Chapter 16 #4
She missed her mother. It hit in odd moments, sometimes a prick of snow on her cheek, sometimes an iceberg to her stomach.
Mamma had always been there to greet new ambassadors too, with a fur stole around her shoulders and a welcoming smile on her face, even though they all knew the appointees wouldn’t last more than a few months.
She’d still tried to make them feel welcome, while she was in the room.
“There they come,” Nik said, still peering out the window. “Looks like a man in a black coat and gray trousers seems to be the central figure. But that is quite a guard around him.”
Kyrja moved back to the window, though by the time she looked down, the trailing members of the guard were all she could see. They were always something to behold though, with their gold-toned uniforms and flowing red capes. “All diplomats travel with their own logade of hoplites.”
Perla and Elianne both made it into the room before the procession was shown in, the princess in what she’d called her “standard Daryatlean garb”—a royal blue gown, this one cut to fit through the torso then billowing out in a wide satin skirt—and Elianne in, of course, black leathers.
Footsteps echoed down the corridor, all marching in time.
Kyrja had heard it dozens of times, and still it made her spine go rigid, her shoulders edge back.
She took her place where Fodur usually would have stood, in the center of the room with the table to her right and the lounge area to her left.
The others arranged themselves behind her.
She didn’t turn to see what formation they’d chosen.
When it was her family doing the greeting, Mamma had always been on his left, Einar on his right, both one step behind Fodur, and Kyrja and Krystiana between them, but another step back.
The first two hoplites entered, so similar in appearance with their bronze helmets complete with nose pieces that they could have been replicas of each other.
They peeled off in opposite directions, still marching in time toward the far corners of the room.
Two more soldiers would follow and take up their stances just inside the door.
Then, of course, the ambassador. A final two hoplites would follow him in, but the rest of his logade would wait in the corridor.
But when the second two hoplites turned, revealing the diplomat, all her expectations froze. Shattered.
King Stefanos himself stood before her, surveying the room as if it were his next conquest.
Behind her and to the left, Perla growled. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
Stefanos’s gaze snapped to the princess, a smile on his lips that Kyrja could only describe as ruthless.
“Princess Perla. With such a gracious greeting, as usual. You could take a few lessons from that delightful sister-in-law of yours.” Well.
At least those introductions didn’t need to be made.
He gave a little bow that looked more mocking than respectful.
Perla glared. “Iraja is nice to everyone. Don’t take it personally.”
He chuckled, straightening again. “For once, it seems we had the same idea.” He set his gaze on Kyrja.
As a child, she’d been intrigued by Ellas, the only land that had no magic but was still considered a threat to every other nation.
They were a land of warriors, widely recognized as the fiercest in the world, with more advanced technology—when it came to weaponry, anyway—than anyone had attained since the ancients.
While the rest of the kingdoms had focused on might gained through magic, they’d compensated with their inventions.
But it was their aristocracy and monarchy that both intrigued and frightened her still. Birthright was no guarantee of either title or crown—knowledge and intelligence ruled Ellas with an iron fist. Ironic, people generally thought. Pure muscle being ruled by pure mind.
But she’d seen the results of it in their histories.
How their king, each of whom won the crown through cunning, ruled with strategy and doled out knowledge as the sharpest of weapons, the most advanced of machines.
The crown always seemed to stay in the same few families, but every ten years the king had to defend his right to rule through a series of grueling examinations.
Thus far there had never been a queen, which Kyrja found entirely suspicious. They said women were eligible, but somehow one had never proven smarter than her male counterparts?
Very suspicious indeed.
Stefanos had ascended to the throne, ousting his uncle, when he was only seventeen.
And had defended the next decade of his reign so successfully last year that each of the four ambassadors from Ellas they’d had since boasted he would be their king until his dying breath—something no one before him could claim.
The longest-reigning king of Ellas thus far had been in his position for thirty years.
Kyrja had long ago outgrown the hope of meeting an Ellesian king one day, having no particular desire to be outwitted in every sentence. But it looked like her wants were no more important today than they’d been any other day in the last two weeks.
Silently, she said a prayer for peace. Strength.
And wisdom enough to get through the evening without falling into some sort of mental trap.
Without Fodur here to answer to, she’d attended the two weekly services in the Grand Kyrka so far, and in both, the dominie’s words had reaffirmed that the Giver was walking with her.
Tonight, he would most assuredly have to take the lead.
Stefanos bowed, without the mockery he’d given Perla.
Kyrja curtsied, low enough to be respectful, shallow enough to say that she was this man’s equal.
“King Stefanos, Fjordlandi welcomes you.” What was it she’d read about Ellesians?
They value honesty above diplomacy—and wit above honesty.
She rose, lifting her brows in challenge.
“Though we’d have done so with more aplomb had we been aware of your coming. ”
Stefanos’s face was all sharp angles and hard planes, more intriguing than handsome.
His smile, like everything else in Ellesian culture, had been weaponized.
“I thank you, Queen Valkyrja, both for the welcome and the indulgence of my unannounced arrival.” Those clever eyes moved to the black-clad figures, his blink heavy, loaded.
“Interesting. I do not recognize the symbols on these uniforms, nor the tattoos. Is this a new guard, Your Majesty, fashioned after one of your ancient-of-the-ancients tribes?”
“No.” She half-turned to Daemon, who’d taken up the position where Einar would have been behind Fodur—fitting.
The Aflame had unanimously agreed he was the most powerful among them, so he’d taken the foremost seat on her new High Council.
“This is Daemon, primal of the Aflame and highest ranking of my new High Council. And two of my other Aflame High Council members, Elianne and her son, Nikanor. It seems you already know our ambassador from Daryatla, Princess Perla.”
He didn’t so much as look at the princess again.
Just moved a few steps forward, gloved hands clasped behind his back, and kept his attention on the trio.
“Son, you say—but he looks the elder. Which indicates the agelessness that comes with magical blood, Awakened later in Nikanor than in Elianne, and recent enough that his skin has not yet reclaimed the perfection of youth. Interesting.” A click of his heels, and his whole attention moved to Dae.
“Primal could indicate that you are simply the leader, given that you are clearly the most powerful, to have that ranking on the Council. But given that not so much as a whisper of this so-called ‘Aflame’ has made its way to Ellas, I am inclined to think it more than that. That you are like darling Perla’s mother.
First of your kind. I assume the name of your clan designates your magic? I would love a demonstration.”
Daemon might as well have been made of obsidian, as much reaction as he gave.
Stefanos turned back to Kyrja, brows lifted. “Does he not speak the common tongue?”
“He does,” Daemon answered, still staring straight ahead. “But he’s been under the mountain a long time and isn’t fluent enough in presumptuous royal demands to know if punching a visiting king in the nose would be a declaration of war. Or, in your case, a vow of friendship.”
Kyrja went stiff. She wasn’t sure either, honestly.
But Stefanos laughed. “I think our diplomatic ties will grow only stronger, if you’ve brought people like this into your inner circle…Kyrja?” A lift of a brow, another challenge. “That’s what you’re called, isn’t it?”
Never without invitation, and he no doubt knew that.
But it wasn’t a battle worth picking. She had to wrestle control of this meeting from him, or the night would spiral into disaster.
“It will suffice. And while I imagine a small demonstration of the primal’s power can be arranged before your departure, there will be none tonight.
” Her smile felt frigid on her lips, but perhaps that would work in her favor.
“Unless, of course, you fancy having your clothes set on fire. Nothing much else in here will burn.” She motioned to the obsidian walls, table, chairs.
The more comfortable furniture to the left had been quickly reupholstered in the same flame-resistant leather her new friends wore.
They’d learned their lesson after their first meeting here two weeks ago, when Nik had burst into flames and Perla and Kyrja had both had to douse the whole seating area in water and snow to put it out.
Stefanos looked to Daemon again, as if waiting for his argument or agreement.
She realized only then that she’d asserted dominance over the Aflame. Which, yes, was what Stefanos ought to expect of the queen—but clearly he didn’t.
A slight. A slap to her, with one look.
Given that she still wasn’t convinced Daemon’s bending of the knee had been anything but a show for Nik’s sake—and perhaps even an expedient introduction of his family to the world—she had no idea how he would react.
He didn’t. Just stood there, staring straight ahead, like before.
Like, she realized, the hoplites were doing. Feet shoulder-width apart, arms akimbo and clasped behind his back.
He’d styled himself not as a near-equal, which he could have done given his new rank on her High Council, but more as her guard. A quick glance told her Nik and Elianne were in the same position.
Bless them.
Kyrja planted her own hands on her hips. “I realize you are unaccustomed to magic in Ellas, Stefanos, but they are people, not new war machines for you to reverse engineer. Do stop studying them as if you mean to make a diagram for your libraries.”
“All right.” He turned that penetrating gaze fully onto her.
“You’re why I’ve come anyway. I’d already been planning to, of course, after I signed the Accord with your father, but I was quite surprised to receive your missive.
Even more so when my informants verified that you somehow subdued both Isidor and all twelve of his most powerful Blessed. ”
Frost bloomed on her skin. She didn’t bother stifling it but soothed herself by shaping it into a design that would echo the beading on her gown.
In the wake of the attack, she’d forgotten all about the Accord Fodur had mentioned to Einar.
But hadn’t Einar said something about her learning more after her Blessing Day celebration?
Everything had shifted that day, though.
Fodur certainly hadn’t told her anything—she hadn’t given him the chance, even if he’d wanted to.
Suddenly she wondered if that had been a misstep. “Forgive me, I’m still acquainting myself with all my father’s files and dealings. Of what Accord do you speak?”
That deadly smile again. And he fired his weapon of knowledge. “The one to make you my wife.”