Traitor (A Crown of Lilies Book 1)

by Melissa Ragland

  I placed the letter into her outstretched hand and stood silently as she read it, her brow furrowing.

  “Is that all? Are you sure?”

  “Yes.” I wasn’t. Not at all, but it was my instinct that where lengthy pleas had failed, this might succeed. “There’s something else to accompany it.”

  When I told her, she laughed harshly, fear plain in her voice. “You’re mad.”

  I held her gaze, unwavering. “I need you to trust me.”

  In the end, she did, and in doing so, gambled our entire House upon it.

  I was pacing in the courtyard when the courier returned from the palace, looking winded and a bit frightened.

  “Well?” I pressed as his beige mare sidled beneath him.

  His throat bobbed, knuckles pale on the reins. “The King demands the presence of House Lazerin immediately.”

  My parents dressed in their Court finery, deep Lazerin green. I opted for a modest wool dress to match, in color if not in quality – the one I had worn to the equinox hunt one year prior. Shera did her best to cover my bruised nose with cosmetics, the both of us solemn and silent as she worked. In short order, the three of us piled into my family’s carriage and rushed to Crofter’s Castle.

  A high-strung doorman ushered us quickly down the empty halls. The palace echoed around us, cavernous and desolate, servants scurrying like mice through the shadows. An unnerving number of King’s Guard lined the throne room, standing at hollow attention in their crisp white uniforms. He was waiting, seated on the distant dais and looking agitated. My parents exchanged a weighted glance before leading the way down the long golden carpet to the far end of the chamber.

  Standing to Amenon’s left, just behind the throne, a hawk-nosed man in flowing white robes hovered. His dark complexion reminded me of the gezgin, but his black eyes held none of their kindness. The priest. A strange smell emanated from a silver thurible seeping bluish smoke near his feet. Wisps of it threaded around the dais, casting a faint haze over the stale air.

  To the King’s right stood Selice, looking older than last I saw her. She was, of course, but it was in her carriage rather than her appearance: a hint of strain, of a burden well-hidden. Those magnificent golden eyes watched us suspiciously as we approached and made our obeisance before the throne. A few paces behind her, her handsome captain hovered, looking nearly as tense and miserable as his charge.

  A brown hare thudded onto the floor before us when we straightened, the arrow protruding awkwardly from its chest.

  “What is the meaning of this?” Amenon demanded, his tone laced with a cruel edge I’d never heard before. Flesh that was once tan and hale now slumped in his seat, pale and wan. Hollow brass eyes glinted furiously, dark shadows sinking them into his face. Madness lingered there, at the edges of his mind. One pale hand hurled a crumpled piece of paper onto the floor beside the carcass. My petition: four words, followed by my signature.

  This time, it matters.

  I pressed my way between my parents to stand at the fore, determined to take the brunt of his ire. Something akin to recognition flickered in his gaze as it settled on me. My choice of attire had done its job.

  “You. You dared to send me this insult? This threat?” he thundered at me. The corner of the priest’s mouth twitched at the edge of my vision.

  “It is no threat, sire.” I curtsied deeply. “Nor is it meant to offend.”

  “Then what?” His voice cracked like a whip in the cavernous marble hall. I was walking a knife’s edge, every muscle in my body strung tight.

  “A reminder, Majesty, of happier times. Times that could be again, if we find the will to act.”

  “My wife is dead,” he hissed at me.

  “But your son is not.”

  “My son…” he muttered almost to himself, his eyes losing focus. They drifted past me to settle on some unseen ghost, glazing over as they filled with equal parts sorrow and madness.

  “Surely you mean to preserve the realm he is to inherit,” I added when the silence stretched.

  His attention snapped back to me, and with it, his anger. “Do not presume to tell me my mind.”

  I heard my mother shift behind me, a warning to back down. I couldn’t. Not yet. Not without my ask. “I merely request your aid, my king. Your people are suffering.”

  “…Speak.”

  “The White Sea is overflowing with refugees.” I eyed the Persican priest but held my tongue on that front. Careful. “The Darian fleet is overburdened and undermanned. Alesian merchant ships are being pilfered at an increasing rate. Civilians brutalized and slaughtered at sea. Women and children, sire.”

  “What would you have me do?” he asked, rubbing his head as though it were about to burst.

  “Send to your navy for reinforcements.”

  “It will take them months to sail around the continent to the White Sea.”

  “All the more reason to make haste, sire.”

  He rubbed his head a bit longer before glancing over his shoulder at the priest. Those dark eyes remained fixed on me as the cleric leaned down to murmur in the King’s ear. Whatever was said, Amenon nodded in agreement.

  “The Van Dryn fleet can protect its own interests,” he said. “If they don’t want their trade ships raided, they have plenty of coin to hire more escorts.”

  Incredulity and anger flared in my chest. He’d defer to a foreigner, when those who had bled to keep him on that throne stood right in front of him?

  “Every freelance frigate and galleon has already been conscripted,” I replied, willing myself to calm. “It is still not enough.”

  “Tell them to build more ships. This is not the Crown’s problem.”

  “With all due respect, sire, there is more to this than just coin.”

  He waved a hand dismissively, growing impatient. “With Van Dryns, everything is about coin.”

  I bristled at that. “You do them a disservice, my lord. People are dying.”

  “Not my people,” he hissed, lurching forward abruptly in his seat. One pale hand wobbled with palsy.

  I held that half-mad gaze in stunned silence, the very air stolen from my lungs. I felt my resolve slipping, anger giving way to the paralyzing fear of failure as my mind grasped at the threads of reason unraveling before my eyes.

  How can he not see?

  “The refugees tell of a pirate king uniting a great marauder fleet under his banner,” I blurted, one last play that I’d hoped not to need. “If Alesia does not contest him, we will lose dominion over the White Sea.”

  He tilted his head at me, chapped lips curling in a sneer. “You must truly be desperate, to resort to rumors.”

  “…Please, my lord.”

  No light, no compassion, looked out at me from those cold brass eyes. “No.”

  I stared at him in disbelief, unwilling to admit defeat, unable to move, barely able to breathe.

  “Perhaps, then, Your Majesty, we might turn the discussion to your own people.” My mother stepped forward, grabbing my arm and pulling me back to take my place at the fore. Amenon all but rolled his eyes at her.

  “I am well aware of the spreading sickness, Nefira. It is the same refugees your daughter wishes to aid that brought this plague to our lands.”

  “It is her betrothed and his House that she wishes to preserve, sire. My daughter is young, but she is not wrong. Surely, your extensive network has reported the shift in public opinion. Should the guilds continue to suffer, rebellion could break out in Daria.”

  “My network?”

  Her tone never wavered as she pressed on. “The destabilization of Alesia’s largest port could cost the Crown dearly, both in trade interests and lives.”

  “You always did have a flair for the dramatic.”

  “Perhaps we could retire and speak practically, my lord, just you and I,” my father spoke up finally. “As friends. As brothers in arms. As we used to.”

  Amenon considered
him for a long moment, madness warring with unfathomable depths of sorrow and anger. Beneath them all, I detected a fleeting desire for reconciliation, but in the end, the weight of his own personal misery won out.

  “House Lazerin has wasted enough of my time. Get out.”

  I will never forget that long, terrible walk from the throne room. I had failed in every unquestionable sense of the word, and put my entire family into the King’s ill graces. I’d been so sure, so confident in the sheer virtue of my cause, that I’d barely considered the possibility of Amenon’s refusal. Once safely ensconced in the carriage and well on our way back to the manor, I finally broke the awful silence.

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered into the close air. My father offered me a rueful smile, but neither of them spoke.

  When we returned home and swept through the door into the foyer, my mother’s fingers closed on my arm. “Come with me,” she murmured, exchanging a glance with my father as she led me away to the study.

  I felt ill. The pit of my stomach had morphed into a gaping maw of despair. People would die. Adrian could die because I had failed. As the door clicked shut behind me, I struggled to find the words to express the twisting tempest of shame and disbelief in my chest.

  “I’m sorry,” I repeated. “I thought I could make him understand.”

  “You managed to secure an audience,” she observed evenly, “which is more than we’ve been able to achieve in the last six months.” Soft fingers brushed my shoulder as she passed, crossing the room while I grappled with my anger and the sheer senselessness of it all.

  “How could he refuse? Why? How can he not see what is happening around him?”

  She spared me a disapproving glance as she rifled through the stacks of maps and letters on the desk.

  “You see but you don’t observe.”

  “I saw the damned priest. I stood closer than you, and I couldn’t make out his words. You certainly couldn’t either.”

  “It doesn’t matter what he said,” she insisted. “It matters what he wants. Persica needs the White Sea to fall into chaos. The ferocity of their ambition is only growing. Ulgar and Rume fell in a matter of months, but it will take more than a few assassinations for them to push west. Elas, in particular, poses a greater challenge than any they’ve yet faced.”

  “Greater than Alesia?” I challenged with a twinge of patriotic pride.

  She tilted her head at me. “Agorai has stood for thousands of years. Empires have risen and fallen around her, kings and conquerors have tried to claim her, and yet she remains. Alesia is still recovering from one war. Our people will not be eager to start another.”

  She pulled a sizable map from beneath the chaos of papers, smoothing it flat atop the rest.

  “To have any hope of adding Elas to their empire, Persica must isolate her in every way possible. The Senate provides a mass of redundancies that make it more difficult to infiltrate and destroy from within, as they did in Makednos. Alesia is the only thing standing in their way. If the refugees and this pirate king, if there even is one, can keep our southern fleet occupied, Agorai is left without allies.”

  “Elas controls the most powerful navy in the White Sea,” I countered.

  She traced the country on the map before us. “That is a lot of coastline to protect. Even their substantial fleet is insufficient to the task.”

  So the priest will do everything he can to keep the King from sending reinforcements. The understanding settled in my gut like a stone. My cause was doomed before I ever loosed my arrow.

  “Then why did you let me send my petition at all?”

  Bright green eyes lifted to mine, that beautiful face solemn and focused. “We’ve not seen Amenon since Rishel’s death. I’d no idea he’d slipped so far into Persica’s hands. I had hoped you might be able to get through to him, with a plea rooted in love. He is a scion of Adulil.” She smiled sadly. “Though I fear he no longer remembers as much.” A silent moment passed as she collected her thoughts. “What else?” she pressed, watching me expectantly in a mimic of our lessons.

  “Well, he’s obviously gone mad.” I threw up a hand in frustration, unable to keep the bitterness from my voice.

  “Don’t oversimplify,” she scolded. “Madness is largely subjective.”

  “What would you call it, then?”

  “Despair. Amenon’s life has become a pantomime of misery. He cannot find sympathy for anyone else’s suffering, because how could it possibly compare to his? Love runs deeper in the blood of Adulil than in the rest of us. It is a sacred, powerful thing. Amenon is not a cruel man, but everything around him reminds him of what he’s lost.”

  “Selice.” He had kept her at arm’s length her whole life.

  She nodded gravely. “That girl is a prisoner, make no mistake.”

  “And the boy.” The one he’d not bothered to name.

  “Every room in that castle holds a memory that tears the wounds anew. The sheep of this Court wonder why Yule went unremarked this year for the first time in centuries.”

  I didn’t. I’d known the moment Captain Russo had told us, clustered below deck over stale bread and mugs of ale. They’d married on the winter solstice. Tonight we start anew, Amenon had said, raising a glass to hope and healing, wholly unaware of the terrible loss that awaited him.

  “His children, above all, remind him of the shattered pieces of his heart,” she continued, bracing her hands atop the desk, piles of papers crinkling beneath. “He cannot bear to face them, and he knows the hurt his neglect has caused. It is yet another bitterness stacked upon the rest, to see the harm you are doing and be incapable of acting to correct it.”

  “He could, though,” I protested. “He could choose to be better. To name his son, and address this illness, and throw that snake out of Litheria.”

  “I assume you noticed the censer at his feet.” I nodded. “And the smell?” Another nod. Her eyes flickered with old shadows. “It has been many years since I’ve seen such a thing.”

  “What is it?”

  “Jadeweed. Like opium, it dulls the mind – and pain – but is far more addictive and rarely found this side of the Mare Nox. Once reliant, few are able to shake from its grip. I fear it will be Amenon’s downfall.”

  “We should tell the Court.”

  “The King knows he’s being drugged. So long as he wants to forget his grief, there is nothing we can do to stop him.”

  “We could kill the priest,” I said with an abruptness and a surety that startled even me. “Cut off his supply.”

  The corner of her mouth twitched in what I would have sworn was approval, if not for the sadness in her eyes. “They will just send another to replace him, and it would expose us to great risk.”

  “But it could give us time to reach him.”

  “A month, perhaps, and that is only if we could get through to him once the priest is dead. Amenon is not the only one in conference with Persica.”

  I balked at that. “Who?”

  The tightness of her jaw told me she considered such fraternization just as treasonous as I did. “There are those,” she worded carefully, “who will seize any opportunity to advance their own interests.”

  “Adulines,” I realized incredulously. The venomous look on Priscilla’s face flashed in my mind. “His own kin.”

  “Whether they plot openly against him or not, I can’t be sure. I have no contacts within the Houses of Adulil outside the castle.”

  That she would openly admit to having any contacts at all caught me out. I only knew about them as a result of my own eavesdropping, but I kept my mouth shut on that front as she continued.

  “Either way, their involvement makes a move like that far too unpredictable to attempt. Whoever else would see Persica as an ally could step in and isolate Amenon before we ever reached him. And if he retreats in his paranoia and shuts everyone out, the physical agony of his withdrawal could push him over the edge. He is already havi
ng the headaches, even with the censer constantly at hand. No priest, no jadeweed.”

  I sank into a chair, desperation gripping hard. Memories of my encounters with him flooded me: his golden eyes greeting me at my debut, the warmth and adoration on his face when he announced the impending arrival of his child, genuine kindness in his voice as we spoke at the hunt. He had ruled Alesia with a steady hand for two prosperous decades, an honorable man who had proven he would fight for his people and his right to the throne, whose bravery had been the highlight of my favorite stories as a child.

  How could such a man fall so very far?

  “We are not all the men we once thought we would be.” My father’s voice. I hadn’t heard him enter, too lost in the mire of my thoughts.

  “What do we do?” I asked them both, my voice small as I stared at the mountain of missives and charts. It all felt too big, too impossible, a giant labyrinth with no exits.

  “Nothing,” he replied, heavy steps halting at the arm of my chair. “Which is often the most difficult choice.”

  I shook my head incredulously. “We must do something.”

  “We wait,” my mother intoned, drawing my gaze to hers. “When the time is right, we will back Selice to succeed her father as steward of the throne until the boy comes of age.”

  Solid steel, that woman. A thousand honed blades in a pretty package. Pure, unapologetic necessity.

  “You mean when Amenon dies,” I clarified sharply.

  Her expression never wavered. “When Persica shows their hand.”

  “And until then?” I pressed. “What do we do about it? We can’t just sit here and watch them tear everything apart. There won’t be anything left for her to rule!”

  My parents exchanged a meaningful look, volumes spoken in silence.

  “We do what we can, where we can,” Mother said. “Starting with your Adrian.”

  CHAPTER 31

  A sliver of moon hung overhead as I rode one of our common house mounts through the streets of Dockside. My eyes darted down every alleyway, sweaty palm locked on the hilt of my belt knife beneath my cloak. I scrutinized every passerby, scoured every corner, waiting for the shadows to shift, to strike. Despite my paranoia, I reached the hidden livery stable without incident. Once inside the warehouse, a lad I guessed to be around twelve or thirteen strode up to take my reins. I swung down from the saddle and pressed a silver into his hand.