Chapter #2
“Isn’t it compelling? More compelling than a promise I made to my mother?”
Flor arched an eyebrow. “Quite compelling. A Rae actually in love with her Prince, who has been claimed by her rival, no less . . . Oh, the court will go wild for that.”
“Good,” she said, though she didn’t feel particularly good. “Then that’s what we’ll tell them.”
“But that does leave Cae quite vulnerable. If the other Raes think you have no intention of claiming him, they will try all the harder to steal him from you.”
She frowned. “You’re right.”
“Then why not tell them that I am intent on winning Magda’s affection and convincing her to claim me?” Kaelan said, flipping up the lid of his basket and digging through the contents.
Flor’s hands clapped together at her breast. “Yes. Even better. You love Riker and Cae loves you. It’s like something out of one of those silly romantic stories the court troubadours are always telling.
Perfect. And it will suit to explain why Magda gifted you with such a pretty little nymph.
She is attempting to placate you, distract you.
” She pointed her finger at Kaelan. “But you must both play the parts. Especially tonight. You must dote on her and make your affection for her visible for everyone to witness. You must convince everyone that you truly are in love with her.”
Kaelan pulled out a bag of roasted chestnuts, the sweet unctuous aroma filling the carriage. “Yes, Mother.”
Flor turned to Magda. “And you must put him off, but not too much. You need him still and you cannot allow any other Rae near him, but it must be apparent that your heart is elsewhere.”
“I don’t think that will be too difficult,” Kaelan remarked. He tore open the bag, a puff of steam swirled around his face.
She scowled at him, but he kept his attention on peeling the skin from a chestnut.
“We’ll need to explain to Honey what is going on,” she said.
“I will speak to her at our next stop,” Flor said, leaning back and crossing her legs. “This is good. This is very good.”
Magda chewed her lip, gazing out the window, keeping Kaelan in the corner of her eye. It may have been a good story for the court, but it was churning the acid in Magda’s stomach. So much deception already. It was like she had never left.
The journey to the Spire took a few hours, but it seemed much longer, trapped in the tight confines of the carriage. Kaelan hardly spoke. And Flor was constantly remembering one more thing he should know and attempting to stuff his head with every rule of etiquette and family history.
Twice they stopped to rest. Flor departed both times, Magda and Kaelan only once and only briefly.
The stares Magda received at the inn were good practice.
Keeping up the weight of a Rae’s facade was much more difficult than she’d remembered.
The effort left every muscle in her neck tight and aching.
At the Eastern Cliff’s bridge, they were stopped again and inspected by the cool gazes of the Crown’s warriors. They peered into the carriage and combed over each of the occupants in turn.
“Step out,” Flor said to Kaelan after the guards had moved back to Damion and Honey’s carriage. “There is no better view of the Spire than from the bridges.”
Flor disembarked and Kaelan followed. Magda hesitated, enjoying the absence of Kaelan’s heavy silent presence for a few seconds, but then she, too, was drawn out.
The brisk air hit her first. The wooden gates to the district’s bridge were closed, the guard towers looming over them, obscuring the view.
Flor led Kaelan over to the narrow vista point beside the tower, where a few bodies could cluster and view the Spire in the distance.
Piercing the cobalt sky, the great peak of the Spire glistened in the late afternoon sunlight.
Limned gold, the soaring, tapered white tower was thickly coated with sculpture, impossible to discern from a distance.
Below the Spire Peak, more towers ringed, overflowing with cascading greenery.
Down and down the Crown’s Palace tumbled, in a succession of towers and buildings, like a massive tiered cake.
Separated from the city below by a steep barren slope, the Palace could only be entered underground, through the mountain.
The city was divided into seven districts.
Each fell under the jurisdiction of one of the seven Radiants.
Walled off from the other, each had with their own bridge by which to enter across the chasm.
Often the gates between the districts stood open, but sometimes not.
Gleaming stone buildings and glorious lush gardens in the upper echelons of the great cityscape rose above the outer walls, and below, the chasm.
Magda leaned over the waist-high stone barrier at the edge of the vista and looked down through the plummeting shadows to the river hundreds of feet below.
The seven bridges spanned the river in arches like the great Roman aqueducts she’d seen in human pictures.
She always hated visiting the Spire, because of all its grand heights.
This was the first time she’d ever been able to look down at the great river.
In the deep shadows of the afternoon, the water was barely visible but for a few sparks of light reflecting off its back.
“Carved from the very mountain,” Flor was telling Kaelan of the Spire. “A gift from the dwarf kings, a marker of their fealty to the Crown. And there,”—she pointed towards a gray stone round tower overlooking the Cliffs’ District—“is our home in the Spire. Stonerise. Come along.”
Flor turned, leaving Kaelan and Magda alone at the vista point.
Magda gazed at the round tower, half hidden behind its own walls. The grand manor of Stonerise was more of a fortress than a manse. Numerous buildings were housed behind its granite walls. In one of them, she knew, was Lavana.
Kaelan glanced down into the chasm, his hands flat on the wall, as though he were thinking of springing over.
“It’s a long way,” he said.
Her gaze dropped over the edge into the dark depths, then up to the white peak of the Spire, then over to meet the silver eyes that should’ve been green, then to the Crown guards, in their silvery Pixie-cloth uniforms, lingering a bit too close, their gazes fixed a bit too steadily on nothing—eavesdropping.
“Then we’d better not fall,” she said, turning and heading back to the carriage.