Satordi’s eyes flew open. “War.”
Amarande’s mouth went dry. “What?”
“Along with the funeral procession, each kingdom brought regiments of thousands to line our borders. Pyrenee, Basilica, Myrcell—all three are ready to strike. Sign the wrong contract and it will not matter how you or your people will live under a new king, but rather how many of them will die.”
“That can’t be true.” This time, Amarande looked to Koldo for confirmation.
The general’s dark eyes held her gaze. “It is true. I’ve seen it myself. Ardenia’s army is the greatest on earth and the chosen protector of the realm. But even our army will be stretched by multiple fronts.”
Stars War. At the doorstep of Ardenia. Again, no one had told her. Not even Koldo.
War was what her father had worked so hard to prevent—he had built every Ardenian into a warrior not for the purpose of war but for the maintenance of peace.
That moment of ultimatum on the funeral dias, once so sweet, faded to ash upon her tongue. Her mouth was so dry she could barely get the next words out, her heart thrumming against the bodice of her mourning gown.
“And if I play the part? Make each of them happy, with enough promises to the losers to send them home with diamonds spilling out of their pockets?”
Satordi shrugged his thin shoulders—the movement was a heavy thing. “It may not be enough to prevent war. Diamonds and a throne under pressure are too great an opportunity for greed to ignore.”
CHAPTER
7
WAR.
The word rang in Amarande’s ears, down her throat, and into the pit of her stomach. Scorching it all.
The threat was great enough that at that very moment Koldo and her regiments were headed out, fanning across the borders, each with an ear to the ground and an eye on the line.
A single arrow and it could begin.
Rather than turning for her chambers to prepare for dinner, the princess rushed down the stairs of the north tower and out into the yard, making a beeline for the arena.
The crowd was gone, the stone stands now quiet. The only sound was the echoing in her ears of that small word that meant so much.
War.
On the arena floor, the funeral benches were gone, dusty divots in their absence. Now all that remained were decaying flower petals from bouquets of mourning and, on the dais, her father’s body lying in its ornate coffin, the tiger of Ardenia a bejeweled mosaic across the closed lid, its garnet eyes burning toward the stars above. Sendoa’s famed swords, Egia and Maite—truth and love—crossed over the gold scrolling at the tiger’s breast as they’d been crossed over King Sendoa’s back in battle.
Egia and Maite weren’t fancy, not like Renard’s gold-and-emerald sword. The hilts were plain as the ones carried by the king’s guard, yet they held their own special music, thrumming deep within the ridges of Basilican steel. There were songs at court about Egia and Maite containing magic welded impenetrably into their depths. Amarande wasn’t sure about that, but they had kept her father safe until the very end. Until the enemy couldn’t be met with steel.
Amarande ran through the arena, steps never hesitating until the toes of her boots brushed the dais. She stepped onto the platform and pressed both hands onto the casket, the gold inlay warm and glowing despite the dusky light. She wasn’t one to cry, not really, but these days were unlike any others in her life, and tears came easily as she sighed over the swords.
“Father, I’m sorry. So, so sorry.”
She wasn’t sorry for resisting—he’d taught her how, after all. No, Amarande was sorry that the people of Ardenia would suffer no matter what came next.
She placed her hands on his coffin, pressed them hard enough she hoped he could feel the warmth of her fingertips. The need there. The princess squeezed her eyes closed, letting the breeze shuffle her veil in the falling night.
Her father had made it clear very early in her childhood that though he was known as the Warrior King, he preferred to save lives without lifting his sword. He spent much of his time in the council room or officers’ tent, sifting through the options so that each one touched the light.
Examining all the angles.
Positives. Negatives. Consequences.
Take something at face value and you miss at least half of it, Ama, he would say. Then he would wave a big, freckled hand toward the mountains. When diamonds are first found, what do we see? Just a spark. Just a piece. But when it’s fully revealed, is all that’s there that little piece? No. The facets are endless. And that first sparkling piece? It might not be the most beautiful part.
The facets here were endless as well, and likely just as sparkling in a deadly sort of way.
The kings before Sendoa hadn’t made Ardenia a military power—her father had been the one to build his great army, drafting any man or woman who offered themselves. Thousands upon thousands did, and Ardenia’s military grew into the enforcers of the realm, maintaining a perilous peace for kings who, in Amarande’s current estimation, didn’t deserve the aid.
His only failure was the Torrent. That kingdom—Torrence—fell before she’d even been born. The ruling family, the Otxoa, had been driven out in what the conquering Warlord deemed “the Eradication of the Wolf.” A king, queen, heirs, and everyone they loved. The end of the line—extinct after a thousand years. Rebels had even murdered every black wolf within the Torrent’s borders. The symbolism was lost on no one: the ancient sigil stamped out, too.
Her father hadn’t been able to save it. Hadn’t even tried to reinstate it in all the years since. He’d guarded against raids, but he’d never seriously tried to remove the Warlord, even when they came face-to-face.
Why have the greatest army in all the world if there were no war in which to use it? Why maintain it? Why continue the narrative of greatness? Teach his daughter to fight as if she were one of the soldiers herself?
Protection, yes, but there must be more.
Protection not simply from the plagues of the realm but from something within it.
For fifteen years, he had avoided marriage, even when the possibility was handed to him on a silver platter by Pyrenee.
Amarande knew a lack of love kept him from joining hearts—he would not suffer again or force another to suffer.
But what if it was more than that?
And, why—why—did he not use his influence to change the law and allow her to rule in her own right? Instead of setting up a situation where mostly grown men fought over her like a pack of wolves over carrion?
Her father was so careful. Thoughtful. Strategic.
Wasn’t he?
He had a plan. He always had a plan.
Didn’t he?
Amarande’s eyes flew open. She’d come here for her father’s guidance and received nothing but more unanswerable questions, swirling before her mind’s eye, the facets in all their shine blinding.
CHAPTER
8
WITH Koldo already winding her way south with a full regiment, there was only one person alive Amarande could talk to about any of this. The one person who knew her well enough to see the facets through her eyes and listen well enough to help pull her through.
The princess ran through the grass, the knife in her boot thunking soft enough that only she could hear it under the hiss of wind through the juniper trees in the failing light. She paused at the stable’s edge.