Page 33 of The First Spark (Dynasty of Fire #1)

“Our apologies, Your Excellency?—”

“Silence!” Kalie slammed her gavel down on the table. She glared at her simpering courtiers, who looked at her with expressions of shock and fear. “I meant every word.”

Carik frowned. “Oh, Princessa. How naive you are. You might be willing to risk everything in a misguided quest for revenge, but look around you. Are you foolish enough to believe your court will follow you?”

Words stuck in Kalie’s throat. Some of her nobles were muttering amongst themselves and nodding, as if they thought Carik was right.

“Your allies will abandon you as soon as they see the truth—you’re nothing but a witless girl at best, and a cold-blooded murderer at worst. And when this goes wrong for you, when it gets too hard, you’ll run and leave them to clean up the mess. Like always.”

Her knees threatened to give out, but she dug her nails into the table and forced herself to stay standing. He was wrong. She wasn’t going to run, not this time.

“Enough of this.” She glowered at Carik’s floating projection. “ Your options are simple. Submit to my demands, or face the alternative.”

“Then I’m afraid we’re at a stalemate, because I plan to do neither.”

Kalie’s chest rose and fell rapidly. Beads of sweat dripped down her face. Her heart was beating so fast, impossibly fast, like it might explode.

Aunt Calida had been a dove, as peace-loving as Azura’s snowy messenger, but the Hannovers were phoenixes, cunning and fiery.

Right then, she didn’t want to be a dove.

“I hope you rot in hell,” she spat, and punched a button to end the transmission.

She’d expected absolute chaos.

She was met with silence.

It wasn’t the good silence, the silence that came with respect. No, her nobles were looking at her with disbelief, horror, and disgust written across their faces.

“You think I’m naive, I know. But war is coming, whether I lead it or not. I don’t want to wait until Carik attacks us to fight back. I want to take the fight to him.”

Hewlett’s father-in-law examined his beringed hands. “Personally, I don’t see the benefits of embroiling us in a galactic war. What’s done is done.”

“How ironic that the man who played both sides in the last war has suddenly become a pacifist!” Julian’s father placed a warning hand on his wife’s arm, but she threw it aside. “No, Gal, it has to be said! Like it or not, she’s our Duchissa, and we owe her our loyalty!”

Leighton scoffed. “You’ll defend her, after she humiliated your son in front of the court?”

Kalie’s cheeks flushed .

“Ignore him,” Ariah’s voice whispered in her ear, “he’s just a drunken oaf.”

She closed her eyes, swallowing thickly.

“We can discuss this without stooping to petty insults,” a young woman said. “While I sympathize with the Duchissa’s desire for vengeance, I cannot commit my people to another war that will cause suffering for billions?—”

“That monster murdered my granddaughter!”

Silence swept through the room. The hoarse cry had come from Uncle Jacyn’s elderly father, hunched at the end of the table. Kalie bit down on her lip.

“Is there to be no justice?” His voice broke as tears spilled down his cheeks. Nobles bowed their heads. “Are you all such cowards that you’ll let the murderer of a child walk free?”

For the span of a heartbeat, barely a breath, the words hung in the musty air.

Then the room exploded into chaos.

“You’re going to call me a coward?” Leighton thundered, leaping from his chair. “We haven’t forgotten your cowardice, Baron Amador. Strange that you’ll call us cowards for refusing to fight now, when you refused to fight in the last war!”

“Order!” Kalie cried, slamming her gavel down on the table. “Order!”

“You’re a reckless fool.” Leighton kicked his chair aside and marched to the door. “You’ve doomed us all.”

The ancient oak doors slammed shut behind him.

As if his departure was a rallying cry, others rose.

Kalie’s lips parted in stunned dismay. Two of Leighton’s relatives pushed their chairs back and strode for the doors.

Hewlett’s pale-haired siblings rose from their seats at the foot of the table and followed.

One, two, three, four of them. Then Hewlett himself.

Kalie gaped at him.

“I lost one family to one of your wars. I won’t lose another.”

“Wait—”

Hewlett had already followed the others through the towering marble archway .

Eight of her advisors, nearly a third of her council… gone.

Kalie slumped into her chair, pressing her hands to her face. She needed twenty-one votes. She was now at twenty.

Less than that. Count Harrington had taken up Leighton’s position and was screaming at Julian’s mother.

As a storm of curses flew between them, Kalie’s blood boiled, and she slammed down the gavel. “I said, order!”

As Harrington spat another curse at Julian’s mother, Julian’s father leapt in, backed by Haeden’s mother. Spittle flew between their flushed faces. Their guards, posted around the room, reached for weapons. They weren’t alone. Everywhere, shouting nobles turned on their cousins and spouses.

Shaking, Kalie turned to Uncle Jerran. “End this. Please. Get me out of here.”

At once, he rose to his feet, and his purple cloak billowed around him.

At once, the room fell silent.

“This meeting is adjourned.”

Kalie stumbled towards the marble archway, pushed open the double doors, and staggered into the hall. Vague voices flitted around her. Footsteps pounded against the floor, but she didn’t look back. She couldn’t see the chaos she’d created.

She couldn’t face the truth: they wouldn’t follow her.

She wasn’t good enough.

So she ran.

Her heels skidded across the tile and the marble walls blurred around her as she rushed away, struggling for air that didn’t come.

The moment she burst into an empty hallway, she slumped against a marble pillar and buried her head in her hands.

She’d known they hated her. She’d known some of them wanted her dead.

But she hadn’t thought—for them to side with Carik after he’d killed Aunt Calida?—

She couldn’t breathe.

He would get away with it. All of it, and her own people didn’t care.

“Hey.” Mylis’s quiet voice seemed impossibly loud in the silent hallway, and as his footsteps tapped against the tile, his gentle hand landed on her shoulder. “Breathe, Kalie.”

She sucked in a gasp of air, but it didn’t go into her lungs.

“Breathe.”

Her hands dropped to her sides. “I hate him,” she choked out. “I hate them . How can they just—how can they do nothing when he killed?—”

“They’re greedy, backstabbing snakes who wouldn’t know honor if it hit them in the face.” Mylis rubbed slow, gentle circles into her arm. Understanding shone in his dark eyes, and as he took deep breaths, she forced herself to match the rhythm.

“I expected it of Leighton, but Hewlett was Aunt Calida’s friend?—”

“Hewlett is a schemer and a traitor,” Mylis said stiffly, as his hand dropped to his side, “and the only person he’s ever been loyal to is himself.”

Anger lurked in his eyes, but it was a distant, faraway look—not directed at her, but at the man who’d abandoned him to foster care and homelessness.

She’d read the background check on Mylis, and the reports from his childhood were downright horrifying.

He had good reason to hate Hewlett. How Aunt Calida had ever thought she could trust a man who’d turned on his infant godson, she would never know.

But Vale and Uncle Jerran had been right. She couldn’t remove a noble from the Advisorium just because they refused to support her.

Except…

Kalie’s eyes widened.

“What?” The anger in Mylis’s gaze vanished, replaced by concern. Glancing over his shoulder, he took a step closer and tilted his head towards hers. “What’s wrong?”

She could remove Hewlett.

His reign over Oakwood, while sanctioned by Aunt Calida, was unlawful. It belonged to Mylis. Overturning the bill of attainder blocking his inheritance would be difficult, but the payoff would be immense—a loyal soldier in place of a count whose power had grown unchecked.

Mylis’s hand rubbed circles into her arm.

He looked so anxious, so concerned for her.

He was probably the only person in this palace who even cared.

As his gentle caresses grew slower, she found herself melting into his touch.

He could prove to be a loyal ally. It was easier to breathe with him standing before her—a friend she’d already come to rely upon, someone she could grow to trust.

They were so close their foreheads were almost touching. Her heart pounded in her ears. He smelled of cedar and sandalwood, of forests and nature, and they were far too close for propriety—but she didn’t pull away.

“Kalie,” Mylis whispered. She loved the way her name sounded on his lips, like the most devout prayer and the sweetest dream—someone safe, reliable, dependable?—

Then footsteps thundered around the corner.

As Zane blazed down the marble hallways, fire roared in his chest, with memories and nightmares as kindling.

The bombed-out husk of Mom’s base. A pool of blood marking the spot where she fell.

That Mordir-blasted battlefield. The corpses.

The screams. His hands, coated in viscera.

His sobs. Labored breaths. A dark hand on his cheek.

The thunderclap of cannons. Bloody fingerprints he hadn’t been able to wash off for days.

The broken body sprawled in his arms. And a once-beautiful sky, blazing orange like fire.

He turned into a corridor of sunlight.

Mylis stood inches apart from Hannover, and they were gazing into each other’s eyes?—

“Damn you.”

They sprang apart, and as Hannover paled, Mylis spun between them. His wide eyes quickly narrowed. “Watch yourself, Zane.”

“Watch yourself ,” he shot back. He loomed over Mylis, but Mylis glared up at him. Zane scowled. “You’re going to stand with her? Leighton was right, she doomed us all! ”

“She’s our Duchissa!”