The Archduke

A Daindreth’s Assassin novella

By Elisabeth Wheatley

Copyright 2021 by Elisabeth Wheatley

Published by Avowed Publishing and Media, LLC

All Rights Reserved

Table of Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Daindreth’s Assassin

Chapter One

Daindreth had spent most of his life learning to ignore the voice in his head, but that didn’t stop the demon—the cythraul—from speaking.

I’m bored, Your Highness, Caa Iss purred. The voice was both sultry and impatient, mocking and seductive. Entertain me.

Daindreth’s general practice was not to give the demon attention. Yet Caa Iss never seemed to tire of wheedling and nagging him. Most nights, Daindreth could filter out the cythraul’s speech and get to sleep. Yet ever since Daindreth’s retinue had passed into the kingdom of Hylendale, the archduke’s frayed nerves had worked against him. Caa Iss always got stronger when Daindreth was under stress.

It was late, but Daindreth hadn’t been able to sleep. He sat alone in his tent by a travel desk his servants had set up for him. A lone lamp hung above his head, flickering light making shadows dance across the parchment beneath his quill.

How long are you going to keep up this scribbling? Caa Iss complained. We should go outside, he said. I have some ideas for fun we could have tonight.

Daindreth knew full well the cythraul’s idea of “fun” and wanted no part in it.

Come now, archduke. This is your last night of freedom! Your last night before you meet your wife.

Inhaling a deep breath, Daindreth stopped to rub his eyes before scratching out another word and writing a different one above it. He paused, reading through the lines. Satisfied, he added another line to his draft at the bottom of the page before scratching out several other lines above it.

The cythraul continued to prattle away. Not that marriage means anything for you and I, of course. You’re the archduke, you could still have any woman you wanted. Caa Iss’s tone turned annoyed. You could, but you don’t. Anyway. Getting married will mean you won’t be getting away with being so reclusive. People will want to meet your wife.

Outside his tent, Daindreth could hear the soft snores of his pages and servants. Every so often, the low voice of a soldier filtered across the camp. A dog whined and laughter sounded from somewhere close by.

As archduke, he traveled with a retinue of several hundred people including a constant guard contingent and several servants within shouting distance. He’d dismissed his servants several hours ago, but Caa Iss’s endless commentary paired with the nervous energy fluttering through him made it impossible to sleep.

Daindreth exhaled, reading over the poem taking shape under his parchment in one corner.

Cut me and I bleed poison

Wound me to your own pain

These bruises have crushed giants

He frowned at that, not sure where he wanted to take it. Most nights when he couldn’t sleep, he wrote about birds in flight, rabbits in their warrens, children dancing around maypoles, and other free, unshackled things.

Tonight, his mind was filled with Caa Iss, the foreign princess he was supposed to marry, his duty to the empire, and the fate of his father.

Daindreth’s father had died young, barely into his thirties, but in that time he had conquered more kingdoms, duchies, nations, and tribes than anyone in memory. Drystan the Conqueror, historians called him. It was a title that had overshadowed Daindreth his whole life. How did a son even begin to match that? Drystan had taken the Erymayan Empire from a loose collection of city states and turned it into the greatest power in the known world.

Though Emperor Drystan had not been a great statesman, he had known that. He had found the best ministers to look after trade, diplomacy, and civil matters—men and women who had been loyal and done their jobs well. Daindreth often wondered if he could ever be half so good at inspiring loyalty.

Drystan might have been a conqueror, but his armies had brought civil structure, learning, and wealth in their wake. Countries that had bitterly fought to maintain their independence years ago now called their annexation “culture.”

And yet even Drystan had not been strong enough to overcome Caa Iss.

What’s this? Caa Iss’s tone was puzzled.

Daindreth looked down to his parchment. He couldn’t see what had caught the demon’s attention and Caa Iss didn’t elaborate. Daindreth didn’t hear all of the cythraul’s thoughts, blessedly, just the ones Caa Iss deliberately shared. Daindreth still didn’t know quite how that worked, but had stopped questioning it over the years.

The archduke went back to writing. “This nightmare maddens the sane,” he jotted, thinking of his father.

Caa Iss had driven Daindreth’s father mad, eventually. Years after his father’s death, Daindreth had awakened one morning to find the demon’s voice in his own head.

He still didn’t know why the cythraul had taken years to infect him. All he knew was that Caa Iss was inside him as the demon had been inside his father and the archduke had no way to escape it.

Caa Iss went silent in Daindreth’s head for several moments. That was unusual, but Daindreth never complained when it happened.

The archduke began working on the next line of his poem, thinking of Fonra, the stranger he was supposed to marry. What would her bridegroom’s condition mean for her?

You’ll thank me later, Caa Iss muttered.

Daindreth felt something snap inside his head. It was like he was plunged underwater and yet his body didn’t move.

Suddenly, he was watching himself from inside his own skull, as if in a dream—or a nightmare.

Panic gripped Daindreth as he realized what was happening. He hadn’t lost control to the demon in years, not since he’d been a child, but—

The world washed red. Daindreth’s massive personal tent was mostly dark save for the area directly lit by the lamp over his desk, but in an instant, the demon’s night vision illuminated everything.

Let me out! Daindreth screamed in his thoughts, unable to move his mouth to form words. Stop this at once! Let me out!

Daindreth was but a spectator as Caa Iss spun him around, steering his body like a marionette.

As Caa Iss turned, Daindreth would have jumped if he’d had enough control over his body to do it. Caa Iss locked his red-washed sight on a stranger—a girl at his back with a knife in her hand. Dark lines marked her face and the demon’s heightened senses recognized the scent of blood. She was dressed in some sort of light archer’s armor, made from leather.

She gaped at him as their eyes met, horror and fear flashing across her face for the briefest of moments. Daindreth was so shocked at the sight of her—she was simply there—he might have hesitated, but Caa Iss didn’t.

In command of Daindreth’s body, the demon grabbed her wrist that held the knife. The girl retaliated just as fast, snapping up her knee, barely missing his jaw.

Caa Iss dropped off the writing chair and sank into a crouch. He shot out one hand and seized her ankle. With a swift jerk, he yanked her to the ground.

The girl went down and Caa Iss tackled her, landing a hard punch to her side. Daindreth felt the impact through his knuckles as they met ribs. Something cracked, both in her side and his arm, but he felt no pain. The girl wheezed, gasping for air.

Caa Iss snarled at her, teeth and lips twisted into an animalistic, savage expression.

Daindreth fought to take back control. Caa Iss might be defending them both for now, but Daindreth knew better than any that the creature couldn’t be trusted.

The girl—the would-be assassin—had another blade in her hand before he saw where it came from. She slashed at his face, but Caa Iss brought up an arm to block. Her blade connected and Daindreth felt a slight tug as she sliced a bloody gash in his sleeve, but still no pain.

Growling, Caa Iss grabbed her knife hand again, slamming her to the ground. He pinned her down, overpowering her easily.

Daindreth felt the demon smile in wicked satisfaction, but the girl wasn’t beaten. She yanked her legs up, getting her knees and shins between them.

Caa Iss struggled to keep hold of her as she wrenched her hips, trying to buck him off. They tangled on the floor in a mass of kicks, punches, and flailing limbs. One of her kicks missed him and struck something to the side.

A coat rack fell to the ground with a loud clatter, striking a tent pole as it went down.

“My lord?” a young voice called from outside. Daindreth recognized the voice as belonging to Bran, his page.

Daindreth had not been afraid when he’d seen the armed assassin or even when she’d drawn first blood, but fear gripped him now. It was one thing to have Caa Iss fighting a skilled warrior, but Bran?

Caa Iss had made creative suggestions on more than one occasion of things he’d like to do to the boy. Locked away as a mere watcher in his own skull, Daindreth felt panic rising. He couldn’t let Caa Iss meet Bran while in control of his body—he couldn’t.

Still pinned under him, the assassin gave up her knife and grabbed the back of his shirt. The archduke wasn’t quite sure what she did, but she twisted her wrist and then his collar tightened like a noose around his neck.

Caa Iss snarled in annoyance. This was taking longer than Caa Iss had expected, if Daindreth had to guess. Daindreth himself was impressed by how long she had lasted against the cythraul. Women in the southern parts of the empire often fought in tribal war bands, but this girl was showing a level of skill above that of most imperial soldiers.

By all the damned flames of the Dread Marches, who was she?

The assassin twisted again and this time she flipped him off her, landing a kick to his ribs as she did. She scrambled out of reach, stumbling to her feet and drawing yet another knife. How many of those did she have?

Caa Iss leapt upright and studied her. He cocked his head to one side, considering.

She’d seemed surprised by the cythraul, so she probably hadn’t been expecting Caa Iss. That meant she had come to assassinate the imperial archduke and was a traitor to the empire.

Though she’d come to kill him, Daindreth had to admire the girl. She was facing a cythraul, a monster of the Dread Marches. But she didn’t run, she didn’t cower, and she didn’t stop fighting. Maybe she had no idea what she was facing, but Daindreth respected her for her courage all the same.

Not speaking, the girl stared him down, breathing heavily and favoring the side he had punched. Her eyes were wide in fear, but she dropped into a defensive stance.

Outside, Daindreth heard Bran and another voice, probably Taylan, the archduke’s valet. They had heard the commotion and would no doubt be coming at any moment. Daindreth needed some way to get back in control before the assassin or Caa Iss—

Caa Iss lunged, so fast that not even Daindreth saw it coming.

In the blink of an eye, the demon crossed three paces across the tent to slam the assassin into the center tent brace. The entire tent shivered with the impact and Daindreth was worried for just a moment that the whole thing would crash down.

The assassin blinked up at him, dazed. Through the demon’s red-washed sight, she looked straight back at him, still not speaking. It was impossible to know what she was thinking just as it was impossible to know what Caa Iss was thinking.

Caa Iss held the assassin against the tent brace, not moving for a long set of heart beats. He looked her from head to foot, tilting his head first to one side, then the other.

“Who are you?” Daindreth’s mouth moved, but it was a demon’s voice that spoke. A gravelly voice laced with anger, malice, and noxious hate. “Have the Istovari witches gone back on their bargain?”

Istovari? That was the sorceress clan that had first cursed Daindreth’s father. What did they have to do with this girl? She wasn’t a sorceress, was she?

From the corner of Caa Iss’s red vision, something moved. A shadow filled the tent entrance and Daindreth realized with horror that Bran had come.

Get out! Daindreth tried to scream. Get away until I’m back in control! But no matter how hard he fought to make his mouth work, it didn’t matter. Caa Iss had total mastery.

Caa Iss turned and his red gaze settled on the page. A perverse smile twisted the demon’s mouth, but in that moment, he turned his attention from the assassin.

She twisted in his grip and yanked to one side before a booted foot slammed into his hip. He was knocked back by a few steps, but Caa Iss came back around to attack an instant later.

The assassin brought up her knife and Caa Iss dove for her, but not fast enough. She slashed and he had to duck to avoid having his cheek flayed open.

He heard steel slicing flesh and the cythraul’s senses picked up human blood, but Daindreth didn’t feel anything. It took him a moment to realize she’d cut her own hand.

The assassin lunged this time, but Caa Iss had been busy watching her knife hand and didn’t watch her free hand. Her palm slapped into his face, her bloody hand leaving hot, sticky splatter.

Caa Iss leapt back as if he had been stung, snarling. He pulled away from her, but the bloody handprint scorched his skin. It burned and Daindreth was sure it was burning through his flesh and melting the bone.

Caa Iss shrieked in pain, dropping to the floor. He writhed and thrashed, squalling and screaming.

Inside his body, Daindreth could feel the cythraul fighting against the fire that scorched Daindreth’s face. Caa Iss fought to claw the blood off, but wherever Daindreth’s skin touched it, it stung his skin. The fire burned and bit and gnawed and Daindreth joined the demon in crying out in pain.

Caa Iss snapped his jaws, thrashing from side to side like a horse fighting a bit.

In the distance, Daindreth heard voices crying out. His elbow bumped something and someone called his name. His eyes flared red and black and white as the demon’s vision flickered. The world spun around him and he had the sensation of falling though he could feel the carpet of his tent under him.

No! Caa Iss grated. No, this isn’t right! This wasn’t part of the deal!

Daindreth was still flailing against the pain on his face, but he realized Caa Iss was speaking in his thoughts again. Daindreth tried to speak, but all that came out was a primal scream that made the shadows over him murmur in concern. They were standing beside him, he was sure of that, but he could make out none of their words or their faces.

Caa Iss writhed and roiled, clawing and fighting to stay in control even as he was dragged back by the magic coursing through Daindreth. It had to be magic. What else could this be?

Was it the Istovari? They were the sorceresses who had placed this curse on Drystan. Perhaps one of them, could…?

Daindreth struggled to pull himself back together. He curled his limbs in on himself to stop their thrashing, though he couldn’t stop trembling. Still shaking, he locked his arms around his legs in the fetal position.

“Dain?” a familiar voice asked. The archduke looked up to see his cousin, Thadred, crouching over him. “Can you hear me?”

His cousin's hair was in a tousled mop and his shirt was halfway unbuttoned, but he was here. The servants had probably sent for him.

Daindreth realized he was holding his face. Sweat beaded his forehead and trickled down his cheek, but…he wasn’t burned. He groped at his jaw but found nothing but a day’s stubble. How was that possible?

“I…I’m not…” Daindreth coughed, surprised he could speak again. He blinked, eyes adjusting to the poor light. Without the demon’s sight, he couldn’t see nearly as well, but he wasn’t about to complain.

There wasn’t a mark on his arm, either, though he knew the assassin had slashed him with her knife. Had Caa Iss healed him somehow?

Caa Iss…

Daindreth waited, but the cythraul didn’t speak. Seconds ticked by and there was nothing—glorious and beautiful nothing.

His heart leapt in his chest. Every second he expected to hear the demon speak again, but every second the demon remained silent.

The archduke looked around him to find Thadred, Bran, his valet Taylan, and several guards and servants. They stood at a respectful distance, save for Thadred, watching him closely.

“The girl.” Daindreth cast about the tent. There was no sign of her. “Where did she go?”

“So that was you dreaming of a girl, was it?” Thadred cast him a devilish look.

Daindreth cursed Thadred’s filthy mind. “No, she was here.” How had they not seen her? Daindreth searched the darkness of the tent, eyes sliding over shadowy boxes and trunks.

Thadred watched him, but didn’t speak.

Daindreth didn’t blame him. He probably seemed like a madman in his cousin’s eyes.

A flicker of movement caught Daindreth’s attention. A shape seemed to slide from the shadows, as if it had been one with the darkness only an instant before.

“There!” Throwing caution to the wind, Daindreth jumped up and dove for her. He seized her wrist.

Something snapped, though Daindreth wasn’t sure what. The girl in front of him came into clear focus, her face a mask of horror as whatever concealing spell she’d used came undone. Without the demon’s tinted vision, he could see her braided hair was that bold red that only came from these northern kingdoms.

Thadred cursed and shuffled, cane sword at the ready.

“Who are you?” Daindreth gripped her wrist, careful lest she draw a knife on him again. Caa Iss was still dead silent. There was no trace of the demon in Daindreth’s mind. “How did you do that?”

The assassin didn’t speak. She snapped her wrist to the inside, popping free of his grip. Her hand moved for her thigh, and he leaned back, dodging in time to avoid her slash at his chest. He felt nothing, but his shirt tore.

Thadred was already springing to action. “Dain! Guards!”

The archduke didn’t listen. He needed to know what she’d done and how she’d done it. Banishing the cythraul? That was unheard of. Why had she done it? Why was she here at all?

There were too many questions and he needed answers.

Thadred shouted. Daindreth ignored him.

Daindreth reached for the assassin again and her blade connected with his forearm. He hissed in pain as blood dripped down his sleeve. This time, he definitely felt it.

“My lord!” someone screamed.

Guards surged into the tent before Daindreth could stop them. They dragged him back and converged on the assassin.

One of them jabbed a spear for her and she just barely managed to dodge.

Daindreth’s heart raced. “No!” he cried. He couldn’t explain to them why, there wasn’t enough time. But she had just cured him of his curse after more than half his life. He needed answers. “I want her alive!”

Just then, the assassin threw a knife—that had to be her fifth or sixth—and struck the nearest guard in the shoulder. The man flinched, but kept advancing on her.

The assassin, realizing her predicament, tried to run. She stumbled into the side of the tent, moving sluggishly. She was moving slower now, like that attack on Caa Iss had taken too much out of her.

Thadred grabbed Daindreth and dragged him backwards. The guards kept striking for the assassin despite the archduke’s protests. Another spear lunged for her and this one struck true.

Daindreth saw her whole body jerk to the side and saw the guard’s spear come back bloody, but the assassin didn’t stop. She ran from the tent, disappearing into the camp.

“I need her alive!” Daindreth shouted after his guards. “Alive! Do you hear—”

“Dain!” Thadred grabbed his arm, forcing him to turn around. “What happened?”

Daindreth shook his head. “I don’t know. I just—one moment I was alone and then Caa Iss took control and fought her.” He jerked his head toward where the assassin had fled. “Then she did something to me with her blood and now he’s gone.”

“Gone?” Thadred blinked at the archduke.

“Gone, Thad.” Daindreth grabbed the front of his cousin’s shirt. “I can’t hear him. I can’t feel him. It’s like I can breathe for the first time in…and I don’t know what…”

“Dain!”

The archduke’s breaths came in short, quick gasps. The silence overwhelmed him. The emptiness. The quiet.

“Dain, take it easy.” Thadred laid a hand on his shoulder. “Easy. Are you alright?”

Daindreth nodded, fighting to pull himself together. “I’m fine. Fine.” He coughed. “I just…” He touched his head. “How?”

Istovari sorcery.

Daindreth’s heart sank and he covered his face with his hands. “Oh no.”

“What?” Thadred demanded. “What’s wrong?”

You idiot. Caa Iss growled. I save your life from a sorceress assassin, and you respond by throwing yourself at her as soon as she locks me away?

Daindreth slumped down to the ground as Caa Iss’s berating

continued.

You’re unfit to be emperor, Caa Iss growled. She should die for her offense to you, but you tried to make your guards spare her. Pathetic.

“My lord!” cried one of the guards. “The assassin has fled into the forest. It’s too dark to follow her.”

“Did a wounded woman outrun you?” Thadred quipped.

“No, my lord,” the guard responded, looking embarrassed. “She just…”

“She what?” Thadred snapped.

“She took your destrier, my lord.”

Thadred blinked at the man incredulously. “My horse?”

“The black stallion, my lord,” the guard confirmed. “Rode him into the forest.”

Thadred cursed profusely. “I won that horse in a bet against Baron Alderman!”

You need me, archduke, Caa Iss grated. After everything I did to save you just now, you wanted to risk death just to be rid of me?

Daindreth smeared his hands over his face.

“Dain?” Thadred leaned over him. “Are you alright?”

“Caa Iss,” Daindreth said, not looking up. “He’s back.”

And here to stay, Caa Iss sneered.

Chapter Two

Daindreth had his guards search the surrounding forest at first light, but there was no sign of the mysterious assassin. Eventually, they had to move on and continue their journey to the royal palace in the city of Lashera.

Daindreth had been driven nearly to hysterics when they couldn’t find her. She’d been injured and had apparently acted alone. They could find no trace of anyone else in the forest. Had she died from her wounds? Was his only hope of freedom dead in a ditch somewhere? But they’d been unable to find Thadred’s horse and that served as a small sliver of hope.

If she was alive, how could Daindreth possibly hope to find her? He had thought over and over how to ask King Hyle, his future father-in-law, for help, but after discussing it with Taylan and Thadred, decided to wait. Telling the king had obvious risks, including that the more people who knew, the more might learn of Daindreth’s condition—a secret that his personal servants had guarded for years.

The archduke and his retinue arrived in the capital and were greeted graciously by the king without incident. Days went by and Daindreth had no idea how he would go about finding the assassin, but he needed to decide soon. After he left Hylendale, there wouldn’t be much he could do.

Daindreth had tried to explain to Thadred and Taylan what had happened with the girl and the demon, how Caa Iss had been silenced. They were both fairly sure that meant she was an Istovari sorceress of some sort. That did nothing to answer his other questions—where she had come from, why she had come, who sent her, who she was, what she had done, and most of all—how did he find her again?

Not quite to my standards, but still quaint, said Caa Iss, taking in the northern palace around them. When do we meet our bride?

Daindreth gave no outward reaction, but the voice still snickered.

Jealous, are we? Well, to be fair, Daindreth, what’s yours is also mine. I do live here, you know.

Daindreth stopped at the entrance to the banquet hall. A small troop of servants, guards, and retainers shuffled neatly to a halt around him, keeping formation. He inhaled, steeling himself. He straightened the cuffs of his coat again, squaring his chin. On the other side of that archway were all the nobles and dignitaries of Hylendale—a small country, to be sure, but soon to be important.

When his mother and her advisors had announced their plans to marry him into a northern kingdom, he had resisted it just as he had resisted all other offers. But he’d learned to manage his condition and had kept it under control for years. He’d thought that just maybe…he might be able to keep managing it well enough to have a family.

That was until the assassin had come and Daindreth had lost control completely. The creature in his head had saved his life, but he had been under thrall to Caa Iss, wholly mastered as the cythraul fought to defend him. He’d been helpless to take back control of his own body until—

“You ready?” asked Thadred. Thadred adjusted the grip on his blackthorn cane, shifting the weight off his bad leg.

“No,” Daindreth answered. “But I’m as close as I’ve ever been.”

Thadred clapped him on the shoulder. “You’ll be fine. I’m sure the girl is as nervous to meet you as you are to meet her.”

“But what if I—”

“You won’t,” Thadred said shortly. He then motioned for one of the pages to signal the heralds on the other side of the entrance.

Daindreth let out his breath in a hiss. He’d tried to explain his fears to Thadred, but his cousin would hear nothing of it.

To Thadred, the cythraul was something Daindreth always overcame. Daindreth didn’t think Thadred or anyone else truly knew how much willpower it took for Daindreth to keep control, how hard it was to take back control when he lost it.

I think you fear me more than anyone else does. There was a snicker in the creature’s tone.

Daindreth fixed his attention on the banquet hall beyond the arch. The heralds silenced the party with a shout and began announcing him, listing out his titles and honorifics.

He feared the cythraul the most, it was true, more than his mother, her advisors, or Thadred. But he also knew the monster better than any of them.

As Daindreth entered, a hush fell over the gathered crowd. Perhaps three hundred heads—from the serving girls to the king and queen of Hylendale themselves—dropped into bows and curtsies.

Daindreth used the pause to survey the room as his swordmaster had taught him. Especially after the attempted assassination two nights ago, he couldn’t be too careful.

Never fear, archduke, the cythraul said. I won’t let us die. Didn’t I prove that?

Yes, the cythraul had saved Daindreth’s life. Even he had to admit that. But he couldn’t be grateful. To realize that Caa Iss could still possess him fully had been more frightening than any thought of death.

But then there had been that girl. Daindreth was ready to pardon any traitor and pay any price if she could make that spell permanent. But she had disappeared, and he had no idea how to find her.

Oh, is that our wife? the cythraul crooned as Daindreth’s gaze fell on a slight, slim girl with her neck roped in pearls and her head bowed. Look at how delicate she is. So small and soft! The monster practically crowed with delight. I can’t wait to—

Caa Iss’s voice snapped off like a dry twig.

Daindreth sucked in a sharp breath.

Thadred noticed and shot him a glance, but Daindreth remained focused on the royal family before him.

Clearing his throat, Daindreth did his best to act calm. “Rise, King Renner,” he said to King Hyle, his soon-to-be father-in-law. He used the king’s given name as a show of familiarity and goodwill. “Mother,” he said to Queen Hyle, also using that title as a term of endearment, acknowledging the tie they would soon have. “Rise. I am glad to be graced with the countenances of your royal persons with my own eyes.”

The king straightened. He was a balding man with a wide girth and a long history of hard decisions written in the wrinkles above his grey beard. He and Daindreth had met for only a few brief dinners these past days and the king had been all courtesy and kindliness. The man was no less deferential now.

Caa Iss had prattled on in an endless commentary for their first meeting. King Hyle had been one of the few minor kings to surrender to Daindreth’s father without ever fighting. Caa Iss had made it clear he took that as a sign of cowardice.

But Caa Iss was silent now as King Hyle spoke.

“Your Royal Highness, I would like to introduce my daughter, Princess Fonra.”

“How do you do, Your Highness?” Fonra dropped into a curtsy so graceful she seemed to float.

Daindreth took her hand, hoping that she wouldn’t notice the shaking in his own. “Charmed,” he said, brushing a kiss over the backs of her knuckles. “Charmed, my dear lady.”

Fonra smiled and dipped her head. Demure. Delicate. Breakable.

Daindreth shuddered to think what his demon would do to this girl if he ever took control again.

“We are beyond pleased by your presence, Your Highness,” Queen Hyle said. She smiled, something Daindreth doubted she did often. She had lines and creases around her mouth, the scars of a lifetime of scowls.

She was King Hyle’s second wife, as Daindreth knew all too well.

Hyle had negotiated with the empire, ensuring protection for his people and his family, but in the end had still become just another vassal whose kingdom dotted the map of the continent. He had turned out his first wife—an Istovari sorceress whose clan had remained defiant to the last. His firstborn daughter had been declared a bastard and her mother’s people named traitors.

Daindreth had often wondered how things could have been prevented. If the sorceresses had not been cast from this small, insignificant kingdom, how might his life have been different?

Daindreth’s own father might still be alive, then.

All through this, the cythraul remained silent.

Daindreth’s heart beat faster. He glanced to Thadred.

His cousin frowned, leaning close and dropping his voice to a whisper. “Are you well, Your Highness?” Thadred rarely used the title in private, except when he was teasing, but they were in a formal gathering now.

“Fine,” Daindreth answered, sounding out of breath even to his own ears. “Better than fine, but—”

Thadred’s brow quirked, shooting a glance to Fonra. He learned over, dropping his voice. “Warming up to the idea of her?”

Daindreth turned to whisper to Thadred. “No. I think she’s here.”

“What?”

“The girl. The assassin.”

Thadred’s eyes widened ever so slightly, and he shifted his cane, ready to flick out the thin sword hidden inside. “Where?”

“I don’t know yet, I—” He cleared his throat when he realized the king and queen were staring at him. “Forgive me,” he said. “Could you repeat your question?”

“We asked if you were ready to receive homage, Your Highness,” King Hyle said. “It has been many years since we have had the privilege of pledging loyalty to your esteemed family in person. Within our own halls, no less.”

The last time would have been about twenty years ago, Daindreth guessed. When his father had come to take a kingdom and gone home with a curse.

“Of course,” Daindreth said with the most genteel smile he could muster. “Nothing would please me more,” he lied.

Right now, every fiber in his being screamed at him to lock the doors and tear the room apart until he found that girl. He didn’t even care that she had tried to kill him. If she could somehow restrain his cythraul, he would give her anything, anything if she would just—

Daindreth met the train of well-wishers with a smile and gracious bow that he had practiced over a lifetime at court. The men, women, and youths wore fashions that had been in style two seasons ago in the capital city. Many of them were paler and the men’s beards longer, but altogether, they were not so different than any of the other throngs of supplicants that met him wherever they went.

They introduced themselves and their houses. Some mentioned ways in which they or their fathers had known or served his. Many asked after his mother, the empress. All of them expressed their happiness at his upcoming marriage to their princess.

A few dropped hints that they looked forward to his coronation now that he was of age and had been for some time. Like most the empire, they wondered how long his mother, the widowed empress, would continue to rule. He responded noncommittally, hardly able to tell them that he might be the most unfit ruler in the empire. There would be no end to the danger of an emperor possessed.

Daindreth responded to the courtiers in kind, with smiles and bows and gratitude. It was exhausting work, but archdukes needed stamina for these sorts of things.

A shadow snagged Daindreth’s eye from across the room—a figure in a black velvet dress and a black beaded veil over her eyes. Her dress was scandalously backless with silver chains looped across her shoulders. A tumble of red hair, partially pinned up, played around her slender neck. He remembered that hair. And there could very well be bandages concealed under the flare of her dress.

She looked up. Even through her beaded veil, he was sure she looked at him. She turned away, ducking her head.

Daindreth’s heart pounded faster. He’d found her.

“Thadred.” Daindreth turned to his cousin between groups of supplicants. “That’s her,” he hissed, struggling to keep his voice down.

“What?”

“The woman with red hair in a black dress. The one with no back. Do you see her?”

Thadred turned solemn, gaze drifting over Daindreth’s shoulder. “With the veil?” He didn’t question how Daindreth knew. “You’re sure?”

“Yes.”

Thadred shifted toward the guards, ready to sound the alarm, but Daindreth grabbed his arm to stop him.

“Can you bring her to me?” Daindreth’s heart was ready to pound out of his chest. She might be here to finish the assassination. He knew that, but the chance for a cure was worth the risk.

Thadred blinked at him. “Here? In a room full of witnesses?”

“She’d have no chance for escape if she tried anything.”

“Unless—” Thadred shot a furtive glance toward King Hyle.

“I need to speak with her.” Daindreth gripped Thadred’s arm tighter. “Please.”

A trio of coiffed men sporting a garish mimicry of last spring’s fashions stood waiting to greet the archduke. The king and queen glanced to one another, not daring to interrupt Daindreth’s private conversation.

“Please,” Daindreth repeated.

Thadred nodded once and slipped away from Daindreth’s side. He stopped to whisper something to Milton, the head guard. The man nodded once and signaled to the other guards.

Two guards stepped off the dais and circled around the room, following Thadred at a careful distance. Their decorated halberds waved above their heads like steel pennants.

“Is everything alright, Your Highness?” King Hyle asked, taking a cautious step to the archduke’s side.

“Never fear, Your Majesty,” Daindreth answered in his best courtly voice. “I have sent my cousin on an errand, is all.”

Daindreth returned to accepting the promenade of courtiers. He kept one eye on the red-headed sorceress as Thadred ambled toward her. His cousin could hold his own in a fight and had protections against magical attacks, but a chord of guilt twanged in Daindreth’s chest. He had just asked his cousin to fetch an assassin.

Across the room, the assassin spotted Thadred moving toward her and shifted, on guard. She approached a middle-aged couple and began engaging them in an intent conversation.

Don’t run, Daindreth silently pleaded.

Thadred reached the sorceress, the assassin, and appeared to address her.

She turned, head cocked to survey him. Those beads parted, revealing one eye. She was feigning ignorance as best Daindreth could see.

Daindreth forced himself to remain outwardly composed, sharing compliments and commentary with the seemingly endless train of courtiers. This was nothing compared to the number of supplicants he might greet on a normal day in his own palace, but today, with his chance at salvation in a black dress across the room—

The archduke glanced up from kissing the hand of a marchioness to see Thadred with one hand on the sorceress’s arm, leading her back through the throng of people.

King Hyle noticed as well and the man visibly paled. He must know the woman. The archduke considered asking King Hyle who she was, but he thought it best to wait for now.

It was not swords that had played the largest role in building the empire. Pretense, more than anything, had allowed the Fanduillion bloodline to seize power over the entire continent. Two-thirds of a battle was convincing your enemy he was beaten—at least that was what Daindreth’s mother had told him for as long as he could remember.

Glancing back, the archduke lost sight of his cousin and the sorceress for just a moment. He searched the crowd for them, but then the pair reappeared. The girl was rubbing her neck and snapping at Thadred.

Had she attacked him, and he had countered? Regardless, she seemed none too eager as Thadred led her to the back of the line of well-wishers.

Daindreth forced himself not to hurry through greeting several local barons and their wives, a dowager countess, and a man without a title who was introduced as the most successful sea merchant north of Calenport. The archduke smiled, accepted curtsies, shook the hands of the men and kissed the hands of their women.

The meal began and the lower-ranking guests bustled to the table first. This somewhat thinned the line of people in front of him, but not by enough.

Daindreth’s collar had become too tight and the room had become stuffy as a stable in summer by the time Thadred and the sorceress stood before him. Reminding himself that this woman had tried to kill him, Daindreth schooled his face into aloofness.

The sorceress met his gaze, her eyes wide between the beads of her veil. Several heartbeats passed and neither seemed sure how to proceed.

“Dear cousin,” Thadred took on a tone with just the hints of mockery. “May I introduce Lady Amira, your future sister-in-law.”

Lady Amira—King Hyle’s firstborn daughter by his first wife, the Istovari sorceress. If she had been the one to attack him, did that mean King Hyle was a part of the plot? Or was she acting at the behest of her mother’s clan? A hardness settled in Daindreth’s chest at that.

The Istovari had proven themselves nothing if not vindictive.

Daindreth stepped down off the dais, as much to be closer to Amira as to distance himself from King Hyle. Daindreth’s guards followed him.

Thadred tugged Amira back, though she hadn’t moved. “My lord,” he said, in a tone that warned he would protect Daindreth even if the archduke wouldn’t protect himself.

“Lady Amira.” Daindreth tested the name, seeing how it fit this creature who had so nearly been his doom. She might be his doom yet. “There you are.” As he had done with all the ladies who had come before her, he bowed over her hand and brushed a kiss over her knuckles.

“Your Imperial Highness,” Amira said. She had a voice like water, soft as the trickling of a brook, yet churning with the power of a tidal wave. It was the voice of a sorceress.

“I…” Words escaped him. Daindreth cleared his throat. Every one of the glittered hundreds who had greeted him thus far had a protocol and an etiquette for their rank, station, gender, and age.

There was no protocol for a man greeting a woman who had tried to kill him. But he still needed to win her to his side. This was the closest he had come to hope in more than a decade of living with this creature in his skull and he dared not let it slip away.

Finally, it was Amira who broke the silence. “I’m pleased to see you in good health, my lord.”

After spending days fearing she was dead, the answer came easily enough. “And you.”

Amira’s voice had just the hints of a tremor as she said, “I hope you will find your stay in Lashera pleasant.”

Was that a threat? He couldn’t be sure. “It’s had its surprises,” Daindreth responded. “But I am most pleased thus far.”

Amira’s eyes widened as she studied him, but she didn’t pull her hand away or even move.

What now? Daindreth needed to speak with her in private, but he also needed to learn who had been behind her assassination attempt. He didn’t believe she would have acted alone. That she had made it back here as badly injured as she was indicated that she’d had at least some help.

What if she came after him again? Daindreth was not so concerned for himself as he was for the guards who might die protecting him.

There were stories claiming that sorceresses were the loveliest women in the world. Daindreth had dismissed it as idealization, but looking at this one, with a fitted black dress that framed her svelte form, he might believe it now. Even with only half her face showing, those full lips and ivory neck could inspire minstrel’s songs all on their own.

Amira was tense as a green colt in his grip. He needed to say something to put her at ease.

“You’re very beautiful, Lady Amira.” As soon as he said it, he realized that had been the wrong thing to say.

Amira’s head dipped even lower, and Queen Hyle made an angry goose sound from behind him.

“Thank you, Your Highness,” Amira said.

Amira’s hand went sweaty in his. She was afraid, he realized. And rightly so. She’d committed high treason.

The assassin lowered her eyes. “I don’t wish to take up too much of your time, my lord.”

People were watching. Daindreth needed a way to keep her beside him. “Will you be joining us to watch the bride’s dance?” he asked. He vaguely recalled his valet mentioning that part of tonight’s festivities would be a dance of the young, unmarried women led by the bride-to-be.

Fonra certainly didn’t look as if she would be dancing in that dress, but the female ability to move in impractical clothing never ceased to amaze him.

Queen Hyle made another choked sound at their backs. Daindreth ignored her.

King Hyle stepped forward, keeping a non-threatening distance, but close enough to intrude. “Amira is among our most accomplished dancers, but she was recently ill and still recovering. In truth, I believe you should retire soon, my dear. You look pale.”

Alarm shot through Daindreth. If she slipped away from him here, now that she knew she had been found out—

He forced himself to remain calm, at least outwardly. Pretense. “I hope you won’t go far, my lady.”

The sorceress offered a smile that seemed forced. “The palace is large, but not so large as to become lost.”

Daindreth considered that. He’d known when he stepped into this room that she was here. After tonight, he was sure the same thing would happen whenever he was in her presence. “Even if you did become lost,” Daindreth murmured, “I think I could find you anywhere.”

Amira swallowed, telling him that she had understood it as the promise it was—if you flee, I will chase you down.

“That sounds like a threat, Your Highness.”

“Not a threat,” Daindreth corrected. “Let there be no threats between us, Lady Amira.” He meant it. He needed her help too badly to start threatening her.

Daindreth’s father had threatened sorceresses and look what it had gotten him. Daindreth meant to grovel for this one if he had to.

King Hyle interrupted sharply. “You look pale, my dear,” he said to Amira. “Return to your chambers and rest now.”

“Pardon me, Your Highness.”

Daindreth let her twist out of his grip. He couldn’t make a scene, not here, not yet. He wanted to know more before he turned this into a blatant inquisition.

Though he and his men were outnumbered within the castle, they had the weight and power of the whole empire behind them.

He could have ordered King Hyle to bring Amira back. But that would have ruined the pretense.

So Daindreth watched her go, begging fate to return her to him.

Caa Iss came roaring back moments later, shouting and raging. Daindreth had a headache within minutes that lasted through the night.

Chapter Three

“Do they have cherry trees on your gardens in Mynadra?” Fonra asked, her dainty arm hooked through Daindreth’s.

The archduke glanced to the flowering bough overhead. The branches bristled with pale pink blossoms, lovely and fragile. So much like the girl on his arm.

I’ll bet you could snap those arms of hers right off, Caa Iss muttered. Like pulling off a butterfly’s wings.

“Not many,” Daindreth answered, ignoring the cythraul as he usually did. “Though I have seen a few.”

Behind them trailed several of Fonra’s maids along with a quad of Daindreth’s guards and his valet, Taylan. The small procession followed the couple at a respectful, yet proper distance.

Daindreth had spent a great deal of time with Fonra, all of it chaperoned. And for that, he was very, very grateful.

So. Do you plan to tell her about me? Or will it be a surprise?

“I shall have to ask Papa to send us saplings,” Fonra chirped.

Not that it matters. She’ll find out one way or another and she’d just think you mad if you told her the truth.

Fonra smiled, looking up as the branches passed above them. “Amira used to climb the trees and knock down cherries for me when I was little.”

Daindreth felt himself stiffen without meaning to. “That’s the first time you’ve brought up your sister.”

The cythraul growled incoherently at Daindreth’s mention of Amira. She tried to kill you. You should be ordering her head on a pike. Do you want people to think there are no consequences for defying the empire?

It had been days since the ball, the last time Daindreth had spoken with the sorceress. Thadred and his men had been able to confirm that she was still in the palace and hadn’t left her rooms more than a handful of times, which was to be expected with her injuries.

Efforts to ask about her from the servants and staff generally got the same answers—Lady Amira was reclusive and close with her sister. Yes, her mother was a sorceress, but no one seemed to believe that she was one herself, at least not in practice.

Little could be proven or verified aside from Daindreth recognizing her, but they had found Thadred’s stolen horse. The destrier was discovered at the Lashera market, being led around by a hawker offering the animal as a plough horse at less than a third of his value.

Allegedly, the destrier had been found wandering outside the city. The blacksmith’s apprentice who’d caught him had no idea what he’d found. A destrier, especially one as well trained as Thadred’s, was worth a small house.

Daindreth had paid the asking price to have the animal bought back and felt it was a bargain. Finding the horse had lifted Thadred’s spirits and served as confirmation, but it had told Daindreth little about Amira or her motives.

The archduke watched his young companion, hoping she might offer better insight.

Fonra shrugged. “Amira…” She chewed her lower lip. “I love my sister. But we have different places in my father’s court and that has…kept us apart in many ways.”

Daindreth considered his next words carefully. “I have heard she travels a great deal.”

At this, Fonra cleared her throat and licked her lips, but smiled the next moment. “Occasionally, yes.” She was soft, this girl. For one who had grown up in a royal court, she lacked the guile Daindreth usually found in well-born women.

“Why are you smiling?” Fonra asked, pink dots coloring her cheeks.

“Nothing, princess.”

Oh, you think she’s sweet? Well. She could just be the best pretender you’ve ever met and be luring you into a trap.

Daindreth dismissed the cythraul’s input.

Fonra was already contracted to marry him. Negotiations between Hylendale and Erymaya were complete, they just needed to be signed into a treaty tomorrow. Though Fonra might be trying to win him over, she didn’t have to.

Fonra giggled. She had a soft laugh, like a wind chime.

Already, Daindreth was fond of this girl. He could perhaps even grow to care for her. He certainly wanted to protect her.

“Keep your secrets, then, Your Highness,” she said. “I shan’t pry. You have my word on that.”

Oh, if only she knew there were secrets of his she should pry into.

Lucky girl, Caa Iss sneered. She gets two husbands for the price of one! I’m going to have to find a way to get out and play with her at some—

Caa Iss went silent.

Daindreth froze, startled by the sudden silence.

“Your Highness, are you alright?” Fonra leaned toward him, concern wrinkling her brow.

Daindreth shot a glance upward. They had wandered near the edge of the garden, near a wall with open windows along the topmost stories.

Instantly, the archduke’s gaze went to one window in particular. No one was visible from this angle, but the shutters were open and thin curtains blew in the breeze.

“That’s my room,” Fonra said, noticing the direction of his gaze. “I love waking up to a view of the gardens every morning.”

Daindreth’s chest tightened. From his guards, he knew that Amira and Fonra shared adjoining rooms. The assassin was close.

A crossbow bolt or arrow from that window seemed unlikely, especially with Fonra on his arm. And Amira hadn’t tried to kill him again, as far as he knew. Though every corner had been guarded and every meal tested for poison, they had uncovered no more attempts.

“Do you have any secrets, princess?” Daindreth asked, studying the window above.

He was sure Amira was there, watching them. Even if he couldn’t see her.

From the corner of his eye, Fonra chewed her lip. “I think we all do, in one way or another,” she said.

“Hmm.” Daindreth wondered if Amira could sense when he was close. Did the sorceress experience anything the way he did?

To be fair, what he experienced was quite literally nothing—glorious nothing.

“Is something wrong, Your Highness?” Fonra glanced to the guards and servants behind them. “Do you see something?”

“No,” Daindreth answered. “No, I see nothing at all.” But I know she’s there, he thought to himself. “Will your sister be joining us at supper tonight?”

“No,” Fonra answered lowly. “She’s ill, as Papa said the other night.”

Lies, whether Fonra knew it or not, but Daindreth suspected she did. One didn’t share adjoining rooms with one’s sister and not know when she’d been stabbed. Daindreth felt unduly guilty at that. Though it had happened when she’d tried to kill him, Amira had been stabbed by his guards.

“I have spent almost every hour with your father, mother, and you for these past few days,” Daindreth remarked. “Yet your sister has been kept away like a pox victim.”

Fonra went stiff against him, her hand trembled a little on his arm. So, she did know more than she was letting on.

“I want to speak with her,” Daindreth said. He could all but feel Taylan’s disapproval burning the back of his head. This was too forward, too open. There were Hylendale servants listening, but Daindreth was running out of time.

“I…don’t know if that will be possible,” Fonra stammered.

“Why not?” Daindreth was pushing more than a few boundaries, but it was a risk he was willing to take.

Once his marriage contract was signed, he would leave with Fonra and go back home. His options were to get his cure now or take Amira back with him. There were obvious obstacles to both.

He needed a way to get to Amira, speak with her without her father’s guards and servants. Without breaching protocol and causing an international incident, he saw no way to do that.

Even if they had tried to kill him, Hylendale knew better than to directly attack the empire. Once he was back in the imperial capital of Mynadra, they would either go on being the good vassals they always had been, or they would start an uprising that would be met with imperial fire and fury.

In Daindreth’s experience, these minor kingdoms almost always chose the first option. Even those that did choose revolt rarely stayed in rebellion for long.

But he would like to make it easy for them to choose the peaceful option.

Fonra swallowed. “You could request her presence, I suppose.” She said it in an unsure, hesitant way that made her seem far younger than she was.

“Tell me, does Amira avoid me or does your father keep her from me?” Daindreth was a little surprised at the brazenness of his own words.

Taylan shot him a cautioning glare from the corner of his eye, but the archduke ignored him.

Fonra’s eyes widened like a doe’s as she looked up at him. “Your Highness, my sister isn’t well. She—”

Daindreth cut her off. “One request, princess.” He clasped both her hands in his. “Don’t lie to me. And I will never lie to you.”

Fonra shook her head. “I don’t know,” she whispered. “I don’t know why she stays away from you.”

“I believe you,” Daindreth said after a moment. He released her hands and looked back to the window.

Even as archduke and future emperor, there was only so much stalling Daindreth could do. They lingered below Amira’s window for several more moments, and then Daindreth reluctantly agreed to move on.

His mind worked the whole time they walked away, gnawing on solutions. Thadred and Taylan had both had their own suggestions—most of which involved sending for reinforcements from the neighboring kingdom of Ladendell and taking the entire royal family captive.

Daindreth would rather avoid that. The more unobtrusively he could pull this off, the more freedom he would have to pursue a cure. It might take time, but Amira had a cure, he knew that.

But he knew better than to demand anything from an Istovari sorceress, especially when he wasn’t yet sure if she had the backing of her mother’s clan. His father had learned that the hard way.

If he could get her away from the northern wilds, away from the ancestral lands of the Istovari sorceresses—

I will kill her! Caa Iss roared, slamming into Daindreth’s thoughts like a punch to the face. I will peel her apart layer by layer and drink her screams like wine.

Daindreth winced, grabbing his head on impulse.

“Your Highness?” Fonra stepped in front of him. “My lord, are you well?”

Stop stalling and get that bitch’s head on a pike, Caa Iss ordered. If you won’t deal with her, I will!

A sharp pain lanced through Daindreth’s skull, like a tent peg had been hammered into his head. He hissed and stooped over.

The demon clamored and beat against the inside of his head, fighting to get out of Daindreth’s mind and into control of his body.

Daindreth had only experienced total possession—true loss of control—a handful of times and never for long. But the demon was livid and now he could feel it warring with everything it had.

“My lord?” Taylan stepped up beside him, one eye on Fonra. “My lord?”

Daindreth turned his head away as the pounding grew worse. “Forgive me, my lady,” he said, forcing a smile as he turned back to Fonra. “It has been a most agreeable afternoon, but I—”

Images flashed across his mind too fast to stop. Images of Fonra, naked and bloody on a stone floor, screaming, crying, begging for help.

This is what I will do to her if you don’t kill that Istovari bitch, Caa Iss snarled. Don’t think I can’t.

More images came flashing across Daindreth’s mind—Fonra beaten, tortured, and mutilated almost beyond recognition. Fonra pinned to a giant steel spider web. Fonra peeled and disassembled by layers like a butchered animal, still alive and screaming.

Daindreth jerked away from her, heart pounding. The pain in his temple throbbed in time to his racing pulse. “Excuse me, princess,” Daindreth stammered, head down.

Ignoring all propriety, he walked as quickly as he dared with his guards and servants in tow. He caught the tail end of Taylan’s explanation to Fonra—some practiced lie about the archduke’s busyness and promises of an invitation later today or perhaps tomorrow after the marriage contract was signed.

Daindreth stumbled out of the garden and back into the palace, tripping over the threshold and landing on his hands and knees.

“Your Highness!” One of his guards knelt beside him, Alric, a corporal. “Your Highness, what’s wrong?”

The rest of the guards formed a protective gauntlet around their archduke, weapons ready and watching for an attack. Most probably suspected this had something to do with the assassin and they would be right, just not in the way they thought.

“Caa Iss,” Daindreth grated, hands braced against the floor. “He’s—”

“Daindreth!” Taylan pushed away Alric and dropped down beside the archduke. To call him by his first name broke several rules of decorum, but Taylan had been with him since he’d been in boy’s shorts. “Daindreth, is it him?”

Daindreth nodded as a flurry of images and scenes played out across his mind, crammed and stacked over top each other. There was pain and tears and always Fonra—soft and delicate and torn apart.

“Rest,” he said. “I need to rest.”

The cythraul would tire eventually. He always did after these episodes.

Taylan took one of Daindreth’s arms and Alric took the other. The archduke swayed on his feet, but the guard and valet kept him upright.

At the valet’s signal, one of the guards marched on ahead, checking to make sure the way was clear. Assassins and attempts on his life aside, anyone seeing the archduke stumbling drunkenly through a foreign palace in the middle of the day was bound to gossip.

Daindreth let his attendants lead him back to his rooms. He couldn’t see anything beyond the demon’s projections. The images shifted into scenes from another place, somewhere Daindreth had seen in visions before. A place that was dark and yet still lit by fires. A place where a thousand voices screamed and yet no one was ever in sight.

Sometimes Daindreth seemed to be walking on burning stone. Other visions showed him pits of swirling pitch that bubbled and burned, the severed limbs of animals and humans boiling in their depths. There were fields of wheat made from embers, writhing with creatures somehow made from malice.

“My lord, here. Sit.” Taylan’s hand guided him to the edge of a settee.

Daindreth was only vaguely aware of his surroundings. It seemed his men had gotten him back to his assigned rooms.

Daindreth doubled over, putting his head between his knees and waiting for the visions to pass.

“Send for Thadred,” he heard Taylan say.

Taylan always sent for Thadred, though Daindreth didn’t see the point. It wasn’t as if any of them could help him.

The visions dragged on and on.

Caa Iss swore at him, threatened him, tried to reason with him. He made threats and promises. He screamed and cajoled.

Daindreth ignored him, rocking and waiting out the storm within his mind.

The cythraul tried again and again to get him to respond, to break, to order Amira’s execution.

Kill that Istovari bitch, Caa Iss roared. I’m ordering you!

“You’re afraid of her,” Daindreth said, laughing. He didn’t usually address his cythraul, but the realization almost made him giddy. “After all this time, we’ve finally met a human you fear.”

She’ll enslave us both, Caa Iss answered. It was her people that bound me to your father, but they only wanted to control him through me.

Daindreth rubbed his browbone between his eyes. Caa Iss lied to Daindreth all the time. He was a demon, after all.

But the creature’s fear was real.

Anyone Caa Iss counted as an enemy, Daindreth wanted as a friend.

Caa Iss retaliated with a slew of visions.

Daindreth saw the imperial capital of Mynadra reduced to rubble, the bodies of men, women, and children pinioned atop stakes, some of them still moving. He saw smoke engulf mobs of fleeing refugees as they ran across blackened fields.

A woman pale as the moon with black orbs for eyes ordered swarms of winged and clawed creatures across the continent from one end to the other. Daindreth had seen her in these visions before and always she was the bringer of death. Mother was all Caa Iss had ever called her.

By the time the visions ended and Caa Iss fell silent, the sun had shifted out of view and was drawing low over the horizon. The archduke dragged a hand through his hair, head still aching.

Prying himself off the settee, he found Thadred and Taylan seated at the card table behind him. The older man sat with his arms folded, studying Daindreth head to foot

Thadred leaned back with his bad leg propped up, wine in one hand and the other stretched over the back of the chair beside him. “Feeling better?” he asked, swirling the goblet before taking another sip.

Daindreth blinked at the two of them for a moment, thinking. The cythraul grumbled in the corner of his mind. Daindreth had once called this clear-headed, but it wasn’t.

He could think his own thoughts, but the demon was still there. If there was a way to be rid of Caa Iss, any way…

“I must have her,” Daindreth said.

“Fonra?” Thadred’s brows rose from over the rim of his goblet. “You’re getting her.”

“Not her.” Daindreth waved his hand. “The sister. Amira.”

Thadred glanced to Taylan. “I’ll have her arrested now.”

“No, I don’t want her arrested.” Daindreth huffed in frustration. He had explained this to Thadred before, but the man was determined to bring the would-be assassin to justice. “I don’t want to cause that kind of scandal. I don’t want to accuse the Hyles of treason.”

“Even if they’re guilty of it?”

“No more war,” Daindreth said.

“This wouldn’t be war,” Thadred snapped.

“I won’t risk it,” Daindreth countered.

“Bah!” Thadred shrugged. “You could order Amira to come to the palace to serve in her sister’s staff. It’s not unusual.”

Daindreth grimaced. “The family decides who attends the bride. If I order that, it will cause rumors. A scandal. I don’t need a scandal, either.” He didn’t need the attention, was the truth. The less people had reason to notice his eccentricities, the less chance of his secret being discovered.

Thadred rolled his eyes. “Scandal or war. Pick one.”

“My lord, arresting the woman who tried to kill you is not a scandal,” Taylan said. “For your bride-to-be and her family, perhaps. But not for you.”

Daindreth went still, only hearing some of the words. The idea that came to him was almost pure risk, but the possible reward was too great.

Anything—that was the price he was willing to pay. If it got her away from here and back to Mynadra where they could sort things out, he would give anything. Less than a minute passed between the idea coming to Daindreth and him deciding on his next course of action.

“Send for my lawyers,” Daindreth said to Taylan.

Chapter Four

The room felt hot. Daindreth wasn’t sure if that was the number of bodies crowded in the audience chamber or his own nervousness.

Amira stood not ten steps away. She gave the appearance of stillness, but he caught her eyes flitting across the room behind her beaded veil every so often. She was wearing black again, silk, this time. The cut wasn’t as provocative as the night of the ball, but the scooped neckline and fitted bodice showed just enough to tease. At least he thought it did. But that might be because he was already so intrigued by her.

How would she react to his plan? What about King Hyle? Would the man agree? Protest?

There was only one way to find out.

Daindreth remained still as his own lawyers and King Hyle’s reviewed the marriage contract yet again. The archduke had kept his lawyers awake for half the night reviewing every syllable and corresponding statute to ensure there were no barriers to what he planned to do.

Dame Cormorant, his head lawyer, had argued with him for close to an hour along with Thadred and Taylan, but in the end, he had overruled them all. This was the only way to achieve everything he wanted—no war, only a minor scandal, and his sole hope of salvation secured by law.

Finally, the lawyers finished, and Dame Cormorant nodded to him. Daindreth inclined his head to her once.

She might resist his plans, but like Thadred and Taylan, she was loyal. Now that the course had been decided, all three of them would do everything in their power to see this plan succeed.

Across the table from Daindreth sat King Hyle. The man smiled easily over his greying beard, occasionally speaking with Daindreth and occasionally with those around him. If he suspected anything was amiss, he gave no sign.

At her husband’s side, Queen Hyle pretended to make small talk with the lady’s maid at her elbow, but watched every move of the lawyers like a sheepdog ready to bite the sheep back into order.

Fonra was beside her mother. She cast Daindreth a small smile and he forced a smile back. He hoped she wouldn’t be hurt by this. It was for her good as much as everyone else’s, he thought.

Amira remained as she was, alone and shoulders bowed in a deferential pose. She noticed Daindreth staring at her and looked away.

It was all he could do to contain himself. What did she know? Caa Iss had predictably not made a peep since Daindreth had entered her presence. How did she do it?

Dame Cormorant bowed from the corner of his eye. “Your Highness.” She laid the long scroll before him, nodding. “It is ready, as you requested.”

Daindreth perused the neat handwriting of the scribes, meticulously copied and revised from the original to leave out all mention of his bride’s name except at the very end.

Daindreth nodded and the lawyers presented the document to King Hyle.

The king glanced to a severe man in black velvet, Lord Cromwell, his lawyer. Cromwell nodded once and that seemed to satisfy the king.

Without further ado, the king scratched his signature on one corner of the scroll and gestured for a page to bring him his seal and hot wax.

Daindreth watched as the king left his mark, his agreement to the contract. The archduke almost licked his lips but stopped himself. He had no reason to be nervous.

Politically, he had the high ground. And if anyone were to attempt foul play, there were twenty more soldiers outside the door, ready to come rushing to Daindreth’s aid.

When the king finished, he personally passed the document to Daindreth. A page offered the archduke quill and ink, and the archduke was a little surprised when his hands didn’t shake as he took them.

He studied the document before him, not really seeing the words. His heart pounded in his chest, and he looked to Dame Cormorant. She nodded again, jaw set. She’d done her work. Now it was his turn.

“Does everything appear in order, Your Highness?” King Hyle leaned forward in his seat.

Daindreth inhaled and faced the king. “You have shown me great hospitality, Your Majesty.” He added a smile. “I am truly touched by all that you have done to make my retinue and I feel welcome here.”

King Hyle bowed, returning the smile. “It is a privilege, Your Highness. An honor, even.”

Daindreth thrummed his fingers on the table. “You have given us all that we could ask as guests, as friends, even as family.”

Courtiers shifted and several whispers rustled through the room. Amira stared in Daindreth’s direction. He could see her from the corner of his eye. This time, she didn’t look away.

Again, King Hyle glanced to the parchment, where Daindreth had not yet signed. “I look forward to being your family, Highness.”

“As do I, Majesty. Yet…” This was where his plans would either sail or sink. With one last glance to Dame Cormorant, he made up his mind. “My lord.” Daindreth stood and the king nearly jumped in his hurry to do the same. “Please.” Daindreth gestured for the older man to remain seated.

The archduke dropped to one knee and a collective gasp rose from the courtiers.

King Hyle shifted and leaned toward the floor, not about to have the archduke kneel while he sat, but Daindreth kept a hand up to stop him.

The archduke slipped into the courtly speech, something worthy of the gossip and tales that would be told of this later. “You have already shown me more courtesy and generosity than I could have asked.” He kept one eye on Amira, watching him as still and deadly as a sphinx. “But my heart compels me to beg still more of you.”

King Hyle shifted in his seat, uncomfortable. “Anything, Your Highness.”

“I hesitate to ask in light of the great loyalty your house has shown my father and now me.” Daindreth layered the words like chum around a shark hook, leaving no room for King Hyle to say anything but yes.

“Truly, Your Highness. I will give you anything you ask.” King Hyle spoke in a half-pleading tone, unsettled enough to do as he said. “Please, tell me, my lord.”

Daindreth decided to take it even further. “You are too kind, Your Majesty. If you knew my request, I fear you would not be so eager to grant it.”

Courtiers shifted, glanced to one another, whispered. Their fashions might be different and their accents carry a brogue, but courtiers were the same here as in Mynadra.

“Tell me, please. And rise, Your Highness.”

Daindreth let out a breath, pausing for effect. He did not rise. “I would ask for your lady daughter.”

“I am confused, Your Highness. Princess Fonra is yours with a motion of your pen,” said King Hyle.

Across the room, Amira knew what was about to happen. From the way she went stiff and her hands locked together in front of her, he saw that she knew. Was that fear or anger? Both? Too late to back down now. He would worry about winning her over later.

King Hyle waved to silence the whispering courtiers. “My lord…my dear archduke, I do not understand.”

“I have been smitten with the Lady Amira since the moment our eyes met,” Daindreth said. It was true enough. “I cannot wed her sister while my heart belongs to her ladyship.” That was less true, but partly. He did feel less guilt over taking the sister who had proven she could fight the demon. “My lawyers assure me that there are no legal barriers. Our alliance and contract may proceed as intended. Only please allow me to wed your lady daughter.”

A heartbeat of silence passed.

Rationally, Daindreth knew the king couldn’t refuse. It would be an outrage and insult, especially when Daindreth had asked as humbly as he had.

“Lady Amira.” King Hyle beckoned to his daughter, a solemn, decisive tone in his voice. “Come here.”

Amira crossed the room stiff and straight. She kept her head down as she came to stand before the king.

Daindreth studied her from his place kneeling on the ground. She was lovely, that was certainly true. She made him think of fire—red and ever-moving and able to destroy him at any moment.

“My lord.” Amira dropped into a curtsy before her father as he took her hand.

“Your Imperial Highness.” King Hyle knelt awkwardly, half-supported by his daughter.

Amira dropped down beside him far more easily, head down. She offered no resistance, not even a breath of protest.

“There is no greater source of joy for me than to grant my sovereign the desire of his heart.” King Hyle extended Amira’s hand to Daindreth.

The archduke wrapped his hand around hers. It had worked. The king had agreed, and Amira hadn’t burned them all to cinders.

King Hyle clasped his own hands over Daindreth and Amira’s. “I gladly give her to you with my whole heart and sincerest blessing.” He said it with a smile that seemed sincere enough to Daindreth.

Something jerked in Daindreth’s chest—not in his skull where the demon lived, but near his heart, perhaps in it. Daindreth glanced to Amira, but she still had her head down, lips in a compressed line.

Someone made a choking sound from behind the king. Daindreth didn’t bother looking to see who it was.

Daindreth kept his attention on Amira. He was no sorcerer, but he recognized the feel of magic when he encountered it. Something had happened at the king’s words, some spell, but what? Had it been Amira’s work?

A series of heartbeats passed and nothing more happened.

“She is yours, my dear liege,” King Hyle said with a deep breath. “And soon to be my dear son.” He released his hold from around their hands and allowed a servant to help him to his feet. He winced a little, but quickly straightened. “Amira, you shall love, serve, and honor your lord husband as you have loved, served, and honored me as your father.”

Amira’s brow furrowed, though she kept her eyes on the floor. She stayed incredibly still, as if listening for something that never came.

Daindreth held onto her, almost afraid to believe this was happening. He was touching his only real chance of freedom since he had found himself in bondage. He had hope in hand, and it was almost too good to be true.

“Come, my love,” Daindreth said, keeping up the charade of the besotted swain. “Let us put ink to our happiness.”

Amira remained kneeling on the floor until he helped her up.

He didn’t dare loosen his grip on her hand. He needed to convince himself that she was real, that he wasn’t imagining this.

Dame Cormorant personally wrote out Amira’s name beside the archduke’s in the rightmost corner of the document.

Daindreth signed with his free hand and pressed his signet ring into a pool of hot wax beside it.

Amira stared at the document before them.

“Lady Amira,” King Hyle called.

Amira didn’t move, a vacant look in her eyes.

King Hyle leaned toward her. “Sign, Amira.”

The sorceress jumped, looking to her father. She blinked at him several times and went pale as new linen.

“Here.” Daindreth forced himself to release his hold on her right hand. “Sign it, my lady,” he said, trying to speak the words as gently as he could.

Amira still flinched, but she took the quill from him and wrote Amira Brindonu.

She looked down at the drying ink, biting her lip. From beneath the gold beads of her veil, he could see her eyes racing over the document.

She’s afraid, he realized. The archduke surveyed his new fiancée—this lovely, lethal, and duplicitous thing. I don’t need you to like me, he thought to himself. I just need you to help me.

Chapter Five

If Daindreth had thought Caa Iss was angry before, he knew better now. Even if this time, the archduke expected the attack.

No sooner was Amira bustled away by her stepmother and several of the queen’s attendants than a wall of rage slammed into Daindreth’s skull. Eyes watering with the force of the impact, Daindreth managed to excuse himself from a conversation with a minor noble.

Signaling to Taylan and Thadred, his guards flanked him in a gauntlet all the way back to his assigned rooms. Daindreth managed to get the doors shut before he fell to his knees on the parlor floor.

Clutching his head, Daindreth felt the pressure behind his eyes, throbbing in his ears, his mouth, and even his nose. It felt as if his head were ballooning and stretching, like the bone itself were no stronger than the casing on a sausage.

“Daindreth!” Taylan shouted for him, but the valet sounded far away.

Caa Iss roared and cursed and spat in a demonic, abyssal tongue that he used whenever he was especially angry. Visions of fire, pain, death, blood, and torture played out before Daindreth’s eyes, or perhaps behind them.

Groaning, Daindreth rocked on the floor, hands to his head.

“Is there nothing we can do?” Thadred asked. His voice drifted through the madness of Daindreth’s torment, water trickling between the cracks of a brimstone slab. It distorted in Daindreth’s ears, taking on a gravelly, grating sound.

“No,” Taylan answered, standing less than a step from the archduke. “No, you know there isn’t.”

There had been a time when they had tried sedatives and narcotics to stave off the demon, but that had backfired. Drugs only weakened Daindreth and made it easier for the demon. Though apothecaries and physicians had wanted to experiment with different concoctions—stimulants, perhaps—Daindreth had refused.

Daindreth almost ordered his servants to fetch Amira to his rooms this instant—damn the scandal—but he stopped himself. He would do this right, by the rules. That way, no one could question it.

You will kill that bitch, Caa Iss ordered. Or you can expect this every time she leaves the room.

Daindreth didn’t reply.

I could make you powerful! the cythraul roared. You could be the greatest emperor known to the world if you would stop fighting me!

Daindreth had long since given up hope of being the greatest emperor known to the world. These days, he would settle for being a sane one.

He didn’t know how long the attack lasted. Sometimes, he rocked back and forth on the floor. Others, he shook or writhed on the carpet because there was nothing else he could do.

Daindreth fought and fought and didn’t even know how he was fighting. How did a man resist something that lived in his own skull?

Caa Iss raged until he exhausted his power. The pressure reduced to a sore throbbing in Daindreth’s head, and the images became fainter, wispier than those of the real world.

Daindreth pushed himself onto his hands and knees, blinking until he could see the settee and the end of the carpet in front of him.

Caa Iss simmered in the back of his mind, but Daindreth straightened himself off the ground. He touched the low table before the settee, making sure his depth perception wasn’t off.

“Daindreth?” Thadred called from across the room. “Are you alright?”

Daindreth frowned at the meat and cheese crammed between two slices of bread in his cousin’s hand. He glanced to the table in front of his cousin to find it loaded with slices of ham, seasoned lamb, at least six kinds of cheese, and candied nuts.

Taylan was nowhere to be seen.

“What time is it?” Daindreth glanced to the grandfather clock beside the window. “Three hours?” He raked his hand through his hair. Three hours lost to the demon.

Daindreth’s head hurt and his body ached enough to believe it.

I’m asking for you to kill a traitor, Daindreth. I’m being the reasonable one.

Thadred shrugged. “Cherry tart? They’re quite good. And I’ve confirmed they’re not poisoned.”

Daindreth was always hungry after bouts with the demon, but this time, he paused.

Voices clamored in the hallway. Servants rushed past, crying out in panic.

Someone shouted Amira’s name and Daindreth’s blood went cold.

“Amira?” He looked toward the door.

Thadred scarfed down what remained in his hand and reached for his cane. The other man was on his feet in a moment. “Should I call for the guards?”

A hundred possible tragedies and misfortunes played across Daindreth’s mind. Had her Istovari sistren come? Had someone retaliated against her, perhaps the ones who had put her up to the assassination?

With any luck, the bitch has slit her own wrists. She didn’t seem too fond of you, Caa Iss taunted.

Daindreth’s heart pounded. He should have placed guards around her. He should have protected her. He should have—

Daindreth moved for the door.

“Hold on!” Thadred hobbled after him. “You don’t know what’s happening out there.”

“Amira,” Daindreth said, as if that were all the explanation anyone could need. “They shouted her name.”

“I’ll send the guards—”

That wasn’t good enough for Daindreth. He marched out of his apartment and straight for the doors back into the hallway, Thadred in pursuit.

“Ho!” Thadred blocked Daindreth’s path with his cane. “Have you seen yourself in a mirror? You look like you’ve just wrestled a badger.”

“I won’t let her slip away!” Daindreth shoved the cane out of his path and burst into the hall.

Idiot! You have no idea what you could be running into. Caa Iss was right and Daindreth didn’t care.

His guards jumped when he emerged from the apartment, but quickly clustered closer around him.

“My lord,” said Alric, adjusting the grip on his halberd as he moved to stand in front of the archduke. “I’m thinking you should—”

A young woman in a green dress ran past them, clutching her skirts.

Daindreth grabbed the girl’s arm, jerking her around to face him. “What’s happening?”

“Lady Amira,” she sobbed and Daindreth realized her nose was bleeding. “She’s attacked the queen! We tried to stop her, but she—”

“Where?” Daindreth demanded. “Where is she?”

“Princess Fonra’s rooms. That way.” The maid pointed behind her. “We’ve called for the guards, but—”

“Let’s go.” Before Thadred could try to talk him out of it, Daindreth charged down the hallway with his guards in tow.

Heart racing, Daindreth forced himself not to run, making sure that his guards kept a secure formation around him. Thadred fell behind, but Daindreth had his guards. He wasn’t about to slow, and he wasn’t about to stop.

It wasn’t difficult to find Fonra’s rooms. Servants and attendants and the king’s guards hovered around the entrance and dashed in and out.

Caa Iss was furious, even if he was weakened after his onslaught. You are a fool to—

The demon’s voice broke off.

Daindreth shoved through the doors of Fonra’s rooms in a breach of at least fifteen rules of courtly etiquette. Inside was chaos.

The king stood with his guards and that lawyer of his, Cromwell, facing down Amira.

“Lady Amira.” Daindreth took her in, confirming for himself that she was alright. “What happened?” His eye fell on the blood trickling down her cheek. Her dress was torn, and her beaded veil was gone, nowhere in sight.

The queen slumped to one side with cuts on her face and arms. Her fine dress from the earlier meeting was torn and stained in red. Her maids and ladies hovered around her, weeping and doing their best to wipe away the blood.

A shattered vase scattered the floor in shards along with a stool that had been smashed to kindling. The painted white wood was edged in gold and now lay in ruins around the assassin’s feet.

Amira visibly stiffened at the sight of Daindreth, hands at her sides, chin up.

He moved toward her, mind buzzing in a hundred directions.

“Forgive our domestic dispute, Your Imperial Highness.” King Hyle sounded for all the world as if a roast partridge had been served cold, not as if his daughter and wife had just turned up bloody on the day of her betrothal. “My family and I regret to have disturbed you. We shall—”

“Quiet.” Daindreth had just wrestled with Caa Iss for three hours. He wasn’t about to bandy words with a king who had probably tried to have him assassinated anyway.

Amira’s head was down, her hands loose at her sides. Trying to be gentle, Daindreth slipped a hand under her chin and tilted her head back for a better view of her face.

She had a red mark near her temple, likely where her veil had been ripped off. A bruise was forming on her cheek beneath the cut. Someone had struck her.

Daindreth glanced to Queen Hyle, spitting blood into a handkerchief offered by one of her maids. He turned back to Amira.

“Who struck first?” Daindreth wasn’t sure why that question mattered to him, but it would answer a faint suspicion.

“My queen mother lost her temper, my lord.” Daindreth didn’t notice Fonra was in the room until she spoke, dropping into a curtsy. “She is not herself. She did not mean to attack your bride and my dear sister.”

Did not mean to? Daindreth glanced to Queen Hyle again. He could not see even a hint of remorse. That annoyed him. An insult to his betrothed was an insult to the empire.

“You know how to defend yourself, Lady Amira,” was all the archduke said.

“My lord, we apologize for disturbing your rest. I shall see to it—”

Daindreth didn’t wait to hear what King Hyle would do. “Lady Amira is coming with me.” Caa Iss was locked away and silent as he always was in her presence. Daindreth wasn’t giving that up, certainly not until she made the effect permanent. “I want her moved to the guest quarters beside mine.”

Her being attacked by her own family seemed grounds enough for the change. And the Hyles would have an interest in making sure the story didn’t spread or else the humiliation would be theirs.

King Hyle stepped forward, bowing. “My lord, Lady Amira is still my responsibility. It shames me to have her removed from my care prematurely,” the king said.

In Daindreth’s mind, the man deserved the shame if he couldn’t keep his wife from beating his daughter—now the future empress, too.

“I won’t let anything happen to her.” Daindreth didn’t understand this girl or what she did to Caa Iss, but she wasn’t safe here. “She will be under watch by my soldiers from now on.” He should have insisted on that from the beginning, he realized.

He released her chin to take her hand. It was feminine and slender, even if now he noticed the feel calluses along the inside of her palm.

Amira kept her chin up, staring straight ahead, not looking at him.

She looks like a woman going to her death, Daindreth thought to himself.

No one tried to stop him again as he led her out of the ruined rooms and back to his own chambers.

Chapter Six

Thadred encountered them halfway back to Daindreth’s quarters. “Got into a spat, did she?” The knight leaned on his cane, surveying Amira head to foot.

As far as Daindreth could tell, Amira gave no reaction. She was like a shell, as if she was trying to empty herself of anything that he could hurt.

Daindreth looked back to his cousin. “She’ll be taking your room.”

“You just decided that, did you?” Thadred’s nostrils flared.

“You can share mine.” They’d shared a room as boys and still did on the road, often enough. “The servants can move your things.”

“Perhaps—”

“Now, Thadred.” Daindreth disliked giving Thadred direct commands and he tried to avoid it as much as possible, but right now he needed compliance.

For the first time, he had Amira away from her family and her father’s servants. For the first time, he had the chance to speak with her openly.

He tried to contain his excitement. She was still dangerous, he reminded himself. Fiancée or not, she was still as much a potentially deadly problem as she was his potential saving grace.

Inside his apartment, he led her to the private sitting room. They stepped over the carpet where he had spent the past few hours wrestling with Caa Iss.

There was a strange kind of triumph to standing in the same place now, with the demon silenced and locked away.

Amira kept her face neutral and offered no resistance. She wouldn’t meet his gaze, studying the far wall.

Daindreth followed her line of sight to one of the tapestries. He’d never given them much thought before, but now he noticed what appeared to be Istovari sorceresses—recognizable by their black dresses and torques decorated with the phases of the moon. This scene appeared to depict their final defeat before they were driven into the mountains.

Of course, there were no tapestries depicting the sorceresses’ revenge—the blackbriars that had consumed most of the far northern forests. Or Caa Iss.

“Sit.” Daindreth gestured for Amira to take a place on the settee on one side of the low table.

She obeyed, sitting straight and stiff with her hands folded in her lap. Such composure. Such resignation. The assassin stared straight ahead, barely moving. If it weren’t for her breathing and the bruise swelling on her cheek, she might have been mistaken for a statue.

Daindreth ran a hand through his hair. Now what? Did he bargain with her? Demand? Beg?

How exactly was one supposed to start these conversations? Hello, you tried to kill me, and I just forced you into an engagement, but I think you might be able to save my soul.

“Gods, I need a drink.” Daindreth looked for one of his pages. They’d all been dismissed earlier, but he had several and now there should be one or two hanging about. “Bran?”

Bran jumped to attention. “Coming, Your Highness!” He was a cheery boy who Taylan had taught not to smile as much as he once had.

Daindreth had told his valet since to let the boy smile as much as he wanted, regardless of what decorum said. It was good to see that at least some young men got to enjoy their youth.

Amira shot a glance sideways to the open bedroom door and the bed with the bright red coverlet. Daindreth was a little ashamed to realize the thought of her in it was not an altogether unpleasant one. She was beautiful. Then again, so was belladonna.

Amira swallowed and her nostrils flared. Daindreth might have missed it if he wasn’t watching so closely.

“Bran, shut the bedroom door,” the archduke said. That wasn’t something he or the sorceress needed to be thinking about right now.

Bran scurried to obey before leaping across the room with a carafe of jenever and two tumblers. He poured both glasses and set the carafe between them before sprinting out of the room.

Taylan caught the boy by the door. “Don’t run. I’ve told you, don’t run.”

The guards fanned about the room, at a distance, but ready. All the same, Amira was closer and would probably be able to attack at this distance. He hadn’t ordered her to be searched for weapons. She could very well be armed with a seemingly endless supply of knives as on that first night.

Daindreth picked up his tumbler of jenever and took his place on a couch opposite Amira, facing her with the low table between them. He doubted that obstacle would protect him if she decided to lunge, but it would at least slow her down.

He waited a moment, choosing how to begin. “I will make a bargain with you.”

Amira cocked her head, studying him like a cornered fox. “A bargain?”

“Answer for an answer.” Daindreth stared down the assassin as she watched him, unblinking. Her stare rankled him. He felt like she could see through to his tendons, organs, and sinews, like she had opened up enough men to know exactly what was under his skin. “Who struck first?” Daindreth asked. “You or the queen?”

It didn’t matter to him and yet it did. It would answer what kind of woman he was dealing with.

Amira took a breath. “I did.”

Daindreth didn’t believe it, even without Fonra’s testimony. “If you’d struck first, your stepmother would never have had the chance to strike back.”

Amira’s hands tightened in her lap and she looked away, hiding her bruised cheek.

“You’re too good for that.”

Amira didn’t answer. She clenched her eyes shut, shoulders square and rigid.

“Taylan.” Daindreth could see the man hovering by the doorway. “Bring me one of your salves.” He nodded to the sorceress in front of him.

Taylan shuffled to obey just as the first footmen and pages appeared, filing in with Thadred’s trunks and boxes.

Thadred’s voice drifted over from the other room. No doubt, Daindreth would be hearing his cousin’s complaints about this for a week if not more.

“Your turn.” Daindreth nodded to Amira.

The assassin hesitated, her brow wrinkling slightly before understanding dawned on her face. He was letting her ask him something. “Why did you want me?”

Daindreth let a pair of his racing heartbeats pass before he answered. He didn’t want to tell her everything, not just yet. “Your family situation seemed to be out of hand.”

Amira’s mouth tightened. “You know what I meant. Why did you…” She swallowed. “Why did you want me instead of Fonra?”

Daindreth tried to piece together as much as he could. What if she didn’t know the effect she had on the demon? What if what she did was entirely by accident? What if she had no clue how to make this permanent?

Until he could figure out how much she knew, Daindreth decided to be as vague as possible. “You are a shield,” he said.

“A shield?” Her tone rose to a shrill pitch. “A shield from what?”

“My turn.” Daindreth leaned back against the couch. She might not know, he realized. Resting his ankle on his opposite knee, he thought of his next question carefully.

Taylan returned and offered Daindreth a squat jar of wound salve. Daindreth had been a boy prone to scraped knees and Taylan had learned to keep it on hand.

Daindreth pointed to Amira and the valet handed it to her, if a bit reluctantly. Without another word, Taylan marched out to oversee the transfer of Thadred’s belongings.

“For your face,” Daindreth said to Amira. “It will help.”

Amira eyed the ointment suspiciously, but brushed a thin layer of it over her cheek and temple. Some of it stuck to her hair. The white streaks left behind reminded him of the bloody lines she’d worn on her face the night they’d met.

Daindreth decided there was no point in being oblique when they both knew. “Why did you try to kill me?”

“What do you mean?” Amira responded just a little too quickly.

Daindreth fought to contain his frustration. “That night last week.”

“I don’t know what you mean.” Again, Amira answered just a little too quickly.

“It was you.” Daindreth had uncertainty about many things right now, but not that. “You came into my tent. We fought.” Attempting to lighten the mood, he raised his drink and nodded to her. “You fought well. Where did you train?”

Amira clutched the jar of ointment, staring at him. “You’re mistaken.”

“Don’t lie to me, Amira.” Daindreth used her given name, dropping formalities to get his point across. The archduke didn’t see why she would bother denying what they both knew—she’d been found out.

Amira clenched her eyes shut.

“I know it was you.” Daindreth surveyed the young woman in front of him. She was both his prey and predator, captor and captive. Beautiful and mesmerizing, yet cold and deadly. His only hope for freedom, but he could see his own death in her eyes.

“What do you want from me?” the assassin finally said.

Daindreth lowered his family’s most precious weapon—pretense. “I want to know what you did to me that night. With your blood.”

Amira closed her eyes again. She trembled, ever so slightly. She was afraid, he realized. Even more afraid than he’d first thought.

“I’m not going to hurt you, Amira,” Daindreth promised. “If I can help it, I won’t harm your family, either.”

Amira shook her head vigorously. “I don’t know what you want. Or even what you are.” Did she not know about Caa Iss before her assassination attempt? “But if I’m about to die, my last act won’t be selling out my family.”

“Protecting them?” Daindreth glanced to the cut on her face. “They don’t seem too concerned with protecting you.”

Amira remained silent.

Daindreth needed a moment to collect his thoughts, so he took a swig from his tumbler.

The servants stumbled in with another of Thadred’s trunks. Daindreth’s cousin had a taste for the finer things and Daindreth allowed him the indulgence.

When Daindreth turned back to Amira, he fought to keep the impatience out of his voice. “What did you do to me that night?”

Amira stalled, placing the jar of ointment on the table and nudging it gently from side to side. “I panicked,” she admitted in a low voice. “I used my blood as a medium to channel ka in an offensive attack. I burned you.”

She knew what she had done, then.

“Can you make it permanent?”

The assassin blinked. “What?”

Daindreth’s impatience got the best of him. “Can you make the effect last?”

“I don’t understand.”

“You bound him. I want to know how.” It was then that Daindreth saw he’d struck something.

Amira fidgeted. “That…thing?”

“Yes,” Daindreth said, forcing his tone into a calm timbre. “That thing. How did you do it?”

Amira toyed with the sleeves of her dress. She let a long beat of silence pass, studying her lap. He thought she wasn’t going to answer, but then she asked, “What is that thing?” Her voice trembled as she added, “What are you?”

He didn’t know how to answer that. Daindreth needed to think about it before he told her more. “Answer my question.”

“Which one?” Amira shot back just a little smugly.

“Can you bind him permanently?”

“I don’t know. I’m not even sure what I did.”

Daindreth stared at her. Was she toying with him or telling the truth? “Did you know about my curse?”

“No.”

“Then why did you try to kill me?” Daindreth was done playing. “Answer me, Amira.”

“I had no choice!” Amira’s voice rose high and shrill.

“Why not?” At least he’d been right. There was someone else behind the assassination attempt.

Amira’s eyes widened and she shook her head slightly. Her shoulders trembled and she suddenly looked very small.

“You have nothing to lose,” Daindreth said. “I already know you’re guilty of treason. You might have been able to move against me without consequences in the forest, but the whole of the empire will come crashing down on your kingdom if anything happens to me in your father’s palace.”

Amira’s silence told him she knew all of that and it terrified her.

“There have been no more attempts on my life since arriving in this palace, so I assume you or someone else doesn’t want that to happen.” The archduke leaned toward her, schooling his tone and body language into the most non-threatening, soothing air he could manage. “I don’t care about that. You might not believe it, but I don’t want war and I don’t want revenge. I just want your help. And your honesty.”

Amira remained rigid in front of him.

“Tell me,” he coaxed, not sure why he expected that to work. She had no reason to believe him. She apparently had a reason to want him dead and—

Amira’s eyes widened and the next instant, she was talking. “I’m a Kadra’han and I was bound to my father and he ordered me to kill you.”

Daindreth hesitated, feeling as if he had missed something.

A Kadra’han? It was known King Hyle’s eldest daughter came from a sorceress bloodline, but that she had been turned into a Kadra’han? It was illegal to own one that wasn’t registered with the imperial court. But if Hyle had been using his for assassinations, he wasn’t the kind of man to care about the law.

Kadra’han sorcerers had power that increased based on their service to whoever held their oaths of allegiance. The better they served, the more powerful they became. The spell that bound them to their masters was one of the most powerful invented, if Daindreth remembered correctly.

There were a handful of them in the imperial court, sworn in service to Daindreth and his mother, Empress Vesha. He’d never met any others, though. Certainly not a female or one that had been born an Istovari.

The guards shifted at her confession, but Daindreth waved them back. He was finally getting somewhere. “King Hyle? Why?”

“He knows.” Amira almost whimpered the words. “About…your condition. Whatever it is.”

This was too easy. “Why are you telling me this? You didn’t want to talk a moment ago. If it’s true, you’re betraying your liege lord.”

“I’m bound to you now.” Amira’s lip trembled and her fingers knotted in her lap. “My father passed my leash to you with the betrothal vows, I think by accident. I have to obey you.” A tear slipped down her cheek.

Daindreth felt instant guilt at that—he disliked seeing women cry—but it could just be a trick. She could just be manipulating him.

Kadra’han had to obey their masters—that was the flip side of their gift. Or their curse, depending on whom one asked.

“Prove it,” he said, ordering the next thing that came into his head. “Tell me something you would never tell me unless you had no choice.”

“I was relieved.” This time, Amira didn’t hesitate. “When I saw…it.”

“Relieved?” Of all the possible responses to the demon, Daindreth had never considered that one of them.

She nodded. “Because I saw those red eyes and I thought that, finally, I’d been sent after someone I didn’t have to feel bad about killing.”

Daindreth’s first thought at that was anger, but then…yes, he understood why she would think that. “Tell me honestly—do you know what my curse is?”

“No.”

Daindreth grimaced. “What do you know?”

Amira inhaled, pausing for just an instant. “You’re like me.”

Daindreth wasn’t sure what he had expected, but that wasn’t it. “Like you?”

Amira swallowed. “They can dress you up.” Her voice turned soft, almost like a caress. “Parade you around a ballroom. But you’re still a monster.”

Daindreth watched the sorceress, searching for some clue as to what was going on in that mind. “You think you are a monster, my lady?”

When Amira replied, her voice was sharp with bitterness. “I am what my curse made me.”

“Then I suppose we are alike.” Daindreth took another sip from his tumbler, thinking. He studied the girl before him—the Istovari sorceress, the Kadra’han, the assassin. “I believe you,” he said after a moment. “It does answer many of my questions.”

It also absolved her of any crimes committed under her father’s orders. Legally, at least.

Amira’s composure crumbled. She lowered her head and tears fell as she knotted her hands in her skirts, breathing heavily. “Don’t hurt her,” Amira pleaded in a small, soft voice. It seemed unfitting for the cool, composed assassin of a moment ago. “Fonra didn’t have any part in this.” Amira went on quietly weeping, head bowed.

She looked so vulnerable then. So broken. Helpless. In a way, she was. Daindreth had the power to order her to do anything—anything at all.

“I have no intention of harming your sister,” Daindreth said, and he meant it. “But you are going to tell me everything you know about what your father is planning.”

Amira nearly doubled over on the settee.

“Is he still planning an assassination? Answer me honestly.”

Amira didn’t fight this time, the answer coming easily. “Not that I know of. He told me not to try again once you were here.”

Her words caught in his mind. “You wanted me dead?”

Amira replied without a hint of shame. “Yes.”

“Why?”

“I didn’t want you to have Fonra.”

Daindreth had to admit that after she had learned his secret, that was fair.

Amira swore. “What does it matter why?”

It mattered a great deal. He needed to know if he could earn her friendship or at least alliance. Kadra’han were forced to obey the letter of their masters’ commands, but many of them had a knack for finding loopholes in orders.

They were just as capable of betrayal as anyone else, they just had to be cleverer about it.

For a moment, he considered pressing her. She was his Kadra’han. He could pry any secret from her that he wished. He could order her to find him a cure right here.

But no.

As much as a part of him ached to force her into compliance right now, he knew better. Force had been what had brought this curse on his family in the first place. Force wouldn’t fix it.

Better to let her rest and consider what had been said until he thought of how he was going to proceed.

“Lars, Corbin,” Daindreth addressed two of his more experienced guards. They would be less likely to be harmed by the sorceress in any last-ditch efforts at attack. “Take her to the adjoining guest room and keep her guarded. No one comes in or out of her room.” Daindreth turned back to Amira.

He worded his next commands carefully, recalling everything he knew about Kadra’han.

“You will stay in that room until Thadred or I come to fetch you. You will not attack me or anyone in my retinue and you will inform us at once if you sense we are in danger from any source. Are we clear?”

That defiance came back for just a moment, and she glared at him through her tears. “Yes, Highness.”

Amira stood and Daindreth stood with her. They faced one another for a moment, eye to eye. Her nostrils flared and she looked as likely to stab him as wish him a good afternoon.

She has the power to save me, Daindreth thought. But who will save me from her?

Daindreth watched as the guards led Amira away. He stood there after she disappeared, listening for any sign of trouble, and waiting.

Thadred approached, cane thumping quietly on the ground. “That went well,” he muttered. His room situation was forgotten for now, but no doubt the complaints would be back as soon as Thadred no longer had questions about the girl.

“It could have gone worse.” Daindreth didn’t take his eyes off the door where Amira had vanished from his view.

“Kadra’han, eh?” Thadred shook his head. “I never would have guessed it. Are you sure she’s bound to you?”

“Yes,” Daindreth answered, frowning. “Something happened when her father gave his consent. I thought it might be part of whatever she does to Caa Iss, but I’ve felt it before.”

Daindreth had accepted the allegiance of a Kadra’han once in his life and he’d often regretted the curse it placed on the man. All the others had been bound to his mother since his father’s death. But Daindreth’s Kadra’han had been invaluable, even if the man wasn’t able to serve as had been intended.

“I see.” Thadred adjusted his cane. “Dain, are you sure about this?” Thadred cast him a sharp look. “Marrying the enemy? You don’t actually plan to go through with it, do you?”

Daindreth didn’t answer, still watching the door.

“Son of a bitch,” Thadred swore. “She tried to kill you, Dain.”

“Her father ordered it.”

“She’s an Istovari sorceress. They cursed you.”

“And it seems they let her be cursed,” Daindreth shot back, still waiting, still watching the door. To his mind, Kadra’han vows were as good as a curse.

Never one to pull punches, Thadred went on. “Do you really want to marry a known assassin?” Thadred jabbed a finger toward the door where Amira had gone with the guards. “Not knowing if you’ll get out of your wedding night alive?”

Daindreth ignored him for several heartbeats, then whirled on his cousin with a grin.

Thadred’s eyebrows shot up. “I didn’t know you were into that.”

Daindreth grabbed his cousin by the shoulders, smiling wide. “He’s gone, Thadred.” He shook the taller man, unable to stop grinning. “Caa Iss—he’s still gone!”

Thadred cocked his head to the side.

Daindreth let go of Thadred. “She has to be close, but not necessarily in the same room.”

“I see.” Thadred glanced to the wall that separated them from the assassin on the other side.

“Even if we never progress beyond this…” Daindreth raked a hand through his hair. “I have hope. For the first time in years. Real hope.”

He still wasn’t sure about limitations or distance. Could this bond grow stronger over time? And would the attacks from Caa Iss worsen depending on how long the demon was silenced?

Daindreth didn’t know any of that, but he had time. They had time. Soon, he would leave with the greatest prize he’d never dared hope to find. Once he won her over and learned how much he could trust her, they could proceed.

Thadred exhaled out his nose. “You know, all those times I said you needed to find yourself a girl? I didn’t mean one that tried to kill you.”

Daindreth laughed. Who would have thought that an assassination attempt would be the luckiest thing that had ever happened to him?

Born to be a sorceress. Cursed to be an assassin. Chosen to be his empress.

Magic has two immutable rules—every spell requires a sacrifice and every curse can be broken.

Amira Brindonu is a sorceress turned assassin, bound in a curse that forces her to obey her father, even to the point of high treason. When he orders her to kill the future emperor, she fails, but discovers a secret that could bring the whole of the empire to its knees.

The archduke is stricken by a curse that could sentence him and his people to damnation, but Amira could be the only key to breaking it. In a desperate last-ditch effort, the archduke takes Amira prisoner and makes a pact to protect her from her curse if she will help free him of his own.

As time begins to run out, Amira soon learns that there are enemies that blades can’t touch and there are fates worse than death. Caught in a web of sorcery, intrigue, and her growing feelings for the archduke, the assassin must decide just how much she is willing to give to save the only man she’s ever loved.

Every curse can be broken, but can two cursed people save each other?

Get it now!

Table of Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Daindreth’s Assassin