“My kingdom for a handkerchief,” he murmured. “There, there, Cleo. What’s wrong?”
“My father plans to announce my engagement to Aron soon.” Her breath hitched. “Officially!”
He grimaced. “Now I see why you’re so upset. An engagement to a handsome lord. How horrible that must be for you.”
She slapped his shoulder and tried not to laugh in the midst of her tears. “Stop it. You know I don’t want to marry him.”
“I know. But an engagement does not equal a marriage.”
“Not yet.”
He shrugged. “I suppose I might have a simple solution for you if you’re really so upset about this.”
She looked at him eagerly. “What?”
He raised an eyebrow. “Tell your father that you’re madly in love with me and that you refuse to marry anyone else. And if he causes a problem, threaten to run away with me and elope.”
This finally coaxed a true smile from her and she hugged him again. “Oh, Nic. I should have known you’d be able to cheer me up.”
“Is that a yes?”
Cleo gazed up into his familiar face with a grin. “Stop being silly. As if you’d even have me. We’re too good friends to consider each other anything else.”
He shrugged a bony shoulder. “Can’t blame me for trying.”
She let out a shaky sigh. “Besides, my father would have a fit at the very suggestion of it. You’re not exactly royal.”
“As unroyal as they come, actually.” He gave her a lopsided grin. “And damn proud of it. You royals are such a stuffy bunch. Mira, however, wishes she was born royal every waking hour.”
“Your sister is a handful.”
“We’d better make sure she marries a man with large enough hands to deal with her.”
“Does he exist?”
“I sincerely doubt it.”
She heard footsteps coming toward them, heavy on the marble floors.
“There you are, your highness.” It was Theon, dressed in his stiff blue uniform, his expression dour. “The king sent me to find you.”
She let out a long shaky sigh. And so it begins.
Nic looked between them. “Is there a problem?”
“This is Theon Ranus,” she said. There was a tight look on his face right now that wasn’t quite the same as the arrogant one she’d seen the other day in Paelsia. “Theon, you don’t look very happy. Did my father ask you to do something that doesn’t agree with you?”
The young guard kept his dark eyes straight forward. “I obey any command the king gives me.”
“I see. And what did he want of you this time?” she asked knowingly.
Theon’s jaw tensed. “He assigned me as your personal bodyguard.”
“Hmm. How do you feel about that?”
“I feel...honored.” He gritted this out.
“Bodyguard?” Nic’s eyebrows went up. “Why would you need a bodyguard?”
“My father feels that I will stay out of trouble if I have a full-time guard assigned to protect me. He means to stop me from having any fun.”
“A death threat was uttered by the peasant’s brother,” Theon pointed out.
Cleo’s stomach clenched at the memory, but she waved a hand. “I’m not afraid of him now that I’m back here. He’d never get past the palace walls.”
“Well, this is amusing,” Nic said. “A bodyguard. Even here at the palace.”
“It’s ridiculous and totally unnecessary,” Cleo exclaimed. “Besides, Theon told me his career goal was to become my father’s bodyguard, yet now he’s been assigned to look after me instead. That must be incredibly disappointing for someone with such ambition, don’t you think?”
“Utterly disappointing,” Nic confirmed sympathetically, looking at Theon.
Theon’s expression tensed, but he said nothing.
Cleo continued. “He’ll have to watch over me when I’m out lounging in the sun. When I’m having a dress fitted. When I’m taking an art class. When a maid is braiding my hair. I’m sure he’ll find this all incredibly fascinating.”
“If he watches close enough, maybe he can help braid,” Nic said lightly.
It looked as if every word twisted into Theon like a knife in his back. She’d predicted he wouldn’t be happy about this assignment and she was right about that.
“Does that sound fun to you, Theon?” she teased. “To accompany me on my many excursions and local adventures...for the rest of my life?”
He met her gaze and it stopped her dead in her tracks. She expected distaste, but there was something else there. Something darker, yet slightly intrigued.
“As the king wishes, I obey,” he said evenly.
“Will you obey me?”
“Within reason.”
“What does that mean?” Nic asked.
His dark eyes shot to the redheaded boy. “It means that if the princess puts herself into harm’s way, I’ll intervene without a second thought. I won’t have another incident like last week. That murder could have been avoided if I’d been given the chance to stop it.”
Guilt had taken up a permanent place inside Cleo, burrowing deep into her heart. She dropped all teasing. “Aron never should have killed that boy.”
He glared at her. “Good to know that we agree on something.”
She held his intense gaze, wishing very hard that she didn’t find this inconvenient guard so fascinating. But the look in his eyes—that challenging glare...
She liked it more than a little bit.
No guard had ever looked at her with such boldness. In fact, no one at all had ever looked at her this way. Angry and fierce and vastly unfriendly...but there was something else there. As if Cleo was the only girl in the entire world and now he owned a part of her. He made her breath catch and her chest tighten. Theon was entirely overwhelming to every one of her senses.
“My, my.” Nic’s voice cut into her thoughts. “Perhaps you’d like me to leave the two of you alone so you can continue to stare at each other all day long?”
Heat came to her cheeks and she tore her gaze away from Theon. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
Nic laughed, but it wasn’t filled with amusement like before. It was much drier and less pleasant this time. He leaned forward and whispered so Theon couldn’t hear. “Just keep one thing in mind as you embark on this arrangement with your new bodyguard...”
She looked at him sharply. “What’s that?”
He held her gaze. “He’s not royal either.”
Jonas had cleaned the dagger’s blade twice, but it was as if he could still see his brother’s blood on it. He tucked it into the leather sheath at his hip and surveyed the border between Paelsia and Auranos. It was monitored, of course. Guards were assigned to keep watch over it from the Silver Sea in the west and across to the Forbidden Mountains in the east. Stealthy guards, since they couldn’t easily be seen—unless you knew what to look for.
Jonas knew. He’d been taught by the best—by Tomas. The first time he’d ever come close to this dangerous area was when he was only ten years old, his brother fourteen. Tomas had a secret, one he’d never shared with anyone until he decided to share it with his younger brother. He poached from their neighbors. It was a crime with an immediate death sentence if they were ever caught, but he’d thought it was worth it to keep their family healthy and alive. Jonas agreed.
Paelsia was once a land of gardens, lush forests, and hundreds of rivers filled with fish; a land filled to overflowing with wild animals to hunt. That had begun to change three generations ago. Slowly, from the snow-capped mountains in the east and across toward the ocean in the west, Paelsia had become less fertile, less able to sustain life. It all began to die, leaving behind brown grass, gray rock, and death. A wasteland. Closer to the sea, it imp
roved, but by now only a quarter of the land was able to sustain life as it once had.
However, thanks to Auranos, what fertile soil was left was now used to plant vineyards so they could sell wine cheaply to their southern neighbor and drink themselves into a stupor rather than plant crops that could feed those who lived here. To Jonas, wine had become a symbol of the oppression of Paelsians. A symbol of the stupidity of Paelsians. And instead of refusing to accept this and begin a search for a solution, they lived day to day with a weary sense of acceptance.
Many believed that their leader, Chief Basilius, would eventually summon the magic to save them all. The most devoted of his subjects believed him to be a sorcerer, and they worshipped him like a god, bound to this world by flesh and blood. He took three-quarters of the wine profits as a tax. His people gave it over freely, solid in their belief that he would soon summon his magic to save them all.
Naive, Jonas thought, enraged. So unforgivably naive.
Tomas, on the other hand, hadn’t believed in such nonsense as magic. While he’d respected the chief’s position as leader, he believed only in the cold, hard facts of life. He had no problem regularly poaching from Auranos. He would have been more than happy to poach from Limeros as well, but the rocky terrains, wide moors, and frigid temperatures their northern neighbors had to offer weren’t as conducive to wildlife as the temperate climate and grassy valleys of Auranos.
Jonas had been amazed when Tomas first snuck him across the border into Auranos. A white-tailed deer had practically walked right up and presented its throat to the boys’ blades as if welcoming them into the prosperous kingdom. When the boys disappeared for a week at a time and returned laden with food, their father, unquestioning then as now, assumed they’d found a secret bounty of hunting in Paelsia, and they never told him otherwise. While the old man preferred them to work long hours in the vineyards, he allowed them their frequent journeys without argument.
If he’d known the truth, he would have been furious that his sons were risking their lives. The brothers had nearly been caught more than once, escaping only by the swiftness of their feet. All for trying to feed their family. For this, they were forced to risk their own necks in a land that could easily share everything it possessed and never notice the loss.
“One day,” Tomas had said to him while they stood in this very spot just before they crossed the border, “you and I are going to start a revolution. We’re going to make it so anyone can cross this border without getting an arrow in their backs. And everybody in Paelsia will experience the beauty and abundance Auranians get every day of their spoiled lives. We’ll take it for ourselves.”
Jonas’s eyes burned at the memory. Grief clawed at his throat. It had barely let go for a moment since the murder.
I wish you were here right now, Tomas. So much. We’d start that revolution of yours today.
His hand brushed against the hilt of the knife used by Lord Aron to stab his brother in the throat. All while a beautiful princess watched on with amusement.
That princess had quickly become Jonas’s obsession—the perfect symbol of Auranos itself. Coldly beautiful, greedy, and evil to the core. He found his hatred for her burning brighter with each day that passed. She’d likely already forgotten what happened now that she was back in her golden palace without a care in her pampered world. Evil bitch. After he finished with Lord Aron, Jonas fully planned to use the very same blade to slowly kill her as well.
“This was meant to be,” his father had said as the funeral flames for Tomas lit up the dark sky.
“It was not,” Jonas gritted out through clenched teeth.
“There’s no other way to see it. To bear it. It was his destiny.”
“A crime was committed, Father. A murder at the hands of the same royals you would still sell your wine to in a heartbeat. And no one will pay for this. Tomas died in vain and all you can talk about is destiny?”
With the heart-wrenching image of his beloved brother’s spiritless shell branded forever into his memory, Jonas moved away from the crowd who’d gathered to be a part of the funeral ritual. He met his sister’s glossy eyes as they passed.
“You know what you have to do,” Felicia whispered fiercely. “Avenge him.”
And so here he was, ready to enter Auranos. A predator prepared to hunt an entirely different kind of prey. And he knew with a calm certainty that he would not return from this personal mission. He would die in the process—gladly, giving his life to avenge his brother’s murder.
“You look very serious.” A voice spoke to him from the shadows.
Every muscle in his body tensed. He turned to his right, but before he could reach for his weapon, he was met with a fist slamming into his gut. He staggered back, gasping for breath. A body slammed into his and took him down to the ground hard.
A sharp blade pressed against his throat before he could summon the energy to get back to his feet. He stopped breathing and stared up into a pair of dark eyes.
A mouth twisted with amusement. “Dead. Just like that. See how easy it would be?”
“Get off me,” Jonas gritted out.
The blade lifted from his throat. He shoved at the figure on top of him, which finally shifted back with a low rumble of laughter.
“Idiot. You think you could just disappear and nobody would notice you’re gone?”
Jonas glared at his best friend. Brion Radenos. “I didn’t invite you to come along.”
Brion ran a hand through his messy black hair. His teeth flashed white. “I took the liberty of tracking you. You leave a substantial trail. Made it easy.”
“I’m surprised I didn’t notice you.” Jonas brushed off his shirt, now ripped and dirtier than it had been to begin with. “You stink like a bastard pig.”
“You were never the best when it came to insults. Personally, I take that as a compliment.” Brion sniffed the air. “You aren’t exactly the freshest flower in the valley right now either. Any border guard would be able to smell you when you got within fifty feet of them.”
Jonas glowered. “Mind your own business, Brion.”
“My friend running off to get himself slaughtered is my business.”
“No, it isn’t.”
“You can argue with me all day and night if you like if it’ll keep you from entering this kingdom.”
“Wouldn’t be the first time I’ve entered this kingdom.”
“But it would be the last. You think I don’t know what you’re planning?” He shook his head. “I’ll say it again. Idiot.”
“I’m not an idiot.”
“You want to march into the Auranian palace and kill two royals. To me, that’s the plan of an idiot.”
“Both of them deserve to die,” he growled.
“Not like this.”
“You weren’t there. You didn’t see what happened to Tomas.”
“No, but I’ve heard enough stories. I’ve seen your grief.” Brion exhaled slowly, studying his friend. “I know how you think, Jonas. How you feel. I lost my own brother, remember?”
“Your brother slipped off a cliff when he was drunk and fell to his death. It’s not nearly the same thing.”
Brion flinched at the reminder of his brother’s shortcomings, and Jonas had the grace to wince that he’d been low enough to bring up such a sore subject. “The loss of a brother is painful, no matter how he meets his end,” Brion said after a moment. “And so is the loss of a friend.”
“I can’t let this stand, Brion. Any of it. I can’t make peace with it.” Jonas gazed across the open field beyond the thin line of forest separating the two lands. By foot, the palace was still a full day’s journey from here. He was an excellent climber. He planned to scale the palace walls. He’d never seen the palace itself, but he’d heard many tales about it. During the last war between the lands, nearly
a century ago, the Auranian king of the day had built a glittering marble wall around the entire royal grounds, which contained the castle and the villas of important Auranian citizens. Some said an entire square mile was contained within these walls—a city unto itself. Part of such a large wall would be unguarded, especially since it had been so long since there was any substantial threat to worry about.
“You think you can kill the lord?” Brion asked.
“Easily.”
“And the princess too? You think slitting a girl’s throat will be that easy for you?”
Jonas met his gaze in the darkness. “She’s a symbol of the rich scum that laugh at us and wipe our noses in our poverty and dying land. Her assassination will be a message to King Corvin that this is unacceptable. Tomas always wanted a revolution between our kingdoms. Maybe this’ll do the trick.”
Brion shook his head. “You might be a hunter, but you’re not a murderer, Jonas.”
He turned away from Brion when his eyes began to sting. He wouldn’t let himself cry in front of his friend. He wouldn’t show weakness like that to anyone ever again. That alone would be the ultimate defeat.
“Something must be done.”
“I agree. But there’s another way. You need to think with your head, not only your heart.”
He couldn’t help but snort softly at that. “You think I’m using my heart right now?”
Brion rolled his eyes. “Yes. And in case there’s any doubt, your heart is an idiot just like the rest of you. Would Tomas want you to run off to Auranos and stick daggers in royals even if he was a budding revolutionary?”
“Maybe.”
Brion cocked his head. “Really?”
Jonas frowned and an image of his brother flickered in his mind. “No,” he admitted finally. “He wouldn’t. He’d think I was being a suicidal jackass.”
“Not much better than getting drunk to forget your many woes and falling off a cliff, is it?”