I shook my head. “I will never understand why you Ungers turn everything into a dance competition.”
“Because we are a civilized people. Unlike you Bellonans with your gladiator traditions. To you barbarians, everything always ends in a bloodbath in an arena.” She sniffed her disapproval.
I wanted to point out that many Ungerian dances ended with the loser being executed, but I held my tongue. About that, at least. “Well, you do realize you’re not supposed to poke the queen of Bellona with your cane, right?”
Xenia sniffed again. “This is my dance hall, and I will poke whomever I like, whether it’s you, Zariza, or some other queen who dares to step through those doors.”
“Then I’m glad that I’m not a queen,” a voice drawled, “and that I don’t have to learn how to dance.”
A woman ambled into the room. She was around my age, twenty-seven or so, and tall and muscled, with braided blond hair, golden amber eyes, and lovely bronze skin. She was wearing a dark green tunic, along with black leggings and boots. A dark green cloak was draped over her shoulders, but the long, flowing fabric did little to hide the enormous spiked silver mace dangling from her black leather belt. As if the weapon wasn’t intimidating enough, a morph mark was also visible on the woman’s neck—a fearsome ogre face, also with braided blond hair and amber eyes.
Paloma, my best friend and a former gladiator, studied Xenia and me. “If you two are finished with your twirling lessons, perhaps we can get on with the more important business of the evening.”
Xenia sniffed for a third time. “No business is more important than dancing. You should pay more attention to it. After all, it’s part of your heritage.”
Paloma frowned. “What do you mean?”
She gestured at the morph mark on Paloma’s neck. “You’re an ogre, which means you have some Ungerian blood in your family. Didn’t your parents ever tell you that? Or teach you any Ungerian dances?”
Paloma shifted on her feet, clearly uncomfortable. “No. My father was from Flores, and I don’t remember my mother ever saying that she was from Unger.”
Paloma’s mother had disappeared when she was a child, and Paloma had no idea what had happened to her. Perhaps even worse, her father had kicked her out when she was sixteen because he thought her morph mark made her a monster. So Paloma’s inner ogre and apparently Ungerian heritage was something of a sore spot.
Xenia stepped closer, peering at the ogre face on Paloma’s neck. “I’ve never paid much attention to it before, but your mark is quite striking. It reminds me of . . .” Her voice trailed off.
“What?” Paloma asked in a low, guarded voice.
Xenia shook her head. “Nothing. Just an old silly hope.”
She smiled, but her expression was more gritted teeth than easy happiness. Even more telling, the scent of her ashy heartbreak swirled through the air, burning my nose with its sharp intensity. My mutt magic let me smell people’s emotions, everything from soft, rosy love to hot, peppery anger to Xenia’s sudden grief. She must be thinking about her child, the one she had lost through her own supposed foolishness.
I wondered if Xenia saw something of her lost child in Paloma. I had often thought my two friends were a lot alike, especially when it came to their morph marks with their bright amber eyes and distinctive locks of hair. I’d never voiced that thought to either of them, though, and now didn’t seem like the time.
I cleared my throat, breaking the awkward silence. “Paloma’s right. We need to get on with things. Are the others in position?”
“Yes. Serilda, Cho, and Lucas are in the plaza,” Paloma replied. “They’ll be ready to move if something goes wrong and this mysterious person isn’t really a Blair.”
This time, the scent of my own ashy heartbreak filled my nose. Earlier this year, my cousin Crown Princess Vasilia had killed her mother, Queen Cordelia, and the rest of the Blair royal family—my family. The Seven Spire massacre had been part of an elaborate Mortan plot to put Vasilia on the Bellonan throne and plunge our kingdom into war with Andvari. Through a series of unexpected events, I had survived the massacre, become a gladiator, killed Vasilia, and taken the throne.
Now I was widely considered to be the last Blair, something that saddened me more than I’d ever thought possible. Most of my cousins might have been as vicious as coral vipers, but they hadn’t deserved to be slaughtered just because the Mortan king wanted to wipe out the Blairs with their Summer and Winter bloodlines and powerful magics.
But a few weeks ago, Xenia had started hearing whispers about someone using magic in Svalin. Someone with gray-blue eyes, tearstone eyes, Blair eyes, just like mine.
The news, the rumors, the mere hope had stunned me.
After the massacre, Serilda and Cho had searched for months for another survivor, another Blair, with no luck. Once I was on the throne, I had ordered Auster, the captain of the palace guards, to expand the search into the countryside, in hopes that some of my cousins had managed to avoid Vasilia’s turncoat guards, fled from their homes, and were in hiding. We hadn’t heard the softest whisper that anyone else, any other Blair, had survived the slaughter.
But Xenia had.
In addition to running her dance hall and finishing school, Xenia was also a spy, one of the best in all the kingdoms. Over the past few weeks, she and her sources had heard more and more rumors that a Blair was hiding somewhere in Svalin, the capital city of Bellona.
Tonight I was finally going to see if the rumors were true.
And if they were, if this woman really was a Blair, then I hoped we could work together to protect Bellona, not only from the Mortan king, but from everyone who wished to hurt us and our people. I’d only been queen for about six months, but I was already tired of shouldering the heavy burden alone. I needed help. I needed another Blair, someone I could depend on, and especially someone I could leave my throne to if the worst happened and the Mortans finally managed to kill me.
Something that was a distinct possibility with the Regalia coming up.
My heart lifted, and the scent of my own warm, sweet honey hope filled my nose at the thought of finding another Blair, but I forced the emotion down, down, down. All the other rumors had turned out to be just that, and this one would probably be more of the same.
I wiped the last bit of sweat off my face, then tossed my towel onto the bench, grabbed my black leather belt, and buckled it around my waist. A sword and a matching dagger hung from the belt, both a dull silver color with the same crest embedded in their hilts—seven midnight-blue shards fitted together to form a crown.
The weapons looked heavy, but they were actually quite light, since they were made of tearstone. Not only could tearstone absorb, store, and reflect magic like other jewels, but it also had the unique property of offering protection from magic, deflecting it like a shield would knock aside an arrow in a gladiator bout. The dark blue shards in the hilts would divert quite a bit of magier power, as would the weapons’ silvery razor-sharp blades.
The sword and the dagger had saved me from being assassinated more than once, and I never went anywhere without them. I also had a matching shield, but it drew far too much attention, so I had left it in my chambers at the palace.
Once the weapons belt was fastened around my waist, I focused on the two identical bracelets—gauntlets—that gleamed on my wrists. Both were made of silver that had been shaped into sharp thorns, all of which wrapped around and protected the design in the center—another midnight-blue crown of shards.