I was done with all the intrigue, and the Dark swirled in my blood, enough to desire to offend. “And I can make things difficult for His Majesty.” I glided forward, and the emperor shrunk back, his fear palpable. I hid my smile. Was I no longer the small harmless thing he described at our first meeting? “I am the keeper of the dragon. Harm one hair on your queen’s head, harm any of us here…and we will wreak havoc upon your land until your own citizens shall beat their chest and rue the day you assumed your throne.”
Perhaps that went too far, as I was not in the mood to be cordial. But it had the desired effect; Shifang did not need a heartsglass for me to smell his fright, as sharp and as sweet as the breeze around us.
“What the Dark asha means,” Zoya countered, as soft as syrup where I was as rough as granite, “is that the Faceless’s plans to sow discord will succeed if we are divided against them. We must stand united, Your Majesty, but we must do so by means other than marriage.”
The emperor bowed his head, scowling, but nodded. “That is true. My people…have not looked on this betrothal with favor. But Inessa and I are already wedded.”
“We are not, Your Majesty,” Inessa interrupted. “A binding stipulation of an emperor’s bride is that she must come to her husband’s bed pure and untouched. I…cannot fulfill such a requirement.”
To have Inessa declare this before her husband, much less in front of an audience, was positively scandalous. The emperor drew away from her in horror, her audience gasped, and I hid a grin.
I moderated my tone. “There will be no shame in you declaring the marriage to the First Daughter of Kion annulled. Kion will do nothing in retaliation, and you keep your honor in the eyes of your people. For all intents and purposes, it is us who have been rejected and turned away. But you, in your magnanimity, have offered us a chance to enter into better trade agreements with Kion as a means to bolster our friendship in spite of the failed union.”
The emperor was a proud man, but he was no fool. I saw him taking to the idea the longer he thought. “It is the only way,” he said slowly. “As much as I…appreciate the Princess Inessa, I am not willing to put my affection for her before Daanoris. The magic you wield…it is too much for my kingdom, for any kingdom, to contain. See what terrors you have wrought upon my people because of it. My ancestors have done well to ban the practice.”
He looked up at the azi silhouetted against the sky, ever watchful for new signs of trouble.
“See what terrors you will bring upon Kion,” he added.
? ? ?
“You and Inessa planned this,” Fox said as my knife sliced into the dead savul’s flesh. At my request, the Daanorians abandoned the attempt to carry the daeva away, and all had retreated to a safe distance, fearful. Zoya and Shadi were in deep conversation with Tansoong. Now that his most hated rival had been dishonored before all, the old man was predisposed to be friendly. Kalen stood a few meters away with his lip curled, watching me, and the heat in his gaze sent a warm glow through me.
“Have you been reading my mind again?”
“No, but when Inessa declared her reasons for annulling the marriage, you barely batted an eye. You were surprised she announced it so publicly but not why she did so to begin with.”
“I’m not a child, Fox. I know very well what your relationship with Inessa meant.”
Fox reddened. “You’ve talked to Inessa about this before. About annulling her marriage.”
I nodded. “It was her idea. She had read up on Daanorian history and knew emperors had strict requirements when it came to choosing their brides. The emperor had already broken one of the cardinal rules by taking a foreign woman to wife. She knew he would be even less willing if she’d broken yet another, especially one that would hurt the emperor’s pride the most.”
“And if he persisted anyway?”
“I would have called on the azi to threaten the city.” I sensed his shock. “Never to harm or kill the people, Fox.”
“Accidents can happen. Given the azi’s size, it would have been inevitable that someone would get hurt.”
“I know, but we needed a last resort. Inessa seemed confident that her plan would work though. That’s why she declared it before his whole court, to force him to save face. Her reputation’s a bit sullied if you measure it by their standards, but it worked.”
“You’re changing, Tea.”
“People change, Fox.”
“The Dark is changing you. And I don’t know if it’s for the better.”
“We’ve come out of this unscathed, with the best possible outcome. Surely it cannot have been for the worse.” I dug my hand into the corpse and brought out the savul’s bezoar. The daeva crumbled into dust, and shouts rose from the Daanorians. Their dread was nearly tangible; I savored it before coming to myself and forcing that pleasure away.
Fox shook his head before walking away. I watched as Inessa saw, gave chase.
“He’s right, Tea,” Kalen said. “The magic is changing you.”
I looked down at my own heartsglass. “You think so?”
“Mykaela always said that drawing in too much of the Dark leads to darkrot, but there are many dangerous stages in between. The Dark makes you more reckless. More inclined to take risks where none should have been taken.”
“I did what I could to survive this, Kalen.”
“I know. I think I understand that the most out of anyone else here.”
“Fox is mad at me.”
“Everyone is, a little bit. That was a chancy thing to do, Tea.”
“Did you expect me to have acted differently?”
“No,” he admitted bluntly. “But you still need someone to tell you when you’re doing something stupid.”
“I know. I’m sorry. I…don’t think. The Dark came too much, too fast, and I felt like I was the most powerful being in the world. Mykkie always said that was my problem. I like magic a little too much.” The princess had caught up to Fox. “And I want you to tell me when I am being impulsive. I don’t know if I’ll listen though. But I’ll need you for that task because Fox’s starting to outgrow me.”
“When you’re constantly in each other’s heads, I imagine that can’t be easy.”
“I want him to have a life of his own away from mine,” I said. “That’s why I wanted to fight the savul, to bury his vengeance. That’s why I wanted to be an asha. Sometimes I think he forgets that.”
“Sometimes I think you forget it too,” Kalen reminded me. “He didn’t need the savul’s death to find his own peace.”
I bowed my head. “Point taken.” The Kion princess reached out to grab Fox’s hand. “You think they’re going to be OK?”
“Inessa has always been a fighter. And if Fox was able to handle coming back from the dead, I’m sure he’s perfectly capable of handling whatever it is he needs to be for Inessa.”
“You make it sound like the second’s harder than the first.”
“With Inessa, I wouldn’t be surprised.”
I looked away, suddenly self-conscious. The adrenaline was wearing off, my desire to wallow in the Dark diminishing somewhat in his presence. “And…us?”
Kalen bent down to kiss me in full view of everyone, ignoring the delighted gasps from Likh and the Well, finally! from Zoya. “We can be whatever we want us to be too.”
? ? ?
We had overstayed our welcome in Santiang. Though he had agreed to our conditions, Emperor Shifang was a sore loser. With Inessa, he was even more abrupt, so fully encased in his armor of hurt that his arrogance was even more unbearable. Shifang had formally declared the annulment before his courtiers and officials, and Zoya’s foresight ensured that the emperor had no time to present his bride to the citizens. Rumors that the wedding had been interrupted before it could be concluded were encouraged to spread.
“How was it to be the empress of Daanoris for a couple of hours?” Shadi asked Inessa lightly.
“Like a weight around my neck,” the princess admitted sourly. “Once we return to Kion, I would like to spend a few hours yelling at my mother.”
We had one other task to attend to. “Without Princess Yansheo’s heartsglass, we find ourselves facing the same predicament as Mykaela,” Shadi admitted.
“There’s one way to make sure.” Zoya looked at Tansoong. “Have you kept Shaoyun’s remains like I asked?”
The official nodded. “He will have a state funeral, given the circumstances.”
“I’m afraid he has one more duty to the kingdom. Bring his body here.”