Chapter one
When they tell me my younger brother has risen against me, I call them liars. There is no doubt in my heart; there is no room for doubt.
My mother has been dead but a fortnight and I am still to be crowned. It’s strategically the perfect moment for a coup, but it’s Dzyer.
Dzyer, who is as different from myself in personality as we are close in blood and with whom, somehow, all our differences have mattered little in the face of the isolation of royal life.
He might go out and I might stay in, but we both know he is coming back home to me.
We both know nobody else can be as close, or as trustworthy a confidant as the other.
My councillors should know better than to speak ill of my only family in a moment like this.
“Your majesty,” Lady Saalam insists, rising from his seat at the round table where I last sat with Mother. The pale skin under his blue eyes is bruised and tender, proof sleep evades him as much as me since...
I stay in my seat, Mother’s seat, struggling to control my reaction, to make him proud even now he is forever gone. I am angry, but I am so tired too. It has been a very long year, of hope and pain and yet more pain. And now it is over; Mother is gone.
I have no one to advise me but the people in this room he left behind for me. And Dzyer.
And they claim...
Lady Saalam is not a shifter nor noble by birth, but his mother ensured he received the best education and attended the best parties.
He never did find the man to marry nor had children of his body, but he befriended my own mother before he became Queen Iulia of Marcen.
The moment Mother was crowned, he named Lady Saalam to the council.
As far as I can remember, Saalam was also Mother’s closest friend when it came to personal matters, as close to an aunt as I can imagine when none of Mother’s womb siblings survived childhood.
No one else would be allowed to speak ill of my family, but Saalam I do not interrupt.
He meets my eyes, his own full of pain. He is my mother′s age and yet he is here, standing strong, ready to protect me, I think. And then he speaks and no familiarity can excuse his words, “They speak the truth. The palace is surrounded by his troops.”
“To protect us!” I almost scream, my voice rising high like a child’s.
I am not given to emotional displays, it would not be appropriate for the heir to the throne.
But my voice is naturally high and to be told such a thing, in a moment such as this, when the weight of all my mother’s expectations feels heavier and his support and comfort are forever gone. ..
Lady Saalam’s lips press together and he motions to a waiting messenger. Barely more than child, she practically drops the missive on my hand before retreating to the back of the room to await a response.
When I see the familiar spikes of his handwriting, I almost drop it myself. Why would my brother write from right outside the palace instead of coming in to talk to me?
I think that’s when I know.
But I read. I read because knowing is not believing.
The words within are so outrageous I am almost unable to comprehend their meaning.
The surrender they demand is unconditional, and no explanations of any kind are offered, no justification or acknowledgement of the profound wrongness of the act.
He says nothing of our Mother at all, and I wonder; is it grief that leads him to pretend he is not ignoring the wishes of the very person he aims to replace?
It also makes it very clear that my loyal councillors have informed me correctly: the palace is surrounded by at least half of the royal army. My army. Except my brother was given command of it two years ago, as he was always meant to be my right hand and war general.
I might not be trained in the military arts, but I was taught to be calm during emergencies. I give myself not a second to process before sending people off to bring me more information.
But it is Dzyer that I fight against, the one person who knows me best. If I ever doubted his insight or suspected him of not grasping the subtleties of command, I am proven mistaken again and again when one route of escape after another proves blocked.
Every option impossible, every ally strong enough to aid me turned from me either by having become his or being too far away to be of any use at this time.
It slowly dawns on me that while I mourned, he acted, and much can be accomplished in four and ten days.
I realise then that he asked for no immediate surrender, that there is no time limit specified.
Because he knew from the moment, he put pen to paper that victory was his.
There is no need to threaten when one is mistress.
Know thy enemy, they say. Nobody has to be urged to know their friends, but perhaps that would be wiser advice. I do not know how to compete with his complete knowledge of me when I have clearly paid so little attention that this has come to pass.
I almost don’t want to find a solution. Even as I search, in the back of my mind I cannot forget that this is no mere game or screaming argument.
If I am to return fire with fire, I might never get to ask him why.
If I manage to escape the palace and recoup, the fate that awaits me is to kill him for treason.
Treason.
How is it even possible for him to do this to me? And if I killed him, what of my own treason? What of the fact that I was charged with his safety by my parents? May I take my vow back like he has done with his? And with it my love as well?
I let time pass and I let my people look.
I suspect Saalam—long hair in disarray and wearing the same dress as two days ago—knows what I am doing, but he does not question me beyond urging me to rest. I lie down so that my body does.
My mind will not quit going over the fight.
.. Because it’s the fight now, the last one before this happened, although was that what tipped the scales?
Or is it a matter of opportunity? Can something this complex be anything but well-thought and long-planned?
In the dark, with no distractions, my mind goes to the darkest places it can find, to the question it cannot bear to ask: does he secretly hate me?
The great fight had been about two months before... Before Mother’s illness took a sudden turn for the worse and we lost him.
Mother had been well enough then to make military decisions, and, unsurprisingly, Dzyer had disagreed with him.
He had argued himself raw and Mother had not given an inch.
I personally saw no harm in giving Dzyer a company of soldiers or two to take south for reconnaissance; but when the Queen refused, I vowed to his greater experience and authority.
And as soon as we were alone, Dzyer had turned on me for it, demanding my support. I had tried to calm him down, to explain that he had very little reason to think there was anything amiss in the south and that Mother wanted him around because of his failing health.
He had gone off into a rage, spitting more than talking, which was normal enough for Princess Dzyer that nobody had even come to check on us.
He had accused me of obeying orders unthinkingly and trusting Mother above my own sense and I had finally snapped back.
I had tried to explain, like I had many a time before, that a queendom divided cannot stand, that a Queen must have the loyalty of his heir if he is to govern effectively and that I needed Mother’s respect if he was to listen to my advice.
There was nothing to be accomplished by raising his voice, I reminded him, as he insisted on proving time and again when either Mother, or both Mother and I disagreed with his opinions.
I listened to him even when he did; I couldn’t ignore Dzyer, and he often saw things out in the field that I missed from the palace. But just as I would not unthinkingly follow the Queen; I would not follow him, either, and so he never felt I listened enough.
I knew this. But it never occurred to me that he would take matters into his own hands, that he would stop shouting and write instead.
It never occurred to me that he could stop loving me for it. Because I could never stop loving him.
We fought that day like many days before and, I thought, many days after, and I simply went to my rooms and tried to read until my heart quietened down and his words stopped echoing in my ears.
I could have never predicted it. This. I don’t even know what this is. Is he really taking my crown? Does he intend to exile me? Does he suppose any other of the queendoms on the continent would accept a usurper as queen, royal blood or not?
The ideas are so far from the realm of the possible that my mind slips away from them, unable to take them seriously despite all evidence.
***
ON THE FIFTH DAY, I walk to the doors and open them myself. I ignore the guards posted at the ready by the entrance. They, for all they have turned against me, do not try to stop me from exiting. They do not even move.
There’s no need for them too, here are many soldiers milling inside the palace’s walls. Of course, Dzyer didn’t pressure me to hurry; what could I do with the palace guard and a handful of servants against an army already past my walls?
Someone must have alerted him, because a few minutes later I catch sight of Rhina, his black stallion, and the crowd parts to let him through.
He is not in armour, even though my rebellious sibling had one made for his smaller female shape in direct contradiction to tradition—Mother had been absolutely furious when he’d seen it—and he could play the warrior queen if he liked.
If only he did wear armour and hide behind the male bulk of the soldier he left in when I last saw him, if only I did not have to see the princess I know so well—features almost unchanged from the little girl he was not so long ago—and know it is really him who betrayed me.
If only all that watch could see it what a stranger he is to me.
The woman that rides my way, straight and confident on his mount, light auburn hair pulled back by his delicate golden crown, is the brother I have spent countless royal parties glaring into silence.
His eyes are still the deepest of blues, just like mine, his skin still markedly more sunburnt than is proper in a royal. He is still Dzyer.
But he wrote a letter that the Dzyer I know would never write.
I pull myself together, knowing I have a role to play. We all know it is women who rule with their heads, and not men with their brute strength, and that is what Dzyer means to do: Rule.
Except Dzyer can look as feminine as he pleases, and he is still on a horse, surrounded by an army of men, and I am all alone, overpowered by the sword, not the mind. I wear my own crown, the one with the sapphire studs the future queens of Marcen have worn for centuries. His own is simple gold.
“Brother,” I say in greeting, like nothing out of the ordinary is going on, using the same word I have always used to refer to my younger sibling.
If anyone could claim to find it offensive, it is certainly not Dzyer, who transforms into his male form almost every day to go play at war and insists he is the same person in whatever form he takes.
He meets my eyes, confident and unmoved. I had Mikel apply some creams to disguise how little I have slept in the last week but I do not believe for a moment Dzyer can overlook my exhaustion.
I press my tongue to the top of my palate, concentrating on remaining still and relaxed on the outside.
My calm is all I have, for all I feared and more has already come to pass.
But I will not give up my dignity with my power.
He thinks to make a spectacle of his prowess; I will make one of his betrayal.
Nobody looking today will see a woman seizing a throne he deserves because he is able to manage it well, but a brute leading an army against his rightful queen.
It is a small comfort, in the face of all I’m losing, but it helps me stand upright and not look away from the coldness of his gaze.
He must realise how we look because he quickly dismounts, putting us on level ground. “Brother.”
I manage to repress my flinch at the word.
I am entitled to the feminine form of address on account of my age, and he had always used it before.
It makes no difference; Dzyer does not need me to flinch to know he's hit a nerve.
It is not merely the disrespect of speaking to an elder in the masculine, but also that, unlike him, I gave up my military training years ago in favour of diplomacy and history.
We must look like mirror reflections of one another; both our dresses the yellow of mourning, our noble blood on our faces and postures as well as the crowns themselves.
He cannot possibly be doing this to me.
I never saw the need for me to be a soldier as well as a queen. And that’s led to his victory today.
Except that is not true. I could be trained in all the professions of the world and I still would have never seen this coming.
I need him to be innocent so badly that my mind keeps finding ways in which I might be guilty. But he does not look angry; he simply looks certain.
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