Uncle Jerran guided her down the hallway. She didn’t resist.
As if in a trance, she let him guide her through the unused presence chamber where courtiers used to petition duchissas. An old throne sat in front of a sapphire tapestry with the Azurian crest of a snowy dove, though it hadn’t been used in decades.
Uncle Jerran opened the door to the privy chamber. Wandering past portraits of old duchissas, she followed the memory of Uncle Jacyn’s music into the golden room after. His old piano sat in the center. In the days before Lexie, before Uncle Jacyn’s assassination, Aunt Calida had sat on the futon with him. With an arm around her, he’d played, and she’d listened to her beloved husband sing.
Kalie wobbled into the next room, the duchissa’s solar, a vision of creamy white and gleaming gold. Her chest was too tight, and everything inside her felt so horribly wrong.
Uncle Jerran glanced at the gilded doors, flanked on either side by Aunt Calida’s bookcases. “Do you want me to come in with you?”
She shook her head.
He pulled her into a hug and pressed a kiss to the top of her head. “She loved you so much, Kalista.”
Kalie’s vision blurred as the door closed behind him.
Taking a deep breath, she shuffled across the room. With shaking hands, she reached for the double doors. Her eyes stung, and she squeezed them shut. It was just a room.
But it was Aunt Calida’s room. It could never truly be hers.
Kalie swallowed, tugged the doors open, and stepped inside.
Sunlight streamed in through a window on the far wall. Aunt Calida’s four-poster bed stood on a rug on a raised platform. Azure curtains hung around it.
Blinking rapidly, Kalie tore her gaze away from the piles of throw pillows. Plush couches surrounded an ornate fireplace. The hearth was dark and empty; Aunt Calida hadn’t used it since Uncle Jacyn died. Gold picture frames lined the mantel—Aunt Calida and Uncle Jacyn on their wedding day, Kalie hugging Lexie, Lexie holding a drawing of Uncle Jacyn, who’d been murdered before she was born.
Tears streamed down Kalie’s cheeks. She bit her lip, trying to hold back a sob.
One of Lexie’s stories was abandoned on the desk. A drawing of Aunt Calida was tacked to the wall, a mixture of Ariah’s colorful shading and Lexie’s messy strokes. Lexie’s first ballet slippers hung from a string, over a pile of children’s books. One of them was open to a page with a frog, but Lexie would never hear how it ended.
Kalie’s knees gave out.
She sank into a chair, pressed her hands to her face, and wept.
Zane stood frozenamidst a hall of portraits, staring at a painting of a burly, bearded man. His guide’s footsteps drifted towards the Guardsman’s barracks, but Zane didn’t follow. He couldn’t turn away if he tried. The man in the painting looked more like one of Oppalli’s ancient raiders than a noble, but below the portrait, a plaque readCaptain Magnus Wells, Baron of Avington, AMH, COV.
Zane reached out with a trembling hand. “When was this put up?”
“Beats me.” The other guard’s voice jolted him back to reality, and Zane dropped his hand. “I was only hired a few months ago.”
There was a strange lightness in Zane’s chest as he scanned the shining medals pinned to his grandfather’s navy blue jacket. With the weight of Magnus Wells’s fearless brown gaze piercing through him, he stood straighter. It was practically unheard of for a soldier—especially a soldier without noble blood—to get both Azura’s Medal of Honor and Calla’s Order of Valor. It was rarer for a duchissa to personally arrange a marriage between a former guard and an heiress, but Roth’s mother had done it for Grandfather, and his grandparents’ coat of arms hung above the portrait.
With one last look at Grandfather, Zane turned away. He caught up with the young guard, a stocky man named Wright, and they passed through a pair of arched oak doors.
“This is the Guardsmen’s Lounge,” Wright said.
It was a classy modern room, filled with oak furniture and accents in varying shades of Azurian blue. A chandelier’s amber light shone over an empty bar and a spacious dining area. Cigar smoke wafted through the air. It was a welcome change from the hideously perfumed hallways they’d passed on the way here.
“The mess is through that door. The hall to the communal barracks is on the right. Don’t expect to spend much time there, they’re only for resting between shifts. The actual barracks are through a passageway underground, on the next ridge over. Private rooms, shared kitchens. Not a bad setup, compared to the Skyforce.”
Not a bad setup at all. He’d spent his time in the Marines crammed into a room with dozens of other men.
Besides, it was temporary. He’d be in the lord’s suite of a manor soon enough.
It didn’t really matter where he slept, though. The nightmares always found him.
As Wright checked his chrono, he blanched. “This way. The new captain wants to see you, and we’re running late.”
Zane followed him under an archway carved from blue marble. Multicolored crests spanned the walls, between oak doors trimmed with gold. The extravagance left a sour taste in his mouth. Plenty ofthis wealth had been exploited from Oppalli by Hannover’s ancestors, who’d helped establish the planetary republic that he’d fought to defend. Dali had profited heavily from Oppalli’s steel exports in the aftermath, enough that more than a century later, the Oppallese economy was in shambles.
