by Gwynn White
Heartened, he continued, “Lynx is the culprit. The sooner Axel gets over his lust for her, the better. If you wish to help him, then you will make him understand that.”
Tatiana rescued her nail file from where it hung on Felix’s velvet cloak and tapped it against her hand. “Felix, do you remember your first flush of youth when you fell in love with a girl called Katrina? The girl your father said was beneath you because she wasn’t one of the Fifteen?”
Felix squirmed, knowing exactly where she was going with this. He didn’t need to see his wife’s awful decorative sense to know that Katrina hadn’t been the perfect candidate for marriage for an heir to the Chenayan throne. She had been so far down on his father’s list of approved women that she hadn’t even featured.
“Do you recall the hours you spent crying on my shoulder about her?”
He held his up hand to stop Tatiana, but she barreled on anyway.
“Do you remember the advice I gave, that you, bravely I think, followed? Advice that shocked the whole palace when you married her anyway? I do. As if it were yesterday.” Kindness infused her face for a second, and then it was gone. “Well, it seems your son has chosen to follow in your footsteps by falling hopelessly—pathetically—in love with an unattainable woman. You got Katrina. Axel will never have Lynx, no matter that she adores him with the same hopeless passion—that’s if she is even still alive. But like you with Katrina, nothing is going to stop him trying for her.”
Felix shook his head, “No, Tatiana. It is not the—”
“Too late. I still love lost causes. They give me a reason to exist. Like I helped you, I will help Axel and Lynx as far as I can.”
Couldn’t the woman see how stupid she was being? “You are doing him no favors. And what about Malika? You will sacrifice her for some romantic notion?”
“Don’t talk to me about doing favors,” Tatiana raged back. “It is in your power to change this situation right now. If you truly wanted to.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“Whose side are you on, Felix? Lukan’s—or the one your own son and daughter have chosen to support? You know as well as I do that Lukan is weak. Vulnerable. Now is the time to stand up against him before he consolidates his power. Now is the time to topple him. Challenge him! Call him out on what he is doing to Malika. He needs you more than you need him.”
How Felix wished he could, but with Nicholas the Light-Bearer growing daily in Lynx’s womb, he feared the opportunity to openly challenge Lukan had passed. The Dmitri Curse unfolded before Felix’s eyes, and as far as he understood the curse, only one member of the Avanov family carried the mantle for successfully challenging—and killing—Lukan, and it wasn’t Felix. Or Axel. To openly rise up against Lukan now was surely to court death. But he would never share that with Tatiana.
Felix held up both hands as if to ward off an evil spirit. “I will not listen to this. What you are saying is bordering on treason. You are pushing our friendship beyond breaking point. My loyalty is clear. I give my allegiance to the emperor, who, at the moment, happens to be Lukan Avanov.”
Tatiana sank back into her chair. “Goody for you. I hope Lukan makes you very happy. I understand from Katrina that you love coping with his huge technological demands, coupled with the constant threat that you will be eliminated if you fail to deliver. It must make serving him so rewarding. By the way, has he killed his wife and brother like he did his father? That seems to be his way of getting what he wants.”
Felix scowled, and the pulse in his temple twitched. If he didn’t need Tatiana’s help so much, friendship or not, he would march her down to the dungeons.
Then he chortled.
It wasn’t Tatiana at fault here; it was Katrina. As much as he adored his wife, she had never been discreet. It was a testament to how stressed he was that he had shared any of these concerns with her.
“It would seem that my family is conspiring against me. First my children, and now my wife.”
Tatiana smiled, a genuine one. She even squeezed his hand. “Your secrets are safe with me. My lips are sealed—like the dead. So, tell me, Lynx and Tao, are they still alive?”
Felix half-closed his eyes, looking at her through slits. Just because open rebellion was taboo didn’t mean covert action was forbidden. He had already offered Lynx a treasonous trade in exchange for protecting his children and survived. Could he risk it again? Tatiana was certainly a better bet as an ally. She loved Axel and Malika—even if her way of showing it was often misguided. But in the end, she had always done right by his children.
His voice dropped to a murmur. “Yes. That much I will tell you.” He squeezed her hand, hardly noticing her wince. “I beg you, protect my son. He is my world. Guide him to be wise. He can never have Lynx, no matter how much he may want her. His is not the same story as Katrina and my . . . relationship. Lynx is the empress, and our half-witted emperor is obsessed with her.” His breath hitched. “And I am terrified for Malika. I want her out of Cian, as far away from this palace as I can get her. Stefan Zarot loves her. He has almost since their days in the nursery.”
“No one would know that, looking at him,” Tatiana observed.
Felix smiled with pride for Stefan. “He is adroit at masking his thoughts. Axel and I persuaded Lukan to keep him here. The cretin will make Stefan’s life hell, I know that. But Stefan won’t flinch. Not if it protects Malika. Please, encourage that match. Give them space away from Morass to . . . do whatever it is young lovers do. If she has to marry Stefan, I will arrange a posting that will take them to the farthest point in this empire—even if I have to strip him of his rank and make him a private in some forgotten garrison. Anything to keep my daughter safe.” Body and mind drained from that soul-baring disclosure, Felix looked at Tatiana, fully expecting to see agreement and support on her face.
He was disappointed.
“Are Lynx and Tao together?”
Felix’s shoulders slumped. He pulled his cloak tighter around his shoulders. “You drive a hard bargain, Tatiana.”
She was silent.
His nod was so slight he wondered if she’d caught it.
She nodded back. “Why don’t you speak to Axel and Malika? You’re their father. They have always held you in very high regard.”
He snorted, feeling the regret burning in his eyes. “I have sworn my allegiance to Lukan. Three times, in fact. My children no longer trust me. As you point out, I am in the enemy camp. Malika barely speaks to me, and I saw it today in Axel’s eyes. He didn’t even stand to greet me. I have left him a message on my informa, but I hold out little hope. While Lukan holds Malika, I cannot tell Axel what he wants to hear. I need your help, Tatiana. Protect my children. I never want to be in the position where I am commanded to harm them.”
Tatiana reached for his arm. “Just tell me where I can find my friends, and I give you my word, I will do all I can to influence Axel and Malika. Mali will not die on my watch.”
How tempting that was! But could he risk Lukan learning of it? “You know I cannot do that. And how is their location relevant to stopping Axel going after her?”
Tatiana folded her arms and glared at him. “It is the price for my help. Pay it, or sort your children out yourself.”
“How do I know you won’t pass that information on to Axel?”
“You don’t. Any more than I can believe you will tell me their true location. But I am not the one wanting favors right now.” Tatiana started filing her nails again.
Felix warred with himself for a full minute. During that time, Tatiana finished with her nails and picked up her tapestry as if she didn’t have a care in the world. Finally, Felix made a decision that protected Lukan’s secret, while at the same time answered her question.
He stood. “Develop an interest in birds, Tatiana. They are fascinating creatures. Especially the birds of prey that soar and hunt over the Serreti Forest. I think you will find they give you the diversion you are looking for to fill your wan
ing years.”
At her sharp intake of breath, he cautioned, “But be careful. Lukan’s low-born and I will show no mercy if your newfound passion for falcons leads you to places where you should not be. From this time forward, this room will no longer be bugged, but take my word for it, parts of the Serreti Forest are—and, from now on, always will be.”
He reached for the door handle when she said, “Now, about Katcha? What happened to her?”
Felix fixed her with his iciest glare. “Don’t push it.”
Chapter 26
Axel rested his hand against the cannon mounted in one of the eyes at the tip of the Dragon’s Snout’s prow. Below him, the palace slid away with each whirl of the two giant propellers powering him toward Treven. He itched to fire a round of shells, stored in a box at his feet, at Lukan’s office.
Tatiana would call me childish. Foolish. Rash.
She’d be right.
But only when the palace had vanished completely, replaced with a landscape dotted with tiny villages and endless fields, did he turn away from the cannon.
Even that gesture made him feel like a coward.
He had let Lukan and his father pressure him into fleeing from his sister and his best friend. Not to mention Lynx and Tao. And Lukan would make Stefan pay for the benefit of having him in the palace to monitor Morass’s treatment of Malika.
What kind of man am I?
Shame had him burying his face in his hands. He tried to recall the peace that had settled on him as he had watched the falling leaves. Then his path forward had been so clear. He would work with Lukan, doing what he had to, while covertly building an army to ultimately destroy the ice crystal devices.
That sense of calm and purpose was nowhere to be found.
But what else could he have done in the face of such a united front presented by his father and Lukan? Morass threatening Malika had tied his father’s hands as much as it had Axel’s, but did the man have to look so . . . so confederate with Lukan? So happy to show Axel images of Lynx and Lukan seconds before his bastard cousin tumbled her?
And Lynx . . .
He kicked the Dragon Snout’s wooden hull with his very comfortable Norin boot. Kicking the dragon felt good, so he kicked it again, only harder this time. He didn’t stop until both his foot and his quarrel wound screamed for mercy. His legs crumpled under him, and he slid down onto the floor. Forehead resting on his knees, he waited for the pain to subside.
It was easy to be sanguine about Lynx holding and kissing another man when he didn’t have to watch her doing it, even if he fully supported her motives.
Still, he wasn’t naïve enough to believe that the footage couldn’t have been a fabrication. Despite never wanting to see Lynx and Lukan together again, he pulled out his father’s informa.
He hesitated.
It hadn’t escaped him that his father had programmed Axel’s thumb to his device. Perhaps Felix had left some message for him. Axel flicked his thumb across the reader, and as he expected, an awaiting message warning light flashed in the air. His father must have intended all along for Axel to pocket the informa.
Anything to delay looking at the images of Lynx, Axel played the message. Deep in his heart, he hoped his father would explain that he had acted under duress and that Axel was not to believe Lukan’s line that Lynx and Tao had fled.
“Axel, my boy,” his father said, “if you are listening to this, then you are safely on the way to Treven. I know you will be enraged about Malika, but I implore you as your father and your greatest champion, to do nothing to antagonize Lukan. Leave me to handle him and to protect your sister. Due to your hot-headedness, you have already been shot. I do not wish to see that happen again. Put your wrath behind you, accept your posting, do as exemplary a job for the current emperor as you would have for the last.
“And as for Lynx . . . She and Tao have fled, just as you saw on the footage. For the sake of your sister’s and your own life, do not pursue her—”
Axel deleted the message. The urge to throw the informa into a river, sailing far below him, was almost overwhelming.
He resisted it.
Staring, unseeing, out at the passing scenery, he mulled over everything he had been told. Tatiana had been so sure Lynx hadn’t fled Cian.
Axel wasn’t sure what Tao would have done, because it had never occurred to him that Tao wouldn’t support Lukan. His tongue clicked with irritation that he hadn’t asked anyone why Tao hadn’t sworn allegiance. He couldn’t recall anything in the footage to explain Tao’s motives, either.
There really was only one way to find out. It meant looking at those heart-wrenching images again. Axel gritted his teeth and pulled up the sequence of Lynx’s and Tao’s desertion.
As he suspected, nothing explained Tao’s actions. He studied each frame, looking for telltale clues that the images had been generated. After an hour of deep concentration, even he had to admit that the footage was real. Lynx had stripped naked for Lukan, asked him to bed her, and then fled with Tao onto a ship headed for Kartania.
But did that ship arrive in Kartania? Were Lynx and Tao there? Were they even alive?
Without help from his father, which would never be forthcoming, it would be almost impossible to find out. Axel did the math in his head. If that ship didn’t stop in any port anywhere along the way—impossible, given that it would need to replenish its fuel and supplies—it would take three weeks to get to Kartania.
A head popped into the turret. “My lord.”
Axel looked up at the young airman standing at the door.
“Dinner is served in your cabin.” The formal words sounded strained for a soldier more likely to shout, “Hey, Cook’s rustled up some grub, come and get it.” But then the young guardsman probably wasn’t used to flying a warlord around.
Axel read the name embroidered on his flight suit. “Thank you, Sergeant Retzen.” He stood.
The guardsman’s eyes widened briefly, with a quick look over Axel’s Norin clothes. Then, Retzen jerked his head back, saluted, and scurried out.
Axel grunted. The sergeant was right: he needed to get dressed in his proper uniform. Slowly, he made his way down the narrow wooden passage that dissected the dragon’s belly to his private cabin. The cabin offered little more than a bunk bed, a narrow closet, and a small table and chair.
A mess tin of food—indescribable—waited on the table for him. He sighed, acknowledging that he was back in the field. Like all military rations, it looked like and smelled like Dragon dung—if dragons had been real, of course.
In no hurry to sample his meal, he opened his closet and dragged out a pair of fatigues. Despite resenting the fire-breathing dragons denoting rank on his shoulders, the uniform fit like a second skin. Lukan and his father were forcing him into a position where he would have to act against his own military—men, uniforms, and machines he loved. Another sigh escaped him.
Not wanting to eat alone—and in the hope of getting some intel—he picked up his tin and headed for the galley. Two of the Dragon’s Snout’s three aircrew lounged around a tiny table, laughing at some joke. The third was up in the bridge, piloting the airship. The two airmen leaped to their feet to salute him.
Axel waved his hand. “At ease.”
They settled back in their seats but didn’t continue their banter. Part of him knew he was wrong for imposing on them, but he wanted to gauge their moods to the changes in Chenaya. Perhaps one of them belonged to Stefan’s band. It was always nice to know those men were out there.
He plunked his food down, sat, and poked a fork at it. “Who pulled short stick and got cook duty?”
Sergeant Gorgy, a good-looking man in his mid-thirties, raised a hand. “My lord, I’m sorry if it tastes—”
“Inedible?” Sergeant Retzen asked with a nervous laugh.
Gorgy shot Retzen a glare and nudged him in the ribs. Retzen gulped, and both men watched Axel cautiously.
Axel laughed. “You took the words out of my mouth
. But then you haven’t tasted my cooking.” He shoveled a forkful into his mouth. It was so salty he cringed, squinting against the taste. Left to itself, the stew would probably take years to decompose. He swallowed and reached for a glass of water.
“You cook, my lord?” Gorgy asked, looking doubtful, whether at Axel’s assertion that he could knock up a meal, sort of, or at the possibility that he was poisoning an heir to the throne, Axel wasn’t sure.
“I wasn’t always a warlord, you know,” Axel reminded. “I started in the military just like anyone else. Only difference between me and you was that I was sent to officers’ school to have the crap beaten out of me. I got my fair share of cookhouse punishments.” A wicked smile. “Paid the bastards back by burning the grub.”
Another look, surprise this time, passed between the men.
“You were fourteen?” Gorgy asked, still doubtful. “Like the rest of us?”
Axel risked another mouthful. “Officially, yes. But, like you, my training really started at birth. I was attending sword-fighting lessons and strategy sessions before I could even tie my shoelaces properly.”
His men grinned. As firstborn sons, they would appreciate what he meant. Embedded with guardsmen’s jaspers at birth, they would have been removed from their families and sent to special training camps to start their unofficial training. By fourteen, when scooped up into the regular military, they would already have been hardened soldiers. He sensed a softening in their mood.
“Like all of you, I spent most of my youth playing war games. Only difference was, I didn’t have to leave home to go to camp. We, the other high-born eldest sons and I, were chased around the Serreti Forest near the palace.” He paused. “That’s what cemented my relationship with my best friend, Colonel Stefan Zarot. Mutual suffering.” He eyed each man casually.
No reaction at Stefan’s name. These were ordinary guardsmen with no immunity to their jaspers.
“My lord, did His Majesty, Emperor Lukan, also participate in those war games?” Gorgy asked, quiet reverence in his voice as he mentioned Lukan’s name.
