“Pride,” Ptolemus finally says, as if realizing that Evangeline isn’t going to speak. Or admit what she cannot face. “I should be going. I’m late as it is.” Even he can’t keep his voice from cracking with disappointment. “I’ll need the letter, Eve.”
Still quiet, Evangeline nods her head toward the salon. And the envelope still waiting, a white square on polished wood. I haven’t touched it yet. I don’t think I ever will.
“Right, thanks,” Ptolemus mumbles. I half expect him to mutter his annoyance under his breath as he strides into the next room, wishing Evangeline would follow.
I watch her instead of him. In spite of all the glamour and shine of the Nortan court, Evangeline is more beautiful in Montfort. Without her painted makeup, her needle gowns, gems ablaze on every inch of her skin. She’s easier to see. The sharp nose, the familiar lips, cheekbones to die for. And everything she keeps locked inside, the anger and the want and the pain. She has no armor here.
So I recognize the shadow passing over her features, the darkness being chased. It isn’t resistance anymore. It is surrender. And relief.
“Eve—there are two.” Ptolemus returns quickly, the open envelope in one hand. Two pieces of paper in the other. His eyes dart between us in confusion. “Two letters.”
She keeps her eyes on her bare feet, as if counting her toes. “Because I wrote two. It’s not a complicated scenario.” Her haughty tone sends me spiraling through time, and suddenly I’m sitting at a gala luncheon, watching her shred some poor suitor to pieces. But she smiles at her brother in a way she would never smile at another man. “I like to be prepared for multiple outcomes.”
One of the letters is obvious. Her own abdication, to read before her country after Ptolemus refuses the throne of the Rift. But the other? I can’t say.
“Go ahead,” she urges. “Read it.”
Brow furrowed, Ptolemus does as she asks. He raises the second letter, covered in fluid handwriting, and opens his mouth to recite her words.
“‘Dear Iris.’”
My mouth falls open in shock, and Ptolemus hesitates, just as taken aback as I am. “You’re writing to Iris Cygnet? To the Lakelands?” he hisses, his voice suddenly dropping in volume. “Are you insane?”
“Eve, they’re our enemies. Montfort is funding and fighting a war against them right now. You could—you could jeopardize everything we have here.” I find myself sitting on the bed next to her, already clutching her hands in mine. “They’ll throw us out, send us into Prairie. Or worse, Evangeline, this could be seen as treason.” And I know what Montfort does with traitors. What any country would do. “Please, my love—”
“Read it,” she says again, her teeth clenched.
This time, her voice takes me to a different memory. A worse one. My marriage to Ptolemus, small and private as it was. Quieter than a union of the High Houses should have been. Probably because my parents knew I would spend the entire ceremony crying, and that Ptolemus would refuse to spend the night with me. Evangeline stood by my side through it all, as required. Sister to the groom, friend to the bride. We can bear it, she said then, her words coiling with desperation. As they are now.
Ptolemus glances at the windows, and even the door, as if expecting to see one of Davidson’s spies listening in. To satisfy him, I flare up, filling the room with blinding light for a second. Illuminating every corner and shadow.
“There’s no one here, Tolly,” I say. “Do as she asks.”
“Very well,” he whispers. I can tell he isn’t convinced, and probably thinks we’re both lunatics.
Dear Iris,
I will not bore you with the overdone greeting as befitting your rank. I’m a commoner now, and I’m allowed to take such liberties. I’m writing to you not as a friend or an enemy. Not even as one former princess to another. Though I hope my expertise on this subject, as well as my experience with the loss of kingdoms, can be of use to you if you haven’t burned this letter already. Or would you drown it? Who’s to say, really.
Our paths crossed before, and I promise you, as they stand now, our paths will cross again. If your mother keeps up her campaign, if she holds to this war still ripping between your country and my own, I swear to you, we will meet again. Either on the battlefield or across the negotiating table. If you survive long enough to see it. Norta fell to the Scarlet Guard, to Montfort, to the Red tide now sweeping across your own borders. Even you will not be able to weather it, no matter how strong you are. The Nortan States might seem ripe for the taking, but you will find no greater opposition than Tiberias Calore, the Scarlet Guard, and the delegation government now in place.
The pieces on this board we share are already in place, and it isn’t difficult to guess the game. Piedmont has been your proxy with the raiders of Prairie, to keep Montfort preoccupied with their own borders and give the Lakelands time to regroup. After all, you were sorely beaten at Archeon, and I imagine your own nobles have been at your mother’s throat over the entire affair. You’ve found opposition in the Rift, not because the Silver nobles are against you, but because they feared and respected my father. He ended up dead on your ship, did he not? What a terrible misunderstanding. Rumors really can get away from us, can’t they? And your own country, the pious, proud, bountiful Lakelands—you are steadily moving into winter. Your harvest is soon. And I suspect there are a great deal of Red workers missing, aren’t there? Who can blame them, when they can simply cross the border to seek a better life for their children?
You are a nymph, Iris. You can read the tides; you can change currents. But this current, this swift course, cannot be changed. Well I know metal, Princess. And I know that any steel that does not bend is fated to break.
If you value your throne, your crown, and your lives, you will consider what can be done to protect all three. Blood equality, new laws, as fast as you can write them, are the only way you survive this—and survive it with some power still in your grasp.
Evangeline Samos of Montfort
While Ptolemus stares, wide-eyed, at his sister’s bold strategy, the world goes hazy around me. A buzzing sounds in my ears, drowning him out as he rereads select pieces of her advice to the Lakelander princess. Evangeline Samos of Montfort. I knew she wouldn’t have the titles any longer, but to hear it, to see that name written so plainly. Of Montfort. She truly has let go of what she was, and—she’s embracing what we can be.
Tears prick my eyes, and her hand tightens in my own.
Evangeline Samos of Montfort.
Elane Haven of Montfort.
“And the abdication letter?” I say thickly, trying to keep the tears at bay.
Her jaw tightens, but she dips her head in acknowledgment. “I’ll read it myself.”
All the tension of the last few days unwinds, and a pressing weight lifts from my shoulders. I almost sigh in relief. Instead I jump to my feet, my robe swirling around me as I head for the closet.
“I guess it’s a good thing I’ve already packed.”
It’s sunset, red and cold, by the time we reach the airfield cut into the slopes of Ascendant. The pines seem to lean in, watching as the four of us clamber out of our transport and onto the tarmac. We are very much behind schedule, but no one seems to mind. Not Ptolemus, not our Montfort pilots and escort, not even Carmadon and Premier Davidson, who have come to see us off. They stand out sharply from their crowd of retainers—Carmadon in his white suit, and the premier with his familiar, inscrutable smile. Neither looks surprised by Evangeline’s presence, as if they knew she would change her mind.