As the last living member of that ancient bloodline, she carried starfire in her soul the same way Vanya did—deep and powerful, the aether like a living thing at his fingertips. But Eimarille wasn’t the only one up north in those two countries who could cast it. The broadsheets out of Ashion hadn’t given up on reporting about Miss Caris Dhemlan, daughter of a baron and heir to an engineering company, who’d cast starfire in the midst of a revenant incursion in Amari and was now impossible to locate.
Vanya wasn’t blind to the fractures up north. When their civil war had happened several centuries ago, Solaria had sent its Legion to its northern border, refusing to engage in the fighting within Ashion at the time. Somehow, Vanya didn’t think staying neutral would be possible this time if war truly broke out again between Daijal and Ashion.
The northern border was already weakened in the northwest, courtesy of Joelle’s governing decisions in hervasilyet. The poison fields had only grown in that part of the country, with revenants wandering where they shouldn’t, seen in numbers that even had wardens worried about their origins. If the death-defying machine could truly raise the dead faster than spores, as Soren had suspected in his oral report to Vanya, then that was a threat every country needed to be aware of.
Who had invented the death-defying machine and who had created therionetkaswere most likely one and the same. Uncovering the truth amidst political upheaval would take time—time Vanya did not have.
“Joelle is determined to meet her great-granddaughter. She will not stand down, not about this,” Amir said after a moment.
Vanya dragged a piece of flatbread through the spiced tomato sauce and ate it, chasing it with a sip of wine. “I have given Joelle many opportunities over the years to let Raiah know her mother’s House. Joelle has refused to set foot in Calhames or any city I visit.”
“She is here now while your daughter is not.”
The delicate statement was one Vanya didn’t acknowledge, not right away. He tipped his head back, squinting at the blue sky overhead, listening to the servants bustling about the serving table on the other side of the courtyard. When he spoke, he kept his voice low so it wouldn’t carry. “I sent her to Karnak, to your House, in the safety of someone I trust.”
Amir sighed as if the answer aggrieved him, reaching for his wineglass. “Your warden.”
“He’s not my warden.”
Amir snorted indelicately and gestured with his wineglass, nearly sloshing the drink over the rim. “You’ve not let a courtesan warm your bed since you buried your wife. You’ve had him, when you’ve had anyone at all.”
If it were anyone else speaking so bluntly, Vanya would have them banished from his presence. But in some ways, Amir had come to inhabit the space his parents used to stand in, when Vanya came to them, wanting advice. “Does it matter who I fuck?”
“It does when people talk.” Amir took a sip of wine, gaze steady. “There are rumors, you must know that. You favor your warden over anyone else, when wardens aren’t meant to stand where he does beside you.”
“He brings the border reports.”
“He brings you pleasure, do not lie.”
Vanya tipped his head fractionally in acknowledgment of that statement. “Then I won’t. But Soren will not stab me in the back or poison me how some might.”
“A commendable stance in anyone, but he moves outside the boundaries that wardens have kept for generations. People have noticed, and people are talking. Joelle is loudest of them all.”
“And what does she say?”
Amir set his wineglass down and leaned forward, resting his elbows on the edge of the table. “She is questioning what you owe him for you to allow him into your household and grant him access to your time that no other has. And her words are finding a home in ears primed to listen.”
Memory flashed across Vanya’s mind, a moment in time of tumbling through a derailed train, barely able to breathe with quiet killer on his tongue. He’d lived only because Soren had done his duty, and Vanya ever owed him for that. The vow still hung around Soren’s throat, a promise of unrestricted aid that a warden might find himself in need of one day.
Only he’d never asked Vanya for what he wanted, never came to request payment. Six years they’d been in each other’s lives, and Soren had not once asked for what was owed when any other House would use such a vow to cripple Vanya’s.
His mother had warned him of offering such a thing, but he’d offered the vow anyway. Wardens were nameless and stateless and owed no loyalty to any government. Vanya had simply done his best to keep Soren by his side the only way he knew how.
“She knows you took him to the crypts,” Amir said in a voice so low Vanya could barely hear the words. “All the Houses who have ever held the throne and were present that day remember the unspoken law you broke. The rest who did not attend found out after the fact. It is but one of many reasons why you have found it difficult to cultivate loyalty.”
“There is no law about the dead except what we make of it.”
Amir shook his head. “If it is known that the wardens are aware of how we handle the dead who once sat upon the Imperial throne, then you have damned the country to sanctions through the Poison Accords. The Houses will never forgive you and yours for that.”
“It is my duty to rule with an eye to Solaria’s future. I have done so. I don’t trust what Joelle has allowed to happen within hervasilyet. The border with Daijal she oversees is porous, and the number of revenants there is incompatible with the historical border reports.”
“I understand your concern. I share them as well, but Vanya, there were other roads for you to take. Ones that did not allow the wardens to know about the crypt.”
Vanya smiled thinly. “Were there? If I move against the House of Kimathi in an official capacity without evidence and without support, the Houses and the Senate will protest. I will lose what little loyalty I have gained and become the target of assassination from all corners of the country. Believe me when I say Joelle would not pass up such an opportunity, and she would find a way to take the Imperial throne.”
“That is a game we all play.”
“Perhaps, but I don’t trust that she is loyal toSolaria. I made a choice to allow the wardens to know of our misdeeds that have occurred since the founding of our country to ensure someone knew the truth and could stand against her power if I am dead. I did so to keep our countrysafe.”
