Chapter 40
Chapter
Forty
EVIE
The Blue Queen Shines As She Promises to Protect the Blood Brotherhood
After saving Owyn and his young daughter, Anya, from the fire that consumed their home, the Blue Queen has surprised the Capital with her strength and generosity once more. Even though she was unjustly accused of betraying our Clan, she proved her opponents wrong as she revealed a remarkable strategy to make sure precious supplies for the civilians and the army were brought safely into the city.
The advisors and the Sages were left baffled when they discovered the Blue Queen’s plan, which helped ease the strain of war unlike any of the rules they have implemented. One has to wonder why we have the guards suddenly strutting through our city, when there have been more and more accusations of them using their brute force against innocent civilians.
Not only can the Blue Queen dance with the flames, like the gods’ champions from our tales, she can outsmart even her strongest rivals. The gods have truly blessed us with such a kind Blue Queen protecting our city and a fierce Crown Prince that defends us on the battlefield.
“ A nd that’s just the introduction,” I said excitedly, raising my eyes from the parchments Isalyth had strewn through the Capital as I’d been shivering in my nightshirt on the docks.
She’d wanted information and this was about as fresh as news got. I hadn’t told her the plan–gods help me, that Blood Brotherhood mistrust was getting to me–but she’d known enough to start her own little mysterious pamphlet.
I folded the piece of parchment, tucking it safely in my pocket. I might be framing it in the future. “It needs a bit of work, but she’s on the right track.”
“You should have told this Isalyth woman to call the advisors the rotten filth they are,” Dax grumbled through the portal.
“We’re not stooping to their level. Aside from Isalyth’s embellished compliments, everything she wrote was true,” I said. “Everything went according to plan.
“I knew it would work.” Through the haze of the paravel portal, I could see the twinkle of triumph in Dara’s grey eyes.
“Funny,” I said. “When we tested the runes the other day, you kept saying this is too insane to ever function properly.”
“The Blue Queen’s suddenly got a mouth on her.” Dax cheered. “Good on you, Evie. Proud of you.”
Dara sniffed. “I might have been stressed about it.”
I nodded, unable to keep my grin from spreading as all of my cousins stared at me from their own palaver portals. A win like this required a full family reunion. “Thanks for your help. I couldn’t have done it without you and your runes.”
Or Owyn and his crates. Or Adara, who’d sent about three hundred letters to try and get a hold of The Postman. And the slimy git himself, who’d agreed to swap the crates on the Port Master’s ship, through his weird magic mist.
Allie tsked. She’d been glaring my way for a good minute, hands crossed, famed Vegheara forehead scrunched. “What payment did he ask for?”
I tucked my hair behind my ear. “One I could afford.”
Allie didn’t relent. “What payment did The Postman ask for, Evie?”
Clara’s eyes widened. “You asked for help from The Postman ?”
“Yes.” I raised my chin. “And he took all the jewels from the original shipment, of course.”
Clara sighed in relief. Allie’s eyes narrowed. “And?”
“And…” I licked my lips. “The promise to name my firstborn with The Dragon after him.”
Dax choked on the drink he’d been sipping, while Dara sent me a horrified look.
Allie actually froze. “You did what ?”
“I did what I had to do, okay?”
The Postman had refused to help us otherwise.
“What’s in a name?” he’d drawled as we’d stood in the same clearing he’d scared me in weeks ago, Zorin kicking the ground behind me. “Just a bunch of letters, if you think about it.”
“This is not what we discussed,” Adara had rumbled.
The Postman had shrugged. “Deals change.”
“Funny how they changed on the eve of the exchange, when we don’t have time to find another option.” As if we would have had any other option to find. I’d stared daggers at him and the line of crates, mind whirling.
A name was very powerful indeed. Strong magic and spells could be bound to it for a person’s entire existence.
“This is bullshit and you know it,” Adara had said.
“Come on, Adara,” The Postman had said, almost tenderly. “You know how these things go. I’d be a fool to pass up the opportunity to have my name in the Blood Brotherhood royal family.”
“You’re a fool for trying to play me.” Adara had tilted her chin as high as it would go and crossed her arms behind her back, no longer looking at him, but in the distance, as if he didn’t exist anymore. “For this, I cast you to the winds and seas–”
The Postman’s long beard bristled, the beads strewn into it clicking. “Adara!”
“From this day on, my mind will not remember you, my heart will not know you, my soul will not recognize you,” Adara had gone on, undeterred. “You are lost to me, forever.”
“You don’t mean that.” He’d tried his hand at a teasing tone.
“Will you rescind your demand?”
He’d hesitated. “I can’t.”
“Then farewell.”
The Postman took a step forward, wooden leg thumping.
“ Fine .” My voice had echoed in the meadow. Even Zorin neighed at me in warning, lips flapping.
Adara had given me a stern look. “You don’t know what you’re agreeing to.”
“I do.” I looked straight at The Postman, gaze unflinching. “A name is only a bunch of letters, after all…”
“....and the letters in a name can be rearranged,” I said to my cousins, who were all looking at me as if I was insane.
Allie sighed. “Evie, that’s a dangerous game. The Postman is smart.”
“Hate to admit it, but he’s one of the best,” Dax said. “He won’t fall for that.”
“Theoretically, you both said the thing with the letters, and you could scramble them.” Clara chewed on her bottom lip. “But he has ways to make you stick to what he wants. This is risky, Evie.”
“The Rohen dynasty also gives their heirs twenty different names to protect them from curses. Even if that pirate knows one, he won’t discover the rest. And you’re all forgetting something,” I said and waited for them to quiet down. “I promised my firstborn’s name–with The Dragon. The odds of us having a baby are…slim.”
I slumped in my chair, avoiding my cousins’ gazes. It wasn’t like I was jumping at the idea of motherhood, after I felt like I’d barely started living, but…the likelihood of me holding a little baby in my arms was nonexistent.
I’d had so many things stripped away from me with that wedding, including this.
“Why do you say that?” Allie asked, voice so soft and comforting.
“Because.” I shrugged, my words stuck somewhere near my heart. “My husband is married to another woman and I will not bring a baby into this mess. Divorce isn’t an option, since all of us signed those blasted unbreakable Clan contracts. We’re stuck. For the good of the bloody Blood Brotherhood.”
I blinked against the sting in my eyes. I’d cried for this marriage for too long.
“So, you see, you don’t need to worry about The Postman.” I forced a painful smile on my face. “He can’t come after me if there’s no little Rohenstorm heir.”
My cousins all looked at me with nothing but worry. Dax shook his head sadly, Dara’s eyes shifted, Allie’s mouth opened and closed without making a sound.
None of them knew how to react–except Clara.
“You know, I’ve been studying our contracts,” she said hesitantly, licking her lips. Finally, she took a deep inhale. “Evie, are you truly miserable?”
No. But I wasn’t happy.
Then again, Grandpa Constantine had said a happy ruler is more rare than a dragon befriending a human, and nobody had seen one of them in eons.
“I’m stuck.” Because I couldn’t move past what had happened at the wedding and I also didn’t seem to be able to move past my feelings for The Dragon.
As long as I didn’t know why, I couldn’t forgive.
The problem was, some part of me wanted to.
It was a weird, confusing mess. So, yes, I was very much stuck in my own thoughts, twin wishes fighting against each other fiercely.
Clara shook her head. “I asked you if you’re miserable.”
I sighed. I hadn’t allowed myself to pick at that particular scab for too long.
“We are the masters of our own lives, cousin,” Clara said with a gravity that reminded me so much of Grandpa Constantine. “If you’re unhappy with your life, change it.”
“The thing I’m unhappy about can’t be changed. And I’m bound by the contract, anyway.”
“No, the rest of us are. But you–and only you, Evie–are not.”