Page 5 of The Summer War

While Prince Elithyon kept hunting for the secret trap that didn’t exist, Father sent dozens of knights riding forward to offer direct challenges of one-on-one swordfights.

It was too much of a temptation to the summerlings, already sullen about the lack of battle along the way; the front ranks of their army started breaking up completely as summer knights and lords rushed forward to accept the challenges, in some cases quarreling amongst themselves about who got to have the fight.

The summerlings won most of the duels, of course, but before they could return to their lines, Father blew the horns and sent off a massive flight of arrows, followed by a cavalry charge that smashed through the large gaps they’d left.

Thousands of summer knights were slaughtered en masse in a perfectly straightforward battle, and Elithyon had to order a desperate retreat over the river.

Elithyon meant to regroup, but he was out of time on the clock he hadn’t remembered was running.

Just as he finally got his army back into order, the rains stopped, the first cold autumn day blew through, and seven leaves turned yellow and fell off a tree in his camp.

All his summerlings broke in horror and fled south down the royal road as fast as they could go, leaving him stranded in the middle of Prosper with only the tiny devoted core of the summer guard, and Father’s army on the march towards them.

But King Morthimer, perhaps fearing what Father might decide to do with the army after he’d disposed of the Summer Prince, intervened at that point.

He sent an envoy to Elithyon and offered him peace terms. Every envoy who’d been sent to the summerlings over the previous century had been sent back in pieces, with their head enchanted to declare the summerlings’ eternal determination to kill them all, but this time a chastened Elithyon finally agreed to negotiate, and at the Green Bridge he swore an oath of gold and silver to never again invade Prosper before he too fled the changing season.

And by the time Father rode back into the capital after his great victory, with frenzied crowds cheering wildly along every street, a messenger was waiting to tell him that the prophecy had come true: his second son, Roric, had been born, and his inconvenient commoner wife had conveniently died in the process, leaving the now Grand Duke Veris free to ask the king for the hand of his baseborn sister.

The king agreed with much relief: he’d been expecting a demand for the hand of his actual daughter, despite her young years, with real concerns about the future of his own son, Crown Prince Gorthan, who was only ten at the time.

Father wasn’t having to commission song-spinners to get songs written about him anymore, and it was a settled matter among the common folk that he was the savior of the realm.

But Father had known exactly what to do then, too.

He’d known that putting himself too close to the throne—or on it—would stir up enormous resentment among the great lords of the realm, who were already resentful of him, and make him a target of conspiracy.

So instead he asked only for Lady Cecily, and as a dowry, the great royal castle of Todholme along with its rich lands, to make an appropriate home for her.

He brought his new wife and his two young sons there, and settled in to get what he very much hoped would be a daughter of royal blood.

He meant to marry that girl to the grand duke who was his new neighbor, and breed up grandchildren who’d be rich and of ancient lineage and have just enough of a claim to the throne so that when Crown Prince Gorthan grew up and had children, he would accept a betrothal to one of them for his own heir, and give Father a royal princess to be Argent’s wife.

And at that point, the fortunes of the crown would be tied to his so securely that Gorthan would just do whatever Father told him.

So that had been Father’s well-laid plan: a steady two-decade conquest of the throne by a penniless boy from the back of nowhere, which he meant to accomplish without fighting a single battle against anyone in the kingdom, and putting an end to the wasteful summer war while he was at it.

He didn’t care if he wore the crown or not; he only wanted to put himself in charge.

Mostly, Celia felt, once she’d worked out just what Father was doing, because he couldn’t stand how many stupid mistakes other people made.

But now Father was the one who had made the stupid mistake.

Celia knew that Father didn’t care that Argent liked boys; nothing like that ever mattered to him.

What he did care about was that if people knew that Argent liked boys, it would give the king an excuse to refuse to give him a royal princess for his wife, and maybe even to disinherit him.

Father had just been trying to teach Argent not to get caught, and it had never occurred to him that Argent wanted love more than power.

It had thrown him completely off his stride.

At first he didn’t even seem to know what to do about Celia, even though that was perfectly obvious.

At the breakfast table the very next morning, he said to her, remotely, “I mean to write to Grand Duke Preine today, to discuss a betrothal between you,” and she stared at him out of her red-rimmed sandy eyes and said, “What?”

Father actually began delivering her a lecture that he must have had ready for many years, to quash her anticipated objections to the match, in his most cold and unyielding tones. “His Grace is lately widowed, and has no sons—”

“But I’m going to marry Gorthan now,” Celia said, bewildered.

It didn’t make any sense to her. They didn’t need to wait for another generation anymore.

She was a sorceress. The king would instantly snatch her up for Crown Prince Gorthan, and it wouldn’t offend any of the great lords of the kingdom in the slightest. She was surprised that Father hadn’t already sent to tell him.

“Aren’t you going to write to the king ? ”

Father paused and stared at her, his cup halfway to his mouth—so did a shocked Unter and the table servants and a frozen, wide-eyed Roric, who didn’t even know what had happened with Argent last night, and had been hunching over his plate and shoveling in food in his usual way—and then Father put down his cup, his face rigid, and said very shortly, “Yes. You’re right,” and got up at once to go and send the letter to the king, and Celia only then realized how badly off he was.

She was badly off herself, too, but she hadn’t made a stupid mistake, at least. She’d made a horrible one, but that wasn’t the same thing at all.

And she wasn’t sorry to be marrying Crown Prince Gorthan instead of Grand Duke Preine, even if she didn’t for an instant believe any of the spun-sugar tales of how handsome and clever and brave the prince was; she’d only ever learn anything about him once she’d actually met him.

But at least he wasn’t a cowardly old man of forty-five who’d avoided ever fighting in the summer war with an excuse of bad knees, and who always fell asleep directly after eating too much dinner, the handful of times he’d come to visit, and snored.

Celia even ended up having to tell Roric about Argent herself, and that he was now the heir of their house, because three days passed and Father still hadn’t done it. And then Roric only stared at her and said, “I don’t believe you.”

“I’m not lying,” Celia had said coldly.

Roric was silent, working it through, and then said, “Argent’s gone ?

He just— left ?” Celia was half ready to stab him with a dagger, or curse him, as soon as he fully grasped it and she had to watch the glow of gloating joy rising through him, but instead Roric just got up and went away, his narrow weaselly face gone blank, and later that day, he came to speak to her in her chambers and said flatly, “No one’s ever cared about me.

Not Father, not you, not even the servants. Argent’s the only one you cared about.”

“Yes,” Celia said, because that was true. She wasn’t going to be a liar, and pretend otherwise. She didn’t care about Roric, but he was still her brother. He deserved that much honesty from her—that least little thing that Argent had refused to give her.

“And now he’s gone away and left us,” Roric said.

“But Father still doesn’t care. He won’t even look at me at table.

I’m his heir now, and I had to find out from you.

” He swallowed, the lump moving visibly in his skinny throat.

“He didn’t even put me in the register of nobility when I was born.

He only wanted me to be useful for Argent. ”

“For Argent and me,” Celia agreed. That was true also.

Roric nodded. “Well, I wasn’t going to be,” he said. “I had to pretend I didn’t mind, because I couldn’t do anything about it yet, but I knew I wasn’t going to be useful for anyone who didn’t care about me at all. Who wasn’t going to do anything for me. ”

Celia blinked. It didn’t make her angry; that seemed fair enough.

It just hadn’t ever before occurred to her to wonder what Roric was thinking, or what he wanted.

“Why are you telling me now?” she asked.

It didn’t seem like a very good idea. If she went and told Father that Roric meant to be troublesome, he’d probably go and get himself a fourth wife, and try to have another son.

“Because caring about people who don’t care back is stupid, and you’re not,” Roric said. “You were just little. You didn’t know you were being stupid. That’s why you cared about Argent, even though he didn’t care about you.”

“He did!” she snapped.

“Not enough,” Roric said, and that was unarguably true, even if it made her throat swell and her eyes sting. Then Roric took a deep breath and said baldly, “ Would you care?”

“What?” Celia said, too wretched to work out what he meant.