“A bird, Your Highness.” Nock ducked into the nursery, bowing to Pasiona. He kept his voice low, noting the infant sleeping on her lap. “From His Highness the Crown Prince.”

  He handed off the message, bowing again. The lanky soldier seemed to think that the purchase of his loyalty included increased obsequiousness, which Pasiona gladly accepted. Her son was the heir to the Kingdom of Night, after all. Reuel must become accustomed to servility.

  Seeing her husband’s perfectly measured script sent a pang of loss through her. It seemed a thousand years ago that Etian had written her from the northern front—her and no one else. Now the information was relayed through his soldiers. They were to tell her he had taken a consort.

  That hurt even worse, but Pasiona didn’t weep. Other women were made for tears; she was made for anger, as deep and icy as the winters that blanketed House Skalia’s holding each year.

  “If it please Your Highness…” Nock bowed again. “I don’t mean to speak out of turn, but… Werin read the words to me when it came in. That there’s mighty cold. Etian—Etianiel, I mean—ain’t usually like that outside the battle.”

  Not to his men, perhaps.

  “I asked him to inform me if he ever took up with another woman,” Pasiona said. On her lap, Reuel’s sleeping face scrunched into a fret as if he dreamed of his mother’s frozen fury. She smoothed the tiny chin with a gentle caress of her fingertips. He startled and took a juddering breath, but returned to his peaceful slumber. “I told my husband that I wanted to know before the court gossips did. A letter would have taken too long to arrive, and further explanation would have been too much for a pigeon to carry. He put the relevant information into the space allowed.”

  “Still.”

  “Now you are speaking out of turn. That is your Crown Prince.”

  Nock shrugged one bony shoulder. “I don’t serve the prince anymore, Your Highness. I serve the princess.”

  “True.” Pasiona let the questioning of her husband go. “Has Werin had any luck?”

  “About thirty recruits so far, Your Highness. All of ’em green as spring growth, but we’ll get ’em in shape before long here.” He shifted feet. “Your lord father’s got a few bones to pick about quartering them on Overlook land.”

  No doubt he was concerned about offending King Hazerial. Lord Zinote had fought in the Hall of Law to have the standing armies of every lord in the kingdom made answerable to the crown alone—no question where that order had come from—and they had been sent north the previous spring, leaving her father’s lands essentially undefended. All well and good for peasants to be robbed and raided and burnt out of their homes, but Pasiona wouldn’t stand for it while her son lay slumbering unprotected in her ancestral home. Her father’s single pair of Thorns was nowhere near enough to protect the future Chosen of the Strong Gods.

  “I’ll deal with Father,” she told Nock. “You and Werin need only concern yourselves with building my army. How is your wife enjoying her new home?”

  The relocation of his little family had been the price of Nock’s loyalty. Pasiona had given them the old laundress’s quarters, and Malli had taken up the job.

  “She’s tickled as a piglet, Your Highness,” Nock said, grinning fondly. “She never lived inside the safety of a lord’s walls. And Nori the Younger loves it, too. He crawls all over the place while Malli’s doing the washing.”

  “Reuel just started crawling as well. The boys are close in age. If you stay on with me, they might grow up as friends.”

  Nock let out a happy string of curses. “Our boy, friends with the little prince?” He shook his head, greasy hair swinging. “Strong gods love you. Imagine that.”

  Pasiona did, and then she imagined something else. “Nock, how would Malli like to become one of my maidservants? It’s a less taxing job than washing, and while she’s attending me, the boys could play together.”

  ***

  Gossip spread through Siu Rial like an uncontained stable fire. The blame went to the Royal Thorns, who were known to chatter to every whore, tavern wench, and pretty face they met, but the rumors of Josean and his beautiful consort Seleketra were helped along by equal efforts on the parts of the grafted swordsmen, the castle staff, and jealous courtiers.

  Where before the tales had assumed a frigid, businesslike marriage between the crown prince and his wife, now they claimed that that frigidity was the result of the frozen Pasiona withholding her charms. Clearly, the demigoddess had unlocked the storm of lust denied the crown prince by his wife. They slept in the same bedchambers, rumormongers whispered, where the prince and princess always kept separate apartments. Too, Etianiel’s punishing nightly routines of sparring, exercise, and practicing the royal blood magic had shortened significantly in favor of more time closeted with Seleketra.

  On their second morning in the City of Blood, the crown prince and his consort attended the dyre fights. Every spectator, noble and common alike, craned their necks to see the second coming, dark and battle-scarred, sitting alongside the otherworldly demigoddess, his smoked lenses occasionally glinting in the glow from her ghostlit eyes. In the royal box, high in the second story, surrounded by Royal Thorns, and dressed in spotless finery, the couple seemed fittingly separated from the mortals.

  Etian noticed none of the staring. It was the first chance he’d found to go to the pit houses since his stint in the north, and it felt like a true homecoming. He hadn’t felt at ease a single moment since returning to court, but the smoke and sweat and blood and noise of the pit house embraced him like a mother her beloved son.

  Pretty had never been inside a pit house before, although her and Brat used to loiter around the outsides often enough. There were half a dozen in Siu Carinal, most of them with an entrance to the Closes nearby. She and Brat liked to listen to the animal howls and roars coming from inside, and watch the refuse door. After every fight, workers mauled dragged carcasses out and tossed them onto a cart bound for the Mean Tributary, or if food got scarce in winter, the butchers. Sometimes a dyre might have a few kicks left in him, and the workers would have to bash in what was left of his skull. Brat used to do impressions of the brained dyre—eyes rolled back, arms and legs stiff and quaking, mouth frothing—that left Pretty laughing fit to die.

  But Seleketra didn’t have a twin or a past that involved outhouses, so she kept the memories to herself. She let Seleketra’s haughty glowing gaze slide over the handsomely appointed noble boxes and the common stands crowded with spectators. As many people were watching her as were watching the dyre tearing at one another below.

  By her side, the crown prince took in the proceedings, his severe features softened by contentment. Pretty and Seleketra both thought Etianiel was very handsome, especially from this side, where his face was unmarred by that disfiguring scar.

  “You love it here,” she guessed.

  “My uncle used to bring me all the time. Izak was always Ahixandro’s favorite, but he never could stomach the fights.” Etianiel nodded over his shoulder at his Thorns. “Notice how he gave Sketcher command and made himself scarce?” The corner of his lips lifted in a fond smirk at his brother’s poor behavior. “But Uncle Ahixandro and I would spend almost every day here, analyzing the dyre’s styles, picking out techniques or tactics we could use, learning from what they had done wrong.”

  “It was your time to spend together,” she said.

  “And training,” Etianiel said, though afterward he seemed to rethink the hasty insistence. “Well, he told everyone it was more training, but when we got to the box, he would pull the curtains half-shut so I couldn’t be seen by the spectators and tell me I could do whatever I wanted—sleep or run around or throw a tantrum or gorge myself on treats from the food sellers—and he wouldn’t tell anyone.”

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  Seleketra grinned at the thought of a child version of this warrior. “And did you?”

  “Sometimes. Usually, I just wanted to watch the fights with him.” Behind his smoked lenses, the crown prince’s gaze was far away. “When I sat beside him, he’d put his arm around my shoulders and let me lean on him. Or grab me by the hair and rough me around until I fought back. It was fun.”

  Abruptly, he seemed to realize he was speaking. He adjusted his lenses and peered down at the bloody arena sand, where a lumbering bear had just torn the elongating lower jaw from a wolf in mid-transformation.

  “Perhaps your brother was not his favorite after all,” Seleketra said.

  A ghost of his earlier smile returned. “He was, but that’s all right. I don’t need to be the favorite.” When he turned his face toward her, his lenses reflected the glowing green circles of her eyes. She couldn’t see what was hidden behind them, but his brow was furrowed in thought or maybe concern. “I’ve never told anyone any of this before.”

  Tenderly, Seleketra lay her rune-covered hand over his in a way that conveyed comfort and confidence. “I will never betray anything you tell me, Prince Etianiel. The words we speak and the pleasure we share is for no one else.”

  The hard lines of his frown faded, but the openness didn’t return. “And I would rather you not call me Etianiel. Just Etian. Only the king and his wife use my full name.”

  Seleketra accepted this with a gracious nod, while Pretty made a mental note of it.

  Down below, the final fight of the day began. Commoners shouted their bets across the stands, while nobles checked their fight cards or left their boxes to make last-minute adjustments with their bookmakers.

  The cage doors in the arena walls clattered opened and the pair of dyre sprinted at one another across the sand. One shifted form as he ran, flags of man-flesh tearing away as his sleek, golden panther emerged with an ear-splitting yowl. Wicked claws raked and a mouthful of fangs hissed and spit as he bounded the last few steps to meet his opponent.

  The opponent still wore his man-skin, and a grizzled man-skin it was. His chest and arms were slashed with scars, his greasy yellow hair hung long around chewed-off ears, and he was missing an eye. Pretty had seen stray cats with that same feral glare, but seeing it in something that looked so human made her stomach clench like a fist. All dyre were tall, but this one was large even for his species, and starved lean and mean as a whipsnake to boot.

  “What sort of animal is that dyre?” Seleketra asked.

  “I don’t know,” Etian admitted. “I’ve never seen him change forms. I used to go down after fights and ask him why, but he wouldn’t talk to me. Some dyre never develop language—the pit boss thought that was One-Eye’s problem, but that’s nonsense. You just have to look him in the eye to see that he understands what you’re saying.

  “My guess is that staying a man helps him retain all his faculties. See the awareness? He knows exactly where he is, where his opponent is, everything around him.” Clearly this was a subject the crown prince was more comfortable discussing. Through his glasses, Etian followed the lightning-fast combat, his dark eyes missing nothing. “I’d wager One-Eye knows every single one of us and the seat we’re in. He could be fighting blind and it wouldn’t change a thing.”

  “If those scars are the result of coming off the better of a fight, I would hate to see the losers.”

  “Not much left of them to see once he’s done.”

  Seleketra considered drawing a comparison between the beast and the crown prince, but concluded it was better not to draw Etian’s attention back to himself.

  In moments it was over, the one-eyed dyre ending the fight unexpectedly by wrenching the dyrepanther’s head nearly all the way around. Whoops of joy mingled with the complaints of those who had lost money on the panther.

  “Magnificent,” Seleketra purred. “I thought surely only tooth and claw could defeat such a ferocious beast as his opponent.”

  Etian shook his head. “If you can’t keep your focus, all the ferocity in the world won’t save you.”

  Below, One-Eye stalked to the cage door in the far side of the arena and rattled the thick iron bars. His hand ran with blood—snagged by the dyrepanther’s fangs when he grabbed it by the face—and sweat poured from his tall, skinny frame.

  Apparently, the door didn’t open fast enough. The dyre ripped at the bars, scarred sinewy arms bulging, teeth bared and snarling, until began to crank upward.

  “He didn’t use to lose his temper like that,” Etian said, frowning at the dyre’s back as he disappear into the depths of the pit house.

  “Could his injury have angered him?”

  “A warrior who gets mad when he gets hurt isn’t a real warrior. More likely he’s getting close to the end. Dyre don’t usually last long in captivity, and One-Eye’s been around longer than any of the others. Almost ten years now that I’ve been watching him—and the boss here said he bought him from a pit house in Siu Carinal before that.” Etian shook his head. “More than ten years waiting for someone smarter, stronger, or faster to finish him off.”

  “Is he growing fearful in his old age?”

  “More like impatient.” Disappointment touched the crown prince’s features. Or perhaps it was sadness, as if realizing he would have to leave behind an old friend. “When patience goes, the battle’s already lost.”

  ***

  “It looks like a coffin,” Izak said, tapping the chest with the butt of his swordstaff.

  “No, it doesn’t.” Kelena glared at him. “You and Etian used to have a box bed just like this in the Siu Patanal nursery. This one is just smaller, for traveling.”

  “This is nothing like the box bed,” he told his sister. That had been built like a set of cabinets, one bed stacked on top of the other in a cupboard shaped like a carriage, complete with a pair of doors that could be closed to shut out chilly drafts. “This is a coffin. A well-appointed one, but a coffin all the same.”

  The pirate had built the chest just long enough for Kelena to lie down in and wide enough for her to turn over. Its wood shone stark yellow, shot through with the occasional purple knot or stripe of heartwood, without a latch or clasp anywhere. Inside, he’d cushioned and upholstered the bottom and all four walls. It had taken Alaan most of a night and into that day to make. From what Izak had seen, the majority of that time had been spent rubbing the wood smooth, first with rough stones and then with sand.

  “If I hadn’t seen you repair that bunk at Thornfield, I would think you didn’t know what a bed looked like.” Izak leaned closer and poked at a purple knot. “Missed a spot here.”

  “No, I didn’t.” Alaan shoved his friend’s hand off the box and returned to oiling the grain.

  Had he been building this chest on the ocean, he would have made it from cypress or teak, woods that naturally repelled water and insects. In Siu Rial, the only seasoned wood the dirter servants had been able locate on such short notice was cedar.

  “Well, I think it’s beautiful,” the princess said. “It looks very comfortable.”

  She had been watching Alaan work the entire time, asking questions she did not have an interest in and paying him compliments.

  Since the blood-drinking, she had taken special care to act bright and happy, as if to compensate for the dark mood that had overtaken him. But it was only a new fear she felt, one Alaan despised worse than the others.

  “It got the servants’ attention,” Izak said. “Half of them say the pirate’s making himself a coffin because he’s been sentenced to fall on his own sword. The other half swear he’s planning to plunder the treasury and sail away with a chest full of royal jewels.”

  Alaan scowled down at his work. “Where would I go? The grafting will not allow me more than a courtyard’s length from the princess. And what use would I have for dirter jewels at sea? I cannot buy my way back to my people.”

  Izak shrugged. “You’re looking for intelligence where there isn’t any. Rumors aren’t supposed to make sense, they’re supposed to entertain.”

  “I know better than to search for intelligence on land,” Alaan said.

  Izak chuckled, but the princess did not share in her brother’s amusement. Alaan could feel her cheeks burning, troubled by his outburst. He pushed the anger down, feeding it to the heart of the abomination in the depths, but his unease did not leave with it.

  It was not the place of a man to interpret signs, but Alaan could not ignore the fact that this was the second wooden vessel he had built to carry a bride to her husband. It was not the place of a cursed, separated half-man to pray to the God of the Waves he had forsaken, either. But while he worked, he prayed that this marriage would not end in the same bloody, smoky hell as his.

  In time, Izak left for a war meeting with the crown prince and king.

  “Izak doesn’t know much about craftsmanship,” the princess said when he was gone. “This is quite good. I’ll feel very safe in it.”

  Alaan put down the oil jug and sat back on his heels. “Do not coddle me. I am not a dirter, whose pride must be fed and petted.”

  Her mouth popped open to protest, but he stopped her.

  “And do not lie to me.”

  The princess lowered her head. Her huge dark eyes studied the yellow and purple lid of the chest.

  “I want you to feel better,” she said. “You’re so angry with yourself, when all you did was try to solve a problem for my sake.”

  “Some angers are deserved. They prevent repeating the same mistake.”

  She wrung her hands. “But this is like you’ve taken a knife and begun hacking away at your insides.”

  “Not every emotion is profitable.”

  “That doesn’t mean you have to kill it.”

  “It does.” Alaan stood and began gathering the tools he had used. “No good comes of pretending that you can keep sharks close and feed them on seagrass. They want blood and flesh.”

  Dismay furrowed her dark brow.

  “I don’t understand. I’m sorry. I’m too stupid.”

  He stopped and looked her in the eye. “You are not stupid. Whoever told you so was wrong. Neither are you empty; I would have felt it if you were. With the grafting between us, we cannot hide anything.”

  It was infuriating and shaming, but it was true. He could maintain for the rest of the world the mask as steady as the sky and changeless as the sun, as a man ought to be, but he could not hide the truth from someone who could see inside him.

  “To let desire grow and pretend it will not destroy us both is folly,” he said. “The wisest course is to put the torch to it before it takes hold.”

  “Oh,” she whispered. After a moment, she nodded. “You’re right. I agree.”

  Tension Alaan had not noticed before slipped from his shoulders.

  “Thank you,” he told the princess.

  He could not see her smile as he returned to cleaning, but through the grafting he felt a sensation like the warm, gentle breezes that flowed through the tropical latitudes.

  “It does look like a coffin,” she admitted, a musical lilt of amusement in her voice. “But I like it anyway.”