A River of Royal Blood

by Amanda Joy

  I crashed into him, but Baccha caught my fists before I could hit him. “Why would you leave your door open? You fool, I thought she had you too. I thought—”

  “Princess, love, what has happened?”

  I grabbed his arm and started running again.

  * * *

  I changed while someone else explained to Baccha and Mirabel. I hesitated over my swords, but eventually belted the Khimaerani blade around my hips. I’d killed somebody with it and I felt more murderous than ever now. Besides, it was another piece of Papa that I could carry. The knives I’d strapped to my legs earlier stayed and I added two on my wrists. I also hung the horns around my neck.

  When I left my dressing room, I called Baccha, Mirabel, Anali, and Falun into my room.

  I pointed to the hatch Mirabel had boarded up. “I need this removed. The best way to get to Isadore’s room without alerting her is through the passageways.”

  Mirabel snorted. “I’m certain your mad sprinting through the Palace has alerted her enough. I wouldn’t worry about that.”

  “I wasn’t asking.” I pointed again. I turned to Anali. “Only Baccha is coming.”

  She sputtered, stepping closer to me. I willed myself not to step back. “Eva—” she started. I cut her a hard glare. “Your Highness, Prince Aketo is important to me, as are you. I would ask that I accompany you.”

  “This is my fight. It isn’t about Aketo. She’s just using him to draw me to her.” And I was going to kill her for it, if I could. She’d taken so much; she couldn’t have him. I refused.

  “I know, Your Highness, but you are my fight and Aketo is my Prince. Rival Heirs have done this many times before, and often those they take are killed. Princess Isadore would likely face no consequences for his death. I cannot let that happen.”

  I opened my mouth—a yes perched on my lips—but an edge of panic scattered my thoughts. I needed someone to make certain Aketo was safe, but Anali could be used against me. I couldn’t offer Isadore another weapon. I’d seen Baccha withstand her magick. He was the only one I could bring.

  But even more than that, I needed to do this without her. I didn’t have time for Anali to question me or worry about my welfare. This wasn’t just about me anymore and, despite her words, I wasn’t certain she would see it that way.

  “I’m sorry, Anali,” I said, voice fraying. I pressed my lips together and shook my head until I had control. “Captain, I’m sorry, but no. You will stay here with Falun and the rest of the guards. If we do not return in an hour, it will mean that I am likely dead, but you still must bring everyone you can to Isadore’s rooms and save Aketo. And Baccha, should he require saving.”

  “Evalina, Falun and your Captain should go with you,” Mirabel said.

  “I’m sorry. They both have to stay safe,” I whispered. For the first time, I felt emotion seeping through the cracks in the steel fortress I’d erected around my mind.

  I stumbled toward a chair as the room swam. I curled my hands into fists. I didn’t have time for this. I had to save Aketo.

  “I have to do this,” I said. “Baccha will be with me. I won’t be alone.”

  “Evalina,” Anali said, her voice thick with an emotion that I had no time to understand. I thought she would argue, but she just squeezed my hands and said, “You have an hour.”

  Falun pressed a kiss to my cheek; his face was wet with tears. “My Queen.”

  Mirabel set someone to pull up the boards on the hatch and then pulled me to the side.

  She glanced down, and when she looked up, her eyes had filled with tears. “Your father would be so proud of you.”

  “Proud of what?” I asked. I itched to tell her I had no time for this.

  “You’ve feared facing your sister since you first learned of this. You feared your place in this world and your magick—your very self. It takes a great deal of strength to face your fears.” Her eyes went distant, recalling something other than this moment. “Even your father, great man that he was, never mastered that.”

  She pulled me into an embrace, but I could hardly wrap my arms around her. I couldn’t put all the battling fears inside me into words. At least not ones I was willing to say aloud.

  This could be the last time I would see her, Falun, and Anali.

  I wiped my wet eyes and followed Baccha down the ladder. I couldn’t even manage to tell them goodbye.

  As soon as my feet hit the floor, the hatch closed, leaving us in the dark. “I will challenge Isadore and you will take that opportunity to free Aketo.”

  “You should avoid challenging your sister, if you can. You’re not ready yet,” Baccha said. My eyes hadn’t adjusted, but I could see his, luminous in the dark. “Distract her as long as you can. We will see to Aketo.”

  I started down the passage, resting my hand on the bone hilt of my sword.

  “I have to challenge her,” I said. “Why wait?”

  “What about the binding?” he whispered, near my ear.

  “I already tried,” I said, casting my voice low. Mirabel and Anali still didn’t know about the binding. Baccha blinked at me. “I couldn’t do it. I will have to try to kill her without magick.”

  Baccha let loose a string of curses. “I would have told you the key to breaking it if I’d known you’d do something as stupid as to try on your own.”

  “What else was I to do? Wait for you to fix me?” I laughed. “It’s not worth discussing anymore. I tried. I can’t break it and I can’t use my magick.” I was back where I started, only now I’d had a taste of my magick. I knew its power and I’d lost most of my fear of it. Yet I was here still and I would use what little magick I could.

  “What did you do, exactly?”

  I explained, though I didn’t want to. We were close to Isadore’s rooms and I wasn’t going to hope Baccha could fix it.

  When I finished, Baccha was muttering under his breath.

  “The problem is, you don’t know the most important part, Princess.” He shook his head.

  I stopped. “What is it?”

  “The key to removing a binding is wanting your magick. And not just as a tool.” He stopped me with a hand on my shoulder. “Magick is a vital part of who you are. To break the binding, you have to accept yourself. Even the parts you don’t like. That is why the binding has gotten worse after your father’s death—because you resent yourself.”

  I stepped away from him with tears in my eyes. It took only a moment to steel myself against it. I twisted Papa’s ring on my finger until I felt barely anything at all.

  I stepped back and pulled my sword from its scabbard. “Draw your weapon. We’re close now.”

  Just walk straight to the right, I’d told Anali. When you see blue tiles and a ladder, climb.

  We walked right under the hatch, a square slab of sandstone rimmed with light. It could have led anywhere, but I’d sat here before, dozing while my fingers traced the cobalt tiles, waiting for Isadore to let me up. I knew what awaited me.

  Our suites mirrored each other, Isa’s in the east wing of the Palace and mine in the west. They were so similar. When we were children all the furniture in our rooms was the same, down to the hand-painted doves on our bedposts.

  Even the hatch was the same, like the placement of these rooms had been designed to keep us connected.

  Baccha took a step toward the ladder and my mind suddenly went clear as crystal. Aketo had been taken because of me. This was my fight. And I wasn’t going to put anyone, not even Baccha, in danger.

  Before he could realize what I planned, I sheathed my sword and jumped in front of Baccha. I started climbing up the ladder.

  Instead of pushing it open, I banged on the hatch. “I’m here, Isadore. I’ve come to challenge you, on the condition that you let Prince Aketo go.”

  There was no answer. I said it formally. “I’ve come to chall
enge my Rival Heir, Princess Isadore, her magick of light and persuasion. I’ve come to challenge you, Isa, just as long as you return my Prince!”

  For a moment, I thought I was wrong. Isadore had taken Aketo to another place. Maybe she was going to kill him, just to see how it would weaken me. Maybe it was someone else who took him, because they didn’t like the khimaer Prince dancing with their Princess.

  The hatch swung open and a guard with fey-sharp ears was silhouetted in the light. He reached for my collar, but we both knew he couldn’t hurt me.

  “Her Highness awaits you in her sitting room. I will gladly bring you and Lord Hunter,” he said.

  I glanced over my shoulder at Baccha. He nodded. “By all means, show us the way.”

  CHAPTER 33

  THERE WERE TEN guards in the room, half human and the other half fey. Even knowing none of them could harm me, my mouth still went dry. I could feel my heartbeat in the fingers curled around the bone hilt.

  None around us moved as Baccha, keeping his knife in place, bent the guard’s arms behind his back.

  “As you said.” Baccha pushed the man forward. I walked a few steps behind the two, my sword pointed straight ahead.

  We made our way around a large four-poster bed, past a table strewn with what looked like invitations—the gold-and-poppy-orange invitation to my nameday ball in the center—and past an empty dress form.

  It was eerily intimate, and wrong somehow, even with all these guards watching us. Challenges were meant to be at least somewhat public, as well as not held on the night of a nameday ball. Isa’s guards didn’t seem to care. Their faces gave no impression that they thought there was anything wrong with kidnapping a man in order to force a challenge between Rival Heirs. We reached the door and Baccha gave the guard enough slack to pull it open.

  I turned to watch our backs as we left the room, but still none of the guards moved toward me, as if their instructions had accounted for every moment of this.

  When the door swung closed behind me, I spun around. Another line of guards, five this time, pointing toward a door to the left.

  “Baccha,” I whispered. “Call to the wind and the wolves when we go into that room.”

  By design, the abundance of guards expecting us had set me off-balance. This moment had been planned carefully. The invitation felt like a taunt, and all these guards, a show of power.

  Well, Baccha had enough power for the both of us.

  “As you wish,” Baccha murmured.

  I stepped in front of him just before we reached the door. “Leave the guard.”

  I pulled open the door and stepped inside.

  The stirring wind lifted my hair off my neck as my eyes adjusted to the dim light. Isadore sat on a narrow bench in the center of the room and Aketo sat next to her, his hands and feet tied with rope. No one else was in the room.

  Isadore smiled at me, looking so like her childhood self, as if I was the trinket or candy she’d requested. Aketo seemed calm, at least until he saw my face. His eyes rolled over to Isadore and he glared at her.

  Isadore shivered, her hands curling into delicate fists, and she laughed. “Are you really going to try to use your magick again?” She twisted toward Aketo and grabbed his chin, forcing his eyes to hers. I could feel her magick, pulling at me. She was beautiful, heart-achingly so. “Do you love her? I could convince you to love me, if only I had use for a powerless khimaer.”

  “Stop,” I cried, but didn’t step forward. That sucking void of her power filled me with dread.

  Aketo growled low in his throat and opened his mouth, fangs bared. “Let go of me, Princess Isadore.”

  “Let him go, Isa, so we can end this.”

  “End it?” Isadore laughed again and rose to her feet. There was a knife in her hand and I wasn’t sure where she had gotten it. “We’ve just begun, little sister.”

  It was my turn to laugh. “We began the first time you tried to kill me, Isadore.”

  She tilted her head, giving me a strange look. “You’re still going on about that, Eva? It’s been years.”

  A shiver went up my spine. The pitch of her voice was high and wrong, her frozen smile.

  “Are you all right, Isadore?” I asked, inching farther into the room.

  She shrugged, casual as anything. “I will be. I’m about to become Queen.”

  “Even if you kill me, it’ll be years yet until Mother gives you the crown.”

  “No,” Isa said, grinning widely enough to show all her teeth. “I know how to force her hand. I know all of her secrets.”

  I froze. “Speak plainly, Isa. What secrets?”

  She giggled softly and shifted on the couch. I caught a glimpse of polished steel. “You and me, Eva. We’re only half sisters and Mother hid it from everyone.”

  “Liar,” I growled.

  A look of murder flashed across her face. “You are the liar.” She took a half step forward, but then turned back to Aketo. “Did you use your magick to make her fall in love with you? It seems a waste. You should have saved yourself the effort. If Eva can kill me, there will soon be a khimaer Queen on the throne.”

  Aketo froze. “What are you saying?”

  Had they been chatting this way, Isadore rattling off these ridiculous ravings, and Aketo enduring it, since he was taken?

  “He doesn’t know?” She blinked at me. “Oh, Eva, you didn’t even tell him? What about . . .” Isadore’s wild eyes latched on to Baccha. “You knew, didn’t you, Hunter?”

  Baccha went still next to me.

  “Knew what?” Aketo asked.

  Isadore let out a stream of hysterical laughter. I wanted to grab her shoulders and shake her until she started speaking with sense. “Oh. She still doesn’t know.”

  I’d lost all patience with this. “Know what?”

  “Mother was engaged before she and Papa were married. When she became with child”—Isa’s voice took on a bitter tone—“her betrothed fled Ternain. For some reason, he didn’t want to become King. Papa was just a replacement. He was a rising star in the Queen’s Army from an unknown House and a perfect pawn for Mother to manipulate. But that isn’t even the best part.”

  “Isa, I know you and Papa weren’t close but this is ridiculous. He was your father as much as he was mine.”

  Isadore ignored my words. “The best part is Papa tricked her into thinking he was human. Papa was khimaer. You are khimaer.”

  I shook my head. This—that couldn’t be true. Papa would have told me if he was khimaer. Besides, if I was khimaer, Isadore was too. “But you—Isadore, no. Papa wasn’t khimaer. Who told you this? Isa, it can’t be true.”

  “It’s true.” She wiped at a single tear falling down her face and folded her arms across her chest.

  A horrible thought occurred to me. “Did Mama tell you this? You know she hated Papa. You can’t trust what she said about him. Our father kept secrets, but he couldn’t have hidden something like this . . .”

  “He was not my father.” Her voice shook and she pointed the knife toward me. “He was a beast and a liar. And you are not my sister, not really.”

  “Please, Isadore. This can’t be true. Tell me who told you this. We’ll make sense of this together.” I recognized the taste of salt in my mouth. I was crying and I couldn’t even lower the sword to wipe my eyes for fear that she’d attack me.

  “Baccha,” I said. “She’s lying, isn’t she? Someone told her this and she just . . .”

  “Princess, no matter what your sister says, you came here for a reason,” Baccha said slowly. His eyes were shiny with tears. “This is still your fight. End it.”

  Then I realized—the binding. Papa had said that it was created to lock only a portion of my magick away. What if it was khimaer magick? It had never made sense, my father binding my magick just because of the word of the Auguries. But if he had known
there was something I needed to hide to grow up safe in the Palace . . .

  It is true.

  My father was khimaer and I . . .

  My blood raced beneath my skin. I closed my eyes as the room spun. “But how could he lie? How could he . . .”

  It takes a great deal of strength to face your fears . . . Even your father . . . never mastered that.

  And wasn’t the truth impossible to face?

  My sword rang as it hit the floor and I met Aketo’s eyes, so beautiful and so wide with confusion. He didn’t know, but Baccha did. Baccha knew the truth, and Papa had lied, spent his life lying. Like a flame under a strong wind, my vision wavered, then blew out. When I opened my eyes, I found the dark, damp dirt on the edge of my lake.

  I lay on my side, finger dipping beneath the water. I stretched toward it and reached for the truth.

  The water felt warm and welcoming as I kicked to the bottom. Tendrils snatched at my arms and legs, but it wasn’t magick—it was fear. I let my desire for the truth fill me up, because that was what this binding kept trapped. All the magick I feared was part of the whole truth of me and I wanted it.

  I wanted me.

  When I reached that shining barrier, I stretched out a hand and cut through it like a knife. I gasped in wonder as warmth enveloped me and golden light blew through my mind.

  Pain lanced through my limbs, like my bones were growing too quickly for my body to contain.

  I felt small as a child growing in my mother’s womb, but also large and infinite—layered, feathered, scaled, and furred. I rolled around in the allness and felt warmth and comfort that had been trapped inside me along with this magick.

  I felt wholly different, but whole for the first time. I had only my mind, and in my mind I could become all manner of things. No, I was all manner of things.

  A sound pricked my consciousness and I chose, understanding that choosing was now a part of me.

  I opened my eyes to find Baccha standing over me, soft wonder on his face. I’d curled up on my side and I looked down at my fists clenched so tight. I relaxed them and winced, feeling as if I’d just pulled pieces of glass from my palms. Then I screamed.