Chapter One

“Are you ready?”

Thorsi rode to my right and slightly behind me. I didn’t turn around to address her. “Not in the least,” I said faintly. My fingers gripped the reins tightly, the white of my bones showing through my skin, as we came to the top of the hill. Sovares’s walls rose gray and high in the distance, the white of the palace towers glimmering beyond them. I looked away quickly so I wouldn’t get sick, and instead tried to preoccupy myself with the countryside around me. It worked—the fields around me were green with corn, and the bright sky above me was peaceful and scattered with white puffs of clouds—but only for a moment. I remembered again what precisely I was riding towards, and the nausea returned.

My heart was pounding in my chest, beating a quick rhythm in my ears, and my breath came fast, hindered by the stiff corset that was squeezing my ribs. Izza looked back reproachfully at me, wondering why her rider was so fidgety. “Sorry, Iz,” I murmured into her mane. Her right ear, half-obscured by the dark hair of her forelock, twitched at the sound of my voice. For a fleeting moment, I felt overwhelmingly envious. For Izza, living at the palace meant good oats and comfortable stalls; for me, it was going to be an endless, excruciating trial. Everything depended on me. If I failed, the entire Eagle Movement would fail with me.

When I realized that I was jealous of a horse, of all things, I told myself to be rational. This couldn’t be as terrible as I was fashioning it to be. It was what I had been preparing for my whole life. I had felt confident enough when Jacus told me that I was finally ready. So muster up some courage now! I told myself, my queasiness now replaced by a burning frustration—that all of this was relying on me, that I wasn’t brave enough, that my parents—

I stopped that line of thought. It would get me nowhere.

Thorsi pulled up to me, glancing bemusedly at my tightened lips and drawn-down brows. “Don’t be so worried,” she said, her words smooth, spoken with a slight musical lilt. Thorsi was from Farasiel, the country that bordered Yerran to the south. Her accent, along with her honey-colored skin and silver-streaked black hair, betrayed her ancestry—an ancestry that was somewhat mistrusted here. “You’ll do fine,” she said after a pause.

“I know I will,” I replied without conviction. Frustration, hot and consuming, filled me anew.

She heard the lack of belief in my tone, and a slight smile came to her dark lips. “Ah, you’re being foolish and you know it, lerati,” she said, using a Farasi term of endearment. “Have some confidence.” She smiled again.

“Stop grinning. There’s nothing humorous about this,” I muttered bad-naturedly and spurred Izza to a gallop, leaving Thorsi’s infuriating amusement behind.

-

I had been in our house—my and Thorsi’s—when Jacus knocked at the door. A somber expression was on his pale face, but there was a slight upward tilt at the edges of his thin lips that suggested that he was pleased.

Thorsi answered the door. “Hello? Oh! Jacus! What a pleasure. Come in, come in…”

He glanced around as he walked in, and finally his gaze settled on me. The hint of a smile widened into a real one. “Daivana,” he said, but I was already stepping forward, expectant, dreading his announcement yet hoping, hoping...

“Lady Restifa has died,” he continued. “The time has come.”

A heaviness filled my body at his words, like the heaviness a criminal gets when he hears the time of his execution—even as my heartbeat quickened with anticipation. “Do you mean…”

“Yes. You must leave today, so you have to pack quickly. You too,” he added, looking back at Thorsi, who had been watching this all with a worried purse to her lips that I knew well.

After Jacus had left with plans to meet with me later that day, I asked her about her anxiety.

“You are reasonable, but even reasonable people get swept away by fancy,” she started hesitantly. “I know that you think this will be a great adventure, and you’ll finally be able to avenge the wrongs that have been made…But there will be many perils, too. Perils that I’m not sure you will be able to face.” Thorsi raised her hand, already anticipating my indignant retort. “Listen,” she said gently, and I closed my mouth. “You have been trained in the arts of etiquette and courtly manners, things that I know nothing of. But I do know that you have no experience in the ways of love…”

This time I did interrupt, my face hot. This was quickly veering into uncomfortable territory. “That has nothing to do with—”

“But it does.” The tentativeness was utterly gone from her voice. Now her words were firm, tolerating no disagreement. “Your mission is to court the Prince, as we both know, and get military information from him. However, though you’ve been taught the fundamentals of courting …have you ever lived it?”

Now feeling extremely discomfited, I said, “Well, ah, not—”

“A rhetorical question, Daivana,” she said, a hint of wry humor coming into her tone. “You and I both know you haven’t. I know I can’t tell you not to do this thing, even though I know that the Movement’s hopes are resting on you and that you have your own reasons for going—and, indeed, that I will be going with you to supervise you…But, Daivana…I've been like a mother to you these past years, and I can't stand the thought of this hurting you. I wish you didn't need to do this. With all my heart.”

I felt stiff and awkward under the intense beam of her emotion. But I lifted my eyes to hers and held them. The heaviness from before dropped on me again, tenfold. “Yes, I understand. You’re right, of course. I’ll be careful.” And then, after a pause, I said more brightly, trying to lighten the atmosphere that to me was stifling, “Besides, you’ll be with me the whole of the perilous journey, so fear not.”

Thorsi had smiled then, but her eyes were far away.

-

I hadn’t gotten very far ahead after my moody outburst before I slowed my horse with a rueful smile at Thorsi. She nodded, accepting my wordless apology. We finally reached Sovares’s gates, and rode briskly through the streets until we reached the palace. By then my feeling of sickness was gone and my resolve was firmly back in place.

The palace walls, slightly smaller but no less impressive than the walls of the capital itself, stretched above us, blocking the sunlight. We waited in their cold shadow. I shivered, nausea trickling back into my body, but then I clung to my newfound determination and it disappeared. Before us was a large wooden gate, at least five feet thick. A black-armored guard stood at its base, and finally, as it creaked open, he motioned us through. Our horses’ hooves clicked against the red cobblestone, and we rode into the sudden sun; the light dazzled my eyes, and I squinted against the painful glare. As my vision cleared, I saw well-kept booths lining the streets, attractive apartments behind them. This was the palace market, where high quality merchants sold their wares and rented living space.

I felt self-conscious in my green riding dress, my dark hair pinned away from my face. A few of them stared curiously at us, making my nervousness worse. I instinctively wanted to flinch away from their gaze—attention was never good when you worked for the Eagle Movement—but then I remembered how I would appear. Innocent, innocuous, a finely dressed lady and her maid on her way to make her appearance at Court. So I endured the stares, even as my instincts screamed against it, and even managed a few tightlipped smiles in the sellers’ general direction. Some even kneeled at our passing, which surprised me.

Soon we passed from the sunlight of the market into the shade of a gray stone archway. Here another guard checked our identities. This time I gave him an aged, yellow letter—something that I had had with me since birth—and surprise on his rough-hewn, tan face, he waved us through. After we had passed through the arch, a stableboy dressed in the blue and silver livery of the palace motioned for us to dismount. He took our horses, and another uniformed servant stepped up, leading Thorsi to the servant’s quarters.

She looked helplessly back at me as she was led away, and I was left alone. Refusing to give into my fear, I called back the stableboy and asked him where I should go to present myself to the King.

The boy’s face flushed at my address, turning crimson under his freckles, and he stammered an intelligible reply and pointed straight down the path. “Um, d-down this, ah, p-p-path, into the hallway—then follow th-that ‘till you g-g-get to, um, th’end,” he finally managed to say. I was baffled by his shyness, but then realized again that I was a lady, and ladies probably didn’t talk much to servants. My opinion of nobles dropping even lower than it was previously, I made sure to thank him warmly and set off in the direction he pointed me.

Gardens enveloped me, fragrant and colorful. To my right were slim trees with drooping leaves, red flowers growing neatly at their feet. On my left was a wide expanse of elaborate patterns of vibrant blossoms, skillfully grown into the shape of the royal crest—a rearing griffin. Paths wove through the flowerbeds, a part of the design as much as the flowers. The white marble of the palace was visible on all sides, and I realized that I was in a type of courtyard. Finally I reached the end of the path, and walked up ten or so steps to an immense deeply set oak door. Thankfully one door was propped open so I didn’t need to attempt open it, and I passed into the cool air of the palace.

I blinked, allowing my eyes to readjust to the dimness of my new surroundings, and finally a large marble hall appeared before me. The floor was inlaid with beautiful mosaics, in neutral colors of navy blue, gray, tan, and dark teal. Candles flickered from blue-colored glass in the walls and illuminated the corridor. I compared this scene mentally with the image of a poor district in Sovares that we had passed through in order to get here. Thin, dirty children had clung to their tired mother’s skirts as we passed, and I still couldn’t get rid of the mother’s accusing stare that was imprinted in my memory, as if I was the one to blame for her children’s hunger and the hopelessness of her entire existence…

I shook my head, as if to clear the visions. In response to the anger that was creeping up on me—at the King, at everyone who lived so well here while outside, the poor starved and died—I told myself, You’re the one who’s going to fix this. If you do this right, no one will suffer from unfair taxes again.

Bolstered by this thought, I started walking, glancing into the doorways that I passed. In one, a harp sat on a raised dais, chairs surrounding it. In another, a fountain made out of what appeared to be glass bubbled joyfully. Finally I reached the end, and stood at the great iron-wrought double doors that surely led into the throne room. Two guards stood on either side, and I had to once more present my letter to them. Stone-faced, they opened the door and walked through. After a moment where I waited panic-stricken, they reemerged. One of them opened the door for me, gesturing for me to go through. My heart pounded, so loudly that the guards had to have heard it. I wished for nothing so much as to have Thorsi at my side, but a long-lost duchess couldn’t make her grand entrance with a maid.

“Help me, Rhiadora,” I murmured, naming my etiquette teacher. I figured it was just as good, if not better, as praying to the gods.

I smoothed my green velvet dress over my waist, lifted my chin, straightened my back as I had been taught, ignored my racing pulse—

And I stepped inside, to where the King awaited.