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“See that you do. I do not want you returning to our allies damaged by your stay here. Now listen well. I shall tell you my reply. I will send three ships of soldiers, weapons, and supplies to assist Kavanar. They shall leave in three days’ time, and you may return with them if you like. Until then, I insist you partake of my hospitality until that wound is healed and whatever powers your Masters require of you to do your unholy job are restored. Please convey to them that I do not appreciate them sending someone corrupted by magic to my door, but as a staunch ally, I am always hospitable. Aren’t I, dear wife?”
The queen snorted. “Indeed, my lord.” She could call him that, as more of an equal, while most others were required to use the more grandiose forms of address.
Message delivered, the king dismissed the poor man, who walked off with just as much urgency, as if his work were never done, but now holding his burned hand.
“What potions or salves does he carry to ensure that he could heal such a grievous wound so quickly?” Iseris asked Jav. “How is that possible?”
He shrugged. “Do you know of any? I do not. Perhaps Kavanar grows some healing herbs we do not possess.” There was a distance to his voice that made her wonder if he suspected something else, that there was more to the story, but she couldn’t guess what.
The decorum in the court returned to quiet circles of people, mingling and murmuring. A few advisors gathered close to the throne, speaking in more conversational tones. But the advantage of this particular position—as long as there were shadows enough and no one, especially her awful brother, could see her in her hiding spot—was that she could still hear most of what they said.
She was about to ask Javarin why he was hiding near this pillar when a question from an advisor cut through, suddenly sharp.
“Speaking of all that, Your Majesty… What of your daughter?” It was the temple priestess who had spoken before, her gown white and trimmed in gold. A disciple of the goddess Nefrana.
Silence tightened around the thrones, and her throat tightened too. She cradled the apple against her chest.
Her tension seemed to flow into Javarin, too, as his eyes had narrowed. The queen was tense as a cat hit by lightning, too, but not out of concern.
Iseris was not her daughter, although that secret was more widely known than her hidden magic. The two conversations often came hand-in-hand, however, as it was quite convenient to blame Iseris’s curse on her harlot mother.
“Yes, what of the princess?” drawled Alekur into the silence. He was holding the arm of a young woman in the crowd—and by the blush on her cheeks, flirting with her—when he spoke up.
The king narrowed his eyes at his son, then waved his hand. Such an annoying triviality, the fate of his daughter. “What of her?”
“Will you marry her off soon?” the priestess asked. “I hear the Akarians have a prince looking for a bride.”
Laughter ruffled quietly through the group. The queen rolled her eyes. “An Akarian prince would be the last person to whom I would consider offering any woman of our kingdom. I doubt he’ll last long in power, anyway.”
“Why would she be so certain?” Javarin asked quietly.
Iseris shrugged, but before she could answer, the king joined in. “As if we would want such an ally as the prince. That troublemaker himself is a mage, they say. That’s what sent it all boiling over.”
Iseris’s breath caught in her throat, the comment catching her too off guard to hide it. Hopefully, Javarin didn’t notice the hitch of her shoulders.
But another mage! Anyone, really, that she could reach out to for help… This was rare news.
If there were mages here in Brusidal, they were all in hiding. And to think that in Akaria, this mage was a noble?
An unmarried prince looking for a wife? That was hard to believe. Too good to be true. Maybe it was a trap they were setting for her somehow. Waiting for her to beg to be sent to him.
Although… if she thought they would do it, it wouldn’t be such a bad idea. But they never would.
The queen stood abruptly, and everyone else scrambled to stand with her, the king included. “We will retire to our chambers for now to discuss matters of state,” she said primly, granting them all a brief nod.
The king murmured his agreement, and the ensemble began to move, like a herd of anxious goats, heading out.
Iseris hesitated. She couldn’t miss a word of their decisions behind closed doors, but with Javarin at her side, would he notice how she followed? How she vanished between the tapestries into the hidden door?
Strictly speaking, his loyalty was to the goddess Nefrana, but here in Brusidal, loyalty to the goddess and to the crown were one and the same.
To her surprise, he sighed. “To be a fly on the wall of that discussion, eh?”
“What an unlucky creature.” Her smile broadened.
He grinned. “You don’t wonder… Well, you know.”
“Wonder what?”
