“I didn’t tell Darius either at first,” I said to my aunt, my mind dwelling on the Kallorwegian prince and the history between us. “Not for a long time. Not until I had to.”
Aunt Lucienne’s astute eyes flashed to mine.
“I love Darius,” I continued. “I won’t deny it. And I believe in what he dreams of achieving in Kallorway. I believe that Ardann and Kallorway can be true friends and allies one day.” I straightened. “But I have no more desire to be his pawn than yours.”
One of her eyebrows arched, and for a moment we stared at one another. Then a small smile crept across her eyes.
“Yes, you have parts of both your parents in you, there’s no denying that. So you do not wish to be pawn to a crown.” Her stance relaxed slightly. “I can hardly blame you for that.”
She looked me over. “Winning a crown for yourself is certainly one way to avoid being a pawn, but are you sure it’s a future you’re prepared for?”
I grimaced. “Is it ever possible to be prepared for such a thing?”
“Perhaps not,” she said, her voice soft. “And yet those of us cursed with such a fate must do the best we can. I admit it would be advantageous to Ardann to have Darius on the throne and you beside him. Just as long as…”
“Just as long as I retain loyalty to Ardann and my family,” I finished for her. “My loyalty to my roots is exactly what has kept me apart from Darius for so long. But I can see now I was mistaken in him. He would never try to use me against Ardann or my family.” A slight note of resentment crept into my voice. “He won’t even make a formal proposal without my parents’ approval.”
Amusement filled her eyes. “I find it hard to remember the impatience of youth, and yet I’m sure I must have been young once. You must give your parents time, Verene. They fear losing you, and they fear the revelations made by Kallorway’s young king-elect.”
“But you approve?” I asked, unable to keep the eagerness from my voice. “You’ll give your consent?”
The shadow returned to her eyes. “It is not my consent that has been sought. And as I said before, in one area your parents do not defer to my authority.”
I winced.
“But,” she continued, “I trust that your Darius’s honesty will weigh with them as it has with me. It is rare to receive unvarnished truth from one crown to another—and even rarer between Kallorway and Ardann. His actions do much to confirm your claims.”
“Then you believe in the danger we all face from Conall?” I stepped forward in my earnestness, and both guards stirred. But I ignored them. My concerns about Conall had been eating at me all summer.
In the ballroom, only a short stroll from where we stood, the elite of Ardann—mages, sealed commonborns, and merchant families alike—danced and laughed because they knew nothing of the threat hanging over us all. And the royalty of two kingdoms and an empire had done everything possible to keep them in ignorance—just long enough for us to find a way to counter the threat.
Conall had used his evil ability to build an army. And if he discovered we knew his secrets, he would command that army to march against us ahead of schedule. And then all of us would either be engulfed in deadly conflict or forced to kill unknown numbers of innocent commonborns and mages who only fought against us because of his control.
My aunt sighed. “I wish I could disbelieve the existence of such a threat, but I have sent trusted mages of my own to question Tyron. And the emperor has finally admitted to what we have long known—that there have been strange goings on in the north of his empire.”
“The emperor will ally with us?” I asked.
She nodded. “For once, he’s the one in more immediate danger. And it is his people who have been imposed upon by this Tarxi warlord. He has already requested our aid.” She paused. “In particular the Spoken Mage.”
I bit my lip. Of course they wanted my mother—no matter how much she herself might not wish it. And she did not. This summer I had overheard her talking to my father about the return of her nightmares from the battles they had fought years before my birth. And I had seen the haunted look in her eyes for myself.
As the great Spoken Mage, able to draw unlimited energy from others in order to work compositions of unimaginable strength, she knew who everyone would look to if it became necessary to stop that army before it could overwhelm us.
I shot a glance at my aunt. Hers was a complicated relationship with my parents. If she had sent them on this trip as punishment, then it was the only action she could take against them. She needed them, my mother in particular.
“I will admit,” my aunt said softly, “there are moments when I wish I could leave the emperor to deal with the problem himself. So far Ardann has been the least targeted by this Conall.”
I looked at her in alarm, and she gave a brief chuckle followed by a sigh.
“Oh, you needn’t look at me in such a way, Verene. I know better than to engage in such short-sighted thinking. If these Tarxi remnants take over the Empire, then we are all lost. We must stand together.”
Relief filled me. The summer break had slipped away with constant meetings and discreet emissaries sent between Ardann, Kallorway, and the Sekali Empire. But after generations of conflict between the two southern kingdoms, and almost as many years of a closed border with the northern empire, neither our monarchs nor their people were used to the kind of coordination required for such a joint undertaking.
“So you have a plan?” I asked, once again wishing I had been permitted to take part in some of the many meetings. “You mean to act together?”
A wry look crossed the queen’s face. “Ah, the optimism of youth. We have agreed we must stand united. Coming up with a plan, however…”
She looked at me, weighing me with her eyes.
I held my breath. She had already said more than anyone had been willing to tell me all summer. None of the select few permitted into the secret of Conall and his threat would have expected to see me in the meetings—not when they thought of me as the powerless second child of a younger son, and one who was not even yet an Academy graduate. But my family knew of my secret abilities and the crucial role I had played in uncovering the threat. So they knew my exclusion was a punishment.
Only my younger brother, Stellan, had forgiven me for the secrets I had kept. And even his acceptance had been begrudgingly given. But since I had not only befriended the commonborn girl he loved but had promised to support them as a couple, he could hardly hold on to his hurt at my reticence.
But as a third child who had only completed one year at the Academy, he had even less position at court than me. With everyone else who knew the truth having closed ranks against me, I had been forced to spend the summer without any knowledge of the combined efforts being made against Conall. If my aunt was finally willing to share them with me, then I didn’t want to say anything to jeopardize that unexpected openness.
But her next words took me by surprise.
“I cannot force your parents to give their blessing to you becoming the future queen of Kallorway, but I know they will not hamper our efforts to combat this immediate threat. Which means you will get to see your prince again. You will return to your Academy in the fall as normal. We cannot risk giving any unnecessary sign that we are alert to the true situation.”