Akil—the boy king of Myrcell, with its lowland beaches snaking across the southern belt of the continent. Twenty and newly married, he’d traveled to the funeral alone, his wife conspicuously absent as her groom angled for a more enticing prospect. Akil had a nice smile and it made Amarande sick that he could wield it along with such cruelty. Did his queen mean nothing to him?
Renard, the first son of Ardenia’s mountain neighbor, a year older and everything a prince should be—clean, respectful, teeth-achingly traditional. He was like a painting come to life and as uninteresting as a blank canvas. Still, he wasn’t yet a king, his mother standing in as his regent until he turned eighteen. Amarande was bitter that Pyrenee—with approval from the Sand and Sky—had obviously changed its succession rules to accommodate his father’s death four years ago, but Ardenia had no such plans.
No, she didn’t want to see any of them, and they apparently didn’t want to see her either, hiding away in the guest quarters of the Itspi. But she knew the Royal Council was meeting with each party, shuttling from room to room, ahead of the funeral. Forging ahead with new contracts, her future—Ardenia’s future—parsed out in lines of looping text. Despite, or possibly because of, her reasonable requests.
It made her livid.
Which meant the princess required two things to mend her frustrations: Luca and cold, hard, deadly steel.
Whenever she came to him this way at the stable, Luca’s answer was the same: “Always, Princess.”
And so, on the morning of her father’s funeral, Princess Amarande stood at the edge of their meadow with a knife in her hand. Before her, Luca set his feet in the shade of a great juniper tree with a peculiar bald spot about six feet up from the ground.
For the twentieth time that morning, he held a sprig of the tree’s berries in his hand and, giving a shout, tossed it over his head—up and up to the branches. The princess tracked it up and then down, drawing back before, in a blink, a knife shot out of her hand. The tip caught the berries through their arterial stem, impaling it in the tree at the same height as the boy’s head, dead center of the bald patch.
Her best one yet.
Luca flashed a smile as warm as the sun before yanking the knife and cluster down with it, berries shaking free and tumbling off the stem and onto the ground below. He tossed the knife back at her, a friendly hilt-facing lob, not a sharp sling.
As she caught it, a slow clap came from behind, the beat of it drumming off the mountains that peered down upon them. Princess Amarande turned, joy wilting.
Prince Taillefer.
Renard’s younger brother by eleven months, blond and fox eyed. Freshly picked sprigs of white flowers were twisted into a vine around his neck. It was no secret that Taillefer had an interest in the natural arts of botany and anatomy—second sons always needed a hobby.
“Well, after that display, I’ll venture to say that if you marry my brother, I’ll be king within the year.”
Not only brutal but also bold, this one. No introduction. No condolences. Simply a grotesque prediction and a sly grin.
Amarande blinked at him, her grip on the knife suddenly mean enough to etch her knuckles in stark white.
“I’m not marrying your brother.”
“Surely we can make a deal,” the prince said, arms going wide. His voice lilted like a market vendor with a far better pitch than wares. “You marry him, bleed him dry, and make me king, and I’ll install you in your Itspi with your stableboy and a firm promise that I’ll never touch you.”
Luca looked away, blush crawling across his high cheekbones. Taillefer smirked. Amarande’s icy façade wavered slightly, her blood suddenly too warm for her body. It was impossible to tell by his fox-like smile if he was kidding, but serious or not, the second son of Pyrenee had hit his mark.
“Much of that deal requires my pain and your promises,” the princess said. “That’s not a balance that can end well for me, Your Highness.”
This only made Taillefer grin more and cock a brow. “You’re suggesting I should take the Domingu route, are you not?”
She wiped the knife blade against her pants. “How you steal the crown is none of my business, but I don’t plan to help you.”
“Fair enough.” The prince took a step toward the castle with its red-stone turrets scraping the clouds. Then Taillefer stopped. “As a point of reference, my brother is two inches shorter than this strapping young lad. Aim low, Princess, or you’ll miss your opportunity altogether.”
And with that, Prince Taillefer dared to turn his back to the Warrior King’s daughter and her knife.
When the second son of Pyrenee had made it up the hill and through the gate to the yard, Luca appeared at Amarande’s side. “Are they all like that?”
The princess’s eyes didn’t waver from the red spires of the Itspi. Her home had become an asp’s nest.
“Greedy? Backstabbing? Opportunistic? Every last one of them. And yet behind closed doors the council bathes them in sagardoa and compliments while negotiating the theft of Ardenia.”
Luca considered that. She’d told him much about the laws of succession that had left the kingdom in such a position. “And they don’t include you?”
“They know I won’t consent—I’ve made that much clear.” Amarande ripped her eyes away from the Itspi and turned to Luca, frustration pinking her cheeks. They hadn’t even involved Koldo, though she was regent. Amarande had seen her around the grounds, working with the soldiers far too much for her to be in those sagardoa-splashed meetings. “And the last thing they want is me making the thieves uncomfortable with my demands.”
Luca paused, snatching Amarande’s hand to make a point. Her blush rose further. “If they won’t hear you in private, you’ll just have to bring your concerns into the open.”
As he spoke, his eyes skipped briefly to the arena, nestled below the castle yard on the other side of the grounds. The site of the day’s funeral. Where royalty and commoners alike would come together to bid King Sendoa farewell.
Yes, that was exactly what she needed to do.
CHAPTER
4
THIS was not his death to die.
Nothing like any of the blows King Sendoa delivered in life had taken his own. There wasn’t a jagged stitch across his throat, thread straining to hold his head flush to his neck. Both arms were there, too, crossed primly about his barrel chest, and no gaping hole underneath his palms from a heart taken as a prize for killing the Sun and Sky’s greatest warrior.
No, as expected, as described by General Koldo and the soldiers who’d been with him that awful day, there wasn’t a scratch on him.
Sunburn sat uncomfortably across his paled cheeks, copper hair ablaze in the late afternoon of the mountains. Gold pieces pressed down on closed eyes—in Amarande’s mind they were still a brilliant green, though he’d taken his last breath five days before.
This was the body of the warrior Sendoa, king of Ardenia.
Lying in state upon a raised dais, in pristine condition, a man who led the most powerful army in the world from the front lines, serving as protector to the realm of the Sand and Sky.
He’d survived it all—blood loss, frostbite, starvation.