The servants laid down the trays and pulled back the cloths, revealing a wide array of gifts: Sesharian swords with silver hilts, jade elephants with diamond trunks, dresses woven with crystals, silk scarves of every color imaginable, and pile upon pile of glittering necklaces, bracelets, and gauntlets.
Elena sighed. She glanced at her father; he hated when guests brought him such gifts. It was an act of complacency, he had told her, a way visitors tried to woo them like the marigold flowers showering their scent from the ceiling.
Leo waved his hand and the servants wrapped up the gifts and took them away. Then he stood. Elena shot up to her feet. Even the pale assassin looked up.
“You come with a proposition,” Leo said. “State it.”
Again, if her father’s candor derailed him, Samson made no sign. He turned to Elena, his eyes bright and clear, his voice steady.
“Your Highness, I come with a humble offer. Ravence has many enemies along her borders, but Jantar is her deadliest. And yet, your kingdom has decided to take on Jantar’s ire by accepting Sesharian refugees. As a Sesharian, I am thankful for your service to my people. And I would like to repay you. I am willing to give you my strength, my armies, if—”
“If I take you as my king,” Elena interjected. She looked long and hard at Samson, long enough to make him sweat, before continuing. “I’ve gotten many proposals. What makes yours different?”
Samson glanced at Yassen and then to her father.
“Do you have the list?” Leo asked.
Samson withdrew a pod from his pocket and called up the holos.
Lists of names and coded maps spilled out. Elena recognized the city grid of Rani, but there were plotted points that she did not recognize.
“These are the active Arohassin agents in the capital right now,” Samson said. “Their entire operating network is in here. We have names, locations—everything. I’ve had my men cross-check the information and it all holds.”
“But have you tracked any of them down?” Arish asked.
“With the king’s permission, we will.” Samson placed the holopod in Arish’s outstretched hand and took a step back. “This is my offering—redemption. A final blow to the Arohassin, the locusts that have plagued Ravence.” He looked at Elena, his eyes bright, calculating. “And it will all be under your name, Queen Elena.”
Elena met his calculating gaze with one of her own. It was wrong to call an heir queen before she took the throne, but he had done so to please her, and to stroke her ego. Samson was a crafty one.
But Ravence needed his men, the Black Scales, infamous for their efficiency, their coldhearted accuracy. Her father had failed to rid the country of the Arohassin. But she could.
Samson watched, waiting. A small part of her had hoped that one day—one day she might understand the love her father had given her mother. The meaningful silences they had shared. The look in her mother’s eyes when Leo would find them in the library, surrounded by books, and would draw Elena in his lap so they could hear Aahnah read together.
Her parents had chosen each other out of love, not necessity. It was an intimacy Elena had only seen and wondered about.
But Samson was nothing like that. She knew only about his military feats and the promises he offered. The promises that would make her kingdom stronger.
Elena squared her shoulders and ignored the numbness in her bones. Marriage, if not for love, was made for compromise. The welding of kingdoms. The safety of generations to come. Intimacy was not something Ravence demanded from her. It demanded peace, safety, and those she would give it.
“I accept,” she said. “Let us come together in union to rid Ravence of her troubles.” Her eyes rested on Yassen. “All of them.”
Yassen Knight did not falter under her gaze. She had heard of his failed mission; they all had. She had imagined him to be ruined, embarrassed by his mistakes, but he stood as still and impassive as the dunes on a winter night. She shifted, uneasy. There was something familiar about him… yet also something alarming.
“It’s decided then,” Leo said, not with warmth exactly, but with more cordiality in his tone than before.
Elena lifted the golden basin and set it between her father and their guests. She then produced two long matches from the depths of her lehenga and handed them to the king.
“We shall seal the alliance with the Desert Oath.”
Elena watched as Leo struck the matches and threw them into the basin. A fire roared to life.
Together, Samson and Yassen knelt and held their hands over the flames, their voices unwavering.
“The king is the protector of the flame, and I its servant.
Together, we shall give our blood to this land.
I swear it, or burn my name in the sand.”
