Soren’s words spoken to him beneath a starry night sky after surviving the revenant incursion at the Imperial palace before Vanya burned it down were seared into his memory. So, too, was the way they’d said goodbye on silken sheets, the heat of the other man’s skin bruised into his dreams.
He’d thought he knew all of Soren’s secrets after that night. Raiah had survived Artyom’s betrayal because of Soren’s ability to cast starfire, the strength of which Vanya knew must be on par with his own. That revelation had left him with too many questions—too many moments of second-guessing what they’d been to each other—for Vanya to be rational in the face of that hurt.
It didn’t matter that the Dawn Star had interfered in both their lives, changed their roads, to force their paths to cross. Vanya had thought he could have with Soren what he couldn’t have with anyone else, but that, too, had been a lie. Knowing that—and now knowing the name Soren must have had before he was tithed—didn’t stop the hurt.
“If he is capable of casting starfire as a royal of the Rourke bloodline, then the wardens must have known. They would have broken their own Poison Accords with that admittance,” Caelum said.
“The wardens didn’t know.”
Caelum frowned at him. “How could they have not? Starfire isn’t something that is easily ignored by a person who is gifted with it.”
Vanya knew that all too well growing up as a young boy with the biting burn of it just beneath his skin. But he also knew what Soren had said—that the wardens didn’t know about him because of the Dawn Star—and for all the lies Vanya had been told when they last spoke, he didn’t think that had been one.
Callisto had warned him to keep the warden close, after all.
If she had wanted to break his heart, she had succeeded.
“Bring me myvalide,” Vanya said.
Caelum stood and bowed before leaving, closing the door behind him. Once alone, Vanya dragged the broadsheet closer, peering at Soren’s face, some part of him wishing the warden stood before him. Despite his anger, he’d worried about Soren, wondered if the warden had been sent north to deal with the tremendous amount of revenants laying claim to the battlefields.
The wardens had yet to send any of their people into Daijal or Urova since the attack, the wardens’ governor’s order still in effect. For all that they patrolled the poison fields in Ashion, they weren’t overtly supporting the war. He knew the ones assigned to the border around the House of Kimathi’svasilyetwere hard-pressed to give aid to the Legion simply because of the sheer number of revenants. They had the Daijal queen to thank for that, even if Vanya knew Eimarille would never admit to such folly.
Despite the Legion’s prowess when it came to their war machines, their sentinel-class automatons needed to be piloted. Placing people in the direct path of the walking dead—where spore contamination was a real risk and its spread through the ranks could be devastating—meant it was slow going. But Vanya would rather a careful push forward than risk scores of legionnaires dying due to spores. Solaria couldn’t afford such a loss, not with what was happening up north.
Vanya traced the outlines of Soren’s face on the broadsheet, torn between hurt and anger. Closure was out of reach because Soren wasn’t there, and Vanya couldn’t leave to go where he was. If this was how their roads were to end, he loathed it.
The sound of the doorknob turning had him looking up, watching as Taisiya was escorted inside by Caelum. The Chief Minister well knew when a conversation was meant to be private and so stepped back out into the antechamber. Taisiya sank slowly into a seat before Vanya, attention on the broadsheet rather than him.
“I see you enjoy a life of complications,” Taisiya said.
Vanya pushed the broadsheet across his desk so she could reach it. “The purported Ashion queen has announced she found her older brother.”
Taisiya reached for it, carefully picking it up and rotating it so she could read the headline. “So your warden is a prince.”
“His name isn’t in the article.”
“His face is, and there are those of the Houses who will recognize it.”
Vanya shoved his chair back and stood, walking over to one of the windows to stare out at the courtyard, fingernails biting into his palms. “He claimed to be a warden for the years I knew him. That the wardens didn’t know who he was because of the Dawn Star.”
“Didheknow?”
Vanya thought of that night and the anguish in Soren’s gray eyes, the promise that he had never used the vow because then he’d have to leave. But Soren had left anyway, pushed away by Vanya’s hurt in the wake of so much betrayal. “He never said.”
“Can Soren cast starfire?”
He ground his teeth together so hard his jaw clicked. The memory of Artyom holding Raiah and Vanya powerless to save her while Soren gave up all his secrets to do so flashed through his mind. “If I told you no, could you speak that lie as a truth?”
“Vanya.” Taisiya’s voice came out sharp, like a knife sliding between his ribs. “Did you know when you gave him your vow?”
“No.” Vanya spun on his feet, throwing out his arm in a furious gesture. “If I had, do you think I would have offered it?”
“In my experience, one will do anything for love.”
“I don’t?—”
“Look me in the eye and finish that sentence.” Her hazel eyes were bright with anger in her narrow face, unblinking in his rapidly fading rage. She held his gaze, and in the end, Vanya was the one to look away first. Taisiya didn’t treat it like a victory. “You love him. A warden who is now a prince. Who was, quite possibly, always a prince.”
