Chapter 1

Panic wraps its icy fingers around my throat and whispers in my ear that someone in this room wants me dead.

“I know,” I want to say, “the scars are proof enough.”

War is coming, but it is a game kings play–forming alliances, establishing enemies, throwing power around until they can determine a clear leader. But were any of these kings more powerful than the man sitting next to him? Did any of them truly have any real power at all? Or was each simply more arrogant?

Surely more arrogant, even with my own father seated at the table in front of me. Like the other heirs, I am several paces behind my father’s chair in the intimate round room, staring at the maps on the table. Gaudy crowns glint in the late afternoon sun filtering through the windows, the eyes of each man drifting over me every so often. 

Some more than others.

 None of these men have provided any sort of constructive argument–it is the same discourse about who was killing who, who started what, who the real victim is. Not one of them claiming the blame, all of them projecting. 

Candles burn low in the sconces on the walls, and the chandelier drips wax onto the center of the table, the only indication of how long we’ve been here. 

Too long. 

The room is stuffy with stale midsummer air and the heat, coupled with idle conversation, is making me jittery. My fingers drum against my wrist with increasing fervor and I am eager to flee this room. It is easy to ignore the threat to my life when that threat isn’t currently in the residence of my home for summer country. But the longer I stand here without knowing for sure which face wants to kill me, the more my mind races. And the more my mind races, the more danger I am in–from myself most of all. 

This is the room where the five kings come to discuss matters of state. Where they can meet and yell at each other with an air of diplomacy in the only kingdom that has remained neutral all this time–my own. But just because we were neutral, didn’t mean the others didn’t want us to pick sides. However, Gallmore is bound by a twenty year old treaty, one that does not allow us to enter a conflict without a direct attack against us. And with growing tensions, the other kingdoms have turned to more extreme tactics to force my father’s hand. 

“Attempts have been made on my daughter’s life three times in the last month alone, and I will not stand for it any longer.” My father is fuming, his tone cuts through my thoughts and pulls me not just back into the conversation in front of me, but right into the middle of it. He was right, several attempts had been made on my life, but that didn’t make being the topic of conversation any less suffocating. 

The room shifts in uncomfortable silence as the royals around me process my father’s words. We had kept all information about the assassination attempts quiet until now, until the right moment. The other kingdoms didn’t need to know that my life was in danger, especially when we didn’t know the source ourselves, but with the start of summer court, telling them now creates an opportunity to watch them. This is a slow game with too many players, and they are all on our soil. 

Emerald eyes snap to my face from behind the King of Raamos, his jaw set, the muscle in his neck bulging from the strain. To his right, a pair of amber eyes, under a heap of golden hair lock on me as well, eyes that match the fire he could wield at will. The Nouramere heir could not be any more different than his Raamosi counterpart. 

Fire and shadow.

Light and dark.

Good and evil. 

“Rianne, please,” my father turns slightly in his chair, holding out his hand to me. I step up next to him and slip my hand into his thick, calloused one. Years of fighting have hardened his hands. Years of fighting that have brought us the peace we protect so meticulously. 

“My daughter is not a pawn here. Gallmore may be peaceful now, but on my crown, if anything happens to Rianne or any of my daughters for that matter, I will not hesitate to bring the entire force of my armies down on the kingdom whose hand is responsible.” 

I can feel the heat of my father’s anger in his palm and suddenly the tiara on the top of my head feels too heavy. If I wasn’t the crown princess of my kingdom, my death wouldn’t start a war, my death would hold no weight. But I am the crown princess of Gallmore and I have a duty to keep my kingdom safe. Unfortunately, the stress of it all held me by the throat in a vice like grip. More unfortunately, the ability to breath is currently becoming a foreign concept for my lungs. 

The last attack on my life, mere days ago, left me with a thick knife wound on my upper arm, now stitched and wrapped and hidden by the sleeve of my dress. I hadn’t seen him coming when I turned down the hall alone, in a rare moment Tyr wasn’t right by my side. I fought him as much as I could, with what little training I have, and when a mass of guards stormed down the hall, alerted by my shouting, the attacker threw me to the ground to sprint away, but not before he nicked my arm with his dagger. 

The kings murmur their concern and assurances it wasn’t any of them and begin to wrap up their unproductive conversation as the memories flash through my mind. My breathing runs away from me and heat licks the back of my neck hotter than a burning flame. The kings’ conversation drifts far outside the walls of my spiraling mind. My panic washes over me and I need to get out of this room before I expose myself to everyone in it. 

“I have to go,” I lean down to say curtly to my father.

His steady blue eyes turn to saucers as they search my face. “Again?” 

It is all I can do to nod. 

“Be safe Ria,” he squeezes my hand before letting me go. 

I flee the room as swiftly as I can without raising any suspicion, but as I pass through the doorway, a familiar presence enters my mind. He is waiting for me to give him permission to enter my mind like he used to do when we were younger. 

Not now. 

I slam walls down around my mind and ran down the hall, Tyr on my heels. We sprint through the castle to my room–a routine occurrence for him and I. 

I panic. 

I flee. 

Tyr follows. 

I lock myself in my room. 

He stands guard.

I vanish. 

The lock on my door clicks over and I have only seconds to rip the tiara from my head and grab onto something–this time it is a blanket–before I pass out.