Page 41 of Boundless

So, here I sat and here I tried when they weren’t at my door, demanding my attention as if they thought anything in the world mattered to me more than Nilah. They wouldn’t have it, not until she was by my side.

Then my eyes fell on the other end of the room, near the edge of the illusion window that stretched behind the dais, and to the silver white lynx sitting there, looking outside.

I stopped.

He hadn’t been there before. In fact, he hadn’t been there at all for the past two days, if I recalled correctly, yet here he was. Even though I’d specifically asked the Midnight Palace to not let through anyone but Nilah and Raja without explicit permission from me—he was here, looking at the window as big as the wall that was infused with illusion magic, and would show the watcher anything it desired if they had a good dose of imagination and stood in front of it long enough.

Then he turned and his eyes locked on mine.

“Vair.” I said his name as if I expected him to answer me, but I knew he wouldn’t.

I said his name to remind myself that just because his eyes were almost the same as Nilah’s, it wasn’therlooking back at me.

It wasn’t Queen Veyra, either, though she’d looked almost identical—almost.To a foreign eye, they would easily be the same person, but I saw the differences. In the looks in their eyes. In the clarity of their colors. In their smiles. In their body language.

The Queen had been so…reserved.

Nilah was completely free in expressing herself whichever way she pleased. It was part of what I loved about her, the wayshe told you what she felt, not just with words but with all of her. All the passion in her heart.

She was fire.Myfire that brought me to life.

And now that she was gone, I felt like I was fading underneath the very shadows that took her from me.

Then Vair turned and slowly started to walk toward me.

“You left,” I said, knowing very well that I would not get an answer. “Did you go to her? Did you find her?”

The lynx stopped a second before I heard the footsteps beyond the doors. Someone was coming.

I stood up and closed my eyes, breathed deeply to calm my racing thoughts, allowed this need for violence that came over me any time someone tried to get my attention to simmer down before the knock on the door came. It was Raja—her energy I felt clearly. But I didn’t open the door until I had my jacket on and was at the top of the dais, sitting on that throne chair made of pure, raw power.

Then I thought,let them through,and the throne room pulled the door open without hesitation.

Raja came through wearing her modified dress with armor plaques on her chest, her chin up and her swords strapped around her hips.

Behind her were four women who walked like they owned—not just the throne room, but this entire realm. Heads full of dark hair, faces too similar to my own for comfort, but my half-sisters weren’t to blame for that. Merely for their behavior.

“There he is,” said one or the other.

“Our half-brother, the bastard son,” said the next.

“Our newking,” said the last, and I recognized her voice because she spoke the most. Kentara was her name, and on her side were Oda, Jasewine, and Saya.

The king had had five daughters, and I’d met the fifth one, too, that first day I was given this throne. Alemia, the youngest,the only one who hadn’t cared to call me names or tell me how disgusted she was that I, the bastard, had taken the throne from them and had announced myself king.

Of course, they all knew that that wasn’t how it worked, that the throne would have never accepted me if I wasn’t worthy of it. But they said it anyway—except Alemia. All she’d asked for was a piece of land and a house to her name, one that had once belonged to her aunt, her mother’s sister. She asked to go live there for the rest of her life alone and unbothered, and who was I to say no? She left that very same night, but the other four remained. Gave me their word that they would do their best to make me quit and leave and go back to the streets where I belonged. All, except Jasewine. She always stood by the others when she spoke, but she never said the words herself, only watched.

Not going to lie, they had amused me that second time I’d seen them. With their sharp tongues and their contempt, they’d amused me for a minute. Then I’d told them to speak to Raja for anything they might have in mind, yet here they were. With Raja, in the throne room.

Calm,I reminded myself, eyes on the lynx who’d come to sit there on the first stair of the dais, and he was looking at the newcomers, too. Curiously.

The doors of the throne room closed. I allowed no soldiers in here with me, not when I was searching for Nilah, so it was just us.

Raja curtsied. “Your Highness, I apologize for the interruption. Your sisters wanted to hear it once more,fromyou, that there will not be a celebration following your coronation.”

The women barely bowed their heads, except—again—for Jasewine. There was a smile on her face, always, and out of all of them, she never looked at me like she hated me. I got the impression that she came with her sisters and stood by themwhen they made their comments and demands purely for her entertainment, nothing else.

“That is correct,” I said, and my voice echoed in the throne room the way no other voice did. It was part of the magic of the Midnight Palace, I was sure. “There will be no cele?—”