Her mouth twisted slightly, shoulders rising a little toward her ears. “Eimarille keeps sending Blades to try to murder me. My hometown, Cosian, is routinely bombarded by Daijal’s war airships. The front line of the war keeps pressing eastward, and soon enough, our defenses will break. No country has accepted our request for aid, and I fear that if Eimarille is successful in killing me, Ashion will truly fall if there isn’t another to take up my mantle and stand against her.”
“You need an heir,” Soren said slowly, thinking of Raiah and everything that Vanya had done and sacrificed to keep his daughter safe.
“Yes.”
“You’re not married?”
Caris’ gaze flicked toward the door behind Soren, and he wondered which of the two—Nathaniel or Lore—she loved. “Not yet.”
“You have no husband or wife, no child to carry your bloodline. What makes you think me lying for you will help either one of us?”
“Would it be a lie?” Caris reached up and tucked a stray lock of hair behind her ear, meeting his gaze once again. “Blaine carried me out of Amari when I was a just-born infant under the Dusk Star’s guidance. His bloodline guarded the Rourke bloodline for generations, and by doing so, I lived as someone else for the majority of my life.”
Soren thought of Callisto and the handful of times she’d guided him down his road. He didn’t want to share a past with Caris, but the similarities were difficult to ignore. “I am a warden.”
“But you weren’t always such.”
“We’re nameless and stateless once we arrive here as tithes. Whatever past you think to find in me, it doesn’t exist. The attack last summer destroyed our records, our history?—”
“Which means no one can argue youaren’tmy brother,” Caris interrupted.
Soren raised an eyebrow. “I think everyone would see through that lie. You Ashionens live and die by your genealogies like every other country on Maricol. No one would believe I am of your Rourke bloodline.”
“They would if you could cast starfire.”
Soren resisted the urge to physically recoil from her words. He’d learned much from living within the Imperial court over the years and watching how Vanya comported himself. How one physically reacted was just as telling as the words spoken. “The wardens do not take in those who cast starfire.”
Caris slumped a little in her seat before straightening her spine. “You’d still be Rourke, and perhaps that would be enough to put out the North Star’s decree if Eimarille’s Blades are successful where I am concerned.”
“I’m not the answer you were hoping I would be. I’m not your brother.”
There was more to family than the blood flowing through one’s veins. Soren was twenty-seven years old, and whatever memories he had of his time before becoming a warden, they were meaningless in the face of his duty.
“Could you pretend?” Caris beseeched quietly. “Just until the war is over?”
Soren shook his head. “You’re asking me to give up my entire way of life and risk the wardens’ standing beneath the Poison Accords.”
“Eimarille won’t stop with just me or Ashion. She wants to rule the entirety of Maricol. Do you think the wardens will have any freedom beneath her crown? She’d rip up the Poison Accords the moment she’s able to. I don’t want your people to suffer the way mine have. Maricol needs wardens, but we need you whole and unsubjugated. Daijal already permits debt bondage. Do you think Eimarille won’t attempt that with all of you, especially after you pulled out of her country?”
Soren couldn’t quite ignore the shiver that slid down his spine at that frank assessment of a possible future. “She wouldn’t dare.”
Caris managed a half-smile that didn’t reach her eyes. “Nathaniel knows what lengths our sister would go to. She made him into arionetkaand ordered him to murder me. He very nearly succeeded. My advisors wanted him jailed, but I refused to punish him for something out of his control. You wardens gave him back his mind, but his heart is gone, replaced by clockwork gears. Eimarille doesn’t care about the lives she ruins if it gets her what she wants, and what she wants is Maricol. She has the backing of the Midnight Star, so I think she would dare a great deal.”
“And what star god backs you?” Soren asked, trying not to think of Callisto and the moments when she’d been so real to him.
“None, at the moment. I’ve not been blessed by any of them, but I’m not fighting for a star god’s favor. I’m fighting for my people.” She hesitated before continuing with, “And I’m asking you to fight for them with me.”
Soren stared at her, seeing bits of himself in her face and wishing he didn’t. Wishing, too, that she was anywhere else but here, asking him to step off the only road he’d ever known. The one that had given him purpose and which had, for a time, given him Vanya.
He stood, walking away from everything she represented—everything he never wanted to be. “I’m not your brother, and I won’t be your heir. Find someone else to pretend for you.”
He had his hand on the doorknob when Caris spoke again, her voice firm and steady in a way that reminded him of Vanya in that moment. “I tried to deny our bloodline, tried to deny my road, but I ended up walking it anyway. Some roads the star gods deem inevitable.”
Soren tightened his grip on the knob but didn’t respond, yanking open the door. He left the room, ignoring the people in the hallway and the heavy weight of their stares. Soren headed back into the spring night that had fallen over the island, appetite gone but body filled with a tension he couldn’t quite shake.
Eleven
NATHANIEL
