I grimaced, looking down at the plate of roast meat I had just served myself from the platters in the middle of the table. Aunt Lucienne had also talked about my being part of a new generation when she sent me off to Kallorway with the mission to uncover the minds of my year mates—and especially that of the Kallorwegian crown prince. But I couldn’t say I’d seen a great deal of evidence of this new way of thinking that apparently gave my parents so much hope.
Most of the first years had given every appearance of following obediently in their parents’ political allegiances, and none of them had appeared to give a thought to the commonborns at all. The thought sparked something in my mind, an elusive idea that slipped away before I could grasp hold of it fully, the chatter of my family distracting me from pinning it down.
Stellan made a quip about my father’s speech, and my mother laughed, sending my father an affectionately mocking look and apparently taking Stellan’s effort as a sign he was willing to let the charged topic of sealing drop. The conversation moved on, and I rejoined it, suddenly remembering that Bryony and I would be leaving in the morning. This was the last time I would hear my family laughing and joking together for nearly a year.
Although I tried to shake it off, the melancholy lingered with me for the rest of the evening. My mother must have noticed because she gave me an extra long embrace as we all parted for bed.
“It’s so quiet here when you and your brother are gone,” she said softly.
I forced myself to smile. “You’re surrounded by an entire palace full of people. It can’t be that quiet.”
She smoothed back my hair, like she used to do when I was a child. “But they’re not the most important people. I hope you know that your father and I miss you.”
I buried my face in her shoulder, my arms tightening around her. “I miss you too.”
When I pulled back with a long sigh, she smiled at me, but it didn’t light up her eyes the way it usually did. I gave her a final goodnight and left for my suite, wondering if she could sense what I had carefully refrained from voicing all summer. The palace at Corrin no longer felt like my only home, and something—or rather someone—called me back to Kallorway.
Chapter 4
When our carriage rolled past the stretch of road that had once split the Wall, only the dead land remained as a sign of what had once stood there. The work removing the rocks had finally been completed, or so I had been told.
I wasn’t alone in the carriage this year, either, the journey enlivened by Bryony’s company. She had been extra bright all the way from Corrin, and from her careful avoidance of any mention of Darius’s name, I could guess why. But she seemed to have finally abandoned her efforts to lighten my mood, falling silent as she watched the countryside pass by the window.
I stared out the opposite window myself but absorbed nothing of the view. How strange it seemed that I hadn’t seen the Kallorwegian prince for so many weeks. And how much stranger that a year ago I hadn’t even met him. When I pictured his tall form and the hidden spark in his dark eyes, my heart beat faster despite myself, and I willed the horses to hurry.
But I feared our arrival in almost equal measure. How would he react when he saw me? Would our absence over these summer weeks bring back something of the closeness we had once shared? Or would the chill of our parting still linger?
My heart wanted to see the fire in his eyes again, but my mind remembered that nothing had changed in those weeks. I still had a strange new power that I couldn’t share with a prince who had dedicated his life to seizing the throne at Kallmon. If I couldn’t share the truth with my own family, I certainly couldn’t share it with Darius who knew just as well as my aunt what it was to hold everything and everyone else secondary to your responsibility to your kingdom.
But it still felt wrong. He had been the one to rescue me when I had discovered the first part of my ability and had trained with me for weeks. He was a central part of that journey and the world I had lived in last year, and it wasn’t my desire to cut him out now.
But he would be the first to tell me that royals had a responsibility to their kingdoms and people that came before their own desires. It was the only reason he was scheming for the throne. I just wished I knew which kingdom and which people I could safely entrust my new abilities to. I had hoped the summer and a return to my old home might bring some counsel on the subject, but I was no closer to peace on the matter than I had been when I finished first year. I could not let Darius use me against my mother and my family and the people of Ardann. But neither could I become a tool in the hands of my aunt against the people of either Kallorway or the Sekali Empire.
Not that I felt any great loyalty to either group of people as a whole. But their representatives burned brightly in my mind—Bryony and Darius. My best friend and the boy who haunted my dreams.
The carriage rolled on into Bronton and, like the previous year, we stopped for the night, although this time we stayed at the largest of the town’s inns. When we crossed the bridge over the Abneris into Kallorway early the next morning, tension filled me. It wouldn’t be long before I saw Darius again.
He had been closed off from me when we parted ways, shamed, perhaps, by his father’s role in the attacks against me, and resentful of my continuing suspicion of his brother, Jareth. But he had still entrusted me with a secret message to my aunt, and if he hoped to avoid me completely this year, her reply would foil those plans.
She had called me in for a private audience as soon as I returned to Corrin for the summer and had listened to the carefully worded request I passed on from Darius. My father had learned to hide his true emotions through the same upbringing as Aunt Lucienne, but she was the greater expert. I could still sense her surprise, however.
I didn’t know if it was surprise at Darius’s plans, or surprise at the extent of my success. Either way, I could tell she was impressed with my efforts and with the trust I had won from the infamously closed Darius. Once her approbation would have filled me with joy, but now it only sparked feelings of guilt. I had set out a year ago, determined to prove myself to her, and now I was hiding something huge and momentous. I didn’t deserve her approval.
“So the crown prince intends to seize the throne from his father,” she had said, tapping her lips in thought. “An interesting problem.”
“King Cassius is destroying Kallorway,” I replied, refraining from mentioning he had also attempted to destroy me. I didn’t want that story getting back to my parents. They might pull me from the Academy altogether. “Darius only wants to save his people.”
She laughed at that, a short chuckle, although it seemed to hold genuine amusement. “I’m sure we all tell ourselves that. And for some of us perhaps it’s true.”
I wanted to leap to Darius’s defense but restrained myself. It wouldn’t help his case for my aunt to guess the extent of my partiality for the foreign prince. Instead I gave a more political answer.
“It seems to me the crucial element is that he has been promised the throne. And soon—not at some distant date upon the death of his father. King Cassius has assured not just Darius but his own supporters that he will step aside in his son’s favor. From what I understand, it’s the whole basis of his current hold on power. Darius merely intends to hold his father to the promises he has made to his kingdom.”