Spark Read online

  “Marvelous,” he says. He unclasps and tosses his cape aside. One of his retinue lunges forward and catches it ably with an air of practice. Daryon extends a hand to Caelin. "I would be delighted to offer you a romp about the room."

  It takes a moment to muster the movement, and I think I leave a bit of my heart behind as I take a step back, but Caelin holds firm. "I'm afraid I'm promised for this dance. Perhaps the next.”

  Daryon bellows a laugh. "Nonsense! The poor fellow just did not know I was coming!" He throws a nod of his dimpled chin in my direction. "Never fear, friend. I will have her back in one piece."

  With how red she's turning, I'm honestly more worried about him. I give another bow, catch Caelin's eye, and ask, "The next, then?”

  Before she can form an answer, he grabs her by the wrist and pulls her to the center. "There's a good sport. Music!"

  The musicians shake themselves from their stunned silence, and within moments, the center of the room is once again alive with motion. Daryon's guards filter out, and Tressa picks her way over to us. Bannon rubs at his jaw. “I…er…sorry, Northshore,” he says.

  For once, he sounds completely genuine. I’d still like to tell him where to stow his pity. “I’m not about to start another war,” I tell him under my breath as we clear the floor. Barely, in my case. My leg drags as much as my hopes for this dance have.

  “From the looks of her face?” Tressa says, glancing back uneasily. “I’d say she doesn’t need your help doing that this time.”

  Chapter Two

  Caelin

  Daryon Arius Reginius the Fourth was never my favorite playmate. He’s worse now that he’s grown. The entitled way he stomps through this waltz, the wafts of cologne that could knock out a horse. The impertinent patch of stubble at his chin—which incidentally, is pretty much all I can see of him at the moment, since he’s two heads taller than I am and obnoxiously close. It’s bad diplomacy to shove him back, but oh, how I want to.

  The next time he whips me around, I cast a bit of a dark look back at Alain. Damn him and his good sense, leaving me here with the boor. In any tavern the nation over, I’d have leave to sweep the bar clean with the lout, but here in the grand ballroom, the maneuvers are daintier and the glasses unmercifully smaller. Daryon clears his throat. “I saved you the embarrassment of admitting that your invitation must have been lost.”

  “It was meant to be something of a smaller affair.”

  “An oversight, I am sure. You look well. The poison left you none the worse.”

  Folgian royals aren’t big on tact. Daryon’s father, the third Daryon, once told my mother that she had the sharpest collarbones he’d ever seen on a woman. “Like boomerangs!” he'd declared. Anyone else who made my mother seethe that hard would ordinarily not have been invited back to dinner, but Folgia needs our resources, and we need their friendship, since they’re the last line of defense between us and Rosalia. Snatching the throne out from under my parents was the only way the Legion got its claws in Elyssia without entering a war it couldn’t profitably win. So my mother turned the grimace into a demure smile and I’m here trying to pretend that Daryon the Fourth isn’t yanking too hard on the arm attached to the shoulder that was left none the worse by that poison. “How kind of you to notice,” I manage.

  Thank gods, he lets go of the arm, but only to grasp me about the waist and all but fling me into the air like a doll. Customarily the move is more of a hop. I catch myself before my jaws clatter together on my return to the floor. “Gods, it has been what, eight years?”

  “Eleven.”

  “Haf za? Shit,” he says appreciatively.

  “Time flies when you’re trying to force the Legion back out of your country.”

  He nods, silky hair flying. “It feels like less,” he says. “Perhaps because we spent so much time together before then, yes? All those long games of hide and seek.”

  He had been happy enough to be declared it. I'd been happy enough to hide from him, because I knew all the best hiding places. He gladly searched fruitlessly for hours. “Surely you’re not here for a rematch,” I venture.

  Daryon chuckles, his baritone rumbling under the waltz. “No, no, I learned my lesson. Never take on a girl in her own castle.”

  “Astute.”

  He glances down at me. “You must have guessed at my reason for coming here.”

  “Unless it involves a slice of Elyssian strawberry cake, I can’t say I have.”

  “That is an appealing side benefit.” He pauses, and dread grows heavy in my stomach. I don’t think I like the glint in his eye. “It cannot have escaped your notice that we are both royalty?”

  “No,” I say slowly.

  “And unmarried,” he prompts.

  And there it is. “Actually, the Prince Consort and I are very happy and I don’t—”

  Daryon waves me off as though I’ve suggested my need to polish my armor might conflict with our wedding ceremony. “Say no more. I understand. He can stay, so long as the heirs are mine.”

  I step back so quickly that my heel catches on my own hem. “Prince Daryon, that’s quite enough. I am flattered by your interest and remain grateful for our nations’ enduring friendship and the aid Folgia sent during the war, but you have my answer.”

  The moment I need to disentangle my slipper from my skirt is too long. Daryon catches my hand and bellows, “My queen, please say you’ll marry me!”

  The whole room falls stunned in waves— first I freeze, then the dancers nearest us stumble to a halt. Eventually the awkward quiet extends to the musicians, and I’m forced to confront the prospect that I have to answer and that most everyone in the room will hear it. I pull in a dry brambly breath and try to find my tongue.

  My first hesitant word gets buried by a crack like thunder. I whirl as the large glass balcony doors shatter in a roar of wind that douses every light—torch or magic—except mine. Screams start and I see the guards all start converging on a point behind me. Alain.

  I push my way through the panicking guests, dodging elbows and hands and even a few drawn weapons. Even with my best efforts, the ballroom seems to stretch further away from me the closer I get, until at last I cut the last bit of distance by dropping to the floor and sliding along on my knees to get to him. Two guards fling themselves back out of my way, and my breath catches.

  The wind didn’t take out every light. Alain’s skin is flushed a vibrant blue and seems to thrum with a palpable electricity. I don’t even get the chance to reach out and touch him before the hair on my arm stands on end and a gray hand streaks out from the dark to catch my wrist. “Don’t touch him,” Riley says, his shadowed face sweeping from one end of the room to the other. “Wait for the mage guard. It could be communicable.”

  “Riley—”

  “I know,” he says, slipping his crossbow from his shoulder and loading it with a heavy chunk. He braces it on a forearm, his hand finding my shoulder briefly before he takes off in the direction of the shattered glass. “For me. Please. For once.”

  Do as I’m told. I swallow around the swell rising in my throat, trying desperately to ignore the soft blue glow at the corners of my eyes. A steady beating of hooves against the marble pulls my attention, and Tressa arrives at my side, bow ready. “Ah, shit,” she says softly, looking down at Alain.

  Her head snaps up. Amid startled shouts and screams, partygoers scramble away from the door. A single figure, clad in a dark gray cape draped over a shoulder and a porcelain mask, kicks its way through the remains of the glass. The guards surrounding Alain immediately shift position to shield from the rear. The mask makes it hard to tell, of course, but the intruder seems unperturbed. They hold their sword well out to their side and just…walk. Straight past Riley, in fact. His crossbow stays up, aimed, but never fires.

  Tressa, on the other hand, isn’t having any of that. She looses arrow after arrow at this masked person. And they just keep walking. The arrows stop fast in the air as if they've hit an invisibl
e wall and move forward along with this figure. The guards at the head of the formation charge, the remaining filling in around Alain and me. And just like those arrows, they stick in the air, frozen in place. The figure advances, never even moving their head to acknowledge the comers. Tressa starts to pull at my arm. “Caelin—”

  Do as I’m told. I know. But Alain can’t move, I can’t touch him, and I’m not leaving him. The guards in front of me have now frozen in place, and the masked intruder is only breaths away. “Clear the rest of the guests out, please,” I tell her, standing.

  “What are you—?”

  “Go,” I say. I wrest a sword from the stiff hand of the guard nearest me, hoping, praying. That whatever magic they’re working won’t work on me, who’s meant to be immune, that I’m the real target here, and they’ll leave the others alone once they have what they want.

  I do feel something pulling at me as I face the second uninvited guest of the evening. It tempts the edges of my wakefulness, like the last heady moments before falling asleep with a book. I force myself to breathe, blink, open my eyes again, and level the guard’s heavy blade. “Come on, then,” I tell them.

  They regard me with the mask’s blank, black mesh eyes, sword still held out wide. I try sizing them up. A person, slight, only a little taller than I am. They walk with purpose, but lightly. I’m not sure I’ve even heard their footsteps on the floor, which has amplified everyone else’s. I take a breath, hold my head higher. The mask’s unmoving painted porcelain doll lips, slightly blushed cheeks, high arched eyebrows seem unsettlingly familiar. Like something I’ve seen in the background of a fast-moving nightmare.

  The figure pulls their blade up in a sharp salute. Like we’re fencing on the training grounds below, and they haven’t just incapacitated my guards and my prince consort. This isn’t so amicable. I hold fast, extending my blade higher.

  They don’t wait for my return salute. Instead, they turn on their heel without a sound and start running.

  I hike my skirt high and dart after them, edging through still-frozen guards, past Riley, out the broken door, skidding short in the rain. They vault over the balcony’s stone railing and plummet three stories, the gray shawl furling and unfurling in the wind around simple gray linen clothing. My jaw drops. How am I supposed to follow that?

  No, this is a distraction, and I’m falling for it. I turn sharply and head back inside.

  As I rush back in, first Riley, then the guards unfreeze row by row. He rolls out his neck, swearing. “Where’d she go?”

  “Jumped off the balcony,” I answer, not stopping. Alain’s still giving off a pool of that blue light, reflecting in the rain-slicked marble.

  “Godsdamnit,” Riley mutters, heading toward the now permanently open door.

  The mage guard have arrived now, and Tressa moves back over, the hall guards handling the frightened guests. In a swirl of blue cloaks, the mage guard peer out from under their hoods down at Alain. They take turns holding their hands out over him, murmuring to each other. After a time, they sit back and start exchanging glances with one another. Something about this interaction rubs at me like a rock in my shoe. “Well?” I ask. “What’s happened?”

  More glances, more silence. At length, the one with the most silver braided into the hem of his cloak steps forward. “Your Highness…we’re not certain.”

  “You’re—?” My glow flares back to life, and I force myself to take a breath so I don’t explode. The most gifted mages in my service and the best they can do is not certain. “Is it or is it not magic?”

  “It is,” he says slowly. “But of a sort…with which most casters will never be acquainted. I think it would be prudent to consult with Professor Thorn.”

  “Yes, send for him,” I answer, the ire melting away. If there’s one person in all of Elyssia who can tell me what’s wrong with Alain, it’s Teren Thorn. “And the physician.”

  He nods, indicating the door. Two of the lower ranked casters split off and head for it, while the others back away, still observing Alain’s body just out of earshot.

  Riley comes back up to my side. “No body,” he says, his own voice low.

  I nod slightly. “Should have figured. Can you get after them?”

  He glances at Alain. “I think I’m needed here.” He turns to Tressa. “Sergeant, the scene is yours. You have whatever resources and people you need. Find where she’s gone. Don’t engage.”

  She slings her bow back over her shoulder. “Riley…are you sure that I’m the best—?”

  “You absolutely are, and you tell them I said so, all right?” he answers sharply. “Any of them give you trouble, you send them straight up to me.”

  I frown. “Tressa?”

  She looks at me, startled. “It’s—fine. Just some internal issues.”

  “Internal how?”

  She gives my arm a little squeeze as she starts away. “Internal as in I’ll handle them. You just worry about him, yeah? Get him better.”

  I turn to Riley. A million things on my mind, but it feels better to pursue this now—once she’s out of earshot. “Explain.”

  He sighs, letting his arms swing. “Tressa is the first nonhuman that most of these guards have seen, let alone worked with. She’s getting questioned more than most sergeants, and certainly more than she should be.”

  “Oh, for gods’—“

  “I’m dealing with it.”

  “You’d best be! Why wasn’t I told?”

  He reaches into his belt pouch for a small glass cylinder, warming it between his hands for a moment. “Well, for one thing, you’ve been sort of running a country?”

  “Oh, piss on that.”

  “For another, it wouldn’t help.”

  “If they know they’ll lose their sodding jobs—”

  “Cae,” he says, setting the cylinder down. It illuminates most of the immediate area. Handy. “Tressa has been dealing with this a long time.”

  “And that’s precisely why she shouldn’t have to now.”

  “I agree,” he says, steering me back over to Alain. “And I’ve been disciplining where I can. But she’s asked that it be handled as delicately as it can be. For her sake, I think mass firings are out.”

  “For now,” I growl.

  “For now,” Riley agrees, kneeling next to Alain. He looks behind him at the mage leader. “Any residuum?”

  “Nothing tangible, sir,” the mage answers.

  “He’s all right to touch,” Riley tells me.

  I sink next to Alain, my hands flying free of the dampening balls they’ve made at my side since I’ve abandoned the sword. I grasp his shoulders, call his name—more than a few times; I’m not sure how many. All I get in return is shallow breathing and the light fluttering of his eyelids.

  I turn to Riley, biting down on my lower lip to keep my eyes from spilling over. Gently, he uncurls my fingers from the wool of Alain’s jacket. “Let’s get him some air, yeah?”

  He starts loosening Alain’s stiff collar, and I hurry to unbelt the coat. Riley tugs the jacket open and immediately reels back. “What is—” I lift my eyes and catch sight of Alain’s chest in the gap of his white shirt. The scars cutting across it, ordinarily raised and white, radiate the same bluish light and an almost unbearable heat. “Riley, what the devils is that?”

  “It looks like cryst poisoning,” he says. I must be losing my mind. He actually looks worried. About Alain. Very carefully, with the edge of a fingertip, he tugs back one of Alain’s sleeves. The veins stand out dark and blue. Riley frowns. “That’s not—”

  The ballroom doors swing open, and one of the previously dispatched mages hurries back in, very noticeably alone. “Er…sirs, and Your Highness,” she says, acknowledging me with a little bow. “The physician…declines.”

  “What?” I all but shout. “That’s unacceptable, that’s…”

  “A complete violation of his oath,” she says with a little nod. “I told him that, Your Majesty, but he refused.”

>   I sit back on my heels, cold disbelief snaking through me. Nothing about this evening makes a bit of sense. “I don’t understand. Doctor Hargreaves has been with my family since…”

  Riley looks down at Alain. “He was a Resurgent field medic in the war.”

  I follow his gaze. In all of this, Alain has lost control of the spell that hides the brand that marks him forever as a prince of the Rosalian Legion, even if he’s long since stopped being one. The three concentric circles—ordinarily shiny and pink—are just as blue as the rest of him. “That’s not reason enough for me,” I seethe. “The war is over. He doesn’t get to pick who he saves.”

  Riley’s hand finds my shoulder again. “It’ll be dealt with when we can.” He looks up to the mage. “Another physician, please.” She bows her head and hurries away again. I edge forward on my knees again to take Alain’s head into my lap, but Riley purses his lips. “Cae…”

  I know, I know. Cryst poisoning. Prolonged contact is bad. Minimal contact is bad, really, but neither of us is currently losing our hair in drifts or sputtering gibberish, so somehow I don’t think that’s it. Still, I can’t just leave him lying on the soggy dance floor. I unclip the gauzy cape from my shoulders and ball it up underneath his head and do the only thing I can do, the most hateful thing I could be told to do in this moment: wait.

  The sorts of people who want to hear about fights I’ve been in often don’t realize how much waiting there can be in life-or-death situations. I’ve never been more scared than sitting, waiting for a sword I can’t see or hear to fall. Maybe it will, maybe it won’t, maybe it’ll just come for me or maybe it’ll swing out for the people I love, and there’s only a small chance I can parry it. Guards come in with more cylinders like Riley’s, slowly brightening the room. It makes it a little easier to ignore Alain’s glowing and the chill, at least until the next roll of thunder rattles the metal frames that used to hold the glass. The porcelain doll with the sword is lucky my mother isn’t here. She loved those doors and generally loathed people who show up without invitations.