He peered around the corner, watching as Vanya sealed the iron coffins that contained his parents’ bodies, welding both shut with starfire. The metal along the edges glowed orange after the starfire faded away. Four acolytes moved to stand at the head and foot of the iron coffins to keep watch. For how long, Soren didn’t know.
Raiah squirmed in Soren’s arms, but he refused to put her down. Only when Vanya turned and left the tomb, coming toward them, did Soren finally give her up. She tumbled into her father’s waiting arms, wrapping her own small ones around his neck.
Soren met Vanya’s gaze and said nothing as he’d been asked. Then he turned and left the way the Houses had come, fury and fear making his fingers tremble where they were curled tight against his palms.
Four
VANYA
The traditional gifts of mourning from the Houses crowded the table in Vanya’s private living area within the royal wing of the palace. The redecoration was nearly complete under Alida’s watchful eye. All hints of his parents’ life had been boxed up and stored away, because the only way to show the strength of the House of Sa’Liandel was to move forward. Grief had no place in politics.
Anger, though, that was a familiar passion.
A hint of it stirred in Vanya when he finally left his bedroom, body servants still fussing at the fit of his elaborate robes, and found Soren not wearing the robes he’d been given for the feast.
“Why aren’t you ready?” Vanya demanded.
Soren sat on a chaise in his warden uniform, flipping a fountain pen between his fingers. The notepad resting on the cushion beside him was opened on a blank page. Those sharp gray eyes slid away from Vanya to the servants still orbiting around his royal person.
“I need to speak with you alone,” Soren said.
It wasn’t phrased as a request but an order. More than onepraetorialegionnaire standing guard in the room scowled at the show of disrespect.
Vanya gestured in the direction of the door. “Everyone, leave us.”
The servants left without a backward glance, while the legionnaires were slower to make their exit. The arched door to the private living area finally closed with a sharp sound that reminded Vanya too much of the metal coffins he’d buried his parents in.
Soren didn’t move from the chaise. He carefully set aside the fountain pen, keeping his attention on Vanya. “You bury your dead.”
Vanya grimaced. He supposed it was too much to hope that Soren would hold his tongue until after the feast. “Every House who has ever sat on the Imperial throne does so. It is part of how we worship our goddess of death. The records go back to our country’s founding.”
“There are revenants in those tombs, Vanya.”
He knew that. He’d known that since he’d followed his mother and father into the crypt when he was eight years old to bury Iosiv. He’d stood in his brother’s tomb several times over the years, offering up prayers and trying not to think about the terrible scratching sound that came from the iron coffin his brother’s body resided in.
Sometimes the wind carried spores. Sometimes it didn’t. One never knew which ancestor would dance among the stars and which would endlessly claw at a prison in the dark.
“Starfire seals the dead in their final resting place. None have ever risen.”
Soren stood in a fluid motion, anger in every line of his body. It radiated off him with an intensity Vanya could almost feel, a crackle to the air that reminded him of the aether.
“You’re telling me Solaria has been breaking the Poison Accords for centuries and none of you care about the threat buried beneath your feet?” Soren stepped into Vanya’s personal space in a way no one else would ever dare, face flushed with anger rather than pleasure, the difference notable. “You have an unguarded border in that crypt that puts your entire capital at risk!”
Vanya grabbed Soren by the elbow, drawing him in. “The star temple on the palace grounds is watched around the clock by star priests andpraetorialegionnaires. It hasnevergone unguarded.”
Soren pressed his hand against Vanya’s chest, shoving him backward with a strength that forced distance between them. “A warden has never walked that border.”
“You said it yourself. Our tradition goes against the Poison Accords, but that is how we’ve always prayed to our goddess of death. We bury our royal dead in honor of Callisto. The wardens were never supposed to know.”
Soren laughed harshly, yanking his arm free from Vanya’s grip. “Then why show me?”
Vanya’s gaze strayed from Soren to the table that overflowed with mourning gifts from the Houses. “Do you know it is tradition for the Houses to provide a star cake for the royal altar of the dead when a ruler passes away? Every House has one delivered by a servant who wears no indication of the House they serve in their clothing. The offerings are meant to be eaten. No one ever partakes. Some are poisoned. Some are not. But the House that sits upon the Imperial throne will never know which House sent which cake. We never know where their true loyalty lies.”
“Gifts that kill are no gifts.”
“We would not be Solarians if we weren’t trying to kill each other.” Vanya looked back at Soren, meeting that steely gray-eyed gaze without blinking. “I asked you to come below because of what is happening in the north.”
“Of Solaria?”
