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The queen rose gracefully and inclined her head. “Then let us speak. I willconsidergranting aid to our southern neighbour despite our long and bloodstained history, but as it is a decision that concerns the whole of Riehse Eshan, I wanted Temar present at our discussion. That,” she added, her expression turning wry, “and I rather hoped your brother’s presence here would explain why you had not gone to him first, Nathanael. It was certainly…illuminating.”
My stomach knotted at the glimpse of the coldness Ren and Val had tried to warn me about. Astrid had always just beenAstridto me,clever and independent and often apprehensive, but when she was playing the political part of Mazekhstam’s monarch and not my friend, the callousness was evident. “You could have just asked, Your Majesty.”
“I recall a certain nine-year-old Temarian prince swearing up and down that he had no idea where the curtains in the second dining hall had gone,” she mused, and her eyes danced with a mischief I recognised from years past, “when he’d watched me cut them into cloaks for our games not half an hour before. I learnt a long time ago not to trust your word, Your Highness.” Yet the words were spoken with fondness, and Astrid gifted me a smile – something she’d done often when we’d been alone a few days ago but hadn’t yet allowed herself to show in front of Ren – before gliding through into one of the antechambers along the throne room’s left wall.
“Nat,” Val said on an exhale, raising his arm again. This time, not struck by fear, I recognised it for the hug it was and let him pull me into a tight embrace, amazed when his other arm reached out and wrapped around Ren’s shoulders. My lover stiffened in similar surprise before quickly recovering, winking at me and pressing his lips to Valeri’s cheek in an exaggerated, noisy kiss.
My brother immediately shoved him away with one huge hand, the movement abrupt yet playful. “Fuck off, Aratorre.”
I laughed into his shoulder, relief cascading down my spine at the realisation that I didn’t have to choose between my family and my heart. I’d been so terrified of what I’d Seen Val do to Ren that I hadn’t let myself believe what I knew: that hewouldn’t.
Valeri glanced at the door Astrid had left through, and then lowered his voice. “Our mother won’t allow Mila to mobilise Temar’s army unless Mazekhstam is willing to send its own,” he murmured. “You’re going to be negotiating for both armies.”
Ren caught and held my eye. Maybe if I didn’t know him as well as I did, I’d have been fooled, but his tense posture betrayed the anxiety he was hiding behind a cocky smirk. “If I can entice your brother into my bed, Velichkov, I doubt winning a few thousand more people to my side will pose a challenge at all.”
Rolling his eyes, Val shooed Ren ahead of him, waiting for the prince to leave through the door before turning to me and ruffling up my hair with a fond smile. Then he frowned, rubbing his fingers together and bringing them to his nose to sniff.
“Is that…mustard?”
“Serves you right,” I snapped, but without much bite, attempting to flatten my hair down from where he’d mussed it up. “How did you get here so quickly?”
It had felt like eons while we were isolated in our rooms upstairs, but by my count it had been less than a week. A rider couldn’t have reached Delzerce and returned with Val in that time.
“I was in Kiripul,” he said, naming a town in eastern Mazekhstam. “Aksinia said she’d Seen you might come through the Pass. I was looking for you.”
“Oh.” I fidgeted under his gaze. “I’m sorry I didn’t trust you.”
Valeri sighed. “The Sight is a difficult gift to manage, Nathanael. I don’t blame you for fearing what it showed you, but you shouldn’t have had to be alone all that time. To reach Stavroyarsk whole and uncaptured…” He shook his head and chuckled. “I really shouldn’t be surprised by your resourcefulness by now. You and Aratorre are the only ones who can keep up with each other.”
And with that, he followed the others into the antechamber, leaving me blinking after him before hurrying to catch up.
The room was smaller than I’d expected, still grand in the way that the whole castle was with its tapestries and looming pillars and huge slabs of grey stone forming the floor and walls, but only just large enough to fit a table of four. A shaft of sunlight allowed in through the single slitted window highlighted the dust motes dancing in the air before landing upon a large map stretched across the surface of the table and held down in the corners by carved paperweights. Astrid was seated demurely in one of the high-backed chairs, her eyes settled on Ren across from her, who was lazily lounging in his own chair like he’d been sitting in it for hours.
He looked up as I entered, winked, and patted his lap in invitation.
I rolled my eyes and took the seat at the far end of the table instead, placing myself opposite Val but instantly half-regretting my decision not to grace my ass with the warm squishiness of Ren’s legs instead. Because fuck me, these chairs were uncomfortable.
My brother made a similar wince to me, but Astrid looked entirely unconcerned at the unpleasant hardness. I expected she could be made to sit on a row of spikes and she’d somehow manage to pull off the same serene expression she was wearing now, a gracefulness that couldn’t be further from how Ren had put his feet up onto the edge of the table and was using that leverage to rock onto the back legs of his chair, clearly already bored.
The queen waved a hand. “You may begin.”
Ren’s brown eyes glittered dangerously. “Oh, howkindof you.”
“If you’re not-”
“I’m nothing like my father,” he interrupted. “Let’s start with that, shall we? All the bloodshed and the aggravation and the cruelty of the last twenty-five years…that’s not what I want for my people. Or yours.”
Astrid regarded him coolly. “Nothing like your father,” she repeated. “And I’m supposed to just believe that?”
Ren’s laugh was short and sharp. “Everyone else in Quareh seems to. A single lie spread about my illegitimacy, and a day later there’s a new king on the throne. I suppose I should be grateful you’re not so easily fooled.”
“Yet you still believe you’re entitled to that throne?”
“Heis,” I said firmly, making three pairs of eyes turn to me. “Ren will be a good ruler, Astrid, and whether you agree with me about that or not, you can’t deny he’ll be better than the pricks in charge now. Didn’t they declare war on Mazekhstam within a fortnight of taking power?”
She sighed, letting the tiredness show in her expression again. “I cannot deny that I would like to see that Lukian lose his ill-gotten crown,” she admitted, fingers fluttering through the air as if she could so easily waft Welzes away, “but interfering in another country’s politics is not an action I take lightly. If I provide soldiers to you to invade Quareh, Aratorre, if I support what would essentially be a rebellion considering the claims against your heritage, then what’s to stop someone doing that to me?”
She looked at Ren, and then at Val, who swallowed in unease.
