“Eira, Your Majesty.” She kept her eyes on her toes as she pinched her dress with three fingers and curtsied. Or, at least did her best approximation of a curtsy. Marcus seemed so natural among them. He was born for this. She was…a continual liability to his aspirations. What could her brother achieve if he wasn’t saddled with her?
Eira hated the question, but she hated the answer even more.
“A pleasure to meet you both,” the empress said politely, and promptly turned to Cullen. “You need to be better about not telegraphing your attacks. That’s how Gregor got in so many surprise hits to you today.”
“Yes, Your Majesty.” Cullen nodded.
Despite her scolding tone, the empress smiled with what Eira would dare say was fondness. “You remind me of myself. I had the hardest time with telegraphing, too. It’s natural, after all. We want to flow with the air.”
“I will do better,” Cullen vowed, nonetheless.
“I know you will. Now, if you will all—”
Horns echoed over Solarin.
All of them paused, holding their breath. Horns blared for two things and two things only. The first was war. But Solaris had been in peacetime for over twenty years. The second…was for the royal family.
“Vi.” Vhalla whispered the name of her eldest daughter, completely forgetting herself. Eira watched as the empress’s royal facade crumbled and a mother’s adoration shone through. Vi Solaris, admiral of the Solaris armada and crown princess, had been gone now for almost two years. “Please excuse me,” she said hastily and started across the training grounds, meeting guards already emerging from the castle.
Cullen placed his hands in his pockets, a thoughtful and unreadable expression on his severe features. “We should go to the Sunlit Stage; it seems the crown princess has finally returned from the brutal lands of Meru.”
3
“Meru isn’t a brutal place.” The words sprung from Eira’s lips before she could think better of them.
“What?” Cullen seemed startled that she was still there. “Oh, that’s right, you’re the one who’s obsessed with the Crescent Continent, aren’t you?”
“It’s called Meru,” Eira murmured, reminding him even though he’d just used its proper name.
“Let’s just go to the Sunlit Stage,” Marcus suggested. Her big brother saving her did have its perks. Marcus knew every topic Eira wanted to avoid and usually used that power for good. It was only a terrible ability when he was the one pestering her about said topic. “The crown princess hasn’t been home since the announcement of the engagement.”
“And what an announcement that was,” Cullen said with a shake of his head. “I can’t believe our princess will wed one of those pointy-eared folk.”
Eira remembered that night. It was the only time she and her brother had been permitted to a state function. Their uncles had brought them to a winter ball where the crown princess had announced her engagement.
“They’re called elfin.” She couldn’t stop herself from pointing out Cullen’s mistakes.
Cullen glanced over his shoulder at her. “Are you going to correct me at every turn?”
“If you keep being wrong then it’s my burden to bear.”
“Such tact.” An unkind smile spread on his lips. “I would love to see you for a day at the royal court. It would certainly be a sight to watch.”
“Keep your courts, I don’t care for them.”
“I suspect the feeling would be mutual.”
Eira glared.
“Be nice,” Marcus said with a note of combined warning and scolding to both of them. “Don’t talk to or about my little sister like that.”
“Apologies to you both.” Cullen didn’t sound sorry at all. Eira glared daggers of ice into the back of his skull, stopping just before they manifested in thin air and actually hurt the man.
She didn’t want to hurt anyone. Even if her magic insisted otherwise… Eira couldn’t deny a dark and curious corner of her wondered what it would feel like to freeze him slowly, just like the journal described. Could she hold him in a frigid stasis without killing him?
“You too.” Marcus didn’t exempt her.
“I’ll be nice as long as he is.” This was why she never had spent time with Cullen and Marcus.
She’d met Cullen years ago and didn’t like him in the slightest, avoiding him like the plague. Every story she’d heard whispered about him since affirmed the decision. Cullen was a polarizing person and Eira knew she was on the right pole when Alyss had agreed with her assessment. Then, after the incident three years ago and his involvement…Eira had all the more reason to be skeptical of his intentions.
The Sunlit Stage was the royal receiving area and largest, grandest public entrance to the palace. A wide stage connected the palace with an arena below. Common folk flooded in while palace servants and staff began to fill tall risers that stretched up and away from the semi-circle like sunbeams.
Luckily, they were among the first to arrive and secured good placement on the lower risers right above the archway that the crown princess would ride in through. The younger Windwalkers packed in around them, staying close. The other palace servants gave them a good step’s worth of distance, even when it became crowded. The wariness that prevailed in public consciousness around sorcerers was a stubborn weed—nearly impossible to rip out from the roots.
Eira ignored the servants, as usual, gripped the railing before her tightly, and stared at nothing. She submerged herself deep into the ocean of her magic, down and down until everything was muffled. This was a noisy place. The people were as loud as the brick and mortar. Everyone and everything wanted to speak all at once in a din that only grew in volume the moment the emperor, empress, and younger prince emerged with their royal detail and took their place at the edge of the stage.
“Imagine what it’s like…” Marcus sighed wistfully. His voice brought her back. “To have people screaming your name.”
“It gets old,” Cullen japed.
“Oh, quiet, you.” Marcus elbowed his friend.
Eira kept her eyes downcast toward the archway below them. Any moment now, there would be—
The rumble of hooves brought the crowd to a hush. With the flutter of pennons catching on torchlight, moonlight, and the last dregs of sunlight alike, a group of twenty people rode through the center roadway and into the heart of the Sunlit Stage. Eira inhaled slowly, as though she could breathe in the unbridled air of a land across the sea…a land filled with unimaginable magic and peoples beyond her current comprehension. As if the people before her radiated that very air off their velvet-clad shoulders.
Elfin. They looked almost like humans, but weren’t. From their pointed ears to brightly colored eyes, they were something different. A race of people that had been unknown to the Solaris Empire for hundreds of years until Crown Princess Vi Solaris formed the Imperial Armada and sailed across the sea three mere years ago. In three years, the world changed for the Solaris Empire.
A fact Eira sometimes felt like she was the only one who understood.
“Where’s Vi?” Marcus whispered at her side.