The crowd gasps and bursts into applause.
‘Excuse us,’ Hal says to a dumbstruck Ember and Marina before guiding me away.
Everyone is staring at us, and for once, I find I don’t care. Hal nods courteously to the onlookers, but when he turns to me, he smiles, and I wonder what it must feel like to possess his gift. The Maker’s gift. To be born of sunlight.
Prince of the Dawn.
‘Impressive little trick, Your Imperial Highness.’ A boy dressed in long grey robes is striding towards us. He bows low, then claps Hal on the shoulder.
Hal grins. ‘Blaze Harglade, I’d like you to meet Zephyr Graven, who, in my extremely biased opinion, is the greatest Guster of his age. Zeph, this is Blaze, who of course needs no introduction.’
Zephyr is tall and handsome, with dark skin and deep-set eyes the colour of honey. I remember Cole singling him out as the Eyes’ favourite to win the Ventalla crown. He reaches for my hand, his brandmark – a single feather – glowing softly on the back of his own.
‘Nice to meet you, Blaze,’ he says.
‘How was training?’ Hal asks him.
Zephyr shrugs. ‘Can’t say it was particularly challenging, though it was only the first session.’ Behind him lingers a rather bored-looking Eye, who I take to be his chaperone. ‘You can go now,’ Zephyr tells him. ‘No need to baby me.’
The boy straightens his golden doublet and nods, disappearing into the crowd.
Zephyr turns back to us. ‘Gods, Hal, are the chaperones really necessary? I can tie my own shoelaces, you know.’
Hal just laughs. ‘Tradition. And as for your training, Zeph, my uncle appointed the Ventalla trainer himself. Trust me, she’ll have you crying for your mother by the end of the week.’
Zephyr raises an eyebrow. ‘Don’t hold your breath. And speaking of mothers, yours doesn’t look too happy.’
We turn to see Empress Goneril sweeping into the ballroom flanked by her ladies-in-waiting. Zephyr is right. She doesn’t look happy. In fact, she looks downright enraged.
‘Uh oh,’ Hal says under his breath. ‘I know what that means.’
I don’t, but I get the feeling I’m about to find out.
Sure enough, moments later the horns are blown and we all sink to the floor, even Hal. The emperor appears in the doorframe looking magnificent in his golden cloak. But it’s not him I’m looking at – it’s the woman on his arm. With her creamy skin, bright-green eyes and auburn hair, she is as beautiful as a God. She wears a necklace of woven flower stems and a dazzling gown of gold-and-green leaves, and when the emperor looks at her, his expression entirely unguarded, I know there is only one person this woman can be.
Lady Kestrel Calloway, the emperor’s mistress.
They make their way across the hall, sweeping past Goneril with not so much as a glance, her plainness rendered positively unsightly next to Kestrel’s unearthly beauty. I am not prepared when they make a beeline straight for us.
‘Father.’ Hal straightens up before adding, ‘My lady.’
But Kestrel is looking only at me. I get to my feet, bobbing a hasty curtsy, unnerved by her attention.
‘How like your mother you are,’ she says finally.
There is a long pause during which I think she might be about to say something more, but then decides against it. And the two of them walk on, just like that.
I can practically sense the tension wedged between Hal’s shoulder blades, rippling in waves up his spine.
I can’t imagine how it would feel to stand by and watch your father parade his lover before the courts, to see your mother humiliated, diminished. My own father has his faults, but his devotion to my mother could never be doubted. It was his lifeline, his redemption. It’s what drove him into that unreachable void of grief.
My mother is gone, but she was loved. Hal’s mother is here, but she is not loved. Nor does she appear to be hated. She is wholly disregarded, which seems even worse. No wonder she looks so sour all the time. It’s said the emperor barely speaks to her. Her one duty, her one purpose, was fulfilled with the birth of their son – the prince at my side.
Yet while Goneril may have borne the emperor’s only legitimate offspring, he has two bastards by Kestrel. Or rather,had. The little girl died young. Of the sweating sickness, I believe. They say she would have been as beautiful as her mother.
And as for the boy, if I am the beginning that brought the end, then he is destruction itself. That’s why the courtiers treat Kestrel as though she were a queen, why they don’t sneer as she walks by, but rather bow and scrape and smile. Because she may be the emperor’s whore, yet she is also the mother of the Earth Cleaver.
She bore the boy who broke the world.
