Alaan woke to the sound of rapping on wood. Had a tackle had come loose in the wind?

  The princess! The grafting seized him. He had fallen asleep and left her unprotected.

  He bolted upright, lungs heaving. A banded, reinforced oak door. An unfamiliar chamber. Rounded, windowless, cold. Lamps unlit.

  The princess stood unharmed in the center of the floor, positioned on the sole section where no carpet covered flagstones. Assured of her safety, the panic of the grafting ebbed.

  Memories of their arrival in the City of Blood slowly drifted back to him, dreamlike and eerie. He had watched himself from a distance high above, looking down on his body as it climbed the tower stairs beside the princess.

  Over the past several nights, he had become so accustomed to fatigue that it took him a moment to realize the exhaustion he felt that evening was not his own. He was rested. The princess was not.

  She swayed gently where she stood. Pain and fear rooted her to the spot, though both were hazy with drowsiness. A small bloom of gladness opened in the grafting when she realized he was awake, but she did not speak.

  Alaan sheathed his cutlass and swordbreaker. He thought he remembered her standing there the day before, while he searched and secured the room. Had he imagined that, or had she not moved in all these hours?

  “What is the matter?” His voice was harsh and dry, his tongue clinging, and his breath rank. He could not have rinsed out his mouth before he slept. He did not remember washing at all before lying down, and he still wore a uniform. The stiff material stunk of sweat and mildew. “Did you not sleep yesterday?”

  She shook her head.

  “There was no reason to stand watch,” he said. “There is no entry but through this door. You are safe.”

  Humiliation. She nodded to the stones, but did not move.

  Growing uneasy, Alaan studied the chamber more closely. Her bed was untouched. Her meal sat in its congealed grease. The bathwater was clear and unused, with a thin luster of lilac oil collected off-center on its motionless surface.

  The rapping came again. Knuckles on the heavy portal behind him.

  Alaan opened the door with the swordbreaker in his fist.

  “Don’t stab me.” For some reason, Izak continued to find the greeting funny, despite having nearly been killed. Maybe because of it.

  Alarm and admiration filled the princess at the sound of her brother’s voice.

  “You shouldn’t be here, Izakiel,” she murmured.

  “What will I get, a scolding?” Izak craned his neck to better see into the chamber. “The last time I was allowed in this tower, you were still in the nursery, Kelen. It’s smaller than I remember. And more pastel.”

  “Mother won’t like you coming up here.”

  “That venomous wench can shove her forked tongue—”

  “What do you want?” Alaan interrupted before Izak could spout unsuitable filth with his sister standing by. Dirters may have no sense of courtesy for women, but he had at least that much honor remaining to him.

  Izak let himself the rest of the way into the chamber. “For the princess to visit the training courtyard tonight. Since we got here, Etian’s thrashed every guardsman and soldier who’ll have a whack at him. Nobody can put dirt on the great second-coming, and frankly, I’m sick of it.”

  “That has nothing to do with the princess.”

  When Izak grinned, the dimples beside his mouth appeared, joining the slashmark channels high on his cheekbones.

  “It’s not Kelen I’m truly after. It’s her Thorn.”

  “No.” Alaan sheathed the swordbreaker and stepped back.

  A conspiratorial smile lit the princess’s pale features. “He wants to, Izak.”

  “I know that, but how do you?” The prince quirked an eyebrow at his sister. “It took me years before I could tell one of those disapproving scowls from another.”

  A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  She gave a happy shake of her head.

  Alaan went the cold brazier, dipped his finger in, and scrubbed the ashes across his teeth to clean them. The bitter grit chased the taste of bilgewater from his mouth.

  “Come on, you stubborn savage,” Izak cajoled. “Nobody else has been able to put Etian in his place. Beat him black and blue across the courtyard while Kelena and I snicker behind our hands.”

  Alaan spit into the chamber pot, then rinsed his mouth with water. That uncomfortable buzzing had flooded the grafting, but when he looked her way, the princess dropped her eyes to her boots.

  Izak had seen her avert her gaze as well. “Don’t worry, the pirate won’t do any damage Etian can’t heal with the royal blood magic. And I’ll put your Thorn back together if Etian breaks him in half. They’ll both be using wooden practice swords, anyway. Otherwise none of my men could stand by and watch him go after Etian.” The prince gave Alaan a lopsided grin. “I’d have to run you through.”

  “You could not manage.”

  “Not in a fair fight,” the prince agreed. “Luckily, I’m not dumb enough to face you fairly. I would cheat.”

  Izak did not realize that he had misread his sister’s hesitation. That buzzing was not the fear she felt when someone could be injured, Alaan knew, it was the unease that filled her whenever their brother the crown prince was near.

  “Fine,” Alaan said. “We will join you soon.”

  The swordstaff leaned against Izak’s shoulder as he rubbed his hands together. “I’ll get the guard started laying bets. Don’t be too long.”

  When the door had closed behind him, Alaan turned back to the princess.

  “Your fear of the crown prince will not disappear by hiding.”

  She looked up from beneath her lashes. “Is that why you accepted?”

  Reluctant to admit the truth, Alaan began unbuttoning his soiled uniform jacket.

  “Yes,” he finally said.

  The princess swallowed. “I don’t know why I’m so afraid of him. Etianiel has never hurt me or threatened me. There was a dream I had once… But that’s so stupid. I shouldn’t be scared because of a dream, should I?”

  “It is not a man’s place to interpret signs. That is the work of a wife.” Alaan removed his jacket and untucked the shirt beneath. “Turn away. I am going to wash and change.”

  The princess made to turn her back to him, but pain shot through her stiff legs as she moved them. She dropped to the floor. Renewed terror washed through her, mingled with self-loathing.

  Alaan crossed the room and picked her up, depositing her on the bed. “Lie down until I am finished. Rest if you wish. If you do not, then tell me why you did not sleep yesterday.”

  ***

  Kelena lay on her side, facing the far wall. She hadn’t fallen asleep, but she hadn’t spoken either.

  Rather than grow angry and shout at the stupid Nothing for not knowing what to say, Alaan had taken the opportunity to step into the corridor with the chamber pot.

  When he returned, he brought the trunk that carried her many gowns, corsets, slippers, gloves, hair ribbons, and combs, as well as the spare uniform and common clothing supplied to all Royal Thorns. The trunk must have been brought up sometime in the day. She hadn’t heard the servant announce its arrival. Perhaps he had been one familiar with the rules of the tower.

  Water splashed behind her as Alaan climbed into the bath. The cold forced the breath from his lungs, but he didn’t recoil from it. Whatever the temperature, he welcomed the opportunity to be clean.

  Izak had wondered how she could tell that Alaan wanted to fight Etian. Obviously, no one had ever told her brother what occurred in the grafting when a man was bound to a woman. Perhaps no one but Mother had ever learned of it.

  Through the grafting, Kelena could feel Alaan’s body as if it were her own—the rush of hot blood in his veins as his body reacted to the icy water, the fading stiffness in his muscles from lying on the stone floor, the gratification of washing away the dirt and sweat of the road. If she focused, she could even sense that great deadly shadow lurking in the depths of his blood magic.

  There were other sensations, masculine needs she tried not to notice because they were too close to the graphic whispers Mother liked to hiss in her ear, and because Alaan tried to afford Kelena the same privacy when the feminine version of those hungers stirred her.

  The part that had bewildered Izak was that Kelena could feel Alaan’s emotions. Foremost just then was the anticipation of violence. A thirst for combat. Readiness to test himself. Preparing to become stronger if he failed.

  The last was the strangest of all. Kelena had only ever known failure as an endpoint.

  Behind her, a breath preceded a dip underwater. When Alaan broke the surface again, she heard the droplets pouring off his hair and beard, splashing back into the bath.

  “I’ve never lain in this bed without Mother’s permission,” Kelena said, smoothing the flat of her hand over the blanket. “I’m allowed to stand over on that square. Except for when I’m supposed to be in the chest.” As she spoke, her voice grew smaller and smaller, until she felt as infinitesimal as the nothing she was. “I was in the darkness for so long last time. I thought maybe Izak would let me out. He did once a long time ago, but then they sent him away. Etian must have already known I wasn’t allowed out. Sometimes Izak knows better, but he does things anyway.”

  Through the grafting, a storm of anger gathered, flickering with lightning flashes of injustice.

  “You were shut in a chest?”

  Kelena flinched. “It’s not like you’re thinking! It was my fault—I never did the right thing. I’m so stupid that I could never even work out what the right thing was. If I had just been better, Mother would never have put me in there.”

  Water sloshed as Alaan climbed from the bath. Linen rasped along skin and scrubbed at hair. Righteous anger rumbled in the grafting like thunder while he dressed and belted on his cutlass and swordbreaker.

  “I said it wrong.” Kelena swallowed against the sudden painful lump in her throat. She had misrepresented it all somehow, tricked him into thinking that she should be pitied for something she had deserved. She pulled her knees to her chest. “Mother could have explained it better.”

  “Have you rested enough to walk?” he asked.

  Kelena rolled over to face him. “I’m sorry I told Izak that you wanted to fight Etianiel.”

  Beneath that rolling, boiling storm thrummed a deep hunger for violence. The cold fury in the pirate’s gray-green eyes made her shiver.

  “You need not apologize for speaking the truth,” Alaan said. “I do want to fight him.”

  e

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