A Court Of Mist And Flames Prologue
FIVE YEARS AGO
Sahara tried to sweep my legs while I was wearing a silver long dress.
Not a short one, either. A floor-length, court-approved, shimmering-when-I-moved kind of dress. The kind meant to say Princess. The kind meant to say Harmless. The kind meant to say, Please don’t stab me, I only negotiate.
Sahara didn’t negotiate.
She dipped low, boots sliding silent over the polished stone of the east corridor, and her shin hooked behind my ankle with the casual confidence of someone who’d been training since she could walk.
My skirts flared. For half a heartbeat I was pure indignation and fabric and the horrible realization that if I went down, I’d go down hard.
My hands moved anyway.
Mother’s voice lived in my bones. Hips square. Weight grounded. Don’t let an opponent out maneuver you.
I shifted my center and caught Sahara’s forearm before her hook completed. My fingers locked around leather, firm and unglamorous. I stepped out of the sweep and used my shoulder to bump her off balance.
Sahara rolled with it, because of course she did. She spun, came up grinning like I was her favorite opponent.
“You cheated,” she said.
“I adapted,” I corrected, smoothing my skirts like I hadn’t almost died of embarrassment in the middle of our own castle.
Her grin widened. “Adapted. Sure. If that’s what you call it when you nearly fell on your ass.”
I lifted my chin. “I’m wearing silver. You don’t fall when you wear a royal dress.”
“You do if you’re you.”
“You’re lucky I love you,” I said.
Sahara’s eyes softened in that twin way that always hit me right in the chest, like our hearts had grown up sharing the same soul. Then she winked, because she couldn’t hold softness for long without trying to bite it.
“You love me because I’m the only one who keeps you interesting.”
“I am plenty interesting,” I said. “I read policy scrolls for fun.”
Sahara made a sound like she might choke. “You read policy scrolls like other girls read romance.”
“Romance is inefficient.”
“Gods,” she breathed, laughing. “You are going to marry a treaty one day.”
“I will marry someone who doesn’t smell like sweat and ego.”
“Liar.” Sahara stepped closer, lowering her voice. “You still watched Soren in the yard this morning.”
I scoffed, loud and offended. “I watched his stance. His footwork is sloppy.”
His footwork was not sloppy. His shoulders were the real crime.
Sahara’s eyebrows climbed. “Mm. Sure. Footwork.”
I pointed at her chest with one gloved finger. “Don’t act like you’re above it.”
She didn’t pretend. Sahara never pretended. She leaned back against the cold stone wall, arms folding across her leather-clad torso like she belonged in a training ring instead of in the royal one.
“I’m not above it,” she said, utterly pleased with herself. “Soren is hot.”
The simplicity of it made me laugh. “You’re going to get yourself married off to someone with biceps.”
“Maybe I want biceps.”
“You want chaos.”
Sahara’s smile turned wicked. “You want control.”
“And that’s why we work,” I said, and the words came out without thought, like a truth we’d both always known.
Sahara paced in a lazy circle around me, her eyes sharp.
She wasn’t just restless. She was watching.
Always watching. She’d been like that since we were little, since the first time someone reached for me in a crowded hall and Sahara’s hand closed around their wrist with a grip that promised consequences.
“You’re dressed like you’re about to be paraded,” she said, tugging lightly at my sleeve, careful not to snag the fabric. “Are you being paraded?”
“Council dinner,” I said. “Mother wants me present for the coastal tariff discussion.”
Sahara’s mouth twisted. “Tariffs. Riveting.”
“It matters,” I said, because it did. It always did. People liked to pretend politics was soft. Like words didn’t cut. Like agreements didn’t bleed. They were wrong.
“I know it matters,” Sahara said, and that was the thing. She teased, but she listened. She listened better than anyone. “I just don’t want to be in a room with old men arguing about fish while you sit there being perfect.”
I lifted my hands, palms up, the picture of calm patience. “I’m not perfect.”
“You’re perfect at pretending you don’t feel things.”
That bothered me more than her attempted sweep.
My throat tightened, just a little, and I tried to turn it into annoyance. “I feel plenty.”
Sahara’s gaze held mine. Lavender on lavender, the same shade our father had given us. The same shade that looked almost gentle until you noticed how much it could harden.
“Show me,” she said.
I opened my mouth, ready with something clever, something sharp, something that would keep us in the safe space of banter.
Instead, Sahara stepped back into a fighting stance, and the shift in her body changed the entire air around us.
“Remy taught me something new,” she said, and her tone was suddenly all focus.
My eyebrows rose. “Remy taught you? When?”
“When he visited Mother and Father last month.” Sahara’s smile flashed. “You were too busy being praised for your speech at the magistrate’s breakfast to notice anything else.”
“I noticed you glaring at the pastry table like it insulted you.”
“It did,” she said. “There were no meat pies.”
I rolled my eyes. “Of course.”
Sahara angled her feet, knees soft, shoulders loose. She looked older than fifteen in moments like that, not because she tried, but because training did that to a person. It shaped you into someone who understood how quickly a day could turn.
“Okay,” she said. “Imagine you’re taller than me and you think I’m weak.”
“That’s not hard,” I muttered.
Sahara laughed once, then moved.
She came in fast, not with brute force, but with timing. A feint high. A shift left. Her hand swept my wrist like she was guiding a dance, not taking control of my body. She stepped behind me and hooked her arm under mine, then twisted, not enough to break anything, just enough to force submission.
Pain licked sharp and clean down my shoulder.
I hissed. “Sahara.”
“Tap,” she said, calm. “Or get hurt.”
I hated that calm. I hated that it worked.
I tapped her forearm.
Sahara released me instantly and stepped back, hands up, no threat.
“That’s the move,” she said, bright with pride. “It uses their arrogance. They think you’ll pull away. You don’t. You go with it and make them give you their balance.”
I rotated my shoulder, wincing, then glared at her. “You nearly dislocated me.”
“Not nearly,” she said. “I’m careful.”
I flexed my fingers, checking my grip, checking that I was still me. “You’re insufferable.”
“You adore me.”
“I tolerate you.”
Sahara’s eyes sparkled. “Tell me again how you don’t feel things.”
I took a step toward her, skirts whisGaving. “Do you want to do it again? On someone else?”
Sahara’s grin grew. “Like Soren?”
The way her voice turned his name into a joke made heat crawl up my neck. I blamed the corridor’s warmth. I blamed everything except myself.
“You just like training with him,” I said, because teasing Sahara was safer than admitting anything about my own attention.
Sahara didn’t even blink. “Yeah. He’s hot.”
I stared at her.
She stared back, unbothered, like admitting desire was the same as admitting hunger.
“Is that what this is?” I asked. “You want him because he’s hot?”
Sahara tilted her head, considering. “It’s one of the reasons. He’s also fun. He doesn’t treat me like I’m breakable.”
My chest tightened again. “No one treats you like you’re breakable.”
Sahara’s smile faded by a fraction. “Some people do. They just hide it behind their titles.”
I hated that she was right.
Before I could answer, a distant bell chimed somewhere deeper in the castle. Not an alarm. Just the soft notice that the council chamber was being prepared. Servants moved like quiet shadows through the halls, carrying trays, adjusting drapes, polishing what never stayed polished.
We were in the east wing corridor, where the stone was pale and the windows tall, casting long stripes of late afternoon light across the floor. The air smelled faintly of beeswax and cold iron from the armory down the hall.
Sahara glanced toward the window, then back to me. “You’re going to be late.”
“I know.”
“You want me to walk you?”
I snorted. “I’m inside the castle. I’m not crossing a battlefield.”
Sahara’s eyes narrowed. “That’s not the point.”
“I’ll be fine,” I said, and I meant it in the way people say it when they’re trying to convince someone else. Or themselves.
Sahara stepped closer and bumped her forehead to mine, gentle as breath. We’d done that since we were small. A twin thing. A quiet promise. I’m here. You’re not alone.
“Try not to fall on your ass in front of the council.”
I smiled, despite everything. “Try not to stab anyone in front of the council.”
“No promises,” Sahara said, and pulled back.
A servant appeared at the far end of the corridor, walking toward us with measured steps. A tray balanced on one hand. Head bowed. The posture of someone who had learned that eyes lowered kept you alive.
Nothing about it should have mattered.
Everything about it did.
Sahara’s attention shifted. I watched it happen because I’d watched her my whole life. Her shoulders tightened. Her weight moved subtly onto the balls of her feet. Her hand drifted closer to the dagger at her belt, the one she wasn’t technically supposed to have outside training.
The servant’s pace stayed steady. Too steady.
My pulse ticked up, irritation prickling. I told myself it was nothing. A servant trying not to spill wine. A servant doing their job.
Sahara’s voice dropped. “Wren.”
“What?” I whispered back, suddenly annoyed at my own nerves.
Sahara didn’t answer. Her gaze locked on the servant’s hands.
The tray looked normal. Silver. Polished. A few goblets. A folded cloth.
The cloth was wrong.
It was folded too tight, like it hid something that needed hiding.
The servant drew closer.
My mouth went dry. The corridor’s light seemed to sharpen, each stripe of sun a blade across the floor. The air pressed heavy against my lungs.