A faint breeze nudges at my papers with enough insistence that I tuck most of them under the weight of the lamp before they can scatter across the desk. One of us has to work. I’ve been making notes along the margins of a funding request from one of the eastern cities, looking for omissions and inaccuracies in their statement demonstrating the need for a new bridge. I expected to get through only a few pages before Harristan would wake up, but now I’ve gone through the entire report and it must be nearly midday.
I tug my pocket watch free and glance at the glittering diamonds embedded in its face. It is midday. If he doesn’t appear at the meeting of the sector consuls, there will be talk. I can only silence so much.
As if my thoughts wake him, my brother stirs, blinking in the sunlight. He frowns at me and sits up, shirtless, then runs a hand down his face. “It’s late. Why didn’t you wake me?”
I listen to his voice carefully, but there’s no roughness to his tone, no sign of any difficulty breathing. Maybe I imagined it. “I was just about to.” I move to the sideboard and lift the kettle. “The tea has gone cold.” I pour a cup anyway and carry it to him, along with a thin corked tube of Moonflower elixir that’s darker than usual. The palace apothecary doubled his dosage last week when the coughing started again, so maybe the medicine is beginning to work.
Harristan uncorks the tube, drinks it, and makes a face.
“There, there,” I say without a lick of sympathy.
He grins. That’s something he only does when we’re alone. Neither of us smiles outside these rooms very often. “What have you been doing all morning?”
“I went through the request from Artis. I’ve drafted a refusal for you to sign.”
His expression turns serious. “A refusal?”
“They’re asking for twice what a new bridge would cost. They hid it well, but someone got greedy.”
“You hardly need me anymore.”
The words are said lightly, but they hit me like an arrow. Kandala needs its king. I need my brother.
I lock away my worries and fold my arms. “You need to dress—and shave. I’ll call for Geoffrey. I’ve said we were too busy for you to bother earlier. Quint has requested an audience with you twice, but he will need to wait until after the evening meal, unless—”
“Cory.” His voice is soft, and I go still. He only ever calls me Cory when we’re alone, one of the few reminders of childhood we have left. A nickname from when I was small and eager and trailing after him everywhere he went. A name that was once spoken in gentle fondness by our mother or encouraging praise by our father, back when we believed our family was beloved by all. Back before anyone knew about the fever, or the Moonflower, or the way our country would change in ways no one expected.
Back when everyone expected Harristan to have decades before he’d take the throne, that he’d rule with firm kindness and thoughtful care for his people, just as our parents did.
But four years ago, they were assassinated right in front of us. Shot through the throat in the throne room. The arrows pinned them upright, their heads hanging cockeyed, their eyes wide and glassy as they choked on their own blood. The image still haunts my dreams sometimes.
Harristan was nineteen. I was fifteen. He took an arrow in the shoulder when he dove to cover me.
It should have been the other way around.
I stare back into his blue eyes and look for any sign of sickness. There is none. “What?”
“The medicine is working again.” His voice is quiet. “You don’t need to play nursemaid.”
My smile feels a little wicked. “Cruel Cory playing nursemaid? Never.”
He rolls his eyes. “No one calls you Cruel Cory.”
“Not to my face.” No, to my face, I’m Your Highness, or Prince Corrick, or sometimes, when they’re being especially formal, the King’s Justice.
Behind my back, I’m called worse. Much worse. So is Harristan.
We don’t mind. Our parents were loved—and they were loving in return. It led to betrayal and death.
Fear works better.
I move to the closet and pull out a laced shirt to toss at my brother. “You don’t want a nursemaid? Then stop lazing around. There’s a country to run.”
The midday meal is already arranged on the sideboard when we enter. Roasted pheasant drips with honey and berries, nestled among a dense bed of greens and root vegetables. A few feathers have been artfully placed along the gilded edge of each platter, held in place by a glistening drop of crystalized honey. Though the stewards stand in silence along the wall, waiting to serve, the eight other Royal Consuls are engaged in lively conversation by the window. I’m the ninth, but I have no interest in lively conversation.
There used to be ten, but Consul Barnard led the plot to have my parents killed. He would have killed us, too. After Harristan saved my life, I saw Barnard coming after him with a dagger.
My brother was on top of me, his breath panicked and full of pain in my ear. I pulled that arrow out of Harristan’s shoulder and stabbed it right into Barnard’s neck.
I blink the memory away. The consuls fall silent when we enter the room, each offering a short bow to my brother before moving to their chairs, though no one will sit until Harristan does, and no one will eat until we both have taken a bite.
The table is shaped like a rectangle at one end, narrowing to a point at the other, like the head of an arrow. Harristan eases into his chair at the head of the table, and I ease into mine, directly to his right. The eight consuls ease into theirs, leaving one seat empty. It’s the one directly beside me, where Consul Barnard used to sit. The Trader’s Landing sector has no new consul, and Harristan is in no rush to appoint one. In whispers, the people often call it Traitor’s Landing, after what Barnard did, but no one says it in front of us. No one wants to remind the king or his brother of what happened.
They respect my brother—as they should.
They fear me.
I don’t mind. It spares me some tedious conversations.
We’ve known everyone in this room for our entire lives, but we’ve long since doused any comfort born of familiarity. We saw what complacence and trust did to our parents, and we know what it could do to us. When Harristan was nineteen, blood still seeping through a bandage on his shoulder, he ran his first meeting in this room. We were both numb with grief and shock, but I followed him to take a place standing by his shoulder. I remember thinking the consuls would be sympathetic and compassionate following the deaths of our parents. I remember thinking we would all grieve together.
But we were barely in the room for a full minute before Consul Theadosia snidely commented that a child had no place attending a meeting of the King’s Council. She was talking about me—but her tone implied she was talking about Harristan, too.
“This child,” said Harristan, “is my brother, your prince.” His voice was like thunder. I’d never heard my brother’s voice like that. It gave me the strength to stand when I so badly wanted to hide under my bed and pretend my world hadn’t been turned upside down.
“Corrick saved my life,” said Harristan. “The life of your new king. He risked himself when none of you were willing to do the same, including you, Theadosia. I have named him King’s Justice, and he will attend any meeting he so pleases.”