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“Nilly!” Queen Amelia’scall echoed down the hall. “Nilly, we need to go over the seating arrangements for the wedding.”
Stella threw Jak a panicked look. “Save me.”
Jak considered his options. He’d vowed to protect Stella from all dangers, and he certainly possessed the resourcefulness to rescue his love from the clutches of the approaching dragon—her mother—but there was also a question of picking battles you can win. Slipping a hand under the long fall of Stella’s waving black hair, he gripped the back of her neck and lavished a bolstering kiss on her pretty lips. “Have courage. You live in the dragon’s den, so there’s only temporary escape to be had. Better to stand your ground now.”
Though she’d at first melted into the kiss, her body sighing against him, Stella stiffened and scowled, her magic stirring darkly. “That’s easy for you to say.Youdon’t have to—”
“Nilly!” Queen Amelia swept into the room, a vision in a violet gown that exactly matched her famously beautiful eyes, a shade the poets compared to summer twilight. Her equally famous red-gold hair was piled in an elaborate and intricate set of coiled braids, adding regal height to her otherwise diminutive figure. “Why are you lurking up here in this awful tower? You have the rest of your life to spend with Jak, but a wedding happens only once.”
Stella, similarly petite, though more delicately curved, flashed Jak one more betrayed look from her solemn gray eyes before she faced her mother. “Youhad two weddings,” shepointed out sweetly, and Jak winced internally, tempted to draw a dagger and spin it between his fingers. A blade wasn’t useful for these sugar-coated duels between mother and daughter, however. Instead, he sidled a bit around a chair, hoping to escape friendly fire.
Ami’s rose-pink lips fell open in a studied picture of wounded surprise at her daughter’s words, her eyes filling with tears in a way that made them luminous.Uh-oh,Jak thought to himself.She’s already escalating to lethal weapons.This did not bode well. On pretext of glancing out the window, he eased himself a bit more to the side.
“I only hope you never experience the devastating grief of being widowed as I was,” Ami replied, voice choked with sorrow. Her canny gaze slid to Jak, however, as if she wouldn’t be allthatupset if he met with an early demise.
Unable to restrain himself, he drew a blade, produced a cheeky grin, and saluted the queen with a flashy spin of the dagger behind Stella’s back before resuming a more subtle and soothing tumble of it through his fingers. That was just practicing technique, keeping his hand in. He’d neveractuallyplant a dagger in his future heart-mother’s forehead.
Tempting though it might be at times.
“Mother,” Stella said with thinning patience, “you know that’s not what I meant.”
“I should hope not.” Ami sniffled becomingly. “Your poor father. Cut down in the prime of his youth.”
“What I mean to point out is,” Stella bravely continued, “that weddings are not the be-all and end-all. It’s basically a big party. I’ve told you numerous times that I don’t want planning this wedding to take over our lives. I would’ve been very happy with—”
“Withwhat?” Ami cut in, bitingly. “You are a princess, Stella. A princess of Avonlidgh and niece of Her Majesty the HighQueen, not to mention the bearer of the mark of the Tala, heir to a legacy of sorcery that precedes written history.”
“Only because the Tala don’t like to write things down,” Stella muttered.
Ami breezed past that objection. “And this isnot‘just a party,’ missy! This is an affair of state. You are the first of Salena’s grandchildren to marry and this alliance joins the distinguished lines of three great nations: Annfwn, the Twelve Kingdoms, and the Empire of Dasnaria.”
Jak blinked in surprise. He’d been wondering what the third nation was. Also, it felt like a bit of a reach, saying he was bringing any kind of alliance with the empire. Though his father admittedly had been second in line to be Emperor of Dasnaria, Kral had also abdicated his claim when he embraced exile with the love of his life instead—a woman who was decidedlynotroyal in any sense of the word. Nobody considered Jak to be a representative of any royal bloodline. He was pretty much a lowly sailor and at peace with that. He edged a bit more toward the door, within scenting distance of freedom.
Stella pinned him with a silvery glance, clearly conveying the unpleasant consequences should he abandon her. That was the trouble with falling in love with a powerful empath and sorceress—he had no secrets from her, whether he wanted to or not. Good thing he didn’t want to. Most of the time.
Resigned, he seated himself on a high stool at the workbench Stella had been using to draft a diagram of the overlapping worlds they’d discovered on their recently completed quest. Stella and their friend, Lena, had been messaging notes and documents back and forth all summer, trying to reconstruct the pattern they’d perceived only through metaphysical senses while traveling out of body.
It went without saying that Queen Amelia didn’t approve of Stella’s abiding fascination with discovering and someday traveling to these new worlds.
“You’re right,” Stella said with admirable grace, capitulating to the point of holding up her hands in surrender. “I fully understand that my rank and privileges come with responsibilities and that what for anyone else would be a private celebration of love is a major political event for me.”
Jak eyed her. Stella’s poise was fraying rapidly, her frustration burning through. No small part of their current difficulties derived from that whole “first to wed” bit. Stella’s twin brother, Astar, would be getting married the following summer at Castle Ordnung, the seat of the high throne. As Astar was also the heir to that high throne, his wedding would be the event of the decade, possibly the century—with credit going to High Queen Ursula. Ami was determined to outshine that wedding with Stella’s in any way possible. What she couldn’t match in gravitas, she was making up for in sheer glitz and glamour.
“Still,” Stella continued, having taken a deep breath first, “I thought we already finished the seating arrangements.”
“Well, if you’dlistenedto me,” Ami replied, looking very pleased with herself, “then you’d know that the guest list has changed. It seems that Empress Inga wasdelightedto receive the invitation to dear Jakral’s wedding.” She threw a satisfied smirk at Jak, her lips curving as she no doubt observed the blood draining from Jak’s face.
“You invitedEmpress Inga?” he asked Stella, the question squeaking out rather unmanfully in his shock.
Stella met his gaze, her somber gray eyes steady and assessing. She shook her head slowly. “Not me.”
“No, because neither of you were at all helpful in discussing the invitation list,” Ami said sweetly, triumph written in everyline of her. She tossed down the scroll she’d been carrying, which Jak had foolishly believed to be some sort of seating chart. The Konyngrr family crest shone boldly in silver leaf. Inga had modified the former crest so that it no longer resembled a mailed fist sitting spider-like in the center of a silver web. Instead, a decidedly feminine hand, open-palmed, appeared to be manipulating the strands of the web, symbolic of the empress’s more subtle, yet still absolute, power.
The unrolled scroll revealed Dasnarian text, a language he could read and write passably well. Even with the document upside-down, he could pick out the column of names listed as attending his wedding, along with the helpfully noted total.
“Aunt Inga wants to bring an entourage of two hundred people,” he told Stella, and she closed her eyes briefly in a clear prayer for patience. If her patron goddess, Moranu, heard her, She gave no sign. “My aunt Helva, included.”
