Dark Skies

by Danielle L. Jensen

  Cordelia stiffened almost imperceptibly, then shook her head. “That won’t be necessary.” She closed her hand tightly on her husband’s arm, all but dragging him from the room, pausing only for a heartbeat to meet Lydia’s gaze, her eyes full of condemnation. “Thank you for your hospitality, Lydia.”

  But Lydia heard what the young woman really meant: if Lucius wins, it will be because of you.

  11

  KILLIAN

  Killian followed the Princess silently through the palace, trusting neither his temper nor his tongue until they were alone. Up the stairs and down the corridor and into a room full of ladies, all who stood at the sight of the Princess, their eyebrows rising with interest as Killian followed her inside.

  “Lord Calorian is sworn to me now,” Malahi announced. “So you can expect to see much more of him, as my safety will be his first priority.”

  “And our safety, by extension?” one of them—High Lord Torrington’s daughter—quipped with a smirk. The way she looked him up and down made Killian feel like he was a horse at auction, and the giggles of the other young women did not improve the situation. “I’ll rest ever so much easier knowing a god-marked warrior is within reach.”

  She said the last with a slow wink and Killian’s cheeks heated, which only added to his foul temper. Gods, but he hated being at court.

  Expression unreadable, Malahi gestured to the door. “If you ladies would allow us some privacy, Lord Calorian and I have much to discuss.”

  They all departed without a word, but the knowing looks and sly smiles frayed the remains of his self-control.

  “Why have you done this?” he demanded, slamming the door with enough force that the picture hanging next to it fell from the wall with a clatter. “What are you playing at, Malahi? This is no joke. Not for me. I’m now sworn to you for life.”

  “You wouldn’t have a life left to live if I hadn’t done it, you ungrateful idiot,” she said, crossing the room and taking a seat on a velvet-upholstered sofa, “so perhaps enough with the complaints.”

  Glaring at her, Killian went to stare out the glass doors leading to the expansive balcony. The sea beyond was grey and storm tossed, and he watched a Maarin vessel fly across the waves, blue sails straining against the wind.

  They’d made him do it right then and there. Get down on his knees and swear to protect Malahi with his sword and his life until the gods took one of them. Dareena had supplied the proper words, but in truth, Killian hadn’t needed them, because he remembered. Remembered his father sitting with him as a child, helping Killian memorize the oath to repeat to the Falorn princess, just as he himself had decades before to the girl’s father. She’d died before Killian had ever had the chance to say them to her, but they still felt burned into his soul.

  The thought of his father sent a slice of pain through his gut. Dead when Mudamora needed him most, and Killian might as well have stabbed him in the heart himself. Shoving aside the hurt, he muttered, “It’s like being married. But worse. At least I wouldn’t have to spend every waking minute with a wife.”

  “Would sharing my bed help ease the pain?”

  Twisting around, he gaped at her. Malahi chuckled before reaching down to pick up a deck of cards, shuffling them without intent to play. “I’m joking, Killian. I’ve no intention of taking up with you.”

  “Not far enough up the chain of succession for your tastes?” He shrugged. “Your loss.”

  Malahi rolled her eyes. “I’m interested in your martial prowess, Killian, not your other rumored talents.”

  There was something easy about slipping into banter with her—certainly far easier than thinking about every gods-damned thing that had gone wrong. Losing the wall. Losing his father. Losing what semblance of freedom he’d ever had. “So you have heard those rumors.” Never mind that most of them were total bullshit.

  “Hearing isn’t the same as believing.”

  “I couldn’t agree more.” He came back across the room and took the seat opposite her. “Always best to discover the truth for one’s self.”

  Malahi gave him a pitying look. “And it’s always good to have aspirations.”

  Laughing, he took the deck from her and dealt out the cards before splashing a generous measure of brandy into two glasses. He wanted answers from her, and in his experience nothing loosened tongues quite like a few drinks and a deck of cards. Eyeing his hand, Killian dug out a handful of gold and tossed it on the table. Malahi’s brow furrowed; then she eased a ring off one finger and added it to the pile. “You’ve changed,” he said.

  “It’s been over a year since you last saw me.”

  Killian put down a card and drew another. A bloody two. Not what he wanted, but he added to his bet, nonetheless. “Time itself doesn’t change people, Highness. What happens to them while it passes does.”

  “Wise words from the dashing Killian Calorian.” Malahi added an earring to the pile, the amber the same shade as her eyes. “Employing you as my bodyguard is paying dividends already.”

  He didn’t answer, only drew another card. Cursed seven. His luck wasn’t normally this bad.

  “Does the kingdom change to fit the ruler or the ruler to fit the kingdom?” she finally asked.

  Killian shrugged. “I’ve spent all my wisdom for the day, Highness. Your turn.”

  The corner of Malahi’s mouth turned up, and she arranged and rearranged the cards in her hand. “I don’t know the answer, only that everything is different.” Toying with the corner of one card with a polished nail, she said, “You’ve been gone. At the wall, and before that, with Dareena in the North. So you weren’t here to see.”

  “To see what?” He’d heard things. Rumors. Whispers. But what Killian was after was the truth, because he rather thought the truth was the reason he wasn’t on his way to the headsman’s block.

  Malahi gave a slow shake of her head. “It’s like the wilting of a flower. An incremental decay that is seen only by comparing what is before one’s eye with the bloom in one’s memory.”

  Killian’s skin prickled. Exhaling a long breath, he leaned back to listen.

  “Failing crops. Dying livestock. Drought. Disease. At first it was isolated to pockets in the center of the kingdom, but it’s been spreading, and with it has come a loss of faith. A belief that the Six are abandoning us.”

  “That’s nonsense. A few years of bad weather, that’s all,” Killian replied, though he’d heard from his own family that dozens of foals in the Calorian horse herds had been stillborn. Fruit rotting overnight on the trees. Springs drying up. Ill omens.

  “Maybe so. But the weather doesn’t explain why the gods have stopped bestowing marks.”

  “Even Hegeria?”

  Malahi nodded.

  Killian’s hands chilled, and he splashed more brandy into both their glasses, despite the Princess not having touched hers. Hegeria was the kindest of the gods, and she was also the most generous with her healer’s mark. The last count he’d heard, there had been close to three thousand healers in Mudamora alone.

  “Not a single healer marked in over a year in Mudamora. Neither Yara nor Lern have marked tenders or shifters in at least two. And the last Mudamorian to be marked by Tremon was you. That was fifteen years ago. I can’t say as to whether Madoria and Gespurn have also ceased giving marks, as neither the Maarin nor the giants are forthcoming, but that something is wrong in Mudamora is certain.”

  Something rotten. The thought crossed through Killian’s mind, then faded away. “Gods … I didn’t know.”

  “No one outside the Council of Twelve and certain individuals within the temples does. It’s been kept quiet lest it further erode faith in the Six.”

  “I think you’re underestimating the intelligence of our people. This isn’t a secret that can be kept. Not for long. Nor should it be.”

  “I don’t disagree,” Malahi replied. “You know my father has always been … devout. He believes marks are a gift from the gods as a reward for our faith.
But he also believes that those marks are often squandered.”

  Such had been the impetus of requiring all Mudamorians blessed with marks to come to the capital for training, most especially the healers. Killian himself had been subjected to intense schooling in the art of war, including three years of tutelage under Dareena in the North, she being the only other individual marked by Tremon in the entire kingdom. Yet his father’s parting words echoed through Killian’s thoughts: The god of war gave you the gifts needed to defend Mudamora, but what have you done but squander them?

  Malahi’s voice pulled him back into the present. “Your defeat at the wall … it was the culmination of my father’s fears that the Marked Ones aren’t as devoted as they should be and, with that loss of devotion, are not as strong. You didn’t just lose a battle—you lost to one of the corrupted. A queen who, if the rumors are true, was placed on the throne of Derin by the Seventh himself. You might not have seen it, but my father is furious with you.”

  “He was ready to take my head off,” Killian replied. “His sentiments were clear enough.”

  “It’s not your fault.”

  Killian wasn’t interested in her absolution. It was his fault. But the information she’d revealed about the gods no longer bestowing marks and of the rot settling into the heart of Mudamora made him certain that the odds stacked against him had been higher than he’d realized. That perhaps it had been no coincidence that the prior commander of the wall had died an accidental death right when Killian had been pushing his father for a position of greater authority.

  “Rufina called me out,” he said, staring at the contents of his glass. “Right before the battle began. She came to the front of her army and shouted that there’d be a reward for my head.”

  “If you were close enough to hear her, why didn’t you shoot her?”

  “I tried.” Blood roared in his ears, realization settling into his core. Another mistake. “Four arrows straight at her heart. She caught them all and laughed.” And his men had seen. Had heard.

  Malahi’s face was expressionless. She knew the story already—it must have traveled with one of the handful who had survived the battle. “Rufina wanted you to try to kill her.”

  Because she’d needed him to fail. Killian’s hands turned to ice and he downed his drink in one swallow. The strength of his mark came from the gods. The strength of the gods came from the faith of the people. The faith of the people depended on their belief that the Marked were what stood between them and the Corrupter.

  His men had watched him fail to kill Rufina. Killian cringed at the thought that their faith in the Six had been rattled by that failure, but Rufina’s subsequent ruse was precisely the sort of thing his mark always predicted. Killian wasn’t fool enough to brush it off as coincidence. And now … “All of Mudamora knows that I couldn’t stop the invasion.” It seemed arrogant to believe that people would think his failings were the failings of the gods, but …

  Malahi gave a slow nod as though reading his mind. “And my father is only reinforcing their fears by keeping you from leading the Royal Army against Rufina’s forces, especially given the role is your birthright. He might as well scream to all of Mudamora that he doesn’t trust the Six to protect us. But he’s so blinded by his fear that his own mistake caused this that he doesn’t see through to the truth.”

  Killian narrowed his gaze. “Which mistake is that?”

  Picking up her glass, Malahi swirled the contents, then set it back down. “The one pertaining to me.” She broke off, her throat convulsing as if it hurt to swallow. “I’m the one he truly hates. The one he truly blames for all of this. The one he really wants dead.”

  The rest of the room fell away, Killian’s focus entirely on her. On the slight dampening of the hair at her temples. The flutter of her pulse in the slender column of her neck.

  Fear.

  “Do you have any secrets, Killian?”

  “Everyone has secrets.”

  “Any that might be the death of you if they were to be revealed?”

  Killian hesitated, then shook his head.

  “Can I trust you?”

  “I’m sworn to protect you, Malahi.” His heart was beating rapidly in his chest, like the steady throb of a war drum. “But the decision of who to trust is yours.”

  She rested her cards facedown on the table, then stood abruptly. Going to a potted plant that sat next to the sofa, the Princess ran a gentle finger across one of the leaves.

  The leafy branches shivered; then buds formed, growing and shifting and then bursting open into pink blooms. A process that should’ve taken weeks, condensed to a moment. A god’s power.

  Killian exhaled a long breath. “You’re a tender.” Marked by Yara, the goddess of the earth and all that grew upon it.

  “Yes.” Malahi curled her hand lovingly around one of the blooms. “Yara chose me when I was ten. I was so happy—the idea that I could help to feed my people seemed such a blessing.” She shook her head sharply. “Children are fools.”

  Killian didn’t agree, but he remained silent.

  “My mother was horrified, of course. This was after my father had made the enforced service of Marked Ones law. The revelation that I’d been marked would’ve meant me being taken from her, sent for training at Yara’s temple and then to work the fields day after day until the gods took me. For my father to make an exception for me…” She dragged in a ragged breath. “Impossible. So she begged him to keep my mark a secret. And he agreed.”

  Gods … If it were discovered that the man who’d forced hundreds of families to give up their marked children into servitude had protected his own from such a fate, Serrick’s reign would be over. His life might be over given that it was his law that mandated that helping a marked individual avoid service was punishable by death.

  “Everything that’s happening,” Malahi continued, breaking Killian from his thoughts, “the invasion, the lack of new marks, the failing of the land—my father believes to be the result of a lack of devotion in the Marked. And to him, I epitomize this lack of devotion—he sees me as blasphemous. But to reveal my secret would see him lose what he sees as his gods-given duty to lead the Marked, and more than once since my mother died he’s told me that if I am not able to serve I’m better off dead.”

  Killian didn’t need to ask whether she believed that threat was real. Every instinct raging through him said that it was.

  “I want to protect our people. To help keep them fed. To use my gift for their benefit.” Malahi withdrew her hand from the plant. “But not under my father’s terms. Not as a slave to the Crown. Service should be a choice, and I believe that in taking that autonomy away from the Marked he has weakened rather than strengthened our devotion to the gods.”

  Though he was far from cold, Killian shivered, feeling the weight of six sets of divine eyes upon him. Upon both of us, he silently amended as Malahi rubbed her arms, casting a glance over her shoulder.

  Retrieving her cards, Malahi hid their faces in the folds of her silken skirts. “What is it that you want most, Killian?”

  Not that long ago, he’d have struggled with the answer to the question. Now the words came straight to his lips. “To push Rufina and her damned army back across that wall and make them regret ever coming near it.”

  “If we work together, we might both get our wishes. We could save Mudamora.”

  Killian narrowed his eyes, considering both her words and his cards. With the way she was clutching hers, he wasn’t going to win with a pair of sevens, so he folded. “How?”

  “By putting the crown on my head.”

  Succession was no simple thing in Mudamora. While the right of primogeniture determined inheritance within the twelve houses, simply being heir to the ruling house did not ensure a rise to the throne when the High Lord of said house met his end. The heir needed the support of a majority of the twelve great houses—seven votes from High Lords or Ladies—in order to assume the crown. But never in the history of Mud
amora had a woman been allowed to inherit the throne. That had been the reason House Falorn had lost the crown when King Derrick and his family were assassinated. His younger sister, the then fifteen-year-old Dareena, had inherited control of House Falorn, but despite Killian’s father’s best attempts, the other High Lords had been unwilling to stand behind the young High Lady as queen, their weak excuse that she was not of age.

  The result was two years of civil war while the great houses jockeyed for control of the kingdom. Serrick Rowenes eventually won the majority under the condition that command of the Royal Army remain with High Lord Calorian.

  All that aside, there was a larger obstacle to Malahi’s ambitions. “Your father is still alive.”

  “There is precedent to the Twelve voting to move the crown to an heir’s head prior to the death of the King.”

  Killian huffed out a breath. “Yes, when the King is on his deathbed or consumed by dementia or in some other way unable to perform his duties. Fanatic he might be, but your father is still sound of body and mind. And even if they desired to take the crown from him, it would be to be put it on one of their heads, not yours.”

  If Malahi was put off by his words, she didn’t show it, her voice smooth as she said, “Mudamora is faltering under my father’s rule. Faith in the Six has been faltering under his rule. Do you imagine it will do any better under any of the High Lords?”

  He didn’t, but neither could he imagine any of them accepting an alternative.

  “Everyone was willing to let my father execute you. Was willing to let you take the fall. Everyone but me. Help me claim the throne and I’ll put you at the front of the Royal Army. And I have nothing but confidence that this time you’ll defeat Rufina.”

  “You need the majority vote, Malahi. Just how do you hope to achieve that?”

  “By offering myself—and my house—up as bait.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Instead of answering, the Princess laid her cards down on the table, and Killian’s focus snapped to the faces of the cards, a slow grin working onto his face, despite the gravity of the moment. It was rare anyone outbluffed him. “You have no hand.”