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“Yes. He’s heard that you are refusing to attend meetings of the war council to discuss strategy. That all you’re doing is alternating between burying your face in books and burying your face in the breasts of Nerastis women.”
Picking up a glass of wine that he’d abandoned at some point, Keris drank deeply. “Accurate.” Or at least, partially so. Ever since the attack on the bridge, he’d been unable to focus on his studies, ever reminded that the pursuit of them had seen Raina killed. A kingdom conquered.
Why didn’t I suspect his plan?
Otis rounded on him, his blue eyes filled with frustration. “Why are you behaving this way? This is your chance, Keris! Father’s giving you the opportunity to prove yourself worthy of the crown, and you’re throwing it away!”
“I’m not interested in proving myself to him.” Especially given that proving himself to his father meant becoming a killer like every other goddamned member of his family, women included. It was almost a shock that Veliant children weren’t born with their hands stained red.
“You’re going to get your own throat slit.” Otis’s face reddened in the way it always did when he was upset, his hand reflexively touching the pocket where Keris knew he kept love letters from his late wife. Her ship had been sunk by the Valcottans several months ago, and the letters were deeply precious to him. “You’re his son. He doesn’t want you dead, but Maridrina must come first…”
Keris shrugged, draining the glass and setting it aside.
“This isn’t still about you getting caught unaware with the Ithicana invasion, is it? God, Keris, let it go. It’s history.”
Keris stared into the darkness of the night, seeing the light fade from Raina’s eyes. Seeing Ithicanian blood pooling on the grey stone of the bridge. “History, is it? It seems like only yesterday that Father used me to start a war.”
Otis snorted. “Don’t flatter yourself. The force you were with was but a small piece in a very large plan.”
“Lara’splan.” And if only he’d allowed Raina to send his escorts back to Vencia, it might have failed. His cowardice, his selfishness, had been Ithicana’s doom as much as his conniving sister.
“Apparently.” Otis rolled his shoulders with obvious discomfort, not alone in his unease that their father had kept their sister in a compound in the Red Desert, allowing Serin to turn her into a fundamentalist warrior bent on Ithicana’s destruction. The revelation that she’d been responsible had come from the Ithicanians themselves, those who’d been captured spitting at Lara’s name, referring to her only as thetraitor queen.
“Has Serin found her yet?”
Otis shook his head. “She’s either dead or disappeared into the wind.”
Given what she’d accomplished, Keris hoped it was the former. And that it had not been swift. “And the Ithicanian king?”
“Stubborn bastard is still fighting. There are orders to take him alive, if possible.”
“To what end?”
Leaning against the raw edge of the dome’s broken wall, Otis gave him a long look. “Never mind Ithicana, Keris. Never mind the bridge. Never mind Lara.Youneed to focus that mind of yours on the Valcottans and taking the southern half of Nerastis back under Maridrinian control. The ranking officers are meeting downstairs in an hour to discuss strategy. Join them.”
To take the rest of Nerastis would mean hundreds, if not thousands, of lives lost. And for what? To hold a larger piece of the rubble that was this city? Keris refused to be part of such an undertaking. “I wouldn’t have the slightest idea of where to begin. You go instead—everyone will be happier for it.”
“Likely. But I’m not in command. I’m not the heir.”
Keris slapped his younger brother on the shoulder. “Soon enough, Otis. Soon enough.”
Otis’s face darkened, and in a flash of movement, he slammed Keris against the wall hard enough to rattle his teeth. “Don’t ever say that. No matter how much you irritate me, you’re still my brother, and I do not want you dead.”
They stared each other down for several long moments, Otis’s fingers digging into his shoulder hard enough to leave bruises, but then his younger brother turned away. “The Valcottans have awomanin command now. Zarrah Anaphora. She’s barely more than a girl.”
Lara is barely more than a girl, and she brought down the impenetrable Bridge Kingdom,Keris considered saying, but instead muttered, “So I hear.”
“You could beat her and take the southern half of Nerastis. I know you could, if you put your mind to it. Do it, and your life will be safe.”
Except losing wasn’t what made Keris’s blood run cold; it was that heknewhe could win. He’d stood in on war council meetings and felt his head fill with strategies for victory, his mind all too capable of distancing itself from the realities of war, if he allowed it. And if he did it once, he had no confidence that he wouldn’t do it again and again until his hands were as drenched in blood as his father’s. “No. You go. Tell them I’m with a woman. Or too drunk. Pick your excuse.”
“Areyou drunk?” Otis demanded.
“No. Although that’s easily remedied.”
His brother’s jaw clenched and unclenched, but then he exhaled. “Fine. But in exchange, you have to agree to train with me again. At the very least, don’t make yourself an easy target for an assassin.”
“The perception that I am an easy target has kept me alive for most of my life, Otis. I’m not inclined to jeopardize it. I will take this, though.” Reaching across the space between them, Keris plucked loose the dagger shoved in his brother’s belt, examining it. The edge was dark with the poison his brother favored. One that was slow to work but always fatal without the antidote. “You know how I love knives.”
