Eden Conquered

  “I did not become friends with you because it was safe,” Larkin snapped. “And winner of the Trials or not, you are my Queen. Whether you wish me to or not, I will stand at your side and defend you with my last dying breath—as I know you would do for me and for the rest of Eden.” As if to prove it, Larkin dropped into a deep curtsy and in a voice filled with certainty said, “Your Majesty, I pledge myself to your service. When the night is darkest, I promise to be a light to help you find your way.”

  Tears pricked Carys’s eyes. The words weren’t the typical ones spoken to swear fealty, but the passion behind them sealed the vow as certainly as if it was said in the Hall of Virtues before the Throne of Light. Yet, they made clear Larkin’s intent to be her champion. To be, in her own way, a knight in Carys’s service.

  Swallowing the lump in her throat, Carys took Larkin’s arm and helped her stand. “I’m supposed to vow that I will never ask you to betray the seven virtues of our kingdom. But considering I’m going to return to Garden City in order to unmask traitors and take the throne, I’m not certain I can do that.”

  Larkin stood and gave a hint of a smile. “I’d be happy to push your brother into a dung heap if given the chance.”

  “No offense,” Carys said, feeling the anger that had been growing with every passing day vanish like smoke. “But that’s something I might have to do myself.”

  Larkin nodded with mock sincerity. “As you wish, Your Majesty. Would you like me to retrieve your stilettos?”

  “I have already done so,” Errik said, sliding off a chestnut brown stallion and starting toward Carys. “But feel free to take anything else from our fallen friends that you think we might have use for.”

  As Larkin hurried off, Errik pulled the long, silver blades from beneath his cloak. “Things might not have gone so well for us had the bowmen not been stopped so quickly. It’s a relief to be traveling with one so skilled.”

  Carys looked down at the blades, then into the handsome face of the foreign dignitary who had helped her when she needed someone to trust. And she had trusted him, but that was before he assisted her escape through the tunnels below the Palace of Winds.

  He should never have known about the tunnels’ existence. How had he discovered the passage out when she, who had spent so much of her childhood roaming those lost tunnels, never had? Her body’s craving for the Tears of Midnight had made it impossible to demand answers before. But she was growing stronger, and now that the danger had passed, she could see the attack on them with greater clarity.

  “Are you feeling all right, Your . . . Carys?” Errik asked, stepping closer.

  In the distance Carys saw Garret speaking to Larkin as her friend examined another of their enemy’s bows. “I’m . . . not sure.” Carys wrapped her hands around the hilts of her silver weapons and took them from Errik’s grasp.

  “Is there something I can do?” He took another step forward and put his arm around Carys’s shoulder. “You must be tired.”

  Carys leaned against him, felt the warmth of his body relax against hers. Then she pictured the man Errik had killed. A man who laid down his weapon because he recognized Errik.

  She took advantage of his ease and jabbed the point of a stiletto into his side. His body went still as she quietly said, “I’m tired of the people I trusted with my life lying to me. So it’s time to tell me how you found the escape tunnel under the palace, and after that you will explain how you knew the man you just felled.”

  “Carys, you have to trust me . . .”

  “No.” She dug the tip of the stiletto through his shirt and felt him gasp as the steel pricked his flesh. “I don’t. But you did aid me in my escape so I will allow you to explain. You are not a Trade Master.”

  “No. I am not from Chinera.”

  “Then where? Who are you and how did you come to the Palace of Winds?”

  “Technically, I have no true home. My family has shed blood, broken oaths, spurred others into war and betrayed one another to regain the power they believe is rightfully theirs.”

  “You speak in riddles.”

  “I speak the truth.” He paused. “I grew up in the castle of Dragonwall, but it was never my home.”

  “Dragonwall. You mean Adderton?” The kingdom to the south had been at odds with Eden since long before Carys was born.

  “There is more.” He sighed heavily. “What was left of my family took refuge in Adderton a hundred years ago when they fled through those same passages that carried you to safety. My ancestors fled—while their brothers and sisters were being slaughtered by yours. My name is Lord Errik of the Family Bastian.”

  Bastian.

  Carys’s head spun. Her great-grandfather had cut down the Bastians in order to be King. The Bastians had sworn revenge against them at all cost and had, through Eden’s last fraudulent seer, killed her father and brother and turned Andreus against her. If given the chance, the Bastians would kill him, and her, too.

  Her cloak fluttered as she turned. “I will do you the honor of looking you in the face as I dispatch you for this treachery.”

  “There is no treachery. If I wished to betray you, Carys, I could have done it long before now. I could have left you to die as your brother did or killed you quietly when you begged in your sleep for someone to end your pain. I am not like my cousin, the seer. Imogen came to reclaim the throne for her father, my uncle, and return the Bastians to power here in Eden. I am not with them. I want none of that.”

  Don’t listen, she told herself. Kill him now. But his words and his face held no fear, no sign of deceit, only conviction. It stilled her hand from spilling his blood then and there onto the frozen ground.

  “What do you want?” she demanded. “If not the throne, why did you come to Eden?”

  “I came hoping to find a way to make peace. Instead, I found something more important.” His eyes met hers and held them fast. “I found you.”

  2

  The lights in the stone hallway dimmed. It was only half a second. If he had blinked, he might have missed it.

  Andreus paused to see if it happened again, but the lamps scattered in between the colorful tapestries that lined the hallway glowed bright and strong. Andreus glanced at the guards at the end of the hall, but their stoic expressions said they hadn’t noticed the change. Yet Andreus was certain he had, just as he had seen the lights flicker in the Hall of Virtues—not just now, but earlier today and yesterday.

  He grimaced at the ache in his leg as he started down the corridor again. If there was something wrong with the lights . . .

  “Your Majesty, if I could have one more minute.”

  The sound of Elder Jacobs’s voice snaked down the hallway, and Andreus wanted to scream even as he slowed his pace. In the days since his coronation, the Council had rarely left him alone for more than a few minutes at a time. Taxes to be determined. Orders to be sent to the High Lords begging for more troops and supplies for the war. Favors to be granted and time provided for his father’s and brother’s friends to fawn over him.

  “I knew you would be triumphant in the Trials, King Andreus.”

  “Your brother always said that in his stead, you would make a brilliant king.”

  “Your father would be so proud.”

  He wanted to believe all of them—and knew he could believe none.

  Straightening his shoulders beneath the weight of the sweltering blue-and-gold-stitched ceremonial robe, Andreus turned and nodded. Elder Jacobs was the sole Council member who had helped Andreus during the Trials. As much as Andreus appreciated the Elder’s aid then, now he wished for just one day with Jacobs not at his side.

  But like the brace he wore—the one that was supposed to heal the wounds inflicted by Xhelozi claws—the Council, and Jacobs, had to be endured. Andreus’s leg was still too weak to walk without the metal contraption, and his authority was still too fragile to push anyone aside, especially an Elder who might be an ally. “Elder Jacobs, did you notice the lights dim just momen
ts ago?”

  “I did not, Your Majesty.” Elder Jacobs shook his head. His long, black braid undulated in a snakelike fashion, and Carys’s voice came unbidden into Andreus’s head. Fitting for one as underhanded as he.

  Andreus shook his head.

  “Forgive me, Your Majesty, but do you doubt the report we received yesterday from the Masters of Light?” the Elder asked. “They assured us the windmills and the lines were all functioning as they should.”

  Andreus had no doubt the Masters reported what they believed they should as they stood in the Hall of Virtues surrounded by court, Council, and King. The report was politically savvy, but that did not make it true.

  If there were weaknesses, and they were disclosed, word would spread. And as the days plunged them deeper into winter, panic would have followed. Public meetings would never give Andreus the answers he sought. Nor would any encounters that involved the Elders and their private agendas. Unfortunately, each time Andreus had tried to go to the battlements to seek out answers on his own, a member of the Council, unfailingly, appeared.

  “The Masters have my trust.” Andreus gave Elder Jacobs the carefree smile his mother had instructed him to use ever since he was old enough to remember. “But I cannot help my concern. After all, the lines were sabotaged not long ago, and the culprit for that sabotage has not been captured. Neither has the accomplice of the assassin who tried to kill me during the Trial of Humility. And I am not certain that finding those behind the plot is at the forefront of Captain Monteros’s mind.”

  Indeed, only one suspect had been questioned. Larkin’s father swore his daughter had nothing to do with the attempt. The old tailor was currently being watched, but other than his statement, Captain Monteros had had little to report about the woman Andreus saw, or those who colluded with her.

  Elder Jacobs frowned and looked down the hall before lowering his voice to barely a whisper. “Captain Monteros has left the Palace of Winds with a contingent of guards at Chief Elder Cestrum’s order.”

  “Our chief officer leaves the palace, and I am not informed of it?” Andreus demanded.

  “The Council did inform you—of their intent to ensure a new Seer of Eden is installed in the palace. You said you trusted the Council of Elders to handle the matter and dismissed the topic. Elder Cestrum took that as a sign the Council was free to direct matters as they wished.”

  Andreus clenched a fist at his side and shook his head. It was his own fault. Any discussion of a new seer brought back memories of Imogen. Her dark eyes filled with passion and her ebony hair brushing against his chest. She should be at his side right now, preparing to become his Queen. Instead, she and the love they shared were dead—lost to him because of his sister’s jealousy and betrayal.

  The village, where the seers studied and trained, was in the southwesternmost district of the kingdom. “Captain Monteros is on his way to Village of Night to escort a new seer to join us?”

  “Acquisition of a new seer is the goal he was given by the entire Council, but in addition Elder Cestrum spoke privately with the captain before he left. I believe they were discussing Lord Garret.”

  Garret. The Chief Elder’s nephew and his dead brother’s best friend.

  Garret had a habit of making unexplained disappearances. First two years ago when he left the palace after a fight with Andreus’s older brother. Then again on Andreus’s coronation day. The High Lord was to swear fealty and suddenly could not be found. The Chief Elder feigned ignorance over his nephew’s absence, but Andreus had not been convinced by his display.

  “Has Lord Garret been located?” Andreus asked. Until his sister’s death, and the declaration made that he had won the crown, Garret’s every move had been followed by the only other person Andreus could trust—the boy he had rescued, Max. But before the coronation, Garret slipped away. Andreus worried. Did the lord’s absence mean he was planning to stake his own claim to the throne? If so, Andreus wasn’t sure whether the oaths of fealty the Elders of the Council swore to him would hold.

  “Elder Cestrum clings to his claim that his nephew must have returned home to Bisog to deal with matters in his district, but none that I have spoken with believe that to be true.”

  “Then where is he?”

  “It is my belief Elder Cestrum has sent Captain Monteros and his men not only to act as escort for the new Seer of Eden, but to discover the answer to that very question. I am sure you understand that Lord Garret is of great import to Elder Cestrum.”

  Because Chief Elder Cestrum wanted Lord Garret to sit on the throne. Andreus kept that thought to himself. “I trust you will come to me with any information you learn about my missing High Lord. Maybe when the new seer arrives, he or she will be able to divine his whereabouts.”

  “Troublesome as he is, Lord Garret is not the concern I wished to speak with you about.” Elder Jacobs glanced back at the guards at the end of the hall. “Perhaps it would be best if we continue our conversation in private.”

  “Very well.” Andreus spun toward the steps that led to the King’s private chambers. “Follow me.”

  Elder Jacobs’s tread was light. Andreus ached as he climbed the brightly lit steps to the floor of the easternmost tower. The rooms were supposed to be a sanctuary for Eden’s ruler, but Andreus had rarely stepped foot in the series of chambers since his coronation.

  Despite his lack of use, a fire crackled in the stone hearth. Fruit, bread, and cheese were laid out near the high-backed chair etched with the orb of Eden that his father had favored. Large windows looked out on the mountain range—a reminder, perhaps, of the dangers that during the cold months ventured down from the mountains and threatened to destroy all inside Garden City’s walls.

  In front of the windows was a massive wooden desk filled with maps and war plans. His father had studied them for hours with Captain Monteros as they plotted ways to defeat Adderton and secure Eden from attack on the southern border once and for all.

  Had they succeeded, Father would still be alive. Imogen would still be seer and Carys . . .

  Andreus’s head throbbed from the weight of the crown of virtue and from the day filled with the Council’s squabbling. Turning toward the fire, Andreus asked, “What is your true concern, Elder Jacobs?”

  “None have come to me directly. They know that I am loyal to your cause. However, I have heard whispers from my sources. Several members of the Council of Elders have been observed speaking with a number of . . . ladies over the past week.”

  Andreus laughed. “And that is cause for worry?” As far as Andreus was concerned, anything that distracted the Council of Elders from advising him as to what choices his father would make was most welcome.

  “It might be, Your Majesty. From what I have been told, these are ladies who believe they have a claim against the throne—or more specifically, that the infants they will bear have claims.”

  “Infants?” Andreus spun back around. “They’re saying King Ulron fathered other children?”

  “Not your father, Your Majesty.” Elder Jacobs clasped his hands in front of him. “Nor your brother, Micah.”

  The silence hung heavy between them. Andreus’s chest tightened even as he gave the Elder his mother’s practiced smile. He picked up a glass of wine from the table near the blazing fire. Gods, the robe he wore was hot.

  “These women—they say they are pregnant and the father of their children is me? You must know that’s preposterous.”

  The pounding in Andreus’s head grew louder as he thought about all the girls—from the ones he’d met in the stables to the ladies of the court—who had willingly been seduced in dark corners of the palace. Could one of them be carrying his child?

  “I am certain you are right,” Elder Jacobs assured smoothly. “And it would be impossible for any claim to be proven. But . . .”

  “But what?”

  “Your interest in women is well-known. Your father had the same interest, but he had an heir and had been King for years before a
ny claims surfaced. Having these women speak against you so soon after your coronation and your sister’s death . . .” The Elder sighed. “The Princess captured the imagination and the hearts of many during the Trials of Virtuous Succession. Stories are being told of her skill and dedication to the people of the kingdom.”

  “My sister is dead.”

  Andreus turned toward the fire. An image of his sister’s white-blond, blood-matted hair flashed in his memory. Her screams clawed through his mind as they did every night in his sleep or when he saw people in the streets of Garden City wearing blue armbands. The bands once showed support for Carys becoming Queen, but they now served as a way to honor her memory. No one he saw in the streets wore yellow bands on their arms. There was no reason the people would feel the same need to honor him. He was, after all, not the one who was dead.

  And still . . .

  He shook his head to clear it. “I am the one that survived and won the Trials and the crown. My sister does not rule, no matter what some might wish.”

  “There are people with power who would never have allowed your sister to take the throne,” Elder Jacobs insisted. “And the people of Eden are grateful you are now their King. However, after years of war and weeks of mourning and upheaval and uncertainty, they are looking to the throne for inspiration.” Elder Jacobs paced in front of the fireplace as sweat dripped down Andreus’s back. “It is why I came to you today about the claims that are being made. I worry some on the Council might be encouraging these women to come forward in order to weaken your position. Elder Cestrum . . .”

  “What about Elder Cestrum?”

  “I did not mean to speak of him specifically, Your Majesty. But I have been told our Chief Elder has spoken with each woman a number of times and has instructed his pages to search for others who might have similar stories to tell. The gold he has given to them is most certainly designed to buy their silence so your enemies cannot use that information against you. With the people still mourning your sister, it would be easy for some to point to your lack of virtue in one area and give voice to the idea that you are also lacking in others.”