Chapter III #3
When the pang had subsided, Ariana glanced up at Orden from where she lay, soaked with sweat and gone beyond herself into a realm of heat and torment. He looked regal and composed by contrast, and though there was pity in his eyes, there was a ruthlessness, too, which she quailed before.
“I had word late last night,” Orden said.
“Afon’s already here. In Inverlyn. How he managed to get past the guard unnoticed is beyond me.
The man might as well be a witch. He’s been staying at…
no. You don’t need to know the name of the place.
Suffice it to say, it’s somewhere a man of Afon’s tastes would appreciate.
I don’t want him in our home, Ari. Let him stay in the whorehouse he chose.
He’ll make it a charnel house before the end, but at least he’ll be away from you. ”
Cold resolve swept over Ariana. Afon of Caervallion was, in many ways, what the Invers’ sire had been upon first seizing control of Honoria.
More warlord than sovereign, a man of violent tastes and impulses, bent on subjugation and domination and shoring up his own power at any cost. Afon was a thorn in Orden’s side, and to have the two of them under one roof would be like lightning in a hayrick.
Or the improbable path to peace. Lyria had worked greater wonders, in the stories and histories of the Beloved Three.
With Orden already bent on war and his allies threatening a total repudiation of Honoria if he made good on that resolve, Ariana had nothing to lose.
She’d invited Afon to the summer council she hosted annually, although Caervallion’s king had never been included before.
Her hope was to find some accord, some previously unrecognized common ground between the two, and to chivvy them toward peace by any means necessary.
All this she’d planned, believing she had a month yet before Orden’s newest child arrived.
“… what I’ll do if Gileta plays us false.
” Orden carried on, seeming oblivious to the titanic struggle taking place within his queen, as her body worked to tear itself open in service to the crown.
“You know she’s been muttering for years about opening her trade in incaendium powder to Caervallion.
If Afon uses this as an opportunity to ingratiate himself to her, it’ll mean far less incaendium for us.
Without it, our witchsmoke refineries will fail, and the front in Vesper will be decimated.
I could be the king who loses the Progenitors’ War unless I find incaendium elsewhere, and there’s only one place besides Gileta that it can be got. ”
Ariana fought back the urge to scream. Why?
she wanted to rage at him. With Honoria already stretched so thin, why would you choose another conflict?
Do the ghosts of your forefathers haunt you so maddeningly that you must risk your own crown and the lives of countless people to appease them?
Struggling to prop herself up a little, Ariana reached out and took Orden’s hand.
His grip was dry and warm, her own sweat-slick and clammy.
“Gileta will stand by us,” Ariana said. Her voice shook with effort.
“I’m not the one who made Gileta and Song Royale our ally, Orden, that was you, years before I came to the throne.
She chose you, and will do so again. All will be well.
This council will be as I wish—a chance for you to show strength to the other powers of the Hand.
And this time to present them with a new heir, and security for the Inver line.
It will be an opportunity to humble Afon, as well, so that he makes amends for whatever it is that has brought your ire down upon him. ”
Orden looked at their joined hands, and for a moment seemed very far away.
“I don’t care about Gileta,” he said. “Not when it really comes down to it. I would not care for Afon, either, if he did not plague me so. The only person I think of is you, my star. Whether you’re happy or not, and willing to stand by me. Can you do so still?”
“Look at me.”
The king shifted his gaze to the queen’s at her command, and she held it.
Ariana refused to falter. She fixed her eyes on Orden’s, and with everything in her—every last fragment of faith, of failing conviction, of foundering hope—she feigned certainty.
She made the words an oath and a prayer.
“I promise you. On my life, on our gods, on this child I’m bringing into the world, I remember where my heart lies. I could never forget.”
But her heart lay in a thousand pieces, and every one of them seemed to be at odds with the other. Orden was silent, and it felt as if Ariana’s pulse might stop. At last, he bent and brushed a kiss to her forehead.
“Sometimes I forget,” he said, “how you’ve fought and bled for Honoria in your own way. You suffer for us all and bear it with such grace that none of the fools at court see your work for what it is—the glory of battle on a different front.”
Ariana kept very still so that he would not see how the words, meant for praise, cut her to the quick. And as he left, she writhed on her bed and cried out, for the worst of her trial was coming, and it felt as if she would be torn in two.