Chapter 3
Chapter
Three
NOW
L ora stands beside Ayc, her back rigid as a spear. Her eyes flash momentarily silver—a threat—before turning back to the deepest of violets, so dark they are almost black. She’s unarmed, but Ayc knows it makes little difference. She’s been trained from birth to be a weapon.
The man holding the knife lowers the blade but doesn’t drop it. He bares his teeth. “He insulted the high priest.”
Lora releases a tight sigh. “I’m sure he did.” Without looking at Ayc, she adds, “Apologize.”
Ayc hesitates.
She snaps her head toward him. Her eyes flash silver again. “Apologize,” she repeats, not lifting her voice from her normal cool, unemotional tone. So like her mother. “Or I will let him stab you.”
“Sorry,” Ayc mutters.
“Fucking mean it. ”
Ayc sweeps a deep bow. “My sincerest apologies for offending your sensibilities, High Priest Marcellus.”
The Lux Aester male glances at Marcellus, who gives a nod. The fae who nearly separated Ayc from his liver flops down at the table.
“It’s good to see you, Loraphne,” Marcellus says.
Lora gives him what should be a smile but is merely a flash of teeth. “As always, Marcellus.”
Marcellus doesn’t question the cryptic reply but turns on his booted heel and saunters away. Ayc opens his mouth, not quite sure what he’s about to say—but sure that it'll be really, really foolish—when Lora seizes his arm and drags him away.
“ Ow, ow, ow,” protests Ayc, but she only tightens her hold. Not tight enough to stab his arm with the sharp points of her short nails. Just tight enough to show she might be considering it.
“Divine’s sake,” she grumbles, as she pulls him behind a pillar and releases him. “Nothing ever changes, does it? Four years I’ve been gone at Adamant, and it’s still not possible for you to go one day without offending someone to the point of a justified stabbing.”
She swings to face him, and her presence strikes him like lightning. No makeup softens her fierce expression, and she wears her armor like it is her very skin. She looks vicious… and beautiful. Perhaps, he has forgotten just how beautiful. Or if not forgotten that she is beautiful, forgotten how her beauty feels : like a punch in his stomach.
“Hello to you too, Lora.” Ayc leans against the pillar and brushes off his sleeve to ease the wrinkles she created. He pretends he can brush off the effect of her just as easily. “Isn’t there a corner you should be sulking in? ”
She fixes him with a look that tells him—if he were a wise man—he would run. Ayc has been accused of being many things. Wise is fortunately not one of them. Instead, he returns her look with a grin.
“I think the words you are looking for, cinnamon roll ,” she says, “are: ‘ Thank you for saving my ignorant, insufferable ass ’.”
“Oh, come on, villainess ,” he shoots back, as though no time has gone by at all, and they are still both teenagers, aiming shots at each other in the hopes one might kill. “All I did was call him a pious little shit. That’s not an insult. It’s a fact .”
She opens her mouth but shuts it. Not even she can argue with that one. Then she opens her mouth again, because she can’t stand to let him have the last word, can she? “Next time, I’ll let them turn your ass into a pincushion.”
“That would truly be a tragedy. My ass would be wasted as a pincushion. It’s a fine specimen.”
She snorts. “Only if we’re judging asses by their resemblance to a smelly, barnyard animal.”
A hand shoots between them, grabs one of the remaining fruit tarts on Ayc’s tray and disappears again. Ayc and Lora turn as one.
“Oh, please don’t stop on my behalf,” says the pretty fae who has joined them, nibbling on the crust of the tart. Like Lora, they wear the scale-like armor of the Everadyn warriors, but the black makes their pale skin look almost translucent. An emerald green cloak, embroidered with elegant swirls on the edge—a sorcerer’s cloak—drapes across their shoulders. Their long snow-white hair curls over their shoulder in a single braid. The only splash of makeup is the violet eyeliner painted into a tapered wing, bringing out the sapphire of their eyes.
“Who’s the pious little shit?” they ask.
Lora closes her eyes briefly, as Ayc angles his body toward this newcomer.
“Marcellus,” Ayc says.
They choke on the tart. “Marcellus? The High Priest?”
“Oh, you know him?”
“Unfortunately. I grew up in Lux Aester.” They say it in the same tone as though they grew up in eternal torment.
“My condolences,” Ayc replies.
“Appreciated. But you’re right. He is a pious little shit.”
Ayc gives Lora a look that clearly says ‘Told you so’.
In return, Lora gives him a look that says, ‘On second thought, a stabbing is too good for you. Disembowelment would be preferred.’ He knows, because he’s seen that same look as she’s uttered those exact words before.
“Lora,” the fae says, “who’s your friend?”
“He is not my friend,” Lora says through her teeth.
“Ouch,” Ayc says sarcastically. “Honest as ever, Lora.” He holds out his hand to the fae. “I’m Ayc Waylonder, court magician and baker extraordinaire. Pronouns he/him.”
The fae’s lips part slightly—a subtle ‘oh’ of recognition. Surely, they too know the tale of the human divina that the Sovereign keeps in her court. Of course, the story the Everadyn fae know about him is mostly untrue. Few who weren’t at Creed Castle that day know his true story. Whatever reasons Yris had for the massacre, she wants no one to know about it.
And what has Yris told the people about Ayc, again? Something about rescuing him from Drakr who made their wealth selling human children into slavery. Yris, of course, only saved Ayc after she saw his divina mark and knew what it meant. Certainly, not out of the goodness of her heart. Everyone knows that is a black, withered thing.
The fae presses their mouth closed and shakes Ayc’s hand. “Bronwen. Pronouns she/her. I’m roommates with Lora at Adamant. It’s wonderful to meet you. I saw you performing when I came in. Are your performances always so—” She giggles, but in a way that makes Ayc feel like she’s laughing with him instead of at him. “—combustible?”
“Yes,” Lora says flatly. “He might as well be made of paper, as easily as he goes up in flame.”
Ayc shoves the tray toward Lora without taking his eyes off Bronwen. “Have a fruit tart, villainess.”
Bronwen’s gaze flicks from Lora to Ayc. “Before I felt like there was a story here, but now I’m starting to suspect there’s a whole novel.”
“It’s nothing,” Lora says, as Ayc simultaneously says, “Oh yes. Really funny story, too. She cut off my ear once. The healer was able to reattach it though, so no lasting harm was done, I suppose.”
Lora folds her arms over her chest, wrapping her fingers around her upper arms. Unlike her mother’s, her fingernails are painted a soft neutral color, and not a blood-red, and their points are far more subtle. But the talons are still there, a constant weapon. “I didn’t mean to hit you.”
“Do you mean to tell me that you had such poor aim you meant to miss me and didn’t?”
She narrows the space between them in a single predatory step, so only the tray separates them. So close he can feel the crackle of fury and power that come from her. That he can see the silver tinge in her eyes. The hair on his arm stands on end, and the rest of the room disappears, his vision tunneling to the threat before him. Ayc knows he’s in danger and he should run. He knows he shouldn’t like the way he seems to get to her, the way he knows how to push her to see a little break in her normally cool, stony exterior. He knows a lot of things, but it all fades away when he looks at her.
“I’m a much better shot now,” she promises. “Perhaps we should try again.”
Bronwen steals another fruit tart from the tray, and the soft scrape of her green-tipped nails snaps the rest of reality back into place. A bemused smile flutters on her lips. “So, I was right. A whole novel, then?”
Lora takes a sudden step back and drops her arms to her side. “No, it’s quite simple. He’s an obnoxious, insufferable ass, and we loathe each other. We’ve hated each other for a decade. The end.”
Bronwen shrugs and licks a dollop of custard off her finger. “Well, we almost killed each other our first year at Adamant. Now, we’re the dearest of friends, so perhaps there’s hope for you two yet.”
Lora reels her head back as though appalled by the very idea, and Ayc laughs. He likes this one. She doesn’t seem like most of Lora’s friends of the past. They were all too cruel. Xylie excluded, of course.
“With that hilarity, I must be off,” Ayc says, sweeping a bow in Bronwen’s direction. “Lovely to meet you, Bronwen. Try not to let this one scowl in the corner too long. Her face is bound to get stuck like that one of these days. Oh, and Lora?”
He spins toward her, and even after all this time, she must recognize his tone, because she stiffens and gives a flat, “No.”
“Did you hear the one about the two dragons who walk into a tavern?”
“Ayc, I swear to the divine?—”
“You haven’t? Fantastic! One says to the other, ‘It’s hot in here.’”
“—if you dare finish?—”
“And the other one says, ‘Shut your mouth.’ ”
Bronwen giggles, which is kind of her. It’s a horrible joke.
Lora rolls her eyes. “Two dragons would never fit into a tavern.”
“It’s a joke,” Ayc says. “You’re supposed to laugh.”
But she won’t. She never has, not in all these years. One of these days, he’s determined to make her. Because it’s a challenge, of course, and not at all because he wonders what her laugh might sound like.
Lora narrows her eyes, but they’re the color of orchids not of steel. “You know what, cinnamon roll? Maybe I need a new pincush?—”
The music cuts off mid-note. The effect is not a ripple, but a lightning strike. The dancers stop. The laughter in the hall ebbs. The servers stop milling about the crowd. Ayc’s smile tumbles from his lips, and he snaps his gaze to the Sovereign. She’s the only one with the power to cause the world to stand still.
Yris stands from her chair behind the table, saying nothing. The Five who sit at the table are watching her intensely. Jenesis, Yris’s Third, a valiant gryphon rider, blinks rapidly, like she is trying not to cry.
Something is happening. Ayc’s heart knows it, based on the way it’s pounding a warning against his ribcage.
Yris’s hands rise to touch the circlet on her head. Beside him, Lora sucks in a breath so sharp it cuts straight through him. Her mouth moves, forms words he doesn’t think she meant to say, so silent he shouldn’t hear them.
“No, not yet.”
Yris, the Sovereign, lifts the circlet from her head, the one she has worn for fifty years, and tosses it before the head table. It clatters on the ground, spinning and whirling and then finally growing still. No one dares move. No one dares even breathe.
Yris’s words rise, echoing without the help of amplification, without anything other than the resonance of her own power. “The Sovereignty Trials begin at sunrise in three months’ time. Clans, choose your victors wisely.”
She sits back down.
Silence, silence, silence.
But in Ayc’s head, it’s so loud. He doesn’t understand the weight of the Sovereign’s words, but he can feel it in the tension in the room as though everything has changed in merely two sentences.
He barely manages to keep his voice a whisper. “What's happening? What does that mean?”
He looks at Lora, but she's…frozen. But not like stone. Like someone facing an oncoming stampede of horses with nowhere to run. If he didn’t know her better, he would think she’s terrified. Lora is never afraid.
It’s Bronwen who answers, leaning close. “It means she’s stepping down as Sovereign.”
It clicks into place. In Everadyn, Sovereignty is not passed down through blood. In another country, Lora might be a princess, but there’s no such thing here; she’s not guaranteed a throne simply because of her birth. No, in Everadyn, a Sovereign isn’t born or chosen. They prove themselves worthy . And once they have that power, it’s theirs for a century or until they decide to give it up.
And Yris… Yris is giving it up.
“S-she won’t be Sovereign anymore?” Ayc says, barely daring to breathe. Barely daring to hope.
Bronwen shakes her head.
There’s another lightning strike, the third in a day. This one splits his life in two. A before and after. Everything changes in a single moment.
The tray slips from Ayc’s fingers and collides with the floor. The clatter screams in the silence. His voice, unbidden, follows:
“Holy fucking shit!”