CHAPTER 2
“Can you not see me?” I looked to my brother, who had been my rock for these many years, despite being two years my junior. “Can you not hear me?”
“I can hear you, but is it you who speaks back?”
—Recounting from the private diary of Jerris, Dragonbound
ELDRETH
Mid-Spring, Patrimon 1036
“Eldreth, tell me this isn’t true.”
I watched her from three paces behind. She did not turn to me. Her platinum hair cascaded down her back, uncharacteristically loose. I memorized her hard lines as if it were the last time I would see them. Perhaps it was.
“Meralda, please—”
“Stop.” She turned at last, raising a hand to silence me. “We’re just having fun here. No reason to get attached.” Her voice was a harsh mask, but I could hear the tremor underneath.
“You know that’s not how I feel.”
“Isn’t it?”
“No.”
“Yet, how easily I’m cast aside. I was never going to be your dana.” I stepped toward her, but she pulled back. “No, I don’t need your comfort.”
“Perhaps I need yours.”
The sternness of Meralda’s face cracked. She cast her pale eyes back to the landscape—lush with the deep green that marked spring in the Riht. She hesitated for a moment, then took my hand and led me inside.
Neither of us broke the silence. After all, endings rarely needed more words.
MERALDA LEFT in the middle of the night while I feigned sleep. There would be no rest for me. Once she was gone, I rose and dressed and headed straight for Dane Auldren’s private chambers. The room was resplendent to the point of gaudy—and empty. Instead, I found him in the Receiving Hall.
“Call back your messenger,” I demanded. “I can’t go through with this. I won’t marry an Inraen woman.”
We were having this fight again. We fought for a full week the first time he suggested it. This bargain chafed from the moment I accepted it, but now that my life was changing, it was too much.
Dane sat on his throne, stroking his long blond beard and staring over my shoulder at the double doors I’d just entered.
Looking up at him on the dais, waiting for him to meet my eye, I might as well have been a boy again—caught skipping lessons to wave around a wooden sword—rather than a man who had every right to question his liege’s asinine orders.
I was a commander of armies, master of blades, and named successor to the dane himself.
I shouldn’t have to remind myself. But in that moment, I was thrown back into the role of the child.
I suppressed a wild urge to stamp my foot.
“I refuse,” I continued when Dane remained silent.
“We’ve gone over this, son,” he spoke at last, rising to his full, looming height. Dane’s gaze was a physical weight when it finally fell upon me. “Nothing has changed. You’ll marry her.”
“Have you lost your senses? Why would you ever strike this idiotic deal?”
“Watch how you speak to your dane.”
I bowed my head, half in deference, half to get command of myself. “How could she ever be my wife? We cannot make a woman like that dana of our people.”
“She can learn.” He lowered into his seat with a huff and flipped his long blond braid over one shoulder. He bent down to rub his knee and shin. The old injury bothered him more than he liked to show. “She’s received an Inraen education. I’m sure they’ve taught her something useful.”
“I’ll be shocked if she has even two thoughts of her own in her head. How could she ever stand at my side when they’re only taught how to be on their knees?”
The look in my father’s eyes told me I’d gone too far. When he spoke, his voice was low and grinding. “She’s the margrave’s daughter, not some common Inraen whore. And you’ll do as you’re told.”
I crossed my arms and grounded myself. I’d always had the good sense to leave my father to the politics and plots, but this time things had gone too far.
Dane’s machinations would destroy me. This was my future, my happiness, my life.
I watched him closely—the way he stroked his carefully braided beard, the way the corners of his mouth turned down, the way he sat leaning on his elbow. I searched for any sign of relenting.
Dane Auldren stood again, but several long breaths passed before he continued. “You’ll marry the girl,” he said with uncharacteristic unease, then he looked away. “She need not know all the company you keep. She need not be dana forever. All we need from her is an heir.”
I frowned. That was not the Riht way. Even if she was Inraen, this wasn’t Inra.
My father, more than anyone, knew that. There was a reason the throne beside him had stood empty for all these years after my mother…
There was no point in rehashing her loss.
It was mercy alone that told me to ignore his comments and change tactics.
“You think this will work? That these people would accept a foreign heir when the time for conquest comes?”
“You’re thinking like a Riht. Those people don’t care who sits on their throne so long as they have food in their bellies. Inraen law will be on our side, and we have the strength of arms to back it. This step is crucial in winning over the people, nobles and commoners alike.”
I frowned again.
“You wanted more peace, Eldreth.”
I did. Despite the skills I’d dedicated my life to, I wanted the warring to stop.
I wanted safety for those I cared about.
Above all else, I wanted them to start making it home.
But this wasn’t the way to get it—this wasn’t about peace.
My father would fight until his dying breath to win back our ancestral lands.
As if we didn’t have enough. He would say whatever was needed to make me fall in line.
After a moment, the fire in me went out.
My brow relaxed, and I nodded. “I’ll do it if I must.”
We embraced forearms, and I lingered—long enough for him to remember why the arm he gripped was covered in scars—before I strode from the hall. There was much yet to be done.