Garbine and Joseba nodded, the long game playing out in their minds. The contract on the table seemed to catch all the windows’ light.
“Are we to simply accept what happened?” Amarande’s voice was still calm and polite, but something was lit from the ashes of who she’d been since the news, and it burned beneath.
“Yes, Princess,” Satordi answered, clipped. “At this moment in time we will accept it because we have much more pressing matters to discuss.”
Amarande hadn’t thought her request a difficult one—in fact, she’d believed it would be the natural course—and therefore hadn’t planned for a fight. But her body was suddenly ready for one. The princess drove her heels into the marble tile, strong legsgrounding her further, all muscles rigid from her calves—the right one tense against the knife in her boot—to the curve of her jaw. “I see nothing more important.”
Satordi rapped a knuckle on the table and blinked at Amarande.
“Becauseyourefuse to see. There is much more to ruling than what is right in front of your face.” He threw his arms wide, dark brows pulled tight. “Your father’s death is in the past. The future of Ardenia needs your focus now. I implore you. You want to be a ruler? Act like it. Hear me.”
Amarande’s jaw clenched. She said nothing. Koldo stood silent at her side.
After a pause long enough to ensure he’d regained control, Satordi continued, immediately addressing the matters he thought more pressing. “We have received a generous proposal for your hand from Pyrenee. It is simply a preliminary offer and more will likely come. The real negotiations will begin once each royal party arrives for King Sendoa’s funeral.”
The princess took a thin breath through her nose before delivering her stony reply. “I’m not marrying.”
“Why resist marriage, Princess?” Garbine asked. “That is your responsibility as princess of the Sand and Sky—it must happen eventually. Why not now, when your kingdom needs you?”
Easy for Garbine to say, when she’d chosen those robes over the ability to wed. Purposely giving up one’s freedom to love was completely different from being born with it already stolen away. Even worse—what if acceptance of an offer meant not only no chance at love but also aligning herself with the nobility who had killed her father?
“Yes, my kingdom needsme.Not some usurper king, who may have had a hand in the death of his predecessor, all the while forcing his queen into a relationship that benefits only him. How is that good for Ardenia? How can a man chosen via contract and council have the best interests of Ardenia closer to his heart thanmyself? Surely my father worked with you to account for that—he wouldn’t have allowed it.”
Now Joseba stood—thick eyebrows knitted together, fingers twisted in a calm knot. He was barely older than the princess herself, and he’d only been a councilor since the death of his great-uncle two years hence. He was baby-faced and his innate kindness still intact, yet to be completely dismantled by Satordi. “Your father did not… object to the process, Princess.”
“Because he didn’t expectto be murdered,” Amarande spat. Satordi gave an exasperated sigh, but the princess ignored it and continued. “I want time. I want what is best for my people. Change the law and allow me to rule outright, not rush into some marriage that will hand my father’s beloved land and his daughter over to someone who only wants it for personal gain. Diamonds and soldiers and location—we all know what is so attractive to outsiders about our home.”
Joseba pursed his lips before continuing, measured. “Time is a pleasant notion, Your Highness, but it doesn’t shield Ardenia from its current vulnerability. Without a contract in place soon, Ardenia will be seen as headless—”
“‘Seen’ being the operative word, Councilor. Others’ lack of vision is not our problem,” the princess said, and then turned to the rest of the group. “We all know the Itspi’s foundation consists of laws, decrees, and directives mixed with mortar and stone. Surely there’s precedent for who rules after a king’s death and before the marriage of his daughter? If not his own blood, then whom? If there’s not precedence for that in enough statutes to swallow a millennium, surely my father had a plan. He always had a plan.”
She looked each one of them in the eye. “What is his plan?”
After a long pause, Joseba’s tongue stumbled over the words, though he knew the answer. “It’s designated in the king’s will that General Koldo be the regent.”
The eye contact the three councilors made with Koldo told theprincess that this was not a surprise to the general. It was, however, a surprise to her. This must have been discussed in the meeting they’d had in those hours after the news, while she was a wreck of shock, haunting her chambers with Luca by her side.
And no one, not even Koldo, had thought to tell her.
Amarande swallowed, face placid, not daring to give herself away with a sideways glance to the general. Still, she angled herself toward Koldo and reached up to give her a hearty pat on the back. “See there? We’re far from headless. And with a female in charge of the throne. Was that so hard?”
She said it with all the confidence she could muster, thick with irony, though a tiny voice in her head wondered why her father hadn’t simply assigned her regency and circumvented the whole succession problem. There had to be a reason, but at that moment Amarande was too relieved by Koldo’s new reality to care.
The princess addressed the general. “General Koldo, as regent, you must agree that an investigation into King Sendoa’s death is warranted before we rush into a marriage contract with possible suspects?”
“Of course. I will see to it at once.”
“Thank you, General Koldo. You display such loyalty and leadership. The Kingdom of Ardenia is in debt of your service.”
Three thin sighs came from behind the great table.
“Your Highness, we’re still vulnerable,” Joseba continued in his soft way, cheeks a ripe red. “Regency is meant to be a temporary solution. Not to mention outsiders will see this as martial law—unstable.”
Amarande nearly laughed. “Was my father not called the Warrior King—the ruler of the most powerful army on the continent? Was that martial law?”
Satordi ignored the princess, continuing Joseba’s argument. “Not to mention primitive. Reckless. Weak.”
“Weak,” Amarande echoed, no longer able to hide her anger anddisappointment. Every spark within her had become a flame, the haze of the past day burned off, her grief reinforcing her words, her stance, the directness of her tone. “The law is what makes us vulnerable, Councilor. Change the law. Allow a queen to rule in her own right.”
