What was left of the Drikiera clan was now nothing, but ash and ruin—their people living in tents and shells of the homes in the Borderlands.
“Your father is trying to prevent what happened in Drikiera from happeninghere. You know as well as I do that demonstrating your powers could persuade them to leave Holiadon alone or form an alliance with us. Either would suffice.”
She was no fool. An alliance could come in the form of marriage or it could come in the form of the Credulans using her as a weapon of war. It was highly unlikely that they would simply be enjoying afternoon tea with them on holidays, perusing Holiadon’s shops or lounging on the beaches at the coast exchanging pleasantries. That sort of an alliance with these brutes was unheard of, to say the least.
Kaya paused, glancing back at the cabin that housed all of her greatest childhood memories. It was evident that those days were over. Her mother forced her into a set of rooms at the Silver Palace the day after her eighteenth birthday, rambling on and on about becoming an adult and following the natural order of Cadaith’s will.
Whatever that meant.
If it meant anything at all, Kaya was sure that it did not mean that they were to form an alliance with colonizers, hell-bent on genocide.
“We don’t need an alliance.” She said it more to herself than to her friend. The declaration was not a comfort.
Her parents would say that she wasstubborn. The name given to her at birth was a precursor to her skill. Ailikaya was a term of endearment in the Lowen language, something you would call a child who refused to eat their supper. But, to put it rather simply, her name just meant willful. In other words—stubborn.
Moryna smirked. “Then do your worst, princess.”
She would.
If there was anything Ailikaya Aesa was good at, it was ruining things.
The thought plagued her for longer than she wished and the walk back to Silver Palace was far too silent—Moryna stealing glances in her direction every few seconds with an annoying look of worry etched across her tanned, freckled face. Kaya tried to ignore it, tried ignoring the incessant hum prickling at her senses—the voices she tried blocking out.
They whispered her name, they whispered their pleas, they cried out inhunger.
She shoved them back down, locking them away in the pitch-black vault that people called herCore.
They were quiet.
For now.
?????????
She stalked through the halls of the Silver Castle, her jaw tight and a constant twitch at the corner of her eye. Her mother told her not to worry over the demonstration, but said nothing about being visibly annoyed by the new presence of guards that seemingly took post at every arched entrance and exit.
There was no way in or out.
She looked at the hooded figures—none of them donning blades or any weaponry besides their own power forces.
This place was supposed to be her home. But no matter how much she familiarized herself with each twisting and turning patch of the larimar floor, no matter how she came to know the exact number of windows and every escape route possible… the palace was just too grand for her liking. She preferred the toasty, humid comfort of the cabin in the woods.
She preferred her fires to roar to life in a river-stone hearth, as opposed to the silver and quartz hearth that was too small. The stone flooring held no warmth in the winter and even though she had strewn rugs across the floor of her bedroom to accommodate the incessant chill that only stone flooring could bring, it didn’t help much. She liked the creaky old floors she toddled on as a babe.
But the cabin wasn’t permanent. She’d been told that from the beginning—that when the palace was complete, they would leave the old barn that her father worked day and night to transform into a cabin for their family.
She couldn’t remember a time at which her father hadn’t been king, but she did remember him seeming so much more…normalbefore the palace was complete. Less frantic and far more considerate of her thoughts and feelings.
Her twitch was not caused by worry, that was for certain.
Kaya rounded the corner, hearing the soft murmurs coming from her parents’ rooms. From the crack of the door, she watched them. Her mother paced the floor, her hand splayed over her rounded stomach, the skirt of her dress swirling with each anxious twirl of her body.
“I do not think that she is ready for this, Alder. She is just agirl. She has barely reached the threshold of her Becoming.” Her mother’s voice shook with nervousness, her hand coming up to brush a black wisp of hair away from her face.
Her father’s voice was not much different from her mother’s, a low and quivering whisper that rolled over the room. “You are correct, my love. But if she isthispowerful before her Becoming, there is no telling how she will grow when she does—”
“She’s achild.”
“She’stwenty.”
