The royal procession arrived at Shamasa Redoubt at sunrise, three nights before the Festival of Springlight. Snow daisies dotted the lakeland around the fortress, thriving in the spaces between rapidly shrinking snow drifts. Here and there green had begun to peek from beneath the humped stands of dead grass, but around the fortress’s scarred walls, mud was the foliage in most abundance.

  The Lake Onicas Hunting Lodge lay a five-night trek to the west. Once the retreat had been the closest royal residence to the northern border, but a sinkhole had expanded the lake shore and sunk half of the keep in its sparkling blue-green waters. Izak had been the last Crown Prince of Night to explore the lodge’s halls, but at ten months old, the only details he recalled were the skull of a creature with fangs longer than his toddler’s legs and the thick black and white pelt that their mother had said belonged to the snarling beast.

  Etian dreamed of the lodge occasionally, though he had only been there in his mother’s womb. He’d heard his uncle say once that the lodge was a favorite retreat of hers. But the sinkhole had collapsed a month before Etian’s birth, and the young Queen Isia had been rushed back to the City of Blood to have him. Somenight, he hoped to visit the sunken keep and compare it to the rustic palace of his dreams. Perhaps he could have the lodge rebuilt and use it as a retreat once more, when it was safe for Pasiona and their son to join him.

  All thought of that idyllic future fled when the mad queen’s cackle rang off the battle-scarred walls of the fort. She stood on the crenelations of the redoubt’s northeastern tower, stunning and disgusting at once, the wind whipping her black ringlets and pulling the gore-stained dress tight to her shapely curves.

  “Praise the strong gods,” Izak muttered. “The mad queen’s still alive and well.”

  From that distance, and in the eerie green light of Shamasa’s ghost city, one could mistake her for making those alluring gestures at the ranks of Royal Thorns. She caught enough attention that there were several narrow misses and grumbling, angry horses.

  But Etian knew who her mocking seduction was aimed at.

  And he knew the stench in the air. No wind could blow that away.

  No guard had stopped them at the gatehouse as they passed beneath the open portcullis. As the horses and wagons filled the bailey, no grooms stepped out of the stables to attend them. No commander or officer appeared. No soldiers patrolled the battlements or trained or lounged around. No archers watched from the loops, ready to fire on an enemy.

  Steeling himself, Etian directed his horse around the far side of Jadarah’s tower. His mount was a beast from the royal stables, bred for running long distances, not war, but some ancient instinct in its bones knew that scent as well. Frightened, it rolled its eyes, tossed its head, and tried to shy away, but Etian kept it under firm rein.

  Jadarah’s ugly cackle followed him. If he looked up, he knew, he would find her insane grin beating down on him.

  A murder of crows squawked angrily at his interruption of their meal, but only one took flight.

  Piled between the tower, the stables, and the wall were the soldiers and officers who had once held Shamasa, from battle-seasoned men to rangy youths. Each one sported a plethora of vicious wounds. Some still had pikes or swords or daggers wedged in their rigid corpses.

  Not one man among them had a head.

  ***

  Shamasa Redoubt had fallen to a massacre, not from the Helat encamped just miles across the border, but from within.

  One of the mad queen’s favorite pastimes was sowing discord; what had been a high-strung group of soldiers when she arrived had become a tinderbox in under a week. The first few deaths had been easy enough for the soldiers to explain away—a boy who would have been better off hung than sent north for the body tax, an old cardplayer who had never taken well to being called a cheater, a stable hand who might have been stomped to death by horses if not for one clearly visible boot print—but when the fraying tempers, growing dread, and suspicion erupted in bloodshed in the main hall, the whole fort had gone up like a brandy-soaked pennant.

  Two of Jadarah’s accompanying priests had lost control of themselves and were killed taking part in the ensuing bloodbath, and one Thorn fell defending the queen from a pikeman trying to go after the woman who had started it all. But when all was said and done, the remaining priests and the queen’s last three Thorns had been more than enough to help Jadarah pick through the bodies and hack off their heads.

  Three hundred and sixty-nine rotting faces now decorated the high place, stacked against the crenelations and facing inward to bear witness for the rituals that would take place there. Far less than Jadarah preferred, but the best that she had been able to do in the sparsely populated north.

  Halls and corridors sported dried pools of blood. Walls were splattered with flesh, bits of hair, and chunks of bone. Weapons lay where they had been dropped.

  For nearly a month, the mad queen and her attendants had been wallowing in the filth and destruction left behind by the slaughter. Unease prickled down Izak’s spine as he noted the wild looks in the eyes of two of Jadarah’s remaining Thorns and the vacant grin that never left the face of the third.

  Servants flew to work cleaning the common areas and preparing apartments for each member of the royal family, but there were only so many hands. The work took hours, and as such, supper wasn’t laid until well after midday.

  The redoubt’s dining hall was a dour, dimly lit stone box that, like the rest of Shamasa, had been built for defense and strength rather than beauty. It boasted no grand chandelier or raised lord’s table. Before they had slaughtered one another, the soldiers, stable hands, and officers had all eaten on the same level at the long tables that stretched the width of the room. The occasional ray of ghostlight filtered through the stone ceiling and its enormous wooden beams, but the only other illumination came from torches hung along the walls and a single hearth large enough to roast a bull.

  With no more than the royal family and fifty Thorns occupying a hall made to hold five hundred men, the cavernous dark seemed to multiply voices and echo back every scrape of knife and fork.

  Jadarah took an immediate dislike to Seleketra, hissing at her like a rabid cat when introduced, so while the crown prince and his consort ate at one end of a table, the king and queen dined with the princess at the opposite end.

  Etian welcomed every inch of the distance. He couldn’t have eaten with the mad queen any closer. The utter waste Jadarah had made of the redoubt’s men stuck in his craw like a shard of bone.

  Despite being surrounded by Royal Thorns whose graftings required them to protect the princess as well as the king, Alaan kept his hands on his blades.

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  He remembered each of the queen’s Thorns. The feral gleam in the eyes of Manly and Fieryhands warned of volatile waters, but it was Twelve that put Alaan on edge. The last had been grafted a year ahead of his time to fill empty ranks, and chosen by the queen for his pretty, hairless face.

  But no trace remained of the rational young swordsman from Thornfield. Something had broken behind those eyes. The longer Alaan watched him, the more Twelve’s grin looked like a frozen shriek.

  At the table, the princess cowered as her mother pressed close and murmured in her ear. Disgust, love, fear, and eagerness to please created a riot of confusion in the grafting, but Alaan could not turn his attention away from the threat.

  Neither could the king’s Thorns. The air crackled with menace. Every moment that passed without violence ratcheted the tension higher.

  ***

  “Bringing a whore to the royal wedding,” Mother hissed, winding her fingers in Kelena’s dark ringlets. The familiar unwashed smell of sex and decay hung around the queen like a cloud. “Such behavior should be expected from that crotch-louse Izak, but the blind prince is playing a game.”

  Kelena winced as Mother tore her fingers free of a snag. She couldn’t tell whether she was in trouble. She didn’t think she was to blame for Etian’s consort, but she was so stupid that she might not even realize she was at fault.

  If she was to blame, then the consequences might be mitigated by an apology. But if she wasn’t at fault and apologized, there might be consequences for that, too. Kelena wanted desperately to believe the hair-stroking was a sign of affection, but Mother’s touch could turn to yanking and smacking in a heartbeat if Kelena showed what an idiot she was.

  “He wants me to see that Josean can take what he wants, blind or not,” Mother growled down the table toward Etian. “But he knows better. He knows that only I have what he wants.”

  The queen twisted back in her seat to appraise the princess. Kelena shivered as her mother’s ragged, gore-encrusted nails caressed her jaw and tickled down the back of her neck.

  “Little Nothing hardly looks like the baby I left two months ago,” Jadarah cooed. “She’s trying to look like a woman instead. But her crippled lord is not here. Who makes Little Nothing’s cheeks so flushed? Who makes her womanhood so hungry?”

  Kelena cringed away, but her mother grabbed her by the collar and yanked her back.

  “Did the blind prince promise to tumble you if you play along with his trick on Jadarah? Or is it Izak the empty little nothing is after? Stupid girl, you’re too ugly to seduce anyone.”

  “I don’t want to seduce anyone, Mother.” Kelena’s voice wavered with terror. She felt sick. “Etian, Izak, they never—”

  “Lies!” Jadarah’s full lips stretched into a grin. “I never should have left you alone with men. They infected you. You stink of it now, just like they do. If the strong gods didn’t hate you so, you would be just like Hazerial. I should have sacrificed you and birthed the seed of one of my toys instead.”

  Tears blurred Kelena’s vision. How wonderful it would have been if her mother had done just that.

  “But Little Nothing has a toy of her own now.” Mother’s grip softened. Jadarah gazed over Kelena’s shoulder at Alaan. The queen’s perfect breasts rose on a deep inhale. “Why haven’t you used him? Even an empty-headed cow knows to hold still for a bull. Are you too stupid to do even that without being shown?”

  A petrified tear shuddered free to drip off Kelena’s chin.

  Jadarah appraised alaan’s sun-dark face and powerful build. “He is a storm. You’re frightened of him, just like when you used to scream and piss yourself every time you heard thunder. This is a storm you control, little fool.” The queen smiled hungrily. “I’ll teach you how to play with a toy like that.”

  “No.”

  “What?”

  Kelena’s throat went dry and her heart pounded so hard that she felt dizzy. She couldn’t believe she’d told Mother no.

  The day she had drunk Alaan’s blood, Kelena had felt his desire roar to life. For one earth-shaking moment, she had been as gorgeous and powerful as the queen. In that moment, Kelena could have made him do anything; all it would have taken was a word, and the grafting would have brought him to his knees.

  But Alaan had asked her not to.

  “No.” The word was a tiny, frightened squeak.

  Jadarah’s black eyes grew as wide as twin gates to the strong gods’ hells. White shined around the edges.

  “You spiteful little slut.”

  She leapt on Kelena. The queen’s forehead cracked the princess in the teeth as they hit the stone floor together.

  Men shouted. Swords clashed. Someone let out an ear-splitting laugh. Kelena couldn’t see what was happening. Mother had grown to take up her whole world, sitting on Kelena’s chest.

  Jadarah slapped her, a sharp crack of palm on cheek, the sound lost in the ring of steel on steel that filled the dining hall.

  “You think he wants you and not me?” the queen railed.

  Kelena whimpered and shook her head.

  Crack. “Nobody wants you!” Crack. “They can’t even see you!”

  Jadarah leaned close, pinching Kelena’s stinging cheeks between her ragged nails. Her breath was rancid in Kelena’s face.

  “If I tell you to give me something, you give it to me. You owe me your life, you owe me your very existence. You are nothing—and without me, you are not. At. All.”

  Kelena squeezed her eyes shut, sending tears running down the sides of her face and into her ears. She wished she really was nothing, so nothing that Mother wouldn’t even remember she was there.

  The nails bit deeper. “Say it. Say that you give the savage to me.”

  Kelena sobbed. She couldn’t. She had to protect Alaan.

  Then with a shriek, Mother was ripped away. Kelena curled into a ball. The queen thudded to the stone floor and skidded.

  “Touch the princess again,” Alaan growled, “and I will bail your blood onto these cursed stones.”

  Kelena peeked out from behind her shaking hands. The pirate stood between her and the queen, his swordbreaker and cutlass at the ready. Their black steel gleamed in the low light from the torches.

  “I demand his grafting!” Mother screamed, disconcertingly animalistic as she used all four limbs to clamber to her feet. “Get his thornknife out, Hazerial! She will retire the savage, and I will graft him. We’ll have the ceremony here, now.”

  Blood oozed from fingernail scratches across Alaan’s brow. “I will not serve a dirter who injures her own child.”

  He wouldn’t have a choice, Kelena realized. If the king made her order Alaan to be grafted to Mother, the grafting would force him to obey. Then Mother could order Alaan to do whatever she wanted.

  That would destroy him.

  “Please,” Kelena squeaked breathlessly, scrambling onto her hands and knees. Her battered cheeks stung like fire, and she tasted blood. Her teeth had cut the inside of her mouth. Facing her father, she pressed her forehead to the cool flagstones.

  “Please, Your Majesty,” she said louder, “I grafted Alaan according to your will. Don’t give him away. Please.”

  Mother screeched. “That savage killed my prettiest toy!”

  “Actually, I killed Twelve,” Izak said. Red ran down the shining silver blade of his swordstaff and shone wetly against the dark wood. At his feet, the youngest of Mother’s Thorns lay with his head at sharp angle, his neck chopped open to the spine. “He lost his mind when you did. I don’t know whether he was trying to kill Kelena or the pirate or both, but he’s not a danger to anyone now.”

  “I demand a replacement for my broken toy! Hazerial, give the pirate to me!”

  The king barely glanced up from his plate. “Thorns are dispensed at my pleasure, Jadarah. It pleased me to make a gift of this one to my daughter, and it pleased the strong gods. The pirate will continue to serve her. That is my final word on the matter.”

  Mother stamped and let out a scream that ricocheted off the low stone ceiling. Hurling a blazing curse at them all, she stormed out, her remaining two Thorns jogging after her.

  “Thank you, Your Majesty.” Kelena slumped with relief. “You are gracious beyond words.”

  Alaan sheathed his blades. Around the dining hall, Royal Thorns were doing the same, giving each other dark looks.

  The pirate lifted Kelena to her feet. She felt as if her bones had turned to thread, but somehow, when Alaan stepped back, she remained standing.

  Izak crouched beside the dead Thorn, bloody swordstaff across his knees. “Someone’s got to go pry his thornknife out of that wench’s dirty claws and return it to Thornfield. They can take Faren’s as well.”

  “Commander Poiran,” Hazerial said, beckoning.

  On shaky limbs, Kelena sidled up to her brother. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for anyone to get hurt.”

  “This had nothing to do with you, Kelen.” Izak reached up and squeezed her hand. His royal blood magic filtered through the contact, searching out the hurts, soothing the welts on her cheeks, and healing the cut inside her mouth. “She killed Twelve long before you got here.”

  A shadow came alongside them—the balding commander of their father’s Thorns.

  In a low voice, Izak told Kelena, “I’ve got to work out arrangements with Commander Poiran. You and Alaan stay out of sight for the rest of the day. We have to keep you safe until you can marry out of this hellhole of a family.”

  “You stay out of her way, too,” Kelena whispered, giving her brother’s hand a final squeeze before returning to her Thorn’s side.

  Izak and Alaan both wanted to protect her from Mother, but Kelena knew better. They were the ones who needed protection.