Deyvid had done everything right. Everything—he dyed his gray skin to help conceal his origins, he worked with the Shifter Corps until every one of them could track him, could gentle a horse into letting them ride even if they had a predator shift, could fight in the forests and on the sand as well as in an open field of engagement. Deyvid had done more than enough to earn his place within their family, but Tania wouldn’t see it.
Case in point.
“I’m considering an offer for you.” The scroll his sister lay down on her elaborate desk and pushed over toward himwas edged with gold silk—the traditional color for a marriage announcement and the way all offers between royal families were indicated. Petur, his heart sinking in his chest even as he maintained a dismissive façade, took the scroll and quickly scanned its contents.
He knew there were no good candidates for marriage for him right then, not unless his sister wanted him marrying out. They had an alliance in the offing from Mersaighe already, thanks to Arven, and those tight-ass mages would never want a shifter as notorious as Petur in their immediate family anyhow. Melisse of Bekkon had a single son as heir, so presumably she was interested in keeping him although Petur seemed to remember there was a stepson in there as well … but he was still underage, wasn’t he? No, this had to come from farther south, then. Deloth, perhaps, or Visima, or …
Petur groaned when he got to the offering in question. “You can’t be serious.”
“Oh no?” His sister’s voice was suspiciously level, her expression cool and calculating. “Why is that? King Moriath’s daughter is a very accomplished warrior—you’d have that much in common.”
“She’s also a bastard,” Petur pointed out. He didn’t actually care, but his sister ought to. “She’s not formally acknowledged by her father despite her very obvious parentage and has been trying to buy his affections through a successful career as a pirate for the past five years at least. Liath has taken out several ofourships in her quest for plunder and not bothered to save the sailors either. We wouldn’t even know the truth of it if we hadn’t had Shifter Corps members on board who could swim or fly.” Another one of Deyvid’s innovations. Not that Petur wasn’t sure he could have come up with it on his own eventually, but—
“Perhaps we can use her skills to our own advantage, then.”
“Against whom?” Petur asked. “None of the other southern nations even bother with merchant fleets, with Sharezar having such a hold on the seas. Riyale gets by because our ships are bigger, and we’ve got better weaponry, but Liath’s are fast, and her crews are merciless.”
His sister raised an eyebrow. “I thought you liked dangerous people. What, you don’t think you could tame Liath?”
Petur resisted the urge to rip the scroll in half. “I advise you not to waste your time on this proposal,” he said instead. “Her father is trying to bait us into making an alliance for the reasons you just suggested, but his daughter is disposable to him. She won’t bring a dowry of ships or fighting crews, but shewillcome with the opportunity to show her father her worth by turning us into targets.”
“You think Princess Liath will try something against the family she marries into?”
How could his sister sound so shocked? “She’s a pirate, first and foremost, and a deadly one. Yes, I think she’ll use us to build her legend if she thinks she can, or she’ll simply try to slit my throat and be done with it. And then I’ll have to kill herfirst, and her father will use it as an opportunity to declare war on us at sea, and we’ll never be able to safely ship our goods without a massive diversion of resources.”
Tania paused. “He has another daughter,” she finally said.
“Sathiya is forty and the mother of five children.”
“She’s not the direct heir, though. Her eldest son is.”
“And her husbandjustdied,” Petur pointed out. “From what our spies report, she’s still wearing mourning colors. Not to mention, she has her father wrapped completely around her finger—she seems to be the driving force behind leaving Liath illegitimate.”
His sister’s eyes narrowed. “This wasn’t in your last report.”
“It was. Ask Jemal; I know he read it.”
“Iwill.”
Good.He didn’t say it out loud—this didn’t need to devolve any further than it already had—but he was sure she could see the disdain he felt for her right now in his face. “Leave,” she snapped.
“As you wish.” Petur got to his feet and bowed perfunctorily, then turned and marched out of his sister’s meeting room like his boots were on fire. He wished theywere; it would give him an excuse to run, a reason tokickthings, a reason to yell and shout and let out all the emotions he wasn’t allowed to acknowledge because he was a prince,damn it.
He wanted Deyvid. And he couldn’t have Deyvid right now, because Deyvid was running drills with their soldiers, which was decidedly more important than talking Petur out of the mood his damn sister had talked him into, which meant that Petur could do one of two things. He could try to go back to work himself and risk offending everyone on his immediate staff by behaving the way he felt, or he could shift and get it out of his system that way.
Petur, because he was a responsible adult, made it all the way to his suite before ripping his uniform off and shifting into his raven form. A second later, he was in the air, flying through the window he insisted be left open no matter the time of year or the weather. He flew out beyond the spires of the palace and into the clear air, wind currents buffeting him gently, like the air itself was trying to give him an embrace.
He wasn’t in the mood for gentleness, though. Petur pushed himself to fly straight upward, toward the heat of the sun. The higher he went, the stronger the winds became, and clouds that had been wisps before became true obstacles, chilling him as he flew through them. Petur welcomed it, though, welcomed the pain of his own aching muscles and pounding heart, welcomed the heat and cold and the strange shadow over his wing that—
Shit!He spun away from the attack, which ripped a beak full of primary feathers from his left wing but didn’t quite bite into flesh. Petur let himself fall, glancing back over his shoulder at the enormous albatross he’d almost run into, and watched as it opened its beak and let his feathers fall like black rain. Luckily, it didn’t feel the need to come after him—and why would it, he chided himself. Albatross didn’t usually hunt other birds; they were fishers first and foremost. If he hadn’t been stupid enough to practically deliver himself into its maw, it would never have bothered with him. To think that his life could have ended by being swallowed by analbatross.
He could never tell Deyvid this.
Petur’s flight had been cut decidedly short. His wing wasn’t working nearly as well as it should now that so many feathers were missing, but he wasn’t ready to be a person again yet either. His warrior form was right out—he’d been very careful about going into that one ever since he’d been drugged, not quite ready to trust himself in it despite the fact that Deyvid had brought him back to himself—and he would have to get all the way to the forest to take his wolf form without scaring everyone who passed him by. That left being an otter.
That sounded just perfect to him.
Petur landed in a plaza on the outskirts of the city, a comfortable distance from the palace. There was a fountain in the center of the little square, filled with only slightly green water, and the moment his feet touched the cobblestones, Petur shifted into his otter form.
