Page 10 of Harbinger

“Fine,” he replies in a clipped tone.

Kieren catches my attention from behind Broderic and draws a finger across his neck. A warning to let the topic die.

But Isidore doesn’t see him do it. “Did you meet anyone?”

“Yes.” He slumps into a chair by the hearth, bypassing the platters of food and coffee, and stares at the fire.

Isidore opens her mouth, but Kieren cuts her off. “What about you?” He shifts the conversation to me. “How did it go?”

Both my siblings turn to hear my answer.

I’m going to kill him.

I paste a smile onto my face. “I still have all my toes.”

“What does that mean?” Isidore frowns.

“Never mind.”

“It’s done. That’s all that matters,” Broderic says, still staring at the flickering fire like he’s hypnotized.

For once, I’m grateful for his moodiness. Because I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t even want to think about it.

Isidore pushes up from her seat, muttering under her breath, “I’m going to bathe.”

“You’ve done that twice already,” Broderic says.

“The king has plenty of hot water,” she says over her shoulder, already halfway down the small corridor that leads to the attached bedrooms.

Kieren’s eyes track her movement across the room. They’ve tracked her since the day our father brought him home half-starved and told us to treat him like a brother. A command we’ve all followed, even—most unfortunately for Kieren—Isidore.

Broderic doesn’t notice. He never has. I pretend not to for the sake of my best friend’s pride.

But this morning, Kieren isn’t the lovesick fool I’m worried about. I pour my brother a cup of coffee. He takes it without a word.

“You never get me coffee,” Kieren teases, snatching a slice of cake studded with dried berries from my unguarded plate.

“You can get your own coffee.” I shoo him away from my food. “You’re not heartbroken.”

Broderic straightens with a scowl. “I’m not heartbroken.”

Kieren and I share a look, and he mouths a single word: Don’t.

But ignoring the situation isn’t an option. Am I supposed to sit back and watch my oldest brother ruin his own life to save the rest of ours?

“Have you spoken to Miranda?” I ask.

His frown deepens, making him look older than his twenty-nine years.

“That’s over. It has to be.” His steely tone tells me that this conversation is over, too.

Because that’s part of his plan. Before Dad’s death, Broderic intended to marry Miranda. He held on to that delusion as long as he could. But marriage is mostly transactional among nobles, and there are plenty of potential matches from the wealthier families where the bloodlines extend out to distant cousins too far down the pecking order to stand a chance at inheriting control of their own provinces. For them, an heir is an heir—even if they’re from Order Icaros.

He’ll marry to shore up our finances, and I’ll spend the next two years learning the sacred nochtimetric magic entrusted to our order—precise patterns that connect the Stars’ magic to enrich our soil or call in rain. And together, we’ll keep everything from falling apart.

Hopefully.

Still, with Velesont swooping in to sell our crops and livestock to the kingdom through their shipping network, we have little control over how much we earn. And without connections, we might never get them to pay us fairly. But I can’t stomach the idea of letting him marry for money or clout any more than I could stomach the idea of sacrificing that oscen.