” Kalen said stiffly. “If it wasn’t in direct conflict with the king’s orders, I would have—”
He stopped at the sound of breaking glass. Heads turned toward the throne.
A glass had slipped from Prince Kance’s hand. He was ashen. He took two steps forward, his mouth forming my name before he collapsed on the floor.
I rushed forward, but Kalen was quicker, reaching his side before King Telemaine. “Send for a doctor!” the king roared.
Prince Kance took a deep, shuddering breath. His eyes met mine, then Kalen’s.
“Protect her,” he whispered.
Helpless to do anything else, the Deathseeker could only nod.
The prince smiled at him and then at me before the light in his heartsglass went out.
“It was chaos,” the asha said, reminiscing. “I remembered little else of that night—only faces hovering over us, Kalen yelling at them to stay back. It was terrifying to feel so helpless. I knew there was nothing I could do, yet I was convinced I’d overlooked some danger at the party.”
“You did everything you could, Tea.”
The Heartforger’s equipment had been sent for, and it was a strange collection of tools. Different glass containers of miscellaneous sizes and shapes stood on a row before the throne. Oddly colored liquid sloshed in many of these vials, bubbling and hissing and resembling no form of water I was familiar with. There was also an apparatus built like a pottery wheel but with more spikes and pedals than seemed necessary. The Heartforger ran his hands lovingly over it, inspecting every hollowed nook.
A cooing noise came from by the window—the taurvi’s giant eye peered quizzically down at us, and it sang a few short notes.
“Lady Tea,” I whispered. “You cannot treat the Daanorian emperor this way.”
“He is a horrible emperor, Bard.” Disdain marked her voice. “He did many terrible things.”
“Lady Tea.” This time it was Princess Yansheo pleading. “I do not know what impels you to treat my kinsman so poorly, but I beg of you. Whatever your quarrel with him, he is still the ruler of this kingdom, and he is my liege, however badly he has treated me. Daanoris does not deserve such punishment.”
But the asha shook her head. “Kings and emperors need the people more than the people need them, princess. Kings are kings only because one ancestor was quicker than another to place a crown on his own head. Bravery and courage are not passed down through blood. Kings and emperors do not require valor or good works; all they require is submission.”
“But there is no one else fit to rule, milady.”
“In Odalia, they tell us that all men are made in Blade that Soars’ s image, and all women in Dancing Wind’s. What claim would he possess to hold the crown better than yours, princess?”
11
For two days, a line of worried doctors traipsed into the prince’s bedchamber and traipsed back out again armed with conflicting diagnoses. King Telemaine held a vigil by his bedside, but not even Princess Inessa or Lady Mykaela was allowed entry.
I divided my time between waiting anxiously in the hallway and sitting in my room, desperately searching for something, anything, within Aenah’s Faceless book that could help the prince. “What good are you?” I finally sobbed, flinging it in a brief fit of rage. What was the use of Scrying and puppets when they couldn’t save the prince?
Kalen had taken the events worse than I had and was reduced to pacing Kance’s hallway, rejecting food and rest. “I can’t think about eating at a time like this, Tea.” He looked like he hadn’t slept since the prince collapsed.
“You’ll become as sick as His Highness without anything in your stomach.” I shoved bread into his hands. “Do they even know what’s happened to Prince Kance?”
Giving in to my bullying, Kalen accepted a piece. “Nothing yet.”
“Why not ask Althy to help? She’s the best healer among the asha.”
Kalen sighed. “Politics. Lady Altaecia is a Kion asha, and as friendly as they are, to ask for help from a neighboring kingdom is a sign of weakness.”
“But not at the cost of the prince’s life!” I insisted.
“I wouldn’t put my son’s life over the needs of the kingdom.” For all his bulk, King Telemaine could walk silently when he wished to. Kalen jerked to attention. “Lady Mykaela, however, has taken a look at him, even she was at a loss.”
“Can’t we do anything?” I pleaded.
He smiled kindly at me, though his eyes were heavy with fatigue. “It warms my heart to know that Kance has friends he can trust. But his illness is beyond our understanding. The doctors can find nothing wrong with him, save for his heartsglass turning an unusual gray. All he does is sleep.”
Dread seized my gut. “Gray? He won’t wake up?”
“So they say. The best doctors in the kingdom and they have no idea. Lady Tea?”