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CHAPTER THREE

ALIE

Keep your lovers close at hand

And your enemies near your heart.

They both hold knives.

—Excerpt from Mother Says by Honora Torlius, Kirythean poet

A lie.”

She ignored him. She had gotten very good at ignoring him. Especially when he used her shortened name, as if they were friends. As if this engagement were anything more than a punishment.

“Alienor.”

No. Still ignoring. Even though there was a pleading edge to his voice now, and even though they were in mixed company.

Once, she’d cared what this court thought of her.

She’d done her best to play her part perfectly.

A good daughter, even if she and her father barely spoke.

A witty socialite, hosting the best parties for the right people. A loyal friend.

Now she was the fiancée of the Kirythean Emperor, half sister of the Sainted King. Alie didn’t know how to play those parts. She was stumbling around on the same stage without cues or lines.

Jax sat next to her, face expectant and anxious. It still unnerved her, how anxious he always looked when he was trying to engage her in conversation. When he was trying to make it seem like this was real.

It was easier to believe that he was playing a part, just like she was. Alie didn’t want to consider the alternatives. But he was undoubtedly a better actor.

She finally tore her gaze away from her half-full wineglass and focused her attention on the Emperor.

He was attractive, unfortunately. Not in the way she usually preferred, rugged and brooding, but in a clean, meticulous way.

His blond hair was always tied back just so. His spine was always straight.

“Yes?” Alie said, realizing she’d completely missed whatever it was he wanted her to comment on.

He relaxed, just a bit. Every call and response between them seemed like a game, points kept in a croquet match. “Lady Villiers was wondering if your afternoon walk was disrupted by the high winds today.”

“They were dreadful.” The aforementioned lady shivered theatrically in her seat, making sure the reaction could be seen. The long table in the rose-choked atrium was full of courtiers today, and she was clearly relishing being sat so close to the head. So close to the King.

“It’s been such a nice autumn,” Lady Villiers continued, picking at the roasted pheasant on her plate, “so lovely and warm, I’d forgotten that winter was on the way.” A high, tinkling laugh. “Those winds surely reminded me.”

Alie’s hand tightened around her goblet, so much so that she was sure her engagement ring would shriek against the crystal.

It was a pretty, simple thing, a square-cut diamond on a golden band.

Too big, so it was always twisting toward her palm.

“I suppose I missed them,” she said. “I don’t recall any winds when I took my walk. ”

None that were natural, anyway. None that she hadn’t conjured herself. She’d have to be more careful now, since it’d been so unseasonably warm. The deep heat of this past summer had abated, somewhat, but it certainly didn’t feel like fall.

Her eyes flicked toward the head of the table, the man sitting there. Flicked away.

“Well, count yourself lucky,” Lady Villiers breezily replied. “I nearly broke out the furs!”

The surrounding courtiers tittered, louder than necessary so that those at the foot of the table would hear and hopefully think they’d shared an inside joke with the King. Alie didn’t join in. She polished off her wine, ardently wishing for something stronger.

His eyes were on her. She could feel them, the burnished gold of a starving wolf, Bastian’s dark irises banished. If any of the courtiers had noticed the change, they didn’t comment.

Alie had managed not to look at the Sainted King through the entirety of this cursed dinner, but she would have to eventually. Might as well be now.

She looked up. Met those gold eyes. Refused to cower.

Apollius grinned.

The god’s assimilation into Bastian’s place had been seamless, even as He dismantled the citizen payments, as He bought or bullied back the art pieces Bastian had auctioned off to build up the treasury.

All the courtiers loved Him again, even those who’d been angry before.

He’d stopped trying to change tax laws, stopped trying to change anything.

At least, as far as they knew.

Behind the scenes, the entire Kirythean Empire was slowly being handed over to Him, a bit more power relinquished from Jax day by day. In the usual, pedestrian way: money and paperwork, the way wars were really won once the battles were over. Or if they’d never happened.

The plan was to wait and unveil the Sainted King as the Emperor on the day of Jax and Alie’s wedding, when Jax would essentially become the regent of Auverraine.

Alie, whose royal blood made that possible, wouldn’t get any extra power at all.

But she wasn’t supposed to know any of that. Those were the whispers her winds brought her, on those long afternoon walks when she ranged around the edge of the Citadel green, one hand on the cool stone wall, the fingers of the other twitching as she wound iridescent threads of air.

There’d been an argument between Jax and Apollius today. Probably the reason Jax was focused so much on Alie rather than his King, his god.

“It isn’t time yet,” Jax had said. “I promise You will get the worship You are owed, Holy One. This entire continent will bow to You in Your fullness, not just to effigies. You will direct them to venerate You as You see fit—”

“Yes, I’m aware,” Apollius had hissed, every syllable enunciated. “What I’m telling you, Emperor , is that I am going to tell them who I am now. Not when it’s all over. Not when every country is won.”

“I don’t think it’s a good idea.” There was no waver in Jax’s voice, and Alie had to give him that: He held tight to his convictions in the face of a god, and that counted for something. Even if those convictions were dead wrong. “You’ll be opening Yourself to assassination—”

Apollius’s laugh hurt Alie’s ears, nearly made her pull back on her threads of wind. “They’d be welcome to try.”

“You are immortal, Holy One. The body You inhabit is not. And though You can heal Yourself, there could come a point when the damage is too great.”

One lie and one truth. Apollius wasn’t immortal, and that was the inconvenient fact that had spawned this whole nightmare.

But Bastian could die, easily.

She couldn’t see the god from her place by the Citadel Wall, but she could imagine His face, the thoughts racing through His silence. “I take your meaning.”

He’d said nothing else, no promises made. But they’d gotten all the way through this dinner without Him standing on the table and declaring His divinity, so Alie supposed Jax’s meaning had, indeed, been taken.

It was risky. She knew that. Not just that she was eavesdropping, but how she was doing it.

Right now, it seemed that Apollius didn’t know she’d inherited the power of Lereal, though Alie couldn’t really figure out how that was true—He’d known about the others, somehow.

But if Apollius knew about her, He hadn’t yet done anything about it, for reasons Alie couldn’t fathom.

There were rumors in the court about the day Gabe and Malcolm left, how Alie had defended herself with… something. Scraps of elemental magic was the prevailing thought, though none of the courtiers were brave enough to actually ask her about it.

Maybe Apollius thought her betrothal to Jax was more important than an admittedly paltry power, putting her at the bottom of His priority list. The lies He’d concocted about Gabe kidnapping her made it seem likely.

That part she’d played for so long came in handy here; Alie was a fixture of the Citadel, and it would take massive effort to make them accept her execution or banishment even if she was proven to have used lost, illegal magic.

Especially now that she was an Arceneaux.

However she’d managed to get lucky, it didn’t make her complacent. Apollius had killed Amelia for her god-power; whatever plan had stayed His hand wouldn’t last forever.

But she had to do something , and magic was the only tool at her disposal. Surely, she couldn’t be expected to sit around and attend parties and wait.

So she experimented. Read everything about her god-power and how it might be used that she could find in the books Malcolm had sourced before his hasty departure. Listening on the wind was one thing. There were others she’d tried.

But she was the only one of the five of them using her magic, apparently, so walking in their dreams was proving difficult.

She kept trying, though. Every night for the past two weeks, when they’d been scattered to the corners of the continent.

Maybe the fact that the others weren’t accessing their power should have made her reconsider her own willingness to do so. But, Alie felt, if it would make a difference, she would be selfish not to use it.

“Hopefully the weather will hold for your ceremony, Your Highness.” Another sycophant, Lady Beaumont.

She’d tried to seduce Jax on more than one occasion.

Alie heard it while she was listening to the wind.

Jax had never given in, though Alie wasn’t sure if that was because he didn’t realize he was being propositioned, or from some misguided sense of loyalty to their engagement. “It’s soon, is it not?”

“Two months,” Jax replied. Alie couldn’t parse his tone. He sat up a little straighter, the austere planes of his face unreadable.

“If you choose to wait that long.” Finally, Apollius, butting into the conversation from His place at the head of the table.

He leaned forward, speared a potato off Jax’s plate, and popped it in His mouth.

“I’ve told Jax that I can move the ceremony up, if he prefers.

I know how hard it can be to wait for your bride.

” He raised a brow. “Though before her betrayal, My own bride didn’t make Me wait for the perks of matrimony. ”