The Storm Crow (The Storm Crow, #1)(29)

Engaged to a Rhodairen, rejected by your mother, distraught over a Jin…

It seemed Ericen had taken Lady Kerova’s bait. But to be bothered by it?

“Find anything interesting in the library last night?” he asked suddenly. “Or were you just reading for nostalgia?”

I eyed the prince, trying to fake indifference even as my heart raced. I’d forgotten to put the books back. Did he suspect what I’d been looking for? “This again?” I asked. “You’re awfully interested in my life.”

“Shouldn’t I be interested in my future wife?”

I snorted. “I give you full permission to ignore me. Besides, this game is getting old. So why don’t we skip the part where you try to use my past to hurt me?”

Ericen started to respond, then stopped, eyes narrowing. He went back to pushing his food around, hand tight around the fork as if it were a weapon. The silence stretched. He looked like he was trying to work himself up to something, to make a decision.

To follow orders? I frowned. Illucians didn’t disobey orders.

Ericen set his fork down. “It’s too bad the man who attacked you died before revealing who sent him.” His voice was low, his words tight. The emotion had drained from his face, leaving him eerily calm. It looked wrong. “Apparently, your people are just inept at keeping things alive. It’s lucky for you my mother’s been gracious enough to offer this alliance. You should be more grateful.”

My hand tightened around my knife.

He shrugged nonchalantly. “Oh well. One less rebel in the world.”

“You’re a bastard,” I said.

Ericen stared at me, lips parted, before they slowly formed a smile. “You Rhodairens are very blunt.”

“No. You Illucians are just conniving monsters.”

His smile widened. “True.”

I blinked. Surely, I hadn’t heard what I thought.

The prince leaned back, an arm over the back of his chair, and met my gaze without wavering. “Maybe I’m not half as bad as you think, Princess.”

Was this another part of his game? He looked and sounded so genuine. No cruel smile, no frost to his gaze. He said it simply, matter-of-factly, and yet I still couldn’t believe him. This was the man who’d threatened to have his army attack to prove a point.

“You’re not what I expected,” he added quietly. In the dim light, he looked haunted, his muscles tight and eyes soft and full of exhaustion. For half a breath, I saw someone else entirely.

Then, as if suddenly remembering himself, his eyes glazed over, and his smirk returned, that other person vanishing like a phantom in the night. “But I suppose you’re not half of what you once were,” he mused.

I shook away the image I’d had of him, focusing instead on the sharp lines and lupine features of the warrior before me. How could I ever have seen anything else? “At least my soldiers treat me with more respect than a pile of feathers, Princeling,” I said.

He stiffened. “Do they? What about your people? I imagine they’d take issue with a princess who turned her back on them.”

I scowled, but his words settled deep. I stood, picking up my plate. “You can eat alone.”

*

I finished dinner in my room with Kiva, where I relayed my conversation with Ericen. We’d cracked open the windows, letting in fresh evening air sweetened by the scent of fruit trees, and I’d piled my pillows at the end of the bed and plopped down. She sat on the floor, her sword in her lap.

“I think you’re imagining things,” she said when I mentioned how difficult it had seemed for him to talk tonight. As if he hadn’t wanted to say those things.

“Maybe.” I rolled onto my stomach to face her, releasing a breath. “I can’t believe this is happening.”

“It was inevitable. The world is reaching a breaking point.” She pulled her sword from its sheath, the black gold rippling like molten night. The tension that had seemed permanently ingrained in her face earlier that day had subsided. The dark circles under her eyes remained, but she looked better.

She met my gaze, her pale eyes soft. She knew what I was thinking; she always did. “In Korovi,” she said quietly, “my first kill would have been celebrated. In Miska warrior tradition, I would have a ceremony, and the sword that spilled my enemy’s blood would be named.”

I stayed perfectly still. Kiva rarely talked about Korovi. All I knew was her mother had been forced to leave while pregnant with her, shamed by scandal for breaking their most sacred laws. Which was probably why the captain had looked like she’d rather walk barefoot on glass than return to Korovi for aid.

Kiva ran a cloth along the length of black gold. “A Miska warrior of my age without a named sword would be a disgrace.” Her lips twitched into a small smile. “Of course, I’m already a disgrace, and in Korovi, I’d never have been a Miska warrior.”

The Mirkova line was an ancient one, a powerful one. Kiva’s grandmother practically ruled the snow kingdom, and as a noble, Captain Mirkova was forbidden to marry. Believed to be daughters of the goddess, Lokane, noble women in Korovi had children by chosen suitors outside of marriage, then devoted their lives to the goddess as priestesses or leaders in the government. The two roles were so intertwined, it was nearly impossible to tell where one began and the other ended.