Rise of Fire

  “Even if it’s no longer a necessity, it might be a wise precaution. Just to help solidify our ties to Relhok so that our claim will never be threatened under any eventuality.”

  Even though I knew this was happening—ever since Maris opened her mouth to me about waiting her entire life for Fowler I knew it could happen—it hurt.

  “And the other wedding?” Chasan asked. “You mentioned two?”

  “Yes.” The bishop spat out the words. “What, pray, second wedding could you mean?”

  My lips felt numb. There was only my heart, thumping madly, aching and twisting like a fist inside my chest. Everything else felt deadened.

  “Is it not obvious? Luna’s wedding to our house is a necessity. Surely you understand that, my son. And you, too, Luna. Your marriage to my son legitimately ties our kingdom with Relhok. With both these marriages, in any circumstance, it cannot be disputed that Relhok will become a part of Lagonia someday.”

  I couldn’t stay here. I couldn’t marry Chasan. I couldn’t stand by and watch as Fowler married Maris.

  My head spun as if I had just twirled in a speeding circle. I set my spoon down, my hunger forgotten as Maris hopped happily in her seat beside me, clapping her hands. Chasan didn’t move or make a sound. If not for the steadiness of his breathing, I would not have known he was still there.

  It made perfect sense for Tebald to play it this way. It was safe. It was smart. For both kingdoms. Even I could see that.

  Accepting what was safe and smart, however, was not so simple.

  FOURTEEN

  Fowler

  I WOKE ABRUPTLY with a gasp. I had been dreaming that I was still underground, running, searching, calling for Luna lost somewhere within the dwellers’ web.

  I blinked, my gaze swerving around the strange chamber with its vaulted ceiling, remembering at once where I was. I’d woken one time since the physician slapped the foul-smelling, skin-burning salve on me. A girl had been there, holding my hand, wiping my feverish brow. She’d declared herself the king’s daughter, Maris. She also called me things, endearments that left no doubt she considered herself my betrothed. I’d opened my mouth and tried to explain that we couldn’t be betrothed, but speech was lost to me then.

  “Glad to see you are healing well.” My gaze jerked to the man sitting in a chair beside my bed, and I knew he was the reason for my sudden state of wakefulness. He passed the smelling salt he held to the physician hovering beside him. Folding his hands neatly in his lap, the king smiled tightly. “You’ve slept long enough, my young friend. It is time we talk.”

  My chest lifted with panting breaths, as though I had in fact been running through tunnels and not merely dreaming about it. I pushed up on the bed, wincing. I felt as weak as a child, but I wasn’t going to have a conversation with a man as ruthless as my own father while lying on my back.

  Tebald eyed my bandaged arm with lifted brows, as though he could see through the wrapping to my arm itself. “You should belong to the dwellers, but thanks to me, you are still here.” I nodded slowly, even as I thought: Thanks to Luna I’m still here. “Barclay here says you should be able to leave your sickbed and walk soon.”

  “I can walk now.” At least I would have liked to attempt it. No more sickbed. No more weakness. No more lying defenseless while Maris stroked me like her new pet.

  There was that slow smile of his again. It didn’t reach his eyes. It didn’t even crease his ashen cheeks. He brushed a finger along the line of his well-groomed beard. “Maris tells me you’re stubborn. Even sick, you fight and resist the help you need. I see that now.”

  I tensed. So he knew his daughter had been visiting me. What else had she said about me to her father? I watched him, careful to keep my expression blank. Maybe he even encouraged her to come to me. There was that ridiculous betrothal between us, after all—made when I was barely walking and Maris was still in a cradle. Maybe he thought to honor it. Or rather, he thought to make me honor it.

  Tebald continued, “Rest easy. No rush on walking yet. You could relapse, and we want you well. We need you well.”

  I didn’t mistake his emphasis on need. It was the reason I lived at all—the only reason I had been brought back to the castle and treated by the king’s own physician. The king and Lagonia needed me. Maris claimed to need me as well. I recalled that from when she sat at my bedside. But that was more tied up into want than need. She was a child and I was the bright and shiny toy for her. Nothing more than that.

  “Thank you,” I replied because he stared at me so expectantly, compelling me to speak.

  He inclined his head slightly. “Ah. Gratitude is a good thing. It means people understand . . . they know their place in the order of things.”

  He leaned back in his chair, lacing his fingers together. “This kingdom has lasted seventeen years. Others have fallen. And others are just skeletons of what they once were.” His gaze narrowed on me. “Relhok hangs on by a thread. True, your father wields an iron fist, and his human sacrifices serve as timely feedings that keep the dwellers in check for now, but how long can that continue before his people revolt? Or the dwellers grow hungry for more?”

  He wasn’t saying anything I hadn’t thought of before, or even anything I hadn’t said to my father, trying to persuade him to change his ways.

  Tebald continued, “But here Lagonia stands. We’re surviving in these walls. My legacy will continue. If only one royal house is still standing when the eclipse lifts, it will be mine. Be assured of that.” He nodded resolutely, a fanatical light gleaming in his eyes. I supposed there had to be a bit of the fanatical in anyone determined to survive the eclipse. “The question, Fowler, is whether you will be part of this house . . . if your legacy will live on.”

  The threat was subtle. Join him or perish. And there was only one way to join him that he would accept. We stared at each other for a long while.

  “You don’t want me to marry your daughter,” I said quietly, thinking not only of me in that moment but of her, too. I could never love her, and she would know that soon.

  Even though I had been half out of my mind with fever when she visited me, I knew enough of the princess already. Maris was a coddled girl, childlike and with no awareness, no fear or respect for the reality of this world. I couldn’t be with someone like that. She would sense that I wasn’t truly with her even when we were together. There would always be someone else there, a ghost hovering between us. A girl with stars in her eyes, full of dreams that didn’t belong in this world. Maris would come to hate me for that.

  “You’re right. I do not. But a ruler must do things they don’t always like. Choices have to be made.”

  “If you care about your daughter, don’t force this marriage between us.”

  He shrugged and waved a hand with a scoff. “Don’t be sentimental. Maris is an instrument, a weapon to be used and waged. Just as you are. You both have your duties.”

  He cared little for his own daughter. I couldn’t appeal to his love for her. He wasn’t that different from my father. That should have made him easy to understand. I should have been able to predict his next move if I simply thought of him in those terms. Gazing at him, I could almost confuse his cold eyes for my father’s.

  “What say you, Fowler? Do you know your place in the order of things?” He lifted his laced fingers one at a time, bringing them down slowly like dominoes falling. “Do I need to make myself any more clear?” He arched an eyebrow.

  Studying him, I angled my head to the side as a calmness settled over me. He meant he expected my fealty—to Lagonia, to him. I don’t think there was a distinction. A bad taste coated my mouth. “Yes, I know my place, Your Majesty.”

  He smiled that oily smile again. “Smart boy. I’ll leave you now.” Smart indeed. I knew to say what he wanted to hear. “I imagine Maris is skulking around the corner, waiting for me to leave so that she can descend on you again.” He patted my knee through the bedcovers. “Get well and we’ll start planning these weddi
ngs. Maris is eager. She’s only been waiting her entire life for this.” He waved a hand. “She has a bounty of ideas. Not all realistic, mind you. Her proposed menu alone is going to require adjusting.”

  She had been waiting her entire life to marry me. While I was on the Outside fighting, trying not to die, watching others die horribly, she was daydreaming about a boy she didn’t know and a lavish wedding. It was all the evidence I needed that I couldn’t spend my life with her. I couldn’t spend my life here, under Tebald’s thumb. I’d made that decision years ago without even meeting her.

  I needed to escape here the same way I had escaped Relhok. Only this place was going to be harder to leave. After my father killed Bethan he thought me broken. No one had thought to watch me. No one thought that one day I might simply walk out of the gates at midlight and never return. Here they would watch my every move.

  I had the same choking sensation I felt when I was in Relhok. As though a great weight was bearing down on my chest, pushing and shoving all the air out.

  I would find my breath again. I’d say whatever lies I had to say. I’d fake whatever I needed to, but I would leave.

  And when I did, I was taking Luna with me. The thought of Luna made something the king said penetrate. “Your Majesty, pardon me. Did you say . . . weddings?” As in more than one? Grimacing, I forced myself back up on the bed.

  Halfway to the door, he stopped and turned. “Ah, yes. Luna shall marry into our house as well.” He smiled slowly, his eyes gleaming with satisfaction. “Come, Fowler, did you think to hide who she really was from me? Ah, from your expression I suppose you did. I knew her mother, wasted many a season paying court to her. With one look, I knew who she was.” Tsking his tongue, he shook his head. “You won’t insult me by denying it, will you?”

  He knew. I shook my head numbly. As soon as I was on my feet, we’d put this place far behind us. “If you know who she is, why bother with me?”

  “I’ve learned the wisdom of having a secondary strategy in place. You’re a nice spare to have around.”

  I stared, truly without words. My arms started to shake and burn and I could no longer hold myself up.

  I collapsed back on the bed, my hands opening and closing into fists at my sides as I stared up at the high beams in the ceiling, listening as the king of Lagonia’s faint laughter faded from my chamber.

  FIFTEEN

  Luna

  SLEEP WAS IMPOSSIBLE. The bed was too big. The room too empty. The castle creaked and settled all around me, the eons-old stone sighing its old bones. The wind whipped and howled outside, pushing against the mullioned glass panes like a living thing trying to get inside. For a moment, I thought I heard a dweller’s eerie cry far in the distance—a world away from here.

  I had never been truly alone. I’d always had Perla and Sivo, if not in the same room with me, then in the room beside me. The cadence of Perla’s gentle snores lulled me to sleep through childhood. When I finally left the tower, I’d had Fowler. Even on the Outside, in the great open space fraught with danger, he’d been there beside me every night.

  The murmur of voices at my door brought me into a sitting position on the bed. I flattened my palms on the mattress, ready to push up and bolt if needed.

  The door creaked open. Robes rustled and I smelled the faint aroma of incense. The bishop.

  I crouched on my knees atop the bed. “What are you doing in here?” So much for the guard protecting me.

  His ankle joints popped as he advanced with more speed than I would have thought a man of his size capable.

  I scrambled to get off the bed, but he was there, the great mountain of him blocking me. I fell back, desperate to avoid contact, the heels of my hands holding me up on shaking arms. His intent was harm. I smelled it on him, bitter as charred ash on his sweating skin.

  “You should never have come here,” he hissed, his voice wild in his zealotry. “You’ll bring ruin on us.”

  I cringed at the stink of his onion-laced breath gusting in my face—and there was the stale aroma of that drink that had made me fuzzy-headed. “I don’t suppose it makes a difference that I don’t want to be here either.”

  He continued as though I had not spoken. “The king doesn’t understand, but I do. You’ll bring war to Lagonia.”

  “Aren’t we already at war? With this eclipse? With dwellers?”

  “Precisely why we don’t need the addition of a war with Relhok.” He reached out and closed his hands around my neck. “I could open those doors and toss you off the balcony. It’s a long drop down. Can’t even see the bottom at midlight. No one would ever know what happened to you.”

  I gasped at the dig of sausage-thick fingers around my throat. “Let me go,” I choked out, clawing at his slowly tightening grip. I hadn’t been through so much, come so far, to let it end like this.

  “I could end you now. Save us all. God would forgive me.”

  My legs thrashed, nails scoring the backs of his hands as he squeezed, crushing my windpipe.

  I couldn’t breathe. A roaring filled my ears. It seemed the worst thing. Not dying, but dying like this. I had assumed it would be at the hands of dwellers.

  The pressure in my head suddenly lightened and I felt like I was drifting. I didn’t feel the sweating, fat hands at my throat anymore.

  Then the lightness vanished.

  Pain returned as air filled my starved lungs. I clutched at my burning throat. It was a blissful sort of agony, though, because it signaled life. I wasn’t dead. Those crushing hands were no longer on my throat.

  Dimly, volume returned. I sucked air in over the sounds of scuffling and harsh voices. Bone cracked against something thick and solid. Frand cried out shrilly.

  I sat up, listening, one hand still wrapped around my throat, massaging the tender skin.

  “Please, please, Your Highness,” Frand blubbered, dragging himself on the floor to get away from the prince. “I beg you! Stop!”

  The prince’s boots followed after the large body, biting hard into the stone floor. His silken voice slid over me, filling me with a strange sort of relief. “You’re fortunate I’m nothing like my father, Bishop Frand, or you would not be leaving this room alive.”

  “Th-Thank you, Your Highness! You are so generous,” the bishop babbled. There was the sound of a sloppy, wet kiss on the prince’s boot.

  “Get off me before I change my mind!”

  Frand whimpered and retreated, bringing his hands up to cover his blubbering face.

  Chasan crouched over the pathetic man. “Now heed me. If anything, anything at all, happens to this girl, I will come for you. Your head on a pike in the courtyard. That will be your fate . . . your legacy.”

  The viciousness of his threat startled me. I would not have thought he cared enough to bother. When his father proclaimed that we should marry, he did not seem any more happy about it than I was.

  The bishop gasped. “I can’t be the only one here with a thought to harm her. Your Highness, your admirers alone . . . any one of them or a member of their family might think to harm her. Half the noblemen at court have been pelting their daughters at you in a bid for marriage!”

  “Then you best hope they don’t harm her,” he cut in smoothly.

  I swallowed, wincing at the pain of the action. The bishop here was not my only danger? I’d landed myself in a vipers’ nest.

  “Your Highness,” the bishop edged, his voice cautiously deferential, “you know marrying her is a declaration of war on Relhok—”

  “Such matters of state do not concern you. Keep to what you do best: delivering lies from your pulpit whilst you lose yourself in gluttony and groping the serving maids. Never cross me again. Someday I’ll sit on the throne. Never forget that. Now go, before I decide to toss you into the dungeon.”

  Frand lumbered to his feet with great panting breaths. “Yes, yes. Of course. Th-Thank you, Your Highness.”

  His heavy tread shuffled from the room. The door thudded behind him and it was
just the two of us.

  “H-How—” I stopped, my voice coming out a hoarse whisper. I swallowed, cringing against the raw scrape of my throat. “How did you know that I was in trouble?”

  “When I walked past your door, the guard wouldn’t meet my gaze. It seemed strange.”

  I nodded slowly. “Thank you.”

  He stopped beside my bed. I scooted to the edge, dropping my legs over the side. I couldn’t stand without coming chest to chest with him, so I stayed sitting, attempting to hide just how much I was shaking.

  When his hands landed on my throat, I jumped. I should have sensed his impending touch, but pain addled my head. I inhaled his warmth, the musk of his skin, his rich, windswept smell. He had been Outside recently. Since I last saw him tonight. I felt a stab of envy that he had the freedom to come and go.

  He pulled back slightly, his fingers a brushstroke on my neck.

  The air crackled as I felt his stare on my face, so close and probing. I resisted the urge to reach out and feel his face so that I would know him, so that I would have a sense of this face staring at me.

  “W-What are you doing?”

  “Just checking your neck. Should I call for the physician—”

  “No,” I blurted. “The fewer who know about this, the better.” I didn’t want anyone to think I was an easy target. Now that I knew precisely how much in jeopardy I was, I would be more guarded against attacks.

  “Good point, but I want to make sure your injuries aren’t too grave.”

  I moistened my lips. “You agree with me? And why is that?” Why should he care what happens to me at all, much less what anyone in Ainswind knew about me?

  He sank down beside me. “This shouldn’t have happened to you. I don’t want anyone to know that I permitted such a thing to ever happen to you.”