No matter how many times my illusions are burned away, there are always more to burn.
“Your Majesty—”
“I am not Your Majesty!” She whirled on the Heir of Valshone. She could not even define the term majesty.
He dropped to his knee on the trampled earth, his head bowed. He looked young. Unscarred. Flawless. His smooth face, lean limbs, and black hair were reminiscent of her childhood image of a knight. “Forgive me,” he spoke, lifting the dark eyes she recalled from their previous encounter. Valerian; he had reminded her of his name as they had waited out the battle in the cave below. He and his men had saved her country, in defiance of the crown.
She held no authority on forgiveness. Deserved no title. “I am only Aurelia,” she said.
“You and I both know that your sister is not the rightful queen of Tyralt.” His eyes moved to the key at her throat. The key he, himself, had delivered to her at her father’s request. Her father had trusted him. What had the king seen in this young man who had been raised to believe he would become king? And marry her.
According to tradition, the Lord of Valshone had the right to name his heir as the future ruler’s consort—an edict her father had nullified when Aurelia was too young to know the difference. Yet upon his death bed, he had placed that key in Valerian’s hand.
The frontiersmen around her shifted, murmurs thrumming through their ranks. She slid the key that should have belonged to her dead brother back beneath the neckline of her blouse. Her father would never have had to choose her as his successor if James had lived. Aurelia had no right to be queen. She had not saved these men. They had saved her. She could not heal their mental scars, nor wrest the injured from the battlefield below, nor call up an inner magic to cleanse and stitch their wounds. Or even sight a rifle to fulfill the dire pleas.
The murmurs grew louder. Now the frontiersmen were standing, pointing at something that clearly meant far more than her presence.
A white flag. Cloth rippled from the hands of a distant rider.
She stood amid the frontiersmen and watched with them as the flag parted the sea of gray and then the ring of standing and mounted Valshone. And at last the men around her.
An Anthonian soldier pulled up before her, his left fist still clutching the white cloth. His opposite hand slipped beneath his gray jacket and pulled forth a sealed rectangle of folded parchment.
She recognized the imprint of a talon—the insignia of Anthonian royalty—pressed in the scarlet seal. Why the sign of royalty rather than that of the military leader in command? “Who speaks for your king?” she asked.
The messenger’s brow wrinkled.
She repeated the question in Anthonian, but still he failed to answer. Perhaps her skill in his language was rusty. Or perhaps his silence was meant as a slight.
Valerian stepped to her side and murmured, “Your Majesty, surely in such a perilous time, even Edward of Anthone would not choose another to speak for him.”
Her understanding of the entire assault altered. King Edward was here? On the battlefield? The man who had plotted to marry her and murder her. Never had it occurred to Aurelia that the vulturous king would vacate his capital in order to personally lead his armed forces.
She snatched the parchment and ripped it open.
Your Former Highness,
Shall we negotiate?
—Edward
Negotiate. The word sliced like a jagged blade through memories of all the ways this man had accosted her: the flames in the forest when his men had tried to burn her to death in her tent, the screams in the desert when his raiders had assaulted the Jaheem, the charred remnants of the frontier cabins she had passed only miles to the south. And the horror on the battlefield below. Her eyes returned to the black wings cutting the sky. “Take me to him.”
• • •
The white flag led her through the battlefield. Valerian and a dozen other mounted Valshone escorted her ride on Falcon. She let them, her fears of a personal guard squelched by fury at the man who held true responsibility for the agony around her.
She could not heal the wounded. And she could not plunge a sword through Edward of Anthone’s chest. But she had every intention of making him suffer.
The flag sank to the ground. Alongside a dark tent. No insignia or royal banners draped the open entrance. A trap, her conscience warned. Robert would have scolded her, reminding her that tradition demanded a week’s delay before any battlefield negotiation.
But the wounded imprisoned on this field did not have a week. She buried both her anger and her hesitation. Then she dismounted, passed Falcon’s reins to a member of the escort, and stepped into the tent.
A medium-sized black table separated her from the sole figure within the depths. Edward of Anthone. His bald head was lowered, the downward slant obscuring his face. His aged torso bent over a sheet of parchment that covered most of the table’s surface. His gray uniform blended with the shadows. No braid or decoration evinced status. A lone brass button held his jacket closed at his throat. “Speak,” he barked in Anthonian, “or cease to block the light.”
Her stomach recoiled at that voice. She defied her instincts, and his order, by stepping closer to the table.
His head jerked up, sharp eyes targeting her chest. “Ah.” He slid a velvet cloth over the parchment. “Your Former Highness.” His neck rotated as he took in the Valshone guards now lining the inner walls of the front two-thirds of the tent. “Your men are rather lax to allow you on an opponent’s ground.”
“On the contrary,” she replied. “It is not I who stand on another’s soil.”
“Debatable.” He lifted a gnarled hand, and a half-dozen soldiers strode through slits in the back corners of the canvas. His men halted behind him. “I believe you are wanted for treason.”
She gave a false smile. “Your information is no longer accurate.”
In her peripheral vision, she saw Valerian’s hand slip from his sword hilt. She should have informed her escort of her ploy, but that had been impossible with the messenger as their guide. She had counted on the guards’ training. And indeed, none of the regular guardsmen had moved.
Anthone smirked at her. “You wish me to believe your sister has offered you a pardon? When there is not a single member of the royal military in your command?” He lifted a ringed finger and slid its gem forward along the bottom of her chin.
Valerian’s hand renewed its grip.
She could not afford to have his reaction spoil her bluff. Aurelia eased left, drawing the king’s gaze. Then stepped up to the table’s edge. “My sister knows the art of politics. Neither she nor I will allow a familial dispute to undermine the power of this kingdom.”
“You forget,” Anthone sneered. “I know how much your sister hates you. I have dealt … closely … with her.”
Not as closely as you imply or you would never have needed to attack Tyralt. “I know my sister better than you.”
“Then where,” he challenged, “is the Tyralian military?”
“Deployed,” Aurelia answered, “elsewhere.”
He coughed into his sleeve. “Your sister, like your father, would never risk her own status for a handful of rustics with no loyalty to Tyralt. Do you honestly think your frontiersmen care which country they belong to?”
“You must believe they care. Or you and your men would not have felt compelled to burn half the region.”
“The casualties of war.” He shrugged a shoulder. “Surrender the northern half of the frontier and the desert to me. And my men will cease hostilities.”
Aurelia forced a laugh. “You have a rather original interpretation of defeat.”
He moved to loosen the button at his throat. “You have a faulty grasp of the situation.” Then he reached into his jacket and produced a pair of gloves. The fabric fingers were smeared with blood. “I halted fire as a courtesy. My forces remain larger in number.”
“But surrounded.”
“We hold the cannon.”
“Though I doubt much ammunition.”
“And we have your wounded,” he said.
She could not allow him to know their fate mattered to her. “They did not risk their lives so that I could barter away their victory.”
“Cede us the ground. And I will pretend to believe you have the authority.”
“I can assure you mine is the only authority that can decide whether you and your men live or die.”
His fingers tightened on the velvet cloth that covered the table. “You relinquished that hand, my dear, when you entered my tent.”
She had expected the threat, but still his willingness to subvert a white flag and the Code of Truce stole her breath. The knowledge that this man would risk his relationship with every nation on the continent. Though in truth there would be no risk—as she held no real authority and her sister would want her dead.
He smoothed the wrinkles from the cloth before speaking again. “If you cede the desert and the frontier, I will allow you to live.”
Did he think yet another threat to her life could convince Aurelia to betray her country? “And if I refuse?”
He tilted his head, exhaling a rancid breath. “Ah, I see. You require evidence of what we will take if you decline my offer.” His hand peeled back the velvet cloth. To reveal a map of her country, with scrawled arrows pointing toward central and southern Tyralt.
She had been correct. He had never had any intention of stopping his assault when his men took the frontier. His word was worthless. He had destroyed the treaty. Had broken trade agreements and used them for blackmail. Had ignored the Code of Truce.
Aurelia’s thumb moved to the map and blotted out Tyralt City. “Your capital lies by the sea; does it not?”
His lips curved in a sidelong slant as though he assumed she was stalling. “Much like your own.”
“And your palace as well?”
“Indeed.”
On the map, her thumb eased into the sea. North. To the Anthonian coastline. Beside his country’s capital. “Within easy reach of any cannon from our navy,” she said.
His stare widened. His jaw locked. His hand crushed the velvet as though crushing her windpipe.
She stepped beyond his reach. “You are a fool, Edward of Anthone, if you think either I or Her Majesty, Queen Melony of Tyralt, would allow our military to remain idle while you attacked our country.”
His fist had grown so white it trembled.
“Surrender,” Aurelia stated. “And I will allow you and your men to leave. To rush back to defend your empty capital.”
Chapter Eight
A SINGLE VOTE
Details burrowed into Robert, like maggots eating flesh, as he walked through the death of the battlefield. Open eyes, hollow without life. Limbs at awkward angles. A shredded chain on a dangling neck. Fractured weapons, wheels, wagons. Scalded earth. Splintered powder barrels. Prints—coyote, wolf, cougar—converging.
A swath of dead frontiersmen.
Robert stumbled, the reins around his wrist biting into his skin. He adjusted his grip, recaptured his footing, then tilted his head back. Grim clouds skidded in the afternoon sky. He took in the distance from the downed men to the canyon. Why had they ever been here? Military terms sliced his brain: height, coverage, advance. Useless goals designed for theoretical battles.
He trudged through the cost. Every corpse was his father, his mother, one of his neighbors. A hundred men—maybe a hundred and fifty—mowed down under heavy artillery. The figures sprawled in a hideous arc, peeling out in opposite directions from the trail. A narrow stretch of dead earth with barren rocks thrusting up liked picked bones. He could have detoured around—skirted the field. But the black pit in his gut insisted on this walk. This horror. This knowledge.
He read the story of the battle. Assault. Retreat. A split force. His gaze turned back toward Viper Ridge. Those desert horses had ridden around an entire army. Brilliant.
And waste.
At last he turned away from the field. His legs hiked the final slope to the break. A hot wind assaulted him across the top of the canyon. He stared down into the depths at shadows, boulders, shelves, and switchbacks. Narrow walls that could have compressed a force, nullified cannon, squeezed the Anthonian army into a funnel of desert arrows and frontier rifles. Lost opportunity.
Robert hovered at the canyon’s edge. He had been prepared to die. Had heard the gunfire from his parents’ graveside and assumed the lethal call was meant for him. But again he was too late. His gaze rose toward the encampment on the other side.
Aurelia might hate him. He had reached that point himself. Had considered as the thousands of retreating Anthonian soldiers had blocked his path—her name amidst their curses—that he had failed her as well as his parents. Perhaps this was the time to let her go. Now. With his insides already covered in black ash.
But he had made her a promise. Robert guided Horizon down the north wall of the canyon and up the south. How many times had he ridden this trail? Without thinking. Without considering how hard this canyon might be to cross in the midst of battle. Or how many men might live within those canyon walls. And die above.
He dismounted among the survivors and found himself asking questions—questions of frontiersmen who had seen nothing but fog, heard only death, and still gripped their rifles as though letting go would invite the next hail of gunfire. The answers were blunt. Expressionless.
Until he asked about her.
In seconds a crowd had formed, voices scrambling: she was in the leaders’ tent; she had faced down the king of Anthone; she had brought reinforcements called on the wind from opposite ends of the kingdom; she had ridden on a bronze horse that had galloped from the fog and become the sun; she was betrothed to the young general of the Valshone and had returned to Tyralt to marry him.
Valerian Siudek. Robert had heard that name also cursed in Anthonian breaths.
So the Heir of Valshone had brought his men north. And saved her. Saved the entire frontier.
Robert swept his gaze beyond the frontiersmen. The darker garb of the Valshone dominated the camp. He recognized those sweltering black coats from his—or rather Aurelia’s—previous encounter with the Heir and his personal guard.
At the time, Robert had wondered whether those armed men had any real allegiance toward their charge. Whether they could truly respect a man whose sole claim to status was a title nullified by the king nearly two decades before.
No question now of whether Valerian had the ability to lead.
I left. I should be grateful he saved her.
Robert extricated himself from the wild stories and followed the tellers’ vague directions to the leaders’ tent. White canvas had been propped up like a silk pavilion, the entrance lowered and closed off. A blend of Valshone, Darzai, and desert tribesmen stood guard outside, all positioned at a wide perimeter well away from the entrance. The Heir’s men—some of whom Robert had seen before—gave no sign of recognition; but the Captain of the Darzai Guard signaled one of his men to accept Horizon’s reins, then motioned Robert toward the tent.
He stepped up to the threshold. And halted at the sound of raised voices.
“Valerian, we have discussed this,” Aurelia snapped. “How can I command these men to follow me into a new war when their companions are still dying?”
“We’ve spent three days removing the wounded from the battlefield,” answered the Heir. “Your medics are serving them, and the women of the frontier will offer what care they can. You must decide now, while the able-bodied men are still here. Before they choose to go home to their wives and families.”
Those who still have families. Robert edged his hand toward the tent flap, uncertain whether he had the right to interrupt the heated discussion.
“If the men wish to return home”—Aurelia’s voice wavered—“I should not stop them.”
Valerian answered, “Tell them you require their support.”
“I did not come back to rule Tyr
alt,” she stated. “I returned to help Tyralt rule itself.”
“Then ask them!” His voice was fierce. “Ask them to turn south. To wrest the crown from your sister. You agree, don’t you? That she cannot remain?”
Remain queen? Or remain alive? Did he know what he was asking of Aurelia?
“You are speaking of revolution,” she said.
“Yes!” Passion filled the Valshone’s voice, a passion that must have driven a thousand men to follow their leader north. He believed in this.
Her failure to respond ripped Robert from his frozen stance and forced him inside.
She stared back at him from across the interior, her eyes wide and overbright, dark circles ringing the hollows around them. Her hair and clothes were disheveled, evidence she had lived through a battle. Those eyes were now pools of emotion—an emotion he could not yet face.
He knew better than to touch her in front of this audience. Silent, in the corner, sat Barak ze Geordian. Watching. And at the center of the tent, midway between Aurelia and Robert, stood the Heir of Valshone. His shoulders were stiff, his gaze narrowing as though he were struggling for identification.
“Vantauge,” he said at last, then crossed his arms over his torso and raised his chin above the uneven collar of his black coat. “This is a private meeting. Perhaps you should remain outside.”
“No,” Aurelia said. Her chest rose, then released a long, shuddering breath. “He has a voice on this council.”
Council?
“Why?” Valerian’s answer spiraled with derision. “He was not even here for the battle.”
“He has a vote,” she replied. “One as strong as mine.”
Was she insane?
“What?” The Heir spun toward her.
“We will all vote,” she said. “Everyone in this tent.”
“Then let us vote and be done!” Valerian exclaimed. He whirled to Robert. “Tell her she needs to decide to move south against her sister before the forces disperse and lose the unity won with this victory.”