“I…I don’t quite know what to say,” I said weakly.
“If you give it a moment, the shock will dissipate.” Amusement sounded in her voice. She continued talking, kindly giving me a moment to recover myself. “As you can imagine, Francis has great sympathy for commonborns. But if there is one thing he loves more than any other, it is the Academy itself. He believes that for him, personally, his primary responsibility is the Academy—and that his neutrality is the best way of keeping it safe in the turbulent politics of the kingdom.”
“But you feel differently?”
“I believe neutrality has served us well in the past. But I also believe the time has come to act. The prince needs as many as possible to rally to his cause, and it is clear since your arrival that allegiances are shifting. It is finally time to pick a side and make a stand.”
“And you think my bruises can help with that?” I still couldn’t quite make my mind accept everything I was hearing.
“I am almost sure of it.” She stood. “In fact, we should lose no time in going to see Francis.”
“We’re going to see the duke right now?” I asked, feeling foolish but not seeming able to stop the inane questions.
“There is rarely a time like the present.” She gave me another amused look as I scrambled to my feet.
I trailed through the servants’ corridors behind her. I seemed to have lost any remaining capacity to be surprised and therefore felt not the smallest astonishment when she opened a concealed door in a wall and stepped directly into the duke’s office.
Checking that his main door was closed, she smiled at him.
“Good morning, my dear.”
“Zora!” He surged to his feet, looking from his wife to me.
“Don’t fret,” she said. “I have told the princess about our relationship.”
“You’ve told Princess Verene that…that we’re…” He gestured wordlessly between them, anger rising on his face.
“Certainly I have done so,” she said, calm in the face of his ire. “And with good reason.”
He sank back into his chair and sighed. “I am sure you have good reason. You always do. However, I wish you had consulted with me first. We had agreed that we would not tell—”
“Never mind that,” she said briskly. “Something of greater significance has arisen.”
He broke off, eyeing her with interest now, his disapproval apparently forgotten. I looked between them in fascination, but as Zora started talking, I was distracted from thoughts of their astonishing marriage.
“Despite your years of neutrality,” she said, “the Academy itself has been violated.”
He sat up straight. “The Academy? What do you mean?” His calculating gaze crossed to me.
“Princess Verene—who is not only a trainee here but under your especial protection—has been attacked within our walls.”
He drew in a sharp breath, his eyes once again fastening on me.
“I was attacked last night in the entrance hall as I returned to my suite after the evening meal,” I said. “They used a composition to drag me outside into the grounds.”
I pulled down the neckline of my gown to expose a dramatic blue and purple bruise just below my collarbone.
“Stop.” He held up a hand. “I must call Hugh and Raelynn.”
His wife raised an eyebrow. “Must you?”
“They have been with me since the beginning and have been loyal through all.” He gave her a significant look. “If the Academy is to change, they have a right to hear it directly.”
He pulled a composition from a drawer in his desk and ripped it neatly in half. We all sat in silence for a number of minutes until his door opened without a knock and the librarian hurried in, followed by the healer.
“Your Grace? We came as fast as we could.” His eyes took in the rest of the room, and he faltered. “Zora. Your Highness. I…”
“Princess Verene knows about Zora and me,” Duke Francis said. “So you may speak freely. She has just been telling me of a vile attack perpetrated in our own Academy walls. After everything we have been through together, I felt you had a right to hear it from the princess herself.”
“An attack?” Raelynn gasped. “But you should have come straight to me. You poor dear.” She hurried forward, already ripping a diagnosis composition.
“Well?” the duke asked. “How bad are her injuries?”
“Widespread, but thankfully not serious.” She gave me a sympathetic look. “I’m guessing they’re rather painful, however. The bruising is severe.”
I nodded, greedily eyeing the healing bag slung across her shoulder. She chuckled and withdrew a pain relief composition. I sighed as the cool mist sank into my skin.
“This time my attackers were scared away before they could do any significant damage,” I said. “But at the end of last year, the assassin who broke into my bedchamber ended up dead himself. His master had bound him in such a way that once he named the person who hired him, his life drained away.”
“An assassin in your bedchamber?” Raelynn looked like she was about to collapse, and Hugh rushed forward to help her into a nearby chair.
Even Zora looked faintly taken aback at my contribution to the conversation. Duke Francis, however, never lost focus.
“And did he name that master, then?”
“He did. Cassius. The man, not the king, if such a distinction really matters.”
Hugh gasped, but the duke sat back, steepling his fingers. “It is a meaningless distinction. We are bound as people by the responsibilities we take on toward others just as tightly as we are bound by the role itself. So after all my years of service, all my years of neutrality, it has come to this. The king sends assassins into the Academy itself.”
“It was one thing to remain neutral when there was a careful balance of power to be maintained,” Zora said. “But change is coming, whether we like it or not. And we must seize the moment to shape that change to the benefit of all.”
The duke fixed me with narrowed eyes. “Why have I not heard of this attack last year?”
“Of any of the attacks,” Zora murmured. “There were others in the grounds.”
“If we are to speak openly and honestly, Your Grace,” I said, looking him directly in the eye, “I didn’t tell you because I wasn’t sure who I could trust. I didn’t know what side you were on.”
The duke sucked in a breath as if he had received a physical blow.
“Everything we have worked toward, gone in an instant,” Hugh said, distress in every line of his body.
“But there is a different future possible.” I kept my attention focused on the duke. “A future where you don’t need neutrality because there are no sides and factions. A future where Kallorway is united behind a young, strong king who works for the good of all the people.”
“Prince Darius.” The duke’s gaze didn’t waver from my face.
I nodded. “Prince Darius isn’t looking to create a new faction—he seeks to end factions altogether, to heal the rift tearing Kallorway apart. He will be a king for all his people.” I glanced sideways at Zora. “And he intends to give sealed commonborns the rights they should always have possessed.”