The Royal Thorns stopped cio outside the drawn curtains of the box. They left the cripple his walking stick, which was either bad practice or an aowledgement that the search for ons was nothing more than a formality. Anyone hoping to attack the King of Night would be turned by that selfsame sn into a fine spray of blood and flesh.

  Inside, King Hazerial was seated on the divan at the ter of the viewing gallery, a bloodsve h emptily in the shadows and a cloaked man along the wall.

  At first, cio thought the man was another of the Royal Thorns. Then he saw those unnerving gold eyes.

  “Lord cio.” The king motioned for him to take the chair at his side. The former Thorn was given no more attention than the service table holding the wine goblets. Like bloodsves, Thorns and tables were all only tools, after all. Barely human.

  The barely human’s gold gre purposefully ignored cio’s.

  The disgraced former Thorn was looking worse for the wear. Gaunt. Older. Shadows in the face. Standing on two good legs, though. No doubt jogging up and down stairs on them. Feng. Riding. Walking anywhere he pleased without sudden twinges or spasms that nearly drove him to the ground.

  cio took the indicated seat beside the king and stretched out his leg. That felt like an admission of weakness, but it was also an unfortunate y. The adrenaline from the fight in the corridor had worn off, and a deep, painful burn had taken up residen the back of his thigh, heralding the cramps that would soon begin twisting the muscle into knots.

  The crowd i house cheered and ughed as, below, an enormous wolf tore the throat from a man half-transformed into a bear. The dyrewolf pped up the bloody stream while the half-man half-bear took his st struggling breaths. Spectators threw back their heads and howled to the rafters in triumph with the wolf as if they were the ones whose muzzles dripped strings of gore and slobber.

  “A local favorite,” the king expined. “And a prime example of the enjoyment these beasts take from their sport.”

  cio had heard the assertion that dyre were ibalististers who lived to fight and would kill one another whether they were in or out of the pit houses more times than he could t. Those arguments rarely took into at the ones who lived in peace with their s until they were captured and those who died in the arena rather than attack their fellow dyre for the eai of the Children of Night.

  “There are killers in every race,” cio said, gng the Thorn’s way again.

  “In every strong race, certainly.” The king snapped his fingers and indicated the goblets oable between their seats.

  The bloodsve padded forward, poured the wiheed into the background again. Ragged bare feet, empty eyes, spotless white sve’s garb. She looked young, perhaps the same age as the boys cio had just thrashed, but there was no telling how long she had been a bloodsve. Aging stopped with enthrallment, that and everything that made one human—thought, speech, progress, aspiration.

  “We are told there is a motion in the Hall to levy standing armies for the war in the north,” the king said. “If it passes, they will be put under anders in the king’s army and used to bolster numbers where the Het have inflicted the most casualties.”

  “Your Majesty is well-informed,” cio said, brag himself. Was the king finally about to demand he “aid the ” by getting the motion passed? cio had been arguing against signing over local armies to the ever since Zihe father of the king’s new daughter-in-roposed it weeks before. The majority of the lords, whose small holdings barely supported more than a knight or two, cared little one way or the other and were voting the way their allies voted.

  “Upon the assembly, we wish you to block the motion,” Hazerial said.

  cio blinked, certain he’d heard the king wrong. “You waue against the levy?”

  “It will pass eventually, but we wish you to stall it. Keep it from passing until after Autumnlight. Wasn’t that part of yument against it? That the men will soon be home for the harvest?”

  And that the already held too much power without seizi-arms from the lords they had swory to. But Hazerial would know that as well.

  Was he bei up to look like a pennant on a windy day, uo decide which way to blow? Or was this to show the other lords that House Mattius beloo the king, jumping whenever Hazerial told him to jump?

  Here they were, discussing the matter in full view of anyone in the round who cared to look up, and clearly visible to the majority of the noble boxes. Indeed, several of the aristocratic set seemed more ied in the king’s box than in the fight below.

  “Five my ignorance, Your Majesty, but I don’t uand why you wish me to block the motion. Adding standing armies to the king’s will strengthen your presence, and making the men answerable to the alone will cut down on flig orders from multiple lords’ field anders.” These were the main two legs Zinote ropping the motion up on.

  “You’re Josean-blessed,” Hazerial said. “Surely you appreciate that the path to ultimate victory is rarely simple.”

  Rarely simple, but even more rarely littered with poor tactics.

  “This dey will cost us nothing and has the potential to gaihing.” The king sipped his wine. “You will block it until the harvest. Now, as for the reason we summoned you.”

  cio g the former Thain, the only survivor of the three young men his father had grafted. Funny how he’d never sidered it before, but cio was the st survivor of three as well—still limping around with his father long dead in the ternds Massacre and his sister soon after. If they had a mind to, the ruined pair of survivors could spend many an hour pointing fingers of bme at one another.

  “The time has e to prove whether you are truly an asset to the ,” Hazerial said. “This matter is of the utmost secrecy, but if you are successful, we will reduce the tracted time before you wed our daughter. From ten years down to five.

  “She finds the pit houses distasteful as well, Kelena. It seems she has no stomach for watg a torn apart.” The king smiled sidelong at cio. “The two of you may be better matched than you anticipated.”

  It didn’t bode well that His Majesty g the carrot so far before the stick. But the girl’s wide, panicked eyes as her mother forced her into the deep dungeoh Bzing Prairie still had the power to make cio sick at heart these many months ter. The child sobbing in the midst of that hell of blood and darkness.

  cio realized he was massaging the cramp in his leg. He scowled and folded his hands atop his walking stick.

  “If it is right and within my ability, I will see it done,” he promised.

  Hazerial smiled. “It is our belief that you are the one member of our court whose vis best align with this ission. We wish you to open unication with the Het.”

  Now cio knew he’d misheard. “Your Majesty?”

  “You will procim yourself our emissary to the Children of Day. The war has gone on too long, too many lives lost, a relic of aimes that must be buried and fotten to move on. We are certain you vihem to begin talks of peace between our nations.”

  The back of his leg seared. cio shifted, trying to lessen the pain. Stall the vote against strengthening the ’s army with his own, se unications to the enemy. Sure, and why not assign him to attempt a public assassination of the king while he was at it?

  “Your Majesty, what is the ultimate goal of this unication?”

  “One day, perhaps, sting peace.” Hazerial chuckled, a sound as cold as frozen bones splintering. “We realize, however, that such a thing is uo be aplished in a single dispato matter how ving you are. Our hope is that the Het will eventually agree to establish a royal ambassador of Night in the Kingdom of Day. A nobleman bound to honor and high ideals, who speaks with the voice of his king. Duke cio of House Mattius, husband of the king’s only daughter.”

  Better known as cio, the traitor to the , executed for spiring with the Het and g himself equal with the king.

  “e now.” Hazerial gestured to the dyre tearing one another apart below. “You view those beasts as human, but not the race that sprang from the same loins as Khihe Het are our brothers. there ever truly be pea a world where brhts brother?”

  Someone had been reading archives of Lord Paius’s old speeches. The king smiled, daring cio to call attention to the borrowed words of the dead man.

  cio sipped his wine. If he was going to be executed for a traitor, he would get what he could out of the deal on his way to the noose.

  “Your Majesty knows the issues close to my heart,” he said. “But five years is still a long time to put off an heir.”

  The king gave him a knowing smile. “The night you receive word from the Het that they will accept an emissary, we will sider Kelena’s training fihe wedding will take pce immediately.”

  “Then I will begin at once.”

  “Draft the letters yourself, cio. aries are to be privy to this matter.”

  Of course not. The more eyes and ears, the more people who could exoe him when the accusations began flooding in.

  “Yes, Your Majesty.”

  Hazerial beed the former Thorn from his p the wall.

  “Your messenger,” the king said. “We are told he carry missives through the lines without being seen.”

  “Of that, I have no doubt,” cio said, log eyes with the man who had crippled him and killed his sister. “Sneaking around is a particur skill of his.”

  ***

  The interior of the House Mattius carriage was sweltering, an oven raging in the heat of the Siu Patanal sun. Before cio even dropped onto the seat, sweat was dripping from his and pasting his clothing to his skin.

  Gritting his teeth, he hammered on his leg until the monstrous spasm that had seized it calmed to a tolerable level of torture.

  When he could speak agaitered, “Still alive, are you?”

  Saint Daven shrugged. “Maybe not much longer, if the rumors are true about the Het and blood magic.”

  “Did you volunteer?”

  “What do you think?”

  The carriage rolled dowreets, lurg over every uneven cobblestone, and sending jags of lightning up cio’s leg and into his back. He scowled across at the silent Thorn.

  Saint Daven pinned back the window cover, allowing in a gasp of air. Summer sunlight gred into the carriage with it. cio had to fight the urge to snap at the Thorn to shut the window cover.

  “Ambassador to the Het, at the king’s request?” Saint Daven said. “Lord Paius wouldn’t know what to think.”

  “I’m not sure I do, either,” itted.

  “Mitchi would like it. I suppose ambassadors attend a ball or a feast every night?”

  “Don’t call her that.”

  “Excuse my impertinence, your lordship.” The Thorched an apologetic seated bow. “The Lady Michia spoke highly of the gaiety of court life to her father’s Thorns.”

  “If ohorn in particur had been professional enough to do nothing but talk, she would be here to enjoy court for herself.”

  Saint Daven had one of those jaws too sharp to hide anything. He went back to staring out the window, a traitorous muscle tig in the hollow of his cheek.

  “If I’d known having a child would kill her, I never would have touched her.”

  “Michia was a child herself,” cio shot back.

  Saint Daven huffed a humorless ugh. “I was two years youhan she was.” Gold eyes gring out the window. Muscle tig. “Your father gave us his blessing.”

  cio ground his teeth as the carriage crashed through a rut. Hounded by the pain in his leg, by the pain in his chest. Hounded by the ghosts crowding the air around them.

  “My father, who adored and sheltered his baby girl all her life, approved of her being impregnated by a boy he stole from Thornfield?”

  Tick, tibsp;went that sinew in the cheek. “Almost sounds like you actually cared about his lordship. Pretty ving for a blood traitor.”

  “You will never uand the love and respect I had for my father,” cio said, strangling the walking stick with his hands. “Nor will you ever uand what it e to turn him in.”

  “Don’t talk to me about costs.” Tick, tibsp;“Ever had your soul shattered serving a man who should have been king? Ever killed your brothers by the dozen to protect him?”

  “A here you sit, alive and well, while he and my sister molder in the ground.”

  “My child, too, in case you fot.”

  “Don’t you dare py the injured party with me!” cio snapped. “While you were rotting in the dungeoh Castle Sangmere, I kept the priests from sacrifig your child to the strong gods. I watched her try to breathe, saw her little body fight and struggle and fail. I buried my nied her mother. Alone, on the leg you maimed, I buried what was left of my ruined house, and I’ve been fighting to rebuild it ever since.”

  Silehe former Thorn sat ba his seat, sweating and gring at the lord.

  The lred back, sweating and g his teeth against another hellish spasm rolling up his thigh. The pain was never as bad as when he was around the man who had caused it.

  The carriage lumbered around a er and down the blistering street, ing to a stop at House Mattius’s Siu Patanal residence.

  “Now here we both sit,” Saint Daven muttered. “Alive and well.”

  cio exhaled. He looked out the window at the townhouse and thought of the unwritteer to the kingdom’s sworn enemy and the inquisition’s cell awaiting the traitor issioo pen it.

  “Maybe not for much longer,” he ceded.