“I heard,” Nightrender said.
Rune cringed. “I apologize for them. They were unacceptably rude to you.”
Nightrender hadn’t been aware there was an acceptable level of rudeness.
“But you’re the only one who can stop this war with Embria.”
“I do not choose sides in your battles.” Nightrender didn’t raise her voice or tilt it toward an emotion. It was unnecessary. Regardless, he flinched.
“That’s not it,” he insisted. “I’m not asking you to take a side. I’m asking you to save a life—no, many lives. My fiancée—”
“I don’t save fiancées, either.” This was why he’d summoned her? This was why he’d acted in secret? No wonder he hadn’t been able to communicate clearly when she’d awakened him in the tower. His request was absurd. “My duties are simple: I fight the rancor so you don’t have to. I prevent the Malice from growing. I fight real war so that you can all wage your petty battles in peace. Summoning me for any other purpose is punishable by death.” She’d never needed to enforce that rule before, at least not that she could recall. Her memory was perfect—or rather, it had been until now.
Prince Rune seemed taken aback. “They’re not petty to us,” he said softly. And then, with more strength: “You owe us.”
Nightrender bristled. “I owe you nothing.” She had served the three kingdoms for thousands of years, and while they probably believed they gave her everything in return, they refused to give her the one thing she truly wanted: an end.
An end to their constant warring, to the rising rancor, to the need for her to keep coming back to solve the same problems over again. There was no hardship they endured that they had not caused themselves. She was so tired of it.
Nightrender started to turn away, but when the prince spoke again, his voice was dark. “You don’t know what I’m talking about, do you?”
She stared at him. Did he know? Could he tell that she’d lost memories?
“What I mean to say,” he said, a little more cautiously, “is that the three kingdoms have a chance for peace.”
“You said the Malice stole that opportunity.” She studied him again, searching for the truth. “Tell me what you want.”
“My fiancée, Crown Princess Johanne Fortuin of Embria, is trapped in a malsite.”
Two facts struck her. First, a Caberwilline prince was engaged to an Embrian princess. Those two kingdoms had been trying to slaughter each other for as long as there’d been kingdoms, but now they were talking marriage?
That was, they would be, if the princess wasn’t trapped in a malsite.
Which brought her to the second, more alarming fact: people were getting trapped in malsites.
But she always cleared those spots before she went to sleep. Always. She would never be so careless—
But she couldn’t remember cleansing them last time. So there was another hole in her memory. The thought sent a bolt of unease through her.
Perhaps there’d been an Incursion while she’d slept. “Tell me how long the malsites have been here.”
The prince’s tone went somber. “Four hundred years.”
Nightrender drew in a breath. She hadn’t missed an Incursion. She’d just…neglected her duty. Somehow. The unease deepened.
“They’re all over the three kingdoms,” Prince Rune said. “Like scars. We’ve adapted to live around them.”
That must be why the people hated her. They’d been living in constant terror for four hundred years.
But that didn’t make sense either. Surely she wouldn’t have just gone back to sleep while people suffered and malice poisoned Salvation. And even if she had been so careless, mortals should have summoned her again to remove the malsites. They’d had four hundred years to do it.
“I see,” said Nightrender. But she didn’t. She didn’t understand this at all. Nothing was as it had been before.
“It’s your job to cleanse the malsites, isn’t it?” Prince Rune glanced over his shoulder as voices rose in the throne room. When he looked at her again, worry filled his dark eyes. “We could start with the one where Princess Johanne is trapped. If she’s still alive”—he swallowed hard—”then the alliance can move forward. We could end these petty wars.”
Sarcasm. Mortals wielded it like a weapon.
Still, if it were possible to end their wars, if peace fell over Salvation, then the Malice might stop growing and she could have the end she craved.
“Tell me of this alliance.”
As the noise in the throne room crescendoed, Prince Rune motioned for her to walk with him. “About three months ago, Embria sent dozens of doves, each with a piece of a letter. It took us days to put it together. I suppose they reasoned a messenger—a person—would have been killed before the letter reached us. But at last, we realized it proposed an alliance by marriage, because Ivasland intended to break the Winterfast Accords.”
Nightrender’s fists clenched.
The Winterfast Accords were the only thing all three kingdoms agreed upon: no one, no matter what, would use malice in their endless war. To do so would damn the entire continent, because uncontained malice spread, infecting everything in its path. Malice destroyed.
“If I can’t rescue Princess Johanne,” Prince Rune was saying, “then Caberwill is going to attack Embria, and neither kingdom will be able to stop Ivasland.”
“Caberwill has no cause to attack Embria.”
“It would be a preemptive attack,” the prince explained as they turned a corner. “Get them before they get us. Considering their princess was lost here, in the Deepway…”
That was such a mortal attitude—“Get them before they get us”—but they had been living with this hatred and distrust for thousands of years. Perhaps they couldn’t help it anymore.
More pressing was the trouble with Ivasland. If Embria and Caberwill were embroiled in their own battle, Ivasland would be left unchecked.
If one kingdom finally conquers the others, suggested some dark part of her, then they’ll stop trying to involve you in their every little dispute.
Nightrender shook that feeling away. She was a neutral party, so she would not advance one kingdom’s victory over the others. Still, she could not allow the use of malice on the battlefield. They had put her in an awkward position.
“What do you think?” Prince Rune asked. “Will you help me?”
“My focus should be on gathering Dawnbreakers and marching through the Soul Gate.” Nightrender strode more quickly down the hall.