Chapter 2 #2
The outer walls are obsidian, polished to a black mirror finish, rising hundreds of feet from the volcanic basin and reflecting the sunset in dark, liquid ripples of orange and gold.
Towers and parapets jut from the cliff face at irregular intervals, connected by bridges and walkways and open-air galleries where he can see figures moving, some of them human-sized and some of them very decidedly not.
The main gate is an arch tall enough for a dragon in full form, flanked by carved obsidian pillars depicting winged figures in flight, their wings spread wide enough that the carvings alone are taller than any building Bryn has ever stood in.
Thermal rivers cascade down the exterior walls in controlled waterfalls that have been engineered into the architecture itself, the steam rising to mingle with the low clouds that hang perpetually around the volcanic peak and giving the entire structure the appearance of something breathing.
It is the most magnificent thing he has ever seen, and he grew up in a palace. Granted, a palace held together with lies and creative accounting and the desperate determination of one eighteen-year-old who refused to let it collapse on his watch, but still. A palace.
The carriage passes through the gate and into a courtyard large enough to hold every building in Everen's capital town with room left over for the town's modest cemetery.
The stone beneath the wheels is smooth and dark, heated from below.
Bryn can feel the warmth radiating up through the carriage floor and into his boots, which are still his own boots and are still the wrong boots and are still, mercifully, hidden beneath the hem of the dress.
Servants are waiting in neat, organized rows.
More Drekians, dressed in dark violet livery that is better made than anything Bryn has ever owned, and they move with a fluid, unhurried grace that makes him feel clumsy just watching through the window.
No one is rushing. No one looks harried or underfed or like they haven't been paid in three months.
The Sovereignty, apparently, treats its servants the way Everen treats its promises: Bryn's kingdom breaks them, and this one keeps them.
The carriage stops. A servant opens the door and offers a hand.
Bryn takes it and steps out and the heat hits him immediately.
Not unpleasant. Warm, constant, radiating from the stone and the walls and the air itself, wrapping around him in a way that makes every cold night he's ever spent hunched over his desk in Everen's drafty study feel suddenly and acutely offensive.
After eighteen years of cold hearths and corridors that hold the chill even in summer, the warmth feels indecent.
It feels wonderful. He pushes that thought down immediately because he is not here to enjoy himself.
He is here to not die, and if that fails, to die slowly enough that Mithri has time to vanish completely.
A woman approaches. She's tall, dark-haired, with deep brown skin and faint silver scale patterns at her temples that catch the light in a way that is, objectively, quite beautiful, and Bryn files that observation away in the category of things he is absolutely not going to think about right now.
She bows, which surprises him. He wasn't expecting anyone to bow to him.
He's not sure anyone has ever bowed to him in his life, unless they were trying to get past him in a narrow corridor.
"Princess Mithri. Welcome to the Sovereignty. I am Counselor Verath. I will see you to your chambers so that you may refresh yourself before your presentation to the court."
"Presentation," Bryn repeats, and the word lands heavy and ominous in his mouth.
"To His Majesty the King and His Royal Highness Prince Ithyris.
It is customary for the intended to be presented upon arrival.
" She smiles. It's polite and practiced and reveals absolutely nothing, which Bryn can respect because he's been wearing that exact smile in front of creditors for the past three years.
"You must be tired from your journey. We've prepared a suite for you in the east wing. "
He follows her through corridors that are wide and warm and lit by stones set into the walls that glow with a soft amber light.
No torches. No candles. No dripping wax or guttering flames or smoke stains on the ceiling.
The light comes from the stone itself, volcanic rock infused with some kind of magic or geothermal property he doesn't understand, and it gives everything a warm, honeyed quality that makes the obsidian walls look less severe and more elegant.
The ceilings are vaulted and carved with intricate patterns: dragons and flowers and geometric shapes that repeat in fractal spirals so precise they must have taken years to complete.
The floors are heated beneath his feet. The air smells of cedar and something floral he can't name and there is not a single cobweb or patch of mildew or pale rectangle on the wall where a tapestry used to hang before it was sold at market.
Every surface is immaculate. Every detail is intentional.
Every stone and carving and glowing light is placed with the kind of care and resources that Bryn has spent six years desperately pretending Everen still possesses.
His castle is a testament to what Everen used to be.
This palace is a statement of what the Sovereignty still is, and the distance between those two things is so vast it makes his chest ache.
He is so far out of his depth that he can't even see the surface anymore.
* * *
The suite they give him is larger than his father's entire wing back home.
Bryn stands in the center of it and turns a slow circle and feels something complicated and unwelcome twist in his gut, because he is not going to cry over a room.
He is not going to stand here in a borrowed dress and weep because someone gave him a nice place to sleep.
He has more dignity than that. Probably.
A sitting room with cushioned chairs upholstered in dark fabric and a low table set with a tea service made of porcelain so fine he can almost see through it.
A bedchamber beyond, visible through an open archway, with a bed large enough for four people and draped in dark silk that looks cool and heavy and expensive enough to fund Everen's grain supply for a month.
A bathing room with a sunken pool fed by a thermal spring, the water steaming gently and smelling of minerals and something vaguely herbal.
Fresh flowers on every surface, arranged with the kind of effortless artistry that takes actual effort to achieve.
A writing desk stocked with paper and ink of a quality that Bryn has never been able to afford, the paper thick and cream-colored and smooth beneath his fingertips when he touches it without meaning to.
This is what they prepared for a bride. For a princess. For someone who matters, someone whose comfort is worth investing in, someone who is expected and wanted and valued before she's even arrived. Bryn has never been any of those things and the contrast sits in his throat and burns there.
He sets his jaw and crosses to the basin and washes his face.
The water is warm and clean and smells faintly of minerals and his hands are shaking just slightly, which he decides to attribute to the journey and not the fact that he's standing in the most beautiful room he's ever seen and lying about who he is to people who could kill him without breaking stride.
He looks at himself in the polished obsidian mirror and sees a tired boy in a borrowed dress with flowers wilting in his braid and fear sitting plainly in his grey eyes.
Not a princess. Not even a convincing approximation of one, now that he's looking at himself honestly in decent lighting for the first time since he left Everen.
The dress is wrinkled from the carriage.
His jaw is too strong. His hands, resting on the edge of the basin, are too large and too rough from years of work a prince shouldn't have been doing.
He straightens the dress. He smooths his hair.
He re-pins the flowers that have slipped loose during the journey and tucks a strand of gold behind his ear and tells his reflection to pull itself together, because falling apart is a luxury he has never been able to afford and today is not the day he starts.
The wardrobe he can see through an open door holds gowns and robes in dark fabrics, all of them cut for a Drekian woman. Someone a full foot taller than him and built with the broad shoulders and long limbs that seem standard in this kingdom. He'd drown in any of them and look ridiculous doing it.
So. The dusty blue dress it is. Travel-worn, wrinkled, smelling faintly of carriage leather and his own nervous sweat.
The princess of Everen, presented to the most powerful court on the continent in a hand-me-down linen frock and boots that don't match.
It is, if nothing else, an honest representation of Everen's current state: underdressed, underprepared, and hoping no one looks too closely.
A knock at the door. Counselor Verath, smooth and unreadable as before.
"The court is assembled, Princess. Are you ready?"
No. He is not ready. He is not even remotely ready. He is a boy in a dress standing in a volcano pretending to be his twin sister so that she doesn't have to marry a dragon, and there is no version of this in which he is ready.
"Yes," he says.
He pulls his cloak around his shoulders and lifts his chin and follows Verath out the door and down the corridor toward the great hall where a dragon prince is waiting to meet the bride he was promised eighteen years ago.
He's going to get Bryn instead, which is not an upgrade by any definition of the word, but it's what's available.
Bryn thinks of Mithri on the east road with the wind in her golden hair and freedom stretching out ahead of her, and he holds onto that image and lets it steady him the way the numbers usually do.
She's safe. That's what matters. Everything else is just details, and Bryn has always been good with details, even the ones that might kill him.
He steels himself and walks forward into whatever comes next.