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Serafina’s gaze shifted to her, and widened. “What are you doing with her? The ball is tomorrow – if you’ve been out cavorting with–”

“How quickly,” Náli interrupted, “you go from fearing for your life to fearing that I’ve been dallying with the young ladies. Speaking of interruptions…”

He turned away from her to face the assembled crowd, ignoring her splutters and protests.

The dais had been positioned so that any speaker’s words would project down the length of the hall, the high ceilings allowing a voice to carry and reach even those standing at the very back of the room. When Náli cleared his throat, the sound echoed along the hall like a growl, and the milling, worrying crowd fell silent; gazes lifted and heads swung his direction. He could watch panic bleed into relief on more than a few faces; they were already reassured by his presence. Their Corpse Lord knew of the disturbance, and was here to make it right.

The realization hit him like a sucker punch. Had no one ever looked at him like that before? Or, consumed by his own self-centered thoughts, had he never noticed it?

He called out: “Everyone, please stay calm. Please. There’s nothing to fear. The mountain isn’t going to erupt.”

“But the whole Keep started shaking!” a man hollered up to him.

“A shudder only,” he said. “Do you feel it now? Is the Keep still shaking?”

Heads shook, and a series of “no”s rippled through the hall.

“What happened?” one of the visiting ladies’ chaperones wanted to know. “The mountain isn’t supposed to do that if you’re here.” She scowled, a disappointed matron who wanted him to answer for imagined crimes.

“What happened tonight was an anomaly. One that won’t repeat.”

“Náli,” his mother said, and it might have been a warning or admonishment; either way, he ignored it.

“In fact, it’s a good thing all of you are gathered here now,” he continued, “because I need to make an announcement about tomorrow evening’s festivities. They will no longer be a matchmaking ball.”

Murmurs. Muted questions.

“Náli.”

“All of Aeretoll knows that Corpse Lords don’t have very long lifespans. All of us have been burdened with short, draining lives dominated by the boiling and shifting of this mountain. A dependent relationship established by the very first Corpse Lord, Lord Lucian, generations ago.”

The whispering intensified into a steady droning. No one would have heard of Lucian.

“It’s a dependent relationship that I learned how to sever for good. That I have severed for good. As of this moment,” he said, chest swelling with a pride that had him standing up straighter, head held higher, “I will no longer need to return to the well beneath this Keep to soothe the mountain’s ire. I will not weaken and be forced to seek rest here, languishing in a sickbed while other men represent the Fault Lands on the battlefield.” He pointed toward the door, the one that had seemed barred to him forever…until tonight. “The Fault Lands as we all know them are forever changed. Tomorrow night, we celebrate that. We celebrate the liberation of all the Corpse Lords to come after me, untied from the mountain at last.”

The crowd bubbled over with exclamations and questions, a little excitement, a little worry, much confusion.

Bony fingers grabbed the back of his arm and pinched. Hard. His mother’s furious whisper filled his ear. “Come with me. Now.”

~*~

There was yelling. A great deal of yelling. Náli stood with arms folded and expression placid, accepting it.

When she bent forward and clutched at her stomach to take a huge, wheezing breath, he said, “Are you finished?”

There was more yelling, after that.

“…intolerable. Your father–”

Náli snapped. “My father is dead – was dead before I was even born – because this fucking mountain was holding all the power that should have been his!”

Her teeth clicked as her mouth snapped shut. Her eyes – narrow, furious slits before – flew wide.

But he was too angry to enjoy having shocked her into silence, for once.

“When did you start trying to marry me off? Eleven? Ten? It was before my voice broke. And it was the same for my father, wasn’t it? That was his sole purpose besides feeding power into the mountain: breeding.

“Only,” he went on, sneering, now, “you couldn’t conceive at first, could you? You were slow. And so Father sired only one son – one son” – he slapped his own chest – “with the weight of a whole kingdom’s safety riding on his shoulders!”