Savage Reign

by Melody Locklear

  The way the necklace hangs out of my jewelry box now reminds me of the way Tristan’s lifeless body hung out of the coffin the night of his disaster funeral and I have to shut my eyes tight to will the image away.

  I pick up the necklace, running a finger over the T. “I miss you so much.” I whisper to no one and then tuck the necklace back into the box, closing it tight. Part of me wants to wear that necklace just to piss Keenan off, but I think better of it since he has the power to restart my interrogations.

  My already sour mood plummets when only Finn is waiting for me outside my bedchambers. I had hoped Missy would have gotten over herself by now and showed up so the three of us could walk down to the ballroom together, but it seems she is still being stubborn. She’s been avoiding me ever since the first interrogation, ashamed of what she’d been forced to do. If only she knew her avoiding me hurts more than anything her ice could do to me. Fortunately she will not be able to avoid me tonight.

  “Hey there, gorgeous.” Finn says with a charming smile, but I can’t smile back. The endearment only reminds me of Roman, souring my mood further. Who knew Roman Novak would be the prince I trust more than the one I know will be waiting for me just outside the ballroom doors? Mistaking my disappointment, Finn adds, “Don’t worry. We’ll ambush her at the deserts table tonight. She won’t be able to avoid you when there’s chocolate cake standing in the way.”

  I laugh lightly, allowing Finn to glimpse a ghost of a smile. “Promise?”

  “Promise.” he says, offering me his arm. He waits until we’re on our way to tell me how beautiful I look tonight.

  “Why does an ambassador need an entire ball thrown in his honor anyway?” is my brilliant response.

  “You don’t take compliments well, do you?” Finn asks me with a smirk. I cut him a warning look. He sighs. “Who knows why any of these royals do what they do, Mar? They like to show off and the king is looking to do a lot of that. He really wants an alliance with Zakaria.”

  “Maybe if he gets it he’ll leave me alone for a while.” I say hopefully.

  “Maybe.” Finn pushes his fingers into mine, giving my hand a gentle squeeze to comfort me. Despite my surroundings, Finn makes me feel safe and so I lean into him, drawing strength from my friend. That’s going to have to be enough to get me through tonight.

  Sure enough when we reach the ballroom Keenan waits for me outside it, hands tucked behind his back, waiting patiently. I see a muscle in his cheek jump when Finn leans over and presses a kiss to my cheek. “Good luck.” he mutters.

  Purposely I grip Finn’s wrist, just to watch Keenan squirm. “Thanks. I’m gonna need it.” Because it isn’t so simple as to tolerate Keenan for the night. In the presence of the court I have to actually pretend like I’m happy to be marrying this man when all I want to do is vomit every time he touches me.

  I approach Keenan feeling a little better about tonight when I see the fire in his eyes. We know how to hurt each other beyond trading insults like children on a playground. He can’t peel away every layer of the lovestruck, village boy.

  Keenan takes my hand when I reach him. “Looks like I was right. You do look beautiful in blue.” he whispers against my ear as he presses a kiss to my cheek.

  For ceremony I lean in and let him, but not without my own response. “Drop dead.”

  My words only make him laugh. “It’s going to be a fun night.” he says. “Oh, but one more thing.” Keenan reaches into his pocket and produces the fleur de lis, the necklace I’d refused to wear. “I chose this necklace for a reason.” he says, removing mine with one quick tug at the neck. I gasp, touching my throat. I’m so astonished by his audacity that I can’t stop him when he replaces my necklace with his. “It’s going to keep that magic under lock and key so you can’t ruin tonight.” He lays the thing flat on my chest and then smiles at me as if I’m not feeling the sudden removal of my magic. “Ready?” He gives me no time to respond before he guides me into the elaborate ballroom.

  It seems the ball has already started because the king is already here. Some people dance on the ballroom floor while others congregate around the hors d’oeuvre table. The rest are at the bar, which is exactly where I want to be right now.

  I recognize Zakaria’s ambassador already, dressed in his queen’s House colors, green and black, to emphasize their element: earth. I don’t know a lot about the Zakarian queen other than the fact that she’s only a few years older than me and she’s as ruthless as they come. It’s probably why she sent this guy on her behalf. Too many enemies to fear.

  The ambassador is not what I expected. An old, graying man as stuck in his ways as the Serpentarian haters. Instead I find someone more boy than man, untamed sandy bronze hair like mine, dark at the root and gray eyes, maybe Theon’ age, in his twenties. He reminds me a lot of my mother, which I suppose isn’t surprising since my mother is Zakarian.

  “Come. I’ll introduce you.” Keenan says, tugging me along, giving me no chance to refuse.

  When Bastian sees us coming he spreads his arm wide, making me flinch into Keenan as we draw closer to him. I have not forgotten those eyes on me as he enacted his weapons—Missy and Finn—to torture me slowly.

  “Ambassador Belvedere, I’m sure you’ve heard of my cousin Keenan Volterra, who I’ve recently taken under my wing.” Bastian says, smiling over at his cousin, but whatever response the ambassador gives is background noise to me. I’m too focused on what my ears have just heard.

  “Belvedere?” I hiss at Keenan under my breath, narrowing my eyes at him, demanding an answer as to why the ambassador of Zakaria has the same last name as my mother. Keenan ignores me, keeping his smile as he responds to the ambassador’s greetings in kind.

  The ambassador, however polite, is focused on one thing and one thing only and that’s me. His gray eyes—so familiar—do not move from mine. Something about me fascinates him.

  “This is her?” he asks Bastian.

  “Yes, this is her.” Bastian smiles down at me, clutching my shoulder. I suppress the urge to flinch out of his reach. “Amara Boudelaire, princess of Llìria and my cousin’s betrothed.”

  “It is nice to finally meet you, Lady Amara.” The ambassador, to my eternal surprise, bows gracefully and there is something in his eye I have not seen from another in quite some time. Respect. “Congratulations on your engagement. You two make a lovely pair.” But this is less sincere, though Keenan and Bastian don’t seem to notice.

  Normally I’d come back with some witty retort that would get me locked in my room for a few days, but there is something about this man that screams ally. “Thank you, Ambassador Belvedere. You’re very kind.”

  “Well,” Bastian claps his hands together. “We have a lovely feast prepared. Like my mother used to say, food before politics.” It’s hard to imagine Bastian with a mother, or as a person who was once a child at all. I just assumed he was born a monster.

  I wait until Keenan has got me tucked into the seat beside him before I demand answers. “Who is that guy?”

  “Oh, that guy?” He eyes the ambassador taking his seat a little ways down from where we’re sitting. “He’s your cousin.”

  “If he’s an ambassador then that means—”

  “Your mother wasn’t just some village girl from Zakaria? No, she wasn’t, but she gave all of that up when she married your father.” He says it like a curse, like my father is somehow unworthy of Lavina. It makes me hate him all the more.

  “Isn’t that what your mother did?” I say spitefully.

  Keenan doesn’t flinch though. The insult grazes over him like it’s nothing to him, like I’m nothing to him. It’s because you’re not, that voice deep inside reminds me.

  “My mother chose her path, Amara. I’m simply choosing mine.”

  “Here you go, Your Highness.” A waiter comes by me, placing a plate down in front of me. I offer him a forced smile and press a hand to the bottom of it when I feel a folded piece of paper underneath. I tilt the plate
up only slightly to find there are words scribbled on the paper. A note.

  Find me later. Come alone—Ambassador Grayson Belvedere

  I quickly tuck the note away and avoid Keenan’s eyes. He glances down at me, but doesn’t seem to find anything wrong. It just goes to show how much he’s changed. The old Keenan could pick up on even the subtlest twitch of the eye and immediately he’d know something was wrong.

  Tonight’s dinner is a four course meal and I can barely stomach any of it. I’m too anxious to speak to Grayson, my cousin. When it finally does come time to dance Keenan snatches me up before anyone else can.

  “May I have this dance?”

  I glance at the on-lookers, nobles who watch our every move, notice every battle line that is drawn. I can’t allow them to see any if I want to ensure my continued survival in this forsaken place.

  “Not like I have a choice.” I allow him to take my hand and pull me out onto the dance floor. He keeps one of my hands tucked in his and I put the other on his shoulder. When his free hand falls to my waist and pulls me in though I can’t help, but flinch. This, however, he notices.

  “You won’t be able to hate me forever, Amara.”

  He said something similar to me once, on a frustrating night spent in a library in a castle, a memory far, far away. You’ll have to forgive me one of these days, Amara. Little did he know that back then, I had already forgiven him. It was the trust I hadn’t had the chance to rebuild yet. Now we never will.

  “It’s not too late you know,” I say. “Everyone’s entitled to one mistake. You have two under your belt, but you can still change your mind. You can still fix this.” I don’t know how much I want that to be true until I hear the words aloud.

  He’s silent for a while and the way those ice-blue eyes look down at me, the way his mask slips just a little, I see he wants to. But his ego has other plans. “And what, Amara? Go back to Limacore, back to captivity? Or maybe you’d like to go back even further, huh? Back to a simple, village girl in love with a boy who was incapable of loving her back.”

  I know he means Tristan, but the similarities almost makes me laugh. “You talking about Tristan or yourself?” Keenan’s eyes twitch with anger, but it is the only reaction he gives me to the taunt. “Tristan was never in our way, Keenan. If you still can’t see that then you’re an even bigger fool than I thought.” Keenan blinks at me, stunned. It’s the closest to an admittance of my feelings for him than he’d ever gotten before he left Baal and it stuns him to silence.

  “Might I cut in?” Finn asks from my side, grinning at Keenan without flinching.

  I meet Keenan’s eyes once more before Finn can take over. “The only person who ever stood in the way of us…was you.” I pull my hand from his and offer it to Finn and let him drag me across the dance floor.

  “You handle yourself well, Boudelaire.” Finn says to me. “No one would ever know you want to stab him through the eye with your dinner fork.”

  “I need your help, Finn.” I say, ignoring the dark joke.

  His brown eyes fall on me and he is the picture of determination. “Name it and it’s yours.”

  “The ambassador left me a note. He wants to speak to me alone, but Keenan will never allow it. I need you to find a way to distract him long enough for me to see what the ambassador wants.”

  “Because you’re related to him?” he asks. I look up at him, surprised. “His last name is Belvedere. I put two and two together.”

  “He’s my cousin and I think he might be here to help, but I need to speak to him in order to find out.”

  “You got it.” Without another word Finn pulls from my grasp and sets off to his task. I peer over at Keenan who’s already moved on from me to his duties as a makeshift prince, schmoozing the nobles.

  My eyes search the room for Grayson and I find him standing by a door. He nods for me to follow. My eyes fly to Finn and he nods his understanding, going for Keenan. I don’t know what he’s going to do, but by the time I reach Grayson at the door Finn is with Keenan, probably running his mouth. Good enough for me. Whatever he’s saying I’m sure Keenan needs to hear it.

  Grayson pushes the door open and waits for me to rush through. Then he pushes open another door, gray eyes scanning the hallway to make sure we’re not seen. Most of the guards are watching the ball. “I’m glad you’re here. I was afraid my message wouldn’t find you.”

  “You’re my cousin.” I say.

  “I am.” He nods. “Your mother is my father’s sister. Lavina sent me.”

  “She did?” I can barely believe my ears. Is it possible something is coming our way, for once?

  “Yes. Zakaria has no intention of working with Vakrov. However, I convinced the queen to let me come here and hear the king out so that I could get a message to you. Your mother is trying to find a way to get you out of here.”

  “She is?” Some of my hatred for my mother dwindles a bit. Her abandoning me and my brother when we were three still stings like a fresh wound, especially since I found out that she’d chosen to do so, but I’m willing to forgive just about anything to get out of this place.

  “Yes. She’s working with Theron to find a way that will spill the least amount of blood as possible.”

  Relief floods my consciousness. “I didn’t even know if he knew that I was here.”

  “Roman saw the transit that took you and Haven away. He tried to stop it and…failed.” His eyes leave mine and I know he wants to say more, but stops himself.

  “What is it?” I press. “My brother. Is he okay?”

  “As far as we know. But…him, the prince, and a few of the others escaped the Limacoran palace to chase down some lead they found that might explain why Theon Beleros wants you and Kara Volterra.”

  “You let them leave the palace?” I snap. “The Hunters, they’ll kill them.”

  “They’re stronger than you think, Amara. Something tells me they’ll be just fine.”

  “Wait.” I pause. “They went after answers to why Theon is after both of us?” My heart sinks. He’s not looking for me? He’s not coming here for me? Of course he’s not, I remind myself. You’re locked away in a rich king’s tower. He couldn’t get to me if he wanted to.

  “We do believe it has something to do with a mystical object called the Nexus because there were many books checked out of the library on the subject by several of them over the last few months. Unfortunately that’s all I know.” Grayson tells me.

  A strange silence stretches between us as I think of Aaric and Roman working together, to save me? To protect me? I’m not sure what they’re doing. I’m not even sure what Theron can do without throwing our country into chaos.

  “How are they going to get me out without starting a war?” I swallow the lump in my throat, trying very hard to forget Aaric, forget Roman. Forget my life in Limacore. It’s gone. I’m not sure it can be recovered.

  “Honestly I have no idea. It is clear the king of Vakrov has no such qualms about hiding your presence here. He shows you off like a trophy won.”

  “He’s making a play for Llìria. If he controls the Serpentarians he controls the most powerful Zodiacs this world has ever seen.”

  Grayson shakes his head. “You won’t be here long enough for that to be a problem. Everyone at the Limacoran palace has travelled to Blackfire Bay.” I simply raise an eyebrow in confusion. “It’s the summer palace. The king always moves there once spring breaks. It is just miles from the border separating Limacore and Vakrov, which means your mother is closer than ever.”

  My heart nearly leaps knowing how close they are. Only the people I want to see the most aren’t there. Aaric, Roman, and Kara are all elsewhere.

  I am alone.

  “You stall this wedding as best as you can, Amara.” Grayson tells me. “And I’ll make sure we find a way to get you out of here.”

  When I leave Grayson that sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach I’ve felt since Tristan’s disaster funeral dissipates just a little
. I knew there was no way someone wasn’t working to get me back, but getting confirmation that it’s true makes everything feel less hopeless.

  By the time I get back to my room that night I feel like I may actually be able to sleep tonight.

  “Care to explain why Finn is spending the night in the dungeon?” Missy says, startling me from her spot on my bed where she sits, waiting for me return I assume.

  I sigh. “I’m sorry. He must have taken his job as distraction a little too far.”

  “Distraction?”

  I sit with her on my bed and I tell her everything I’ve learned tonight and just like that she’s forgotten that she’s supposed to be avoiding me. “We’re going to get out of here?”

  “I think so. I’m not sure when, but we’re not going to die here, Missy.”

  Missy squeals and throws her arms around me and despite myself, I flinch under her touch. She pulls back, looking at me guiltily. “I’m sorry.” she whispers. She gets to her feet and I know she’s going to run again, like she always does when she sees me.

  “Please don’t go, Missy.” I beg her. “I need you.”

  “You’re afraid of my touch, Amara. How can I stay?”

  “Because I’m asking you to.” I say desperately, but she isn’t listening to me anymore. Her eyes are focused on something across the room. “Miss?”

  “Who’s T?”

  “What?” I stand and follow her gaze to the vanity across the room. That’s when I see it. Two words written in lipstick across the mirror. The words send an icy chill down my spine.

  HELP ME—T

  Below the message Tristan’s necklace hangs out of my jewelry box once again.

  “Amara, who is T?” Missy asks again.

  When I look at her my hands shake at my sides. “Tristan.” My eyes fall back on the message. “T is for Tristan.”

  —CHAPTER ELEVEN—

  AARIC

  BAAL

  I never imagined I’d ever be returning to Baal.

  I think Amara always liked to believe we would. It was easier than admitting that we’d probably die in that palace. I wish I weren’t doing it alone. I wish she were by my side, getting overly excited about seeing the boring marketplace or sleeping in her own bed.