“I’ve suspected for a long time my sister was important to you, and now I know why you have not asked me for her hand in marriage.”
“I had planned to ask her tonight.”
Ajali stiffened. “You will let her go when the time comes.”
It was the king who commanded and not his friend.
“I never had her,” Gavyn said flatly, breathing through the rage and loss tightening his chest in a vise grip. “Shall we join everyone?”
He felt Ajali’s stare on his as he walked away, but Gavyn relentlessly suppressed all the chaotic emotions stirring in his heart.
Let her go. Do nothing foolish. Let her go.
* * *
Xian walked with her head lifted high through the long hallway of the castle, her hands clasped at her front toward the war council. A place she had never been summoned before. Only two hours had passed since the soundwaves declaring war had blasted through the air. The ball had ended, their guests had returned home, and warriors had been dispersed by the hundreds to the streets of Adara. They would move with stealth and great vigilance. If spies lingered, they are to be unearthed, dissidents arrested, and the citizens reassured.
Ajali and his most loyal high dukes, Gavyn included, had excused themselves and had been secreted in the war council since. Each duke ruled over a province with millions of citizens and an army. They would soon return to their respective provinces to mobilize the warriors and prepare the people of their territory for war: food storage, families covering in one household for safety, and relentless training of their warrior force.
Ajali requesting her presence had surprised Xian. He had always sought to keep her in the dark about the seedier and more dangerous aspect of ruling, despite her many protests over the years. She had removed the flimsy scraps of jewelry she had worn as her gown and had dressed more practically in a dark green kaftan and had bounded her waist-length locks into a coronet around her head.
Upon approaching the war council, two of the four warriors guarding the entrance turned around and open the door. She swept inside, her gaze scanning the small group of people standing in the center of the room, staring at a wall which highlighted an etched map of the seven kingdoms of Amagarie.
Battle strategies were already being discussed.
Ajali glanced up, and she wanted to weep at the cold bleakness in his eyes. He had worked so tirelessly to keep his people safe and their kingdom away from war.
“You called for me, Kalija,” she murmured.
Everyone shifted their attention to her, except for Gavyn. His shoulders were tense, and something unknown but hungry and dark seemed to swirl around him. Something was frightening and primal in his countenance, yet also eloquent and just beautiful. A trick of light perhaps, for he faced her, and the energy around him had vanished. One moment she was starkly terrified, and the next moment her whole body flushed with heat.
A man dressed in flowing green robes and a jewel-stubbed half-crown stepped forward and bowed deeply before her. His frame was one of lithe power and coiled redness, and the deep blue of his eyes was watchful, cynical even. Though his lips curved, the smile did not reach his eyes, and her senses warned her to tread carefully with this man.
“Princess Xian,” he murmured, lifting from his bow to study her with a bold appraisal. “I am Prince Baku, of the high court of Zandreal, of the Kingdom of Avindar." As if to prove his words, lightning crackled and flared in the depth of his eyes. “We did not get the chance to meet earlier, and I regret our first introduction must be under such circumstances.”
Confusion rushed through her. Why would a prince from Avindar—the realm of lightning, be present in Nuria’s war chamber? She glanced at Uriah, her twin brother, who had always been able to communicate a thousand words with a mere glance. Except now, his face was smooth and expressionless.
A prickle of unease darted through her. “Prince Baku, an honor, I am sure.”
“Well,” said Lord Bastien, one of her brother’s most trusted high chancellors and advisor. "The princess is here, and it is best we get on with it."
“Ajali?” she asked, ignoring everyone else and peering up at him. “How may I serve our kingdom?”
It was foolish to anticipate anything but a request of duty. Suddenly she was glad for all the training she had been doing in the dark pits of the wastelands. Many nights she had stumbled into bed, with bruises and such aching pain she could barely move the next day. Now that she would be required to aid her realm, she was more ready than she had ever been.
Ajali stepped closer to her, but when he spoke his voice rang through the chamber. “War has been declared by the Emperor of Mevia. No other kingdom has responded to the call, their battle horns remain silent, but a march is inevitable. Our kingdom must prepare for when the kingdoms rise against this anarchist.”
Murmurs of assent swept through the chamber.
Uriah stepped forward to stand beside Ajali. “Alliances must be formed if we are to combat the terrible might of Mevia,” Uriah said staring at her, an unfathomable emotion in his light green eyes. “We lost deeply in the last great war. Our Queen and King…my mother and father. We lost thousands of sons and daughters on the battlefield, and our nation still heals from the wounds that were dealt then. Our people must not know the heartache of the last Great Wars and must be protected at all cost.”
She glanced at the prince who stood a few feet back, staring at her with disturbing intensity. As if he lusted for her. Her gut tightened, but she showed no outward reaction. Alliances between two kingdoms were only formed through marriages of royal blood. Uriah was already married to Lady Shae, a high duchess from Aria—the Kingdom of Earth and Sands, cementing an alliance between Nuria and Aria.
Knowledge settled in her bones, and a lump formed in her throat. Xian had the suffocating sense that the life she had just been promised in the ballroom by the man she loved was about to end before it had even begun. Her gaze collided with Gavyn’s, and now she understood the energy which had throbbed around him, it had been one of loss, or perhaps anger.
“An alliance with whom, Uriah?”