Page 22 of The First Spark (Dynasty of Fire #1)

“Mm.” Uncle Jerran tapped his ivory cane against a flat stone.

“You look so much like your father. He and your grandfather were two of my greatest allies in the war, you know. The day Madeleine invaded Avington, it was my troops that arrived to stop her. Your mother had already fled with you. I don’t blame her. ”

Wells kept his face impassive, but his lips flattened and a muscle in his neck twitched. “Thank you for trying.”

Trees rustled above them as a breeze swept through. It sounded like the distant waterfalls, rushing towards the lake hundreds of feet below the Bridge of Destiny.

“I sense a chill coming on.” Mother tucked her hands in her velvet sleeves. “Perhaps we should head inside. I’ve prepared a feast for this evening to celebrate your return.”

As Selene glowered at her, Kalie clenched her teeth. “How kind of you. Please, lead the way.”

Mother led the welcome party up the cobblestone path, past guards dressed in navy blue. Selene strutted after her, but Kalie doubled her pace and leaned in close to her sister’s ear .

“Lusting after my crown, are you?”

“You’re supposed to be dead,” Selene spat.

Her heart twisted painfully, but she flashed Selene a gloating smirk. “And yet, I’m not.”

She marched ahead before Selene could spew more venom at her.

As she approached the towering bronze pillars flanking the entryway, a chill swept past. Wind tore into the sparse leaves clinging to the weathered branches, carrying a few of them away.

A delicate leaf swirled around her and landed at her feet.

It was brown around the edges, moth-eaten and decayed.

Kalie cringed.

She didn’t need an Azurian priestess to tell her it was a bad omen.

As a never-ending stream of nobles ambushed her in the sunny entrance hall, she vanished to a closed compartment in her mind.

She accepted their condolences, expressed her appreciation when they wished her a long reign, and thanked them for their promises of loyalty.

After an eternity, Uncle Jerran dismissed them with the announcement that she had to prepare for the ball.

She glanced over her shoulder. Wells was wedged between some of the nobles, scowling as always.

“Guardsman Wright, show him to his quarters,” Kalie said, motioning to a stocky man she vaguely recognized. The man saluted and led him away.

Curling his arm around her shoulders, Uncle Jerran led her away.

Finally. She felt like she was going to pass out.

Mother moved to follow them, and Kalie stifled the urge to scream.

Leave me alone , she wanted to shout, but she conjured a smile.

“Thank you for your concern, but you must’ve been up all night planning this dinner. You should both get some rest.”

“Oh, please don’t worry about us. We’re just so glad to see you safe.”

Mother laid a hand on her arm. Though her fingers were icy, Kalie found herself leaning into her touch. But Mother’s smile was fake. The warmth didn’t reach her cold eyes. More manipulations, more games. Wasn’t that all it ever was? Setting her jaw, Kalie turned away .

“Let me walk you up to?—”

“I insist. Go rest. I’ll see you at the ball tonight.” Kalie lowered her voice for Mother’s ears alone. “Drop this ridiculous act. I’m tired of it.”

For the sake of the court, she didn’t let her smile waver, and Mother didn’t either. Kalie spun and marched away. She’d understood Mother’s motives perfectly.

Strangely, the realization didn’t make her feel as triumphant as she’d thought it would.

She followed Uncle Jerran out of a lift, then slammed to a halt in a corridor of gold and marble. They weren’t going to her suite of rooms.

“No,” she whispered, backing towards the lift. “No. I… I can’t.”

Uncle Jerran gave her a sympathetic smile. “You’re going to be the Duchissa, my dear. These rooms are yours.”

“But I don’t want them. I—I won’t…” Kalie choked back a sob.

Uncle Jerran guided her down the hallway. She didn’t resist.

As if in a trance, she let him guide her through the unused presence chamber where courtiers used to petition duchissas. An old throne sat in front of a sapphire tapestry with the Azurian crest of a snowy dove, though it hadn’t been used in decades.

Uncle Jerran opened the door to the privy chamber.

Wandering past portraits of old duchissas, she followed the memory of Uncle Jacyn’s music into the golden room after.

His old piano sat in the center. In the days before Lexie, before Uncle Jacyn’s assassination, Aunt Calida had sat on the futon with him.

With an arm around her, he’d played, and she’d listened to her beloved husband sing.

Kalie wobbled into the next room, the duchissa’s solar, a vision of creamy white and gleaming gold. Her chest was too tight, and everything inside her felt so horribly wrong.

Uncle Jerran glanced at the gilded doors, flanked on either side by Aunt Calida’s bookcases. “Do you want me to come in with you?”

She shook her head.

He pulled her into a hug and pressed a kiss to the top of her head. “She loved you so much, Kalista.”

Kalie’s vision blurred as the door closed behind him .

Taking a deep breath, she shuffled across the room. With shaking hands, she reached for the double doors. Her eyes stung, and she squeezed them shut. It was just a room.

But it was Aunt Calida’s room. It could never truly be hers.

Kalie swallowed, tugged the doors open, and stepped inside.

Sunlight streamed in through a window on the far wall. Aunt Calida’s four-poster bed stood on a rug on a raised platform. Azure curtains hung around it.

Blinking rapidly, Kalie tore her gaze away from the piles of throw pillows.

Plush couches surrounded an ornate fireplace.

The hearth was dark and empty; Aunt Calida hadn’t used it since Uncle Jacyn died.

Gold picture frames lined the mantel—Aunt Calida and Uncle Jacyn on their wedding day, Kalie hugging Lexie, Lexie holding a drawing of Uncle Jacyn, who’d been murdered before she was born.

Tears streamed down Kalie’s cheeks. She bit her lip, trying to hold back a sob.

One of Lexie’s stories was abandoned on the desk.

A drawing of Aunt Calida was tacked to the wall, a mixture of Ariah’s colorful shading and Lexie’s messy strokes.

Lexie’s first ballet slippers hung from a string, over a pile of children’s books.

One of them was open to a page with a frog, but Lexie would never hear how it ended.

Kalie’s knees gave out.

She sank into a chair, pressed her hands to her face, and wept.

Zane stood frozen amidst a hall of portraits, staring at a painting of a burly, bearded man.

His guide’s footsteps drifted towards the Guardsman’s barracks, but Zane didn’t follow.

He couldn’t turn away if he tried. The man in the painting looked more like one of Oppalli’s ancient raiders than a noble, but below the portrait, a plaque read Captain Magnus Wells, Baron of Avington, AMH, COV.

Zane reached out with a trembling hand. “When was this put up? ”

“Beats me.” The other guard’s voice jolted him back to reality, and Zane dropped his hand. “I was only hired a few months ago.”

There was a strange lightness in Zane’s chest as he scanned the shining medals pinned to his grandfather’s navy blue jacket.

With the weight of Magnus Wells’s fearless brown gaze piercing through him, he stood straighter.

It was practically unheard of for a soldier—especially a soldier without noble blood—to get both Azura’s Medal of Honor and Calla’s Order of Valor.

It was rarer for a duchissa to personally arrange a marriage between a former guard and an heiress, but Roth’s mother had done it for Grandfather, and his grandparents’ coat of arms hung above the portrait.

With one last look at Grandfather, Zane turned away. He caught up with the young guard, a stocky man named Wright, and they passed through a pair of arched oak doors.

“This is the Guardsmen’s Lounge,” Wright said.

It was a classy modern room, filled with oak furniture and accents in varying shades of Azurian blue.

A chandelier’s amber light shone over an empty bar and a spacious dining area.

Cigar smoke wafted through the air. It was a welcome change from the hideously perfumed hallways they’d passed on the way here.

“The mess is through that door. The hall to the communal barracks is on the right. Don’t expect to spend much time there, they’re only for resting between shifts.

The actual barracks are through a passageway underground, on the next ridge over.

Private rooms, shared kitchens. Not a bad setup, compared to the Skyforce. ”

Not a bad setup at all. He’d spent his time in the Marines crammed into a room with dozens of other men.

Besides, it was temporary. He’d be in the lord’s suite of a manor soon enough.

It didn’t really matter where he slept, though. The nightmares always found him.

As Wright checked his chrono, he blanched. “This way. The new captain wants to see you, and we’re running late.”

Zane followed him under an archway carved from blue marble.

Multicolored crests spanned the walls, between oak doors trimmed with gold.

The extravagance left a sour taste in his mouth.

Plenty of this wealth had been exploited from Oppalli by Hannover’s ancestors, who’d helped establish the planetary republic that he’d fought to defend.

Dali had profited heavily from Oppalli’s steel exports in the aftermath, enough that more than a century later, the Oppallese economy was in shambles.

Wright stopped at the third door from the left. A plaque read Captain Estyn .

“They haven’t changed the name yet,” Wright explained.

The heavy scent of cigars and whiskey slammed into Zane as he stepped into the office. Screens covered the walls. Piles of paperwork towered on a mahogany desk, where a heavily-scarred man with a cigar in his mouth slouched over a holopad. He looked as out of place as the mahogany.

“This is the man the Duchissa hired, Captain Vale.”

The grizzled guard looked up from his paperwork and lowered his cigar. “Oh, Wells. Good to see you. Please, have a seat. Let me pour you a glass.”

Zane sank into a plump blue chair. Vale slid a glass of amber-colored iskai across the desk, pouring a second for Wright.

“You look like your grandfather,” Vale said, taking a sip of iskai.

Zane fought the urge to roll his eyes. Other than his hair and height, which were from the Wells side, all his features were Mom’s.

“You knew him?”

Vale took another puff of his cigar. “Of course I knew your grandfather. We served together. Now there was a man I’d never cross.

The old man was the only one who never shied away from speaking his mind, to hell with the consequences.

I once saw him get into a screaming match with the Major Governor. ”

Zane took a sip of the smooth, smoky iskai.

Mom had spoken of Roth, the Throne Maker, with a mixture of grudging respect and unease: a fearless general, a brilliant diplomat, an unparalleled genius, but also a man who turned on his own sister, who was so ruthless in his fight for Calida’s crown that Madeleine had killed herself rather than face him.

A man like that was someone to keep at arm’s reach.

Still, it didn’t surprise him that Grandfather was the type to mouth off to Roth. He’d been tempted to earlier, when Roth started going on about how close he was to their family. Bullshit. If Roth had ever cared about them, he would’ve given Avington back.

Zane’s fingers tightened on the iskai glass.

The guards were staring at him.

“Sounds like him,” he said. He didn’t really know much about Grandfather, only what he’d heard from Mom’s stories, and she’d only known him for a few cycles.

“His loss was a tragedy.” Vale lowered his cigar again. Smoke drizzled from the end. “As interim Captain, it’s my responsibility to assess the loyalty of new recruits. Let’s get it out in the open, Wells. You lost a lot because of the royal family.”

“If Calida was in charge, I wouldn’t be sitting here.”

“ Duchissa Calida,” Vale chided. “Yet you’ll serve the new Duchissa.”

Zane spun his glass, watching the amber liquid slosh around the ice cube. “Hannover and I have come to an understanding. I won’t turn on her.”

Vale stared at a weathered gold band on his ring finger. “You’re not the only one who lost everything in that wretched war. That greasy Etovian devil wiped my city off the face of the planet. Got my wife and child, too.”

Zane gaped at him. Losing his wife was bad enough, but his child… If that had been his family, he wouldn’t be sitting in this plushy chair. He’d be sitting on a metal slab with wires stuck to his head, convicted of assassination. If that failed, he’d be dead at the bastard’s feet.

“My point is,” Vale said, “I know loss can change a person.”

“You don’t need to worry, Captain. Hannover knows I’m not going to betray her.” Zane took another sip of iskai. This was good stuff. Better than some of the alcohol on the Chimaera . “If her father killed your family, how do you serve her?”

Vale took another puff of his cigar. He blew the smoke out, sending noxious gray plumes towards Zane. “I served her aunt, and her great-grandmother before her. It’s my duty.”

“I wish we had an actual Dalian on the throne, though,” Wright muttered .

“Hannover is Dalian.”

Wright looked taken aback. Even Vale appeared mildly surprised.

Zane couldn’t believe he’d said it.

But now that the words were out, steely conviction made him straighten up, giving them each a look that dared them to argue. After hearing Hannover’s sister whisper that she should’ve died, and seeing Hannover’s unflinching reaction, suggesting she was more Etovian than Dalian was beyond stupid.

“Indeed she is.” Vale lowered his cigar. “Besides, Wright, consider the alternative. Would you rather have an Etovian princess parading around our palace?”

“Hell no. I’ll be glad to see the day when the Etovians finally go where they belong.”

“Won’t we all.” Vale raised his glass of iskai. “To the new Duchissa. May Queen Azura grant her a long and prosperous reign.”

Zane lifted his glass. “To the Duchissa.”