JustNobility. The other three drakes had been busy keeping the rest of the island from being conquered again.
They should have died in that final battle. No one had said it, but she was sure everyone had been thinking it. Even now, as Nobility coasted to a landing on the runway of Pearl Bay Airfield, Faron could never forget that they almost did.
There was a circle of Queenshield waiting for them, but that wasn’t what made Faron pause. Behind them was a small crowd of people wearing scowls and waving signs.STOP THE SUMMIT. NO NEGOTIATING WITH NOVANS. ONE PEOPLE, DECOLONIZED.As soon as the exit ramp opened, they began to chant. “No mercy to imperialists! End the Summit now! No mercy to imperialists! End the Summit now!”
Aveline looked out at her people with a lost expression. And then it was gone behind her queenly mask, curtained by distant politeness. Faron shifted so that she was standing half behind Aveline, happier than ever that she did not have to be a queen. “People of San Irie, I understand your outrage. But the Summit is important, and I promise you that I would not invite our enemies back without just cause. I ask that you trust me for now, and, once the Summit is complete, I will hold a public forum where all your concerns will be addressed—”
“Wedidtrust you,” someone snarled from the crowd, “and you organized a welcome for the very people who tried to kill us!”
“My daughters aredead,” another one shouted. “They died to protect us from the empires, and you invite them here as allies?”
“They willneverbe our allies,” exclaimed a third. “They willneveragain be welcome on our island. NO MERCY TO IMPERIALISTS!”
The chanting rose to new heights. The mob tried to surge forward. A line of Queenshield threw out their hands, which glowed with summoning magic that formed a barrier between Nobility and the angry throng. As the soldiers moved forward, so did the barrier, corralling the people backward like dogs herding sheep from the pasture. Faron saw Aveline’s throat bob as she swallowed, but the queen’s face remained placid until the protesters were gone. Only then did Aveline glide down the exit ramp, where her remaining guards swept her toward the safety of the palace.
Royal servants appeared next, dressed in cotton shirts and trousers of deep gold. They carried everyone’s bags up the hill, leaving Faron alone on the tarmac with adrenaline pounding through her veins.
Well, almost alone.
“How did they get on the airfield?” Reeve asked, staring in the direction the crowd had gone. “I assumed there would be some outcry, but this close to the palace… That’s dangerous.”
“As long as Queenshield are present to keep things under control, Aveline opens the airfield to the public.” It was a stupid idea, but Faron understood the politics of it. Aveline had taken the throne as a teenager, after all, and people wouldn’t allow for her to rule in the shadows. If her every action would be scrutinized, why not allow that scrutiny on her own terms? “I didn’t think it would be this bad.”
The island must have been in true danger for Aveline to risk all this. Chosen queen from a blessed bloodline or not, she ruled onlyby the grace of her people. If they stormed the castle to dethrone her, Faron doubted the gods would intervene.
“That wasn’t here five years ago,” Reeve added when it was clear Faron had said her piece.
He nodded his head toward the greenery in the distance, greenery she had forgotten he’d never seen. While she had occasionally been called to the capital for one political reason or another, Elara and Reeve hadn’t been back since the war. Faron had seen the city rebuild in leaps and bounds, scalestone and summoning magic re-creating what the Langlish had tried to destroy. Victory Garden, as it had been named, now cupped the palace grounds with lush palms, giving the ivory manor house the appearance of bursting proudly from a wreath of trees and flowers. Faron tried to muster up some of the awe she had felt when she’d seen it for the first time, but, as the adrenaline of her anxiety drained, there was nothing left inside her but exhaustion.
Elara should be here. She would have known how to comfort Aveline. She might even have had the right words to quell the dissenters. But if Elara became a drake pilot, Faron would almost never see her.
At least her parents had accepted the lie that Elara had gotten up early to take a stagecoach to the nearest temple. Her sister was a saint to them; of course they’d believe that she would pray for her friends out of the goodness of her golden heart. Then Reeve had promised to keep an eye on Faron in Elara’s absence, and that had been that.
“I don’t actually need you to watch out for me, you know,” said Faron, the memory leaving a bad taste in her mouth. “In fact, I think this week will go by faster if we don’t talk to each other at all.”
Reeve stared at her. His hair rippled in the breeze as Nobility’shatch closed and the drake ferried down the runway toward the hangar opposite the palace. He’d cut it before they’d left, or the Hanlons had, so the wind did little more than tousle the dark strands into something that looked deliberately stylish.
Noticing that made Faron even more annoyed than his silence did.
“Well?” Faron asked. “Do we have a deal?”
No response but a gentle tilt of his head. Sunlight stretched through a break in the clouds, making his blue eyes glow and the red highlights in his hair shine like flame.
She scowled. “What, do you want to shake hands on it or something?”
More silence. But then she caught sight of the mischievous glint in those eyes, the way his mouth twitched as if he were trying not to smile, and she realized what he was doing.
“For Irie’s sake,whyare you so annoying?”
Reeve snickered. “I was doing exactly what you told me to. There’s just no winning with you.”
Faron turned toward the palace but didn’t leave. As much as she wanted to, she knew the second she set foot into that building, she would be expected to perform the role of the Childe Empyrean. She’d be expected to act as pious and otherworldly as the adults across the island believed she was. The idea exhausted her more than staying out here being mocked by the enemy. Though it was odd to think of Reeve Warwick as the enemy right now when there were so many more of them flying in to see her.
“Sorry, but I’m not Elara,” she said. Normally, reminders that she was nothing like her sister could ruin her mood, but she wanted to dig her way under his skin the way her anxieties lived under hers. “I don’t make friends with spies.”
Reeve snorted, but he didn’t argue with her. He never did, not about her suspicions. Faron would love to have the freedom to believe that a thirteen-year-old Reeve had run across no-man’s-land with Commander Warwick’s battle plans, turning the tide of the war at the last possible moment, because he was a genuinely good person. But Faron was the Childe Empyrean, and war had taught her to be cautious. Reeve’s father wouldn’t have risen to become the leader of the Langlish Empire without knowing his way around a contingency plan.
And when Reeve turned on them at the end of his long con, it wouldn’t be because Faron had let her guard down around him. The protesters weren’t the only ones who refused to negotiate with Novans.
