Forbidden Power

by Willa Hart

  “She may not be a Dreg.”

  I turn. Taraz has followed me into the library where Uncle usually inhabits Mother’s desk, but Uncle is still in the Northern District attempting to quiet the uprising.

  “At least you’re alone,” I say. I lift a file from Uncle’s desk. “I was beginning to think that both my brothers had fallen in love with Ninaku Dregs.”

  “Jix is quite lovely, but no, he has not captured my heart.” The space between Taraz’s eyebrows creases. His gaze holds judgement. “When did you become like this?”

  “Like what?”

  “So anti-Dreg? So pro-Eliterrati? So different than what Mother and Fathers were trying to accomplish before they died, so—”

  “What Mother and Fathers were trying to accomplish got them all killed,” I say. My tone is sharp and loud, and surprises even me.

  Deep breath. I glance at the page that I hold in my hand. I’ve taken it from one of the files on Uncle’s desk. The words…they mean nothing to me. My thoughts are jumbled, confused… What am I looking for? “Look,” I finally say, “it was Dregs that killed Mother and Fathers and all while our parents were trying to help them. Trying to put an end to the separation between Eliterrati and Dregs, and that very help is what got our parents killed.” I glance away from Taraz. “Instead of helping Dregs,” I mumble, “our parents should’ve built a higher wall.”

  “How dare you!” Taraz walks toward me. “How dare you think that you’re somehow better or that your life is worth more simply because you were born into a certain group. How can you possibly think that you have more value than anyone else?”

  I glance around the library. It’s filled with the oldest and most expensive texts in the Kingdom, and this is just one of ten private libraries that our family owns. “Don’t I? Don’t we? I mean surely Brother, you’ve noticed where we live and how we live and how other people treat us and that this luxury, this treatment is simply by virtue of our birth, is it not?”

  My brother says nothing.

  “Mmhmmm,” I continue, “yes, it’s a tough reality when one wants equality between Dregs and Eliterrati but then realizes what that might mean to their own lifestyle, isn’t it?”

  “You weren’t always this cold,” Taraz says. “This cynical. This calculating. What happened to you?”

  My chest tightens and I put up a wall in my mind, the strongest wall I can create against a member of my Tripsett. While I share most everything with my brothers, I have thoughts and feelings that are meant to be mine and mine alone.

  Taraz’s eyes widen. “Really? You seek to be alone with your emotional pain? Sharing our burdens is one of the greatest gifts of being linked.”

  “Says you.” I drop the folder back to Uncle’s desk. “You’re standing here insulting me and my beliefs, and I’m just supposed to let you see into every thought I have? So what? So you can try to change my mind? Help me see the light? Show me how Mother and Fathers’ radical restructuring of our society was a good and noble thing even though it got them killed?”

  Brother, I don’t know who you are. Taraz thinks.

  “Don’t be so dramatic,” I say. “I’m the same person I’ve always been. Forgive me for becoming a bit more pragmatic because I’ve lost my parents and my Uncle may or may not be attempting a coup or a genocide or both in the North. Either way, I do believe our lifestyle is about to change.”

  Taraz looks as though I’ve hit him, literally smacked him across the face.

  “What? You’re kidding right? You thought this”—I wave my hand around the giant room filled from top to bottom with books—“was simply going to stay the same? With what we’ve uncovered? That Uncle may be plotting to take over House Roya?”

  “I…” Taraz’s eyelids flutter. “I guess I never really considered—”

  “No, of course not. Neither you nor Sarkany every really consider the reality of a political situation or just how much we must do to maintain our government. No, he’s off playing pretend in the forest, and you’re off in your workshop making all kinds of clever new toys that may or may not be of use to this Kingdom. While I’m left alone to try and discern who is our ally, who is our foe, who we can trust, and who we must kill so that we ourselves are not slaughtered as our parents were.” I take a deep breath and close my eyes, attempting to center myself. I’ve yelled at Taraz twice in ten minutes.

  “It is a burden. I hadn’t considered,” Taraz says. “I guess I assumed that Uncle—”

  “—Was our friend.” I finish. “That he loved us as if we were his own? As did I, but now we know the truth. Now we know that he loved us as his own as long as he could control us and act as Regent. But soon…soon we are to marry our Fated, and that person will then control this world, this Kingdom with us, will she not?”

  “She will,” Taraz says.

  “So, perhaps now upon introspection and a review of where we are and what has happened not only when Mother and Fathers were assassinated, but recently, you understand my concern that The Bear has determined that our fated mate is a Ninaku Dreg.”

  “But she might not be,” Taraz says. “A Dreg.”

  “Yes, she might not be. But forgive me for not fully understanding what a former handmaiden to our mother was doing living in the Wild Lands after our parents and all their friends were killed.”

  “What are you…what are you implying?” Taraz asks.

  “Nothing, yet. I know nothing of the family of this girl of this place that our brother went to and this broach that he seems to have found. Until recently, I didn’t even know that Uncle had a plan to eliminate us and steal the throne.”

  Taraz sighs. “What can I do? I don’t want you to shoulder this burden alone.”

  “I don’t know,” I say. “I don’t know what any of us can do, but I know someone who can help, and I’ve asked her here today.”

  Taraz looks at me, and for as brilliant as my brother is with numbers and mechanics and equations, I realize he has no real-world knowledge of people and how things in our Kingdom actually get done. How one rules or leads or takes care of an entire country filled with people. People that sit atop a powder keg of dislike and fear waiting for someone to strike a match.

  “Who have you asked?”

  “Lady Alana,” I say.

  Taraz smiles and nods. “She’s quite brilliant.” A look of relief crosses his face.

  “And yet, she too is beholden to the politics of the day. She has no army and no power and—arguably, brother—neither do we.”

  “Ha! What are you saying? We are the Crown Princes of the Kingdom, even I know that. And yes, you are correct in that I know very little about how things actually get done around here. How one actually goes about the business of ruling, but I do know what being an heir to the throne means.”

  “Really? Well an heir to the throne is just that, an heir. We have no power, at least not yet, not until it is transferred from the Regent to us, and that doesn’t officially happen until we declare our intent to marry our fated mate.”

  “Which would mean”—Taraz swallows, and again his eyes widen—“Uncle has all the power?”

  I nod. “Indeed.”

  “Until we declare our intent to marry?”

  “Precisely. So now, perhaps you see my concern over our brother determining that our fated mate might or might not be a Dreg? We simply don’t know. Because not knowing right now with Uncle possibly igniting a coup d’état doesn’t help us.”

  “But the army?”

  “Per the laws of the Kingdom, are meant to be led by the Regent in our name until the transfer of power from Regent to Sovereign.”

  “Oh my Goddess,” Taraz says.

  “Exactly. Now you understand my concern when I hear The Bear roar?”

  Taraz scrubs his fingers through his hair, and I realize for the first time ever I truly do have a brother who is helping to shoulder the weight of the crown.

  Lady Alana sweeps into the hall of the Palace where Taraz and I greet her. H
er entourage of three guards and one consiglieri arrive with her. Her head is shaved, and her skin is the color of midnight. She wears an Eliterrati travel cloak, pants, and black boots. Since our parents’ deaths nearly a decade ago, she’s been as constant in my life as Uncle and my brothers. Never attempting to replace Mother but always providing each of us a woman to turn to. And I did, at least when I was younger. Since I began bedding birds, I’ve spent less and less time at Lady Alana’s home and more and more time chasing tail feathers. As have we all. Or so I thought.

  “Taraz, how is Jix? Any new toys to show me since last week?” Lady Alana asks, clasping both of Taraz’s hands. He pulls her close and kisses both her cheeks.

  Last week? I think.

  We have lunch every week. I go and see her on Wednesdays.

  How did I not know this? I think.

  Probably because you’re so busy trying to save us from a coup d’état, Taraz thinks. He smiles and it’s a genuine one. From anyone else I’d expect smug thoughts or a dig at my ego, but not from Taraz. Taraz often annoys me with his logic and simplicity. He fails to understand the unspoken undercurrent of interactions and sees only the reality of a situation, the black and white of a transaction, not all that goes unsaid between humans. But unlike Sarkany, Taraz does not intentionally dig at me. He’s not unkind nor does he deliver sarcasm or ego — no, it is Taraz’s honesty and good heart that will get us all killed, not his overbearing ferocity like Sarkany.

  Lady Alana turns from Taraz. Her eyes are golden, like tiger-stone, and her gaze sharpens upon me. She grasps my hand and a tremor raises through me as I absorb her energy. A tentativeness and uncertainty has infiltrated her thoughts where I’m concerned.

  “Leo,” she says. She presses her lips to each of my cheeks. On the second cheek she pauses for the briefest of moments, and I hear her words in my mind as if spoken aloud: Be very careful.

  It’s an offense, punishable by death, to enter a Roya’s mind unless requested and yet… Then she is gone from my mind, without even a trace. I’m not sure if I’d imagined the moment; the words, the thoughts that Lady Alana presented in my mind.

  Did you hear her, brother? I direct my thoughts to Taraz.

  Not a word, he thinks back. He wraps his arm around Lady Alana’s as we’re meeting in the Library, away from the prying eyes and ears of staff and guards and hopefully anyone that might be here to report to Uncle. I cast energy around the room to prohibit sound and thought from entering and exiting. I shut the giant wood doors and the tongue clicks into the lock.

  Lady Alana turns to us both, and her smile slides from her face. “House Roya is in grave danger.”

  My gaze darts from Lady Alana to Taraz and back.

  “My sources in the North inform me that your Uncle is Mindslaying Dregs and imprisoning Eliterrati that speak out against his tactics. He does all of this in the name of the Crown Princes of House Roya.” She pulls a tablet from her bag and hands it to Taraz. “Pictures that have been forbidden for export.”

  Taraz presses start and the horrors that we see make me want to either break the glass window behind Lady Alana or kill Uncle.

  “In our name?” Taraz says. “He has no right—we would never agree to behavior like this!”

  A Dreg screams for mercy as her daughter is ripped from her arms and thrown into a cage.

  “Many Eliterrati would’ve believed you, until your Uncle arrived on scene with a garrison and orders signed by the three of you,” Lady Alana says. She lifts an eyebrow, and her gaze locks with mine.

  “Our seal? He used our seal?”

  “While it is not needed as Regent, he did in fact use the seal of the Crown Princes, and the order contained each of your signatures,” Lady Alana says.

  “Then it is true, he does seek the throne for himself,” I say. My heart hammers in my chest. I have very little power in this moment; neither my brothers nor I have any actual power as the Regent is supposed to act in our name.

  “What do we do?” I ask Lady Alana, praying that she is one person I can trust, for in this moment I have little choice.

  “We meet with The Counsel and General Adullah and hope that they are loyal to the three of you and not your Uncle.” Her gaze flits about the room. “But where is Sarkany? We shall need all three of you if we’re to save House Roya from this traitorous coup d’état.”

  Do not tell her who he is with, Taraz thinks.

  Ah, it would seem that my brother finally gets it, I think.

  “He traveled to his hunting shack on the edge of the Dark Woods. The anniversary of our parents’ death nears, and he often goes there at this time as he feels closest to them there.”

  “While I understand the reason,” Lady Alana says, “the timing is not ideal. You must have Sarkany return. Send him your thoughts, go get him, do what you must. The Eliterrati of the North tire of this slaughter, and they will rise up against the Crown Princes of House Roya. Your Uncle plays a dangerous game, but I fear he has allies in both North and South that will allow for his daughter, your cousin, to take the throne and you three Crown Princes shall be the sacrifice that will appease both North and South for what your Uncle currently does, allegedly in your name.”

  “He must be stopped,” I say.

  “Yes,” Lady Alana says, “but first you must lead an army that is willing to stop him, and to have that you must have the authority to lead and only The Counsel may grant you such authority.” She pauses and looks from me to Taraz. “Outside of the three of you being mated.”

  I glance at Taraz; it could be so easy if Meela were really an Eliterrati.

  “We shall have Sarkany return. Can you get us a meeting with The Counsel?”

  “Upon your command,” Lady Alana says. “They have concerns and have only been waiting for you to reach out. However once you do, your Uncle will know as there are members of The Counsel who are loyal only to him.”

  I nod. “Of course. I understand the games of power. My mother and fathers did school us on some of this before…before they died.”

  “I’m always grateful for their service and acknowledge the sacrifice they made for our Kingdom,” Lady Alana says. She grasps my forearm and thinks: Not everything is as it seems. The thought rushes through my mind, and I lock on her gaze and I see it…I see that she has sent this thought into my mind, but she does not want Taraz to know it and cannot acknowledge it. But she is willing to possibly sacrifice her life to send the thought to me.

  “Lady Alana,” Taraz interrupts. “You were at our parents’ wedding service, yes?”

  Lady Alana acts as though this transition in topic isn’t jarring…because with Taraz, one never knows where a conversation might go. Her gaze drifts to the picture of our parents that hangs on the wall.

  “Yes. I was just a maiden, that day was…it was one of the most beautiful days of my life, and one of the most joyful days for the entire Kingdom. We…everyone, Dreg, Eliterrati, everyone could not have been more thrilled at your mother and her choice of three mates. So different were each and yet so perfect for her and for the Kingdom. You could tell when you were with them how effortless the relationship was, and how it was obvious that they were indeed fated to be made one from four,” Lady Alana says. “It was a beautiful day.”

  “And her attendants?”

  Lady Alana’s face clouds with Taraz’s words.

  “Her handmaidens,” Lady Alana says, “they…they were with your parents when the…attack happened.”

  “All of them?” Taraz asks.

  “I…” Lady Alana tilts her head and closes her eyes as though pulling up a memory of the wedding and the attack. I slide into her mind without her knowledge and view the memory that she sees. There, beside Mother, are her three attendants.

  “Mother had three attendants?” I ask.

  Lady Alana shakes her head, “No…no…there were only two Eliterrati handmaidens that were part of your mother’s entourage. Two Eliterrati family names.”

  She lies, I th
ink to Taraz. I shoot him the image that I’ve taken from Lady Alana’s mind.

  But…but why? Taraz thinks.

  The answer to that question may be the question that saves a kingdom, I think…or be our downfall.

  “Hmmm…I always thought Mother had three handmaidens and they were the same three attendants that were at the wedding, one for each of our fathers’ attendants. So that the numbers might be even?”

  “No,” Lady Alana says, her voice firm. She turns away from us and toward the door. “There was never a third. Not as her handmaiden and not as her attendant.”

  I say nothing as there is no need in this moment to press the matter as her mind is stone, and clearly I will not get anywhere with her today. Why is she lying to me? What is Lady Alana attempting to hide?

  “Get Sarkany back, as quickly as possible,” Lady Alana says, changing the subject. “When your mother appointed me female guardian, I was tasked by her to help guide the three of you should anything ever happen to her or your fathers and now, now it would seem that I’m to not only help the three of you, but also help save the Kingdom. We must meet with The Counsel and we must do so as quickly as possible.”

  “Yes,” I say. “Yes, we will go to Sarkany this very day.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Meela

  It’s insane for me to believe that I can have the life I want with Sarkany. Queen? I don’t want to be Queen. The politics, the grandeur, the hassle of leading an entire nation. Life weighs heavy on the head that wears that crown.

  Make that four heads, little bird, Sarkany thinks. The Bear opens his eyes and rolls toward me. Next to his giant body, I’m ever so safe.

  “Do you have no respect for the privacy of my thoughts?” I ask. I press my fingertips to his giant bicep and slide them over the muscles of his arm. I’m drawn to his physical being and sexuality. He’s a primal presence, wild and free like an animal. He satisfies a deep need within me that before now I had no idea existed: to be captured and taken and conquered.