“He doesn’t have any weapons,” says the younger one, squinting at Asher in the sunshine.
“He’s a Hunter,” I say, thinking it will be the simplest answer to give children.
But of course the boy immediately says, “What does he hunt without weapons?”
“Whatever the princess wants,” says Asher, and my heart gives another tug.
“Maybe it’s rabbits,” whispers the littlest girl. She drops her other stone, then reaches back to take Asher’s hand, too.
“Did you mean that?” says a woman to my left. When I glance over, I realize it’s the one who looks ready to give birth at any given moment. Her hair is thick and full, twisted into two braids that hang down over her shoulders, but plenty of tendrils have escaped to frame her face. “That you care to hear our grievances?”
“Yes,” I say. “I did.”
She glances at some of the others. They aren’t all armed, but the ones who are have put their weapons away. “The king’s magic has destroyed most of our crops,” she says, gesturing at the grounds surrounding us. “Now he’s turned on the grazing lands.”
I remember the rumors I used to hear in Astranza—the ones that made me fear Maddox Kyronan before I ever met him. But then the king sat in my chambers and spoke so passionately about how badly he wanted toprotecthis people. How desperately he wanted to feed them.
“I’ve heard this before,” I say to her. “But when your king first came to me, he was desperate tohelpyou. Why would he turn his magic against you?”
“We don’t know,” says a man. He casts a dark glare over his shoulder toward the king and his soldiers. “They say he’s lost control of it.”
“We all know that once a fire begins, he cannot stop it,” says another man.
“What good is his magic on the battlefield,” says an older woman, “if it just kills us more slowly at home?”
I hear the pain in their voices, and it tugs at me. It reminds me of Asher’s voice when he finally told me the truth about everything that had been done to him—the truth about Astranza.
But I heard the same pain in Ky’s voice when he spoke of Incendar.
“I hear your suffering,” I say. I glance at Asher, then back at them. “I see your pain. I saw it when you first approached. But your king risked his life to come to Astranza. He spoke passionately about caring for his people—”
“He was just going to kill us!” a man near the edge cries.
“Youdidcome at him with weapons drawn,” I respond, my voice dry. “He could have summoned fire, and he didn’t.”
That makes them all go silent, and I see glances exchanged.
I have their attention now, but I’m not sure if I’m doing the right thing. The king and his men have fallen back to follow at a distance. Kywasready to let his soldiers kill them all. I think of the child clutching my fingers, and I have to shake off a shudder.
The king just risked himself to save those girls at the Suross settlement. But they didn’t know who he was. Would they have attacked him similarly, if they’d known? And would Ky have killed the children here, just because the tradesmen came at him with tools brandished like weapons? I don’t want to consider it.
I remember a conversation I had with Asher ages ago, about his duties as an assassin.
So your brother and his soldiers can be killers on the battlefield, but you save your contempt for me, just because I’m not in uniform?
This isn’t a battlefield.
Has Maddox Kyronan spent so long at war that everything has begun to look like one?
These people were furious, and they did come running down thehill, but even I can see that they’re simple farmers and tradesmen and their families. Yet the king and his soldiers responded so swiftly—bracing for violence as if we’d walked right onto the front lines. I’ve been marveling at Ky’s hidden kindness for days, but maybe I should have been paying closer attention tothisside of him: the ruthless, brutal, practical man who dragged Asher through the snow and threatened my brother with Incendrian justice.
I can’t look back at him. I’m terrified to consider what I might find.
“I cannot speak to the past,” I say to his people. “But I am here to help, if you’ll allow it. My father, King Theodore, has magic that allows him to control the weather, and it helps keep our farmland prosperous. Once the alliance is struck, it will help restore your fields as well.”
As I say the words, a twinge of guilt tugs at my heart.
“And if the king’s magic brings more fire?” says one of the women.
