“You wouldn’t dare fight me,” I say. “Because when you lose, you’ll look unbelievably silly.”
Lark lifts her chin and strides toward the Security office. “I’m serious, and I’ll prove it right now.”
She pushes through the door and pins Edam with a pointed look. “I’d like to record a challenge. Lark ne’Lyssa Alamecha challenges Chancery Divinity Alamecha.”
I can’t quite help from inching close enough to see Edam’s perfect face with total clarity. He may be my evil twin’s boyfriend, but there’s no law against appreciating flawless, unparalleled beauty. His close-cropped blond hair gleams, even in the dull office lighting. His chiseled jawline, his aquiline nose, his full lips, all of them working together to create the most heart-stopping face I’ve ever seen. If I stand too close, he’ll hear my heart pounding and he’ll know. So I stay in the hallway.
And Judica doesn’t chop my head off for ogling her boyfriend. At least, not today.
Lark watches as he writes our names down and then ducks out of the office. When she leaves, Edam’s cerulean eyes lift rapidly. He catches me staring at him longingly. Shoot.
I snap my mouth closed and spin on my heel to lope toward the breakfast room where Mom’s probably waiting. Lark owes me for that nonsense. My life is hard enough without losing mismatched challenges and being outed for secret crushes.
“Chancery,” a deep voice behind me says. My heart skips a beat, and I hope he didn’t notice. The hall is utterly empty though, so I don’t like my chances. How did Voron and Kegan disappear so quickly?
I pivot to face him and nearly trip over Cookie. “Edam.” Why did he chase me down? Was I that obvious?
“I set your challenge with Lark for eleven a.m. today, but you left so fast I couldn’t confirm whether that time will work, Your Highness. Are you accepting her challenge?”
I frown. “Don’t call me that.”
“I apologize, Your Highness. I tried calling you properly first, but you didn’t reply.”
He thinks I’m objecting to his use of Chancery. I want to sink into the floor. “No, I mean, don’t call me ‘your highness.’ I hate it.”
“You’re second in line to the throne.”
I roll my eyes. “I’m plain old Chancery. I’m not the Heir, so you don’t need to call me anything but my given name.”
“Fine. Chancery, then.” He draws out the syllables in my name in a low tone that makes my shoulders feel tight.
I want to hear him say it again. Which is monumentally stupid. “Right, but the point is, eleven is fine. I’ll be there. But for now, I’m late for breakfast with my mother.”
Edam salutes me and straightens his impossibly broad frame. “I won’t keep you then, just Chancery.”
My stomach flips again. I wish he would keep me. I inhale a deep, ragged breath. I’m a mess today. It must be nerves. I’ve never fought anyone, much less in public. Mom’s going to freak out. “Any last-minute tips for someone who’s never fought in an official capacity in her life?”
Edam’s eyebrows rise. “You’re not off book yet?”
I shake my head. “Most people aren’t, not until well into their twenties.”
“You aren’t most people, your high—er, Chancery. I assumed— but I’m sure you’ll be fine.”
“Lark’s going to murder me, isn’t she?”
Edam’s eyebrows draw together. “I don’t believe she’s training in melodics.”
“Nope. Her mother argues with mine frequently about the benefits of sladius and limitations of melodics. That’s why Mom agreed to let Judica start there. Lyssa says sladius is easier to master, which is better—”
“Judica started there so she could protect herself from birth, as Heir.”
I nod. “You think melodics is antiquated?”
Edam crosses his arms. “I don’t, no.”
My eyebrows draw together. “You trained in melodics?”
“No, but my mother did. She was formidable. It’s a subtle, refined, nearly lost art form.”
I scowl at him. Art form? “My mom trained in melodics.” I really hate that I’m going to have to throw this fight. It’s just going to bolster all the detractors’ arguments against Mom’s preferred, but currently unpopular, fighting method.
“I have the utmost respect for your mother, both as my Empress, and as a warrior.” Edam’s eyes haven’t left mine.
I should walk away, but I can’t. Once, when I wasn’t even three years old, I popped a habanero pepper into my mouth. I didn’t know whether to spit it out and cry, or close my eyes and savor the pain. Being around Edam is like that, except there’s no chance I’d ever spit him out.
“Chancy,” Mom calls from down the hall, “you’re late.”
Edam bows his head and departs so quickly I don’t even have time to admire his retreating form before he’s rounding the corner. Mom never misses a beat, so I can’t moon over Judica’s boyfriend or she’ll notice immediately. I ruffle the fur on Cookie’s head and jog over to the small dining room where we always have breakfast.
Mom takes her usual seat, and I drop into mine next to her. “How’d the party planning go?”
Mom rolls her eyes. “I told Angel no lemon cake, but did she listen?”
I lift my eyebrows. “Really?”
Mom sighs. “Technically, she says she did. She made an orange cake with chocolate frosting, which is basically lemon’s first cousin.”
“Oh,” I say, “but that’s my favorite.”
“And if it were your birthday, that would make sense.”
I watch as my mom picks up her napkin. Tomorrow she’ll be nine-hundred years old, which is old, even for us, but you’d never know to look at her. Her chestnut hair shines, her light golden skin luminesces, and her nearly violet eyes sparkle like she’s only been alive three or four centuries.
Today the world’s human rulers who report to her are coming to pay their respects: The United States’ President, Senate and House leaders, the British Prime Minister and the President of Mexico to name a few. Not many humans know about us, but obviously the ones we use to administer the government as our figureheads do. Tomorrow, the heads of the other evian families will show up for her real party. She’s a little stressed over all the details. Sometimes when she’s anxious, she focuses a little too much on things that don’t matter.
“Eat your eggs, Chancery,” she says, because she always says that.
I never do.
I need to distract her so she won’t notice I’m only pushing them around on my plate. “Speaking of cakes, Angel and I spent a while yesterday on it, but no matter how many times we tried, we couldn’t get the nine hundredth candle lit before the first hundred candles melted down to the frosting line.” I pull out my phone and show her a photo of the melted goo on the left side of an enormous tiered cake that resulted from our fourth attempt. “Guess we’ll have to use those big numbered candles this year instead. You know, a clunky number nine and two zeroes.”
Mom’s eyes crinkle. “You know very well we won’t have any candles on my cake. It’s beyond tacky, and a human tradition in the first place.”
“You always put candles on my cake.” I frown.
“That’s because you’re a child. Seventeen little flames look cute.”
“Eighteen this year.”
Her eyebrows crinkle in consternation. “Yes, you’re getting quite old.”
I point at her with my fork. “You’re the expert on old, so I guess you’d know.”
I love mornings in Ni’ihau with Mom. We live on the only desert island in Hawaii, and while I’ve occasionally wished we lived on nearby Kauai instead, at least I have a nice view of the lush, tropical island from our breakfast room. My mom doesn’t seem to care about the view, since she always sits at the head of the table with her back to the windows. The sunlight streams down through her hair, just as bright in March as it would be any other month. The seasons don’t really impact Hawaii like they do the rest of the world
. The light illuminates her face in a sort of halo. I look past her toward the abundant vegetation of Kauai and sigh. In a moment the world will intrude, but for now she’s all mine.
“Alora can’t make it to my party,” Mom says.
“She told me.” Evian gatherings make my much older sister claustrophobic, but nine centuries is a big deal. I’m annoyed she’s not coming to support our mom. She’s not the only older sister who isn’t coming, but she’s the closest one to me, and the one I’ll miss the most.
“She’ll come visit sometime next week. We can celebrate together without all the political nonsense.” Mom scrunches her nose. “Wait, when did she tell you?”
I try to act like it’s no big deal. “She called me yesterday.”
Mom’s eyebrows rise slightly. “Alora did? When?”
Mom and I are usually together. “I stepped out to talk to her during the Military Council, remember?” And I don’t really want to talk about Alora right now, or what I ducked out to ask her. I want to wait until after Mom’s birthday so she’ll be in a good mood when I make my request. I change the subject to the one thing I couldn’t care less about. “Did I miss anything in the Council meeting?”
Mom shakes her head. “Not really. Judica petitioned for incursions against China again.”
“What’s her obsession with that?”
“She wants to make her mark. It’s the only part of the world that isn’t under direct evian control. That makes it an attractive target for all six families, but Judica’s plagued by the burning desire of youth to prove her aptitude.”
Poor China. I wouldn’t wish Judica on anyone. “It’s so hard, it’ll be difficult to effectively administer. It’s why we’ve failed in the past.”
“True,” Mom admits. “But our American branch owes the Chinese quite a lot of money currently. Judica may have mentioned that if we invade, we wouldn’t have to pay it back.”
“What’s her plan this time?” Last month she wanted to bomb them, and the month before that, she suggested an alliance with Vela, whom no one would suspect.
“She’s proposing trade sanctions to soften the area. Divide it among all six, but heavily in our favor, of course.” Mom chews and swallows more of her omelet. “She’s learning.”
“Why bring that up during Military Council?” I ask. “Seems like an economic initiative to me.”
“If the US defaults on its debt, China will react, and that means military force. It would mostly be human lives at stake, but that still has an economic impact on our bottom line, and our strength in relation to the other families.” Mom takes another bite and then glances at me sideways. She has realized that I distracted her. “What did Alora call about?”
At least she hasn’t noticed that I’m not eating my eggs. A tiny win, but I’ll take it. “Nothing much. She misses me. She called to invite me for a visit in New York. I still haven’t seen anything on Broadway, and you promised.”
It’s funny that my sister feels closed in and unsafe here, on our tiny, mostly uninhabited island, but completely at home in New York, which is teeming with humans. She loves Broadway and theater productions, packing into a room full of people like sardines in a can. But the vast majority of humans don’t know what we are, or even that we exist, which means she walks among them as a veritable goddess, and they have no idea. Very different than interacting with hundreds of other evians, all of whom want something from you, and all of whom are analyzing your every word, breath, and heartbeat.
Mom leans back in her chair with less relief than I expected. “Between my party tomorrow and yours in a few weeks, I’ve fallen behind. I doubt we can take a trip until late summer or early fall. Sorry little dove.”
I’ve just stuffed a big bite of fruit in my mouth. I wait to swallow it before responding. “I think she meant just me.”
Mom sets her fork down. “You’ve never gone anywhere without me.”
“True,” I say.
She frowns. “You’re too young.”
I don’t meet her eye. I’m not that young.
“Do you want to leave?” she asks. “Is there a reason she invited you?”
Uh, yeah, but if you don’t know, I’m not going to tell you. “She’s got a new show, I think. Chill, Mom. I told her I probably couldn’t go.” When I take another big bite, this time of toast, Mom takes the hint and changes the subject.
Even so, I can’t quite give up the dream: a long, simple visit to New York. No fear I’ll be attacked, because humans don’t know who I am. They just muddle along around us with their mediocre existences, producing more things for Alamecha to trade or sell to other countries. They go to war when Mom points, and they work at her bidding, without even realizing they’re doing it.
And if I could simply blend in among them, it would be amazing.
“Have you chosen your gown for my party?” Mom asks, tearing me away from my daydream of normal life.
I shake my head. “I was waiting for you, so we can match.”
“I wasn’t sure if you still wanted to.”
“Of course,” I say. “It’s our thing.”
She smiles. “Eventually you won’t want to match me anymore.”
But for today, I still do. “What’re you going to wear?”
“Maybe I’ll try on some gowns after breakfast and you can help me choose.”
It’s as good a time as any to confess. “I’d love to help you, but I’ll need to do it this afternoon.”
Mom wipes her mouth with a pristine linen napkin. “You are full of surprises today. What do you have planned after breakfast?”
“So, Lark and I got into a discussion in the hall earlier, and I might have goaded her a little bit. I’m not sure what came over me.”
“What’s going on, Chancy?”
I clear my throat. “She challenged me. Probably because I don’t know how to fight very well, and if she can beat me, she’ll be ranked first in her class and get whatever placement she wants.” I hate how my voice shakes near the end of my explanation.
“I’ll talk to Lyssa. I find the ingratitude appalling.”
I shake my head. “I didn’t have to agree, but with a few other kids around, I figured refusing would look...weak.”
“You’ll destroy her.”
Oh, no. Mom and everyone else needs to believe I’m a bumbler and that’s the reason that I lose. “Mom, I’ve never fought anyone. Not ever.”
“Which is why she should never have challenged you. It was selfish and extremely inappropriate.”
“She’s my best friend.”
“She’s not acting like it.” Mom frowns. “Why aren’t you upset?”
I gulp. Mom needs to believe this too, more than anyone else, actually. “We knew it would happen at some point, that I’d have to fight in some kind of formal situation.”
“You’re my daughter, only seven generations removed from Eve herself. Your genetics are as pure as anyone alive. Whether you’ve trained in melodics or sladius is irrelevant, whether you’ve gone off book yet, whether you’re nervous or not, you will defeat her.”
I glance around the room. “Is Judica in here and I didn’t see her? You’re talking to me, Mom, and I love Lark. So if I can help her place first, and I’m unlikely to win in any case, where’s the harm?”
Mom purses her lips but doesn’t argue. Because more than anyone else on the island, she knows who I am. The kind-hearted Alamecha daughter. The weak twin. The one who probably couldn’t win if her life depended on it. And she needs to believe I’m a loser, or she’ll see right through my act and the stakes are far too high for that. Lark and her mother would almost surely die for this secret, and maybe me too.
After a few terribly long seconds, Mom places her hand over mine and squeezes. She knows me for what I am, and she loves me anyway. Glaring flaws and all.
Mom doesn’t chastise me or give me unhelpful last minute tips. She knows I haven’t ever fought anyone in a real match, and I might lose. We have zero time to
prepare, so there’s no point stressing over it. She refocuses on eating, and unlike me, she loves eggs. Her gold-rimmed plate is piled high: two boiled eggs, two fried eggs, and the last bite or two of an omelet. Evian bodies need protein, lots of protein. Long life, incredible strength, and quick intellect are a few of the gifts of our pure DNA, but compared to humans with corrupt DNA, we have to eat a lot. Trade-offs.
I grab a few pieces of ham to make up for skipping Mom’s favorite food. Mom notices but doesn’t complain. In light of my confession, dickering over my egg consumption probably seems pointless.
“Which dresses are you considering?” I ask. “You need to make a statement this year, clearly.”
“Should I be wearing a funeral shroud do you think?”
I roll my eyes. “You’ve got decades and decades left. You’re healthy, wise, and strong.”
“Decades and decades, huh?”
No one has ever lived past a thousand years. It’s a sore point for evians, or at least, once they reach their last century it is. Everyone knows that once you start showing any real signs of age, you’ve got a few years left at best, or maybe only months. Good thing Mom hasn’t gone gray, sprouted crows’ feet, or started sprouting liver spots. “You know what I mean.”
“I do, and I’m mostly teasing.” She smiles. “I was thinking about the new Chanel—”
The solid wood entry doors fly open and slam against the wall on either side, effectively halting our conversation. There’s only one person who wouldn’t knock, so I already know who barged in, but I glance up anyway.
Judica.
My sister is the worst.
No, I mean, really. A lot of people have probably thought that over the past six thousand or so years, but I’m pretty sure I’m right. She started pulling my hair and biting me in utero, and my mom has the ultrasound photos to prove it. That was, quite literally, just the beginning. You’d think by seventeen, I’d have toughened up a bit, but she still hurts my feelings pretty often.
I’m lucky when that’s all she hurts.
I grit my teeth as she strolls in, flanked by her tall black Doberman Pinscher, Death, and the head of her personal guard and boyfriend, Edam ne’Malessa ex’Alamecha. Only two places are set at the breakfast table, but that doesn’t stop my twin from dragging an empty chair over near us and sitting down right across from me. She’s wearing her typical knee-high black boots laced up over tight black pants. Her white button-down shirt is pristine, which makes me feel bad about my sloppy t-shirt and denim shorts.
Displaced (The Birthright Series Book 1) Page 2
