Heirs of War, Crown of Flames

by Mara Valderran

  “But why don't you just order the other worlds to give you more soldiers?” Rhaya asked. “I mean, you guys rule them all. Right?”

  “Yes, but we don't want to be tyrannical,” Meridel said. “Each world has an independent government of their own, and they must look out for their own interests, just as the separate territories of Estridia do.”

  “Then why are our soldiers defending their lands and not our own?”

  “Because those lands have negotiated for our help, and so we give it.” Sylvanna grew impatient with the questions. “Anything else, Rhaya? Or perhaps you would like to save your questions for your actual tutors?”

  Rhaya folded her hands on the table. “One more thing. What aren't you telling us about this Reilly guy? The three of you are oozing sympathy for Terrena since she's going to have to marry him—heck, even you seem sympathetic, Sylvanna, and that doesn't strike me as anywhere near your usual character—but you haven't said why this match will be so bad for her.”

  Terrena didn't dare look up. She knew that her sister spoke the truth, but she didn't know whether or not she wanted an answer to the question. She would do her duty, as is expected of her, regardless of the cost. It was for the benefit of the people, so it didn't really matter what Reilly was like.

  “He’s a widower,” Meridel answered softly. “He lost his family in the war.”

  “He is the best we can do at your age, Terrena.” Sylvanna sighed. “We're lucky he comes with such a bounty as an army.”

  “We generally like to give you more time to get to know one another,” Solanna added, “as we did by allowing Prince Cedwen to arrive years before any betrothal arrangements would be reached—”

  “Wait,” Rhaya interrupted her aunt, “did you just say Cedwen? To whom is he supposed to be betrothed?”

  “Not you,” Solanna assured her. “He is here from Tremain, a world abundant in resources used to forge weapons, and when the time comes, we will negotiate a betrothal with either Zelene or Ariana, though it seems he and Zelene might already be forming a bond.”

  “Doubt that'll last long after she finds out,” Rhaya remarked. “Have you told her yet?”

  Sylvanna dismissed Rhaya's concerns. “I believe we were discussing the more pressing matter of Terrena's betrothal contract to Reilly of Tullia.

  “He is a good man with a wonderful reputation,” Meridel assured her. “He arrives two weeks from now.”

  Terrena put on her bravest face, despite the pit opening in her stomach. “I look forward to meeting him.”

  ***

  “How can you be so calm about this?” Rhaya asked as they headed back to their rooms an hour later. She had sat in silence while the Duillaine discussed the details of her sister’s betrothal with them, but that didn’t mean she could understand it. She knew Terrena loved Garrett. Her sister’s heartbreak over losing him was so strong. It was like Terrena’s heart was constantly screaming its feelings at Rhaya, even if Terrena herself never spoke a word.

  Terrena shrugged. “I’ve known about this my whole life, Rhaya. You forget that Kenward raised me to understand the duties that would one day be expected of me. I know our marriage customs, and I know the negotiations that usually take place with children of political families. When I was nineteen, the son of the city tax collector in the North wanted to marry me. His father placated him by meeting with Kenward, but we had nothing to offer. At least, nothing I could give since I could not actually marry without the knowledge and permission of the Duillaine.”

  “I didn't know you were in love with anyone else. I mean, besides Garrett,” Rhaya amended.

  “I wasn't. The boy thought I was pretty, but he knew nothing about me.”

  Rhaya could tell that Terrena didn’t want to talk about it, so she let the subject drop for the time and they walked back to their building in silence. Rhaya glanced behind them to see their Cynewards following and gave Raemann a small wave, wishing she could talk to him about her sister and everything she was feeling.

  “I’m glad the Tullians will be arriving soon,” Terrena said with forced optimism. “I hope you like Reilly.”

  “I hope you like Reilly,” Rhaya retorted and then sighed. “Why don't you just tell them about Garrett?”

  “I really wish you didn't know about him.” Terrena grabbed Rhaya by the hand and dragged her into the stairwell leading up to their floor. “I appreciate that you are trying to look out for me, Rhaya, but you can't possibly understand my position even though you will one day be in it. It is our way, and it is for the best. Garrett does not come with armies that will support us. I wish with all my heart that he did, but I have to do what is best for our people. One day you will see that, and I hope that you will make the right choice on that day.”

  “But you love Garrett,” Rhaya argued in a small voice.

  “Yes, and I hope to one day love Reilly half as much, for even that will be enough to sustain a happy marriage and ensure our alliance with Tullia. We need them. If we had their army, we might have already stormed Cahira and rescued Ariana. But we simply don't have the resources to do that right now, as important as she is.”

  “I don't know what's worse,” Rhaya said with a sad shake of her head, “that you're lying to me, knowing I can tell, or that you're lying to yourself.”

  Terrena turned away angrily. “Perhaps one day you will also learn how incredibly hurtful it is to direct your gift at those closest to you. It's bad enough that you've invaded my private moments through Isauria, but now you spy on my emotions as well.”

  “You're my sister. I'm just trying to be there for you.”

  “Then perhaps you might do well to get to know me before you come to your own conclusions about what I should or should not do. You are too quick to judge, Rhaya. Just like you are doing with our father.”

  “Our father doesn't know the first thing about us.”

  “And he never will so long as you sit there and sulk anytime he is in the room. Perhaps if you could be more understanding of his position instead of being so offended at how he treats your Cyneward, he might have a better chance of being your father. Or maybe you are content to simply stomp your foot like a petulant child when something in this world fails to live up to your expectation, like Zelene does. Because her attitude is quite useful.”

  Terrena turned and marched up the staircase, leaving her sister behind. Rhaya moved to the side to allow Kenward to pass, noticing the reproachful look he gave her before going after his ward. Rhaya knew she shouldn’t have pushed it with Terrena, but she felt she had to do something. She knew in her heart that this marriage was a bad idea. She just didn’t know how to get Terrena to see that.

  Unless maybe Terrena wasn’t the one she needed to convince.

  Raemann walked up to her, already looking suspicious. “I can see the wheels in your head turning. What are you up to?”

  Rhaya shrugged innocently. “Remember how I could always get you to do what I wanted by crying? Even when you knew I was doing it on purpose?”

  Raemann chuckled. “You managed to con me into so many ice cream trips that you really should have been a pudgy little thing.” He poked her ribs playfully. “Thinking of trying the same tactic on your real father?”

  She grinned up at him. “You know me best.” She swiveled around and marched up the stairs with a new destination in mind. She paused in front of the large oak doors in front of her parents’ apartment and shot a glance to Raemann for encouragement. He shrugged as if to say, “if you must,” but there was a twinkle in his eye that told her he was proud that she was standing up for her sister. She threw open the doors to the antechamber, not pausing to let their maidservant announce her before bursting into her parents’ apartment.

  “You can't force her to do this,” Rhaya announced to her parents, who were both sitting in their parlor.

  Their apartment, she noticed, was much bigger than hers and held actual rooms as opposed to the open layout of her room. The walls were the same characte
ristic gray stone as the rest of Anscombe, which only added to the chill. Rhaya could tell that her parents weren’t in love, but she hadn’t expected their room to be so devoid of emotion. Very few paintings hung on the walls, and even the curtains were a dull brown. She looked back and forth between them, noticing how they seemed to exist in separate worlds even when sharing the same space. Her father reclined in a chaise-lounge on the far side of the room reading a book, while her mother sat at the writing desk in the corner, busy at work with some papers.

  “Force who to do what?” Leone asked, his hooked nose wrinkled in confusion.

  “Force Terrena to marry some guy when she's obviously in love with someone else,” Rhaya rattled on nervously. “Who cares if Garrett is poor and doesn't have an army to back him? Shouldn't it matter whether or not Terrena will be happy? And trust me when I say that she absolutely will not be happy with this Reilly guy. Mom, I know you can sense it too.”

  Meridel rose from her seat and came to meet Rhaya in the doorway. “My dear, sweet, Rhaya. You heard what your sister said. This is her duty, as it will one day be yours.”

  Rhaya shifted her angry gaze to her father. “And I suppose you approve of this little arrangement too?”

  He surprised her by shaking his head. “Arranged marriages are complicated, at best.” He cut his eyes to his wife. “Sometimes affections can be drastically uneven, or sometimes there can be no affection at all. I don't wish that kind of life for my daughters.”

  Rhaya stepped away from her mother and walked over to her father. “You mean that?”

  Leone hesitantly reached out for her hand. “Terrena has already been through so much. You both have.” He held her hand gingerly in his own, barely allowing her to feel the warmth from his touch. “Honestly, I wish neither one of you were Duillaine. I know I should be proud, but my heart breaks for you. Had I known then what I know now . . . ”

  Rhaya wondered what he meant by that. Did he mean before they were sent away, or before he agreed to marry a Duillaine? “Then don't make her do it.”

  “You speak as though I have any real power over you girls. I am merely a spectator in your lives.”

  “Enough of this,” Meridel interrupted and put her arm around Rhaya's shoulders, leading her away. “We will do everything we can to ensure your happiness in your marriage.”

  “I'm not talking about me,” Rhaya argued. “I'm talking about Terrena.”

  “Terrena will find her own happiness, as must we all.” Meridel ushered her to the door. “Really, Rhaya. I'll not have any more talk of this. I think you'd find that your sister wouldn't appreciate you speaking on her behalf. I know it comes from a good place, but Garrett was a secret she wanted to keep close to her heart, away from prying eyes. Don't make this known.”

  Rhaya pulled back in confusion. “You know about Garrett?”

  “Yes, Solanna kept a close watch on Terrena and she told your father and I about him. He sounded like a nice boy, and I hope he does well in life. But he has nothing to offer the Duillaine, which Terrena knew from the moment she met him. Reilly does. Maybe if there wasn't a war . . . ” She trailed off, but shook off the thought. “But there is a war, and sacrifices must be made. If giving up her first love is the only sacrifice Terrena has to make, she should count herself lucky. Some of us have lost far more.”

  Rhaya nodded, knowing her mother referred to their recent losses as well as the old ones. Nandalia's death was still fresh on everyone's mind.

  “Just promise me this,” Rhaya pleaded, “don't make her marry him if he's a monster.”

  Her father rose to his feet. “I can swear that to you. If I think he's not good enough for her, I will take matters into my own hands, I promise you.”

  Rhaya shivered, uncertain of his meaning but by the deadly anger coming from him, she wasn't sure she wanted him to clarify. “Thank you,” she said quietly and slipped out. She leaned against the closed doors and looked up to find Raemann mirroring her stance, leaning against her doors down the hall.

  “Didn’t go well?” He asked when she approached.

  “I don’t know. These people confuse me, Dad.”

  Raemann pushed away from the door quickly and pointedly looked around. “Rhaya, you have to stop calling me that.”

  She folded her arms over her chest. “No, I don’t. Zelene’s right. These customs are stupid.”

  “Yes, well, I am beginning to think that your cousin is a bad influence on you.” He opened her door and followed her inside. “What’s going on?”

  Rhaya laughed humorlessly. “Are you serious? What isn’t going on? Everything feels so wrong here.”

  “Are you sure it isn’t just your gift getting to you?”

  “What do you mean?”

  He sat down on the chaise by the window and patted the seat next to him. He waited for her to sit down before turning to her, concerned. “I’ve noticed that your moods are very quick to change since you got here. Are you having a hard time filtering out what others are feeling?”

  Rhaya gave this some thought. It was true. She felt sad when she was around Terrena, and angry when she was around Zelene or the Duillaine. The Duillaine were always on edge about something, which left her feeling the same way and feeling very suspicious of them. “I guess I might be. It’s hard to tell sometimes. Part of me agrees with Zelene that the Duillaine don’t do much of anything. Especially about Ariana.”

  “But it isn’t like you to see the worst in people,” he pointed out. “Even with your ability to read people, you always choose to see the good in them, even when seeing them at their worst. That always made me so proud.”

  “I still want to. It’s just so much harder here. And maybe I’m a little angry too. That they gave us up, even if they had their reasons. They aren’t making it easy on us now.”

  “Nothing worthwhile is ever easy.”

  She smiled at one of his usual sayings and rested her head on his shoulder. “I know. I’ll try to keep that in mind when you tell me not to call you Dad.” She paused, her thoughts drifting back to Ariana. “Dad? Do you think Ariana will be okay?”

  Raemann didn’t answer at first. “I think that there isn’t a force in this world that will keep Varrick from going after her once he finds out where she is.”

  Rhaya nodded, feeling comforted and worried by this at the same time. If it was up to the Duillaine to find Ariana, did that mean Varrick would never get his chance to rescue her? The more parties and marriages the Duillaine planned, the more Rhaya worried that Ariana wasn’t the priority she should be. The more she worried that maybe Zelene was right.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The sun was setting, which meant Ariana's least favorite part of the day approached. Nights were hard, and not only because of the nightmares that plagued her sleep. Night brought the quiet, which gave her time to reflect. The last thing Ariana wanted was to be left alone with her thoughts.

  Everything in the woods reminded her of her father and Varrick, who always took her along on their camping trips. They'd try to show her something concerning survival in the wilderness, but she'd always been more focused on which area of the campgrounds got the best signal and how she would charge her phone. She never told her father this, but those trips had made her feel like he had wanted a son instead of her. Now, knowing that he wasn't even her real father, she knew he was probably trying to teach her to survive. She only wished she'd paid more attention.

  They reached their new domicile just before nightfall. She stood at the edge of the cave that overlooked the river below. The moonlight reflected brightly off the water, casting shadows against her pale skin.

  “We should get something to eat,” Alec said. “I can go hunt.”

  She nodded her head. She could see Alec watching her from his periphery, waiting for her to say something more, but she didn't know what else to say.

  “Are you all right?” he asked softly.

  Normally, she would have some snide remark at the ready. Something to rem
ind him that she had been literally dragged into a fantasy world, and then tortured almost to the edge of her sanity by magical forces she still couldn't wrap her mind around. When she glanced up at him, his face so full of empathy and concern, the snide comments died on her tongue.

  “Yes and no,” she answered honestly. “I'm alive. Mostly thanks to you,” she marked with an appreciative nod. “But I think it's all starting to hit me now.”

  He leaned against the wall of the cave and looked over her shoulder at the scenery below. “You mean your destiny?”

  “I'm not sure I'll ever wrap my mind around that one. No, I mean that I'm here. And that I'll probably never get to go back. Go home. See my parents. My friends.” Images of her best friend Emma lying dead in the backyard sprang to mind, and she wondered if her adoptive parents had suffered the same fate. “I don't even know if they're still alive.”

  “Your parents?”

  “I was thinking about my dad earlier when we were fishing. My dad loved to fish.” She let out a light laugh at the memories. “He was terrible at it, but he loved it. He used to take me all the time when I was a little girl. Me, him, and his best friend Varrick. Daddy used to call us the Three Musketeers. I know you probably don't know what that is, but it meant something.”

  “I do, actually. If it means the same thing, it's part of a story my father used to tell me when I was a child. Before I left.”

  “All for one, and one for all,” she confirmed sadly. “Varrick used to tell me that I was the princess they had to protect but I would get so mad. I wanted to be a musketeer too. That changed when I got older. I didn't want to be a musketeer or a princess or anything. I was so horrible to them. Now all I want is to talk to my mother or just have my father hold me and tell me everything is going to be okay.”

  “I hadn't spoken to my parents for almost a year before I left,” Alec admitted. He startled himself with his confession, turning away and straightening his back. “It's nothing.”

  Ariana's heart swelled with sympathy. “That's not nothing, Alec. That's terrible.”