Rafe shrugged. “I don’t know, we’ve been hearing about this place since we were kids. I expected something…larger? Grander? I don’t know…” He gestured with his hands. “More.”
Xander laughed. “You’ve always been difficult to please.”
“Me?” Rafe touched his heart in feigned denial. “Maybe I just have high standards. There’s nothing wrong with that.”
“Maybe you’re just too stubborn for your own good,” Xander mumbled, his voice barely audible above the blistering winds.
But Rafe heard him.
He heard everything his brother said, whether he wanted to or not, because he’d spent his life learning how to pay attention—to his brother, to his people, to anything and everything that might affect his place in the House of Whispers. That was what the bastard son of a dead king needed to do to earn his keep—love his crown prince unconditionally and leave no room for anyone to ever question his loyalty.
Yet even surrounded by nothing but air and ice, he had no snappy response for his brother. He couldn’t deny that he was stubborn. He also knew why Xander had brought him to the sky bridge so early in the morning, twenty minutes before the rest of their people planned to show up.
“I’m not going to do it,” Rafe murmured.
Xander sighed loudly, but without surprise—with something more akin to frustration. “You have to.”
“I don’t. And I won’t.”
“Rafe, now is not the time—”
“It’s the perfect time, Xander. It’s the only time.”
The crown prince’s midnight feathers bristled, but he took a deep breath, ever the calm, collected brother, and continued with his plan undeterred. Rafe, on the other hand, stepped forward, nostrils flaring as he turned to face his sibling, wings stretching wide even as he tried to rein them in.
“Xander,” he protested.
Patience and unrelenting persistence were Xander's own brand of stubbornness, and he ignored Rafe, pulling free the chain he always wore around his neck to reveal a large ring previously hidden beneath his leather overcoat.
“You have to take it,” Xander said in an unflinching tone.
Rafe preferred to think of this as his brother’s royal voice, because it was a royal pain in his ass. Still, he glanced down at the silver band resting in his brother’s open palm. The polished obsidian stone faced out, mocking him with the royal seal. Rafe had spent his entire life convincing the ravens he had no desire to steal his brother’s throne. And yet, here he was, being asked to do that very thing during the most important week of their young lives.
He lifted his gaze back to his brother’s. They’d been born four months apart, from two different mothers, but they might as well have been twins except for the color of their eyes—Xander’s the soft lavender of the royal line, and Rafe’s the vibrant blue of a bastard born of the sky.
“Don’t ask this of me, brother,” he whispered. “Anything but this.”
Xander’s gaze was harder than its soft color seemed to allow, full of compassion yet unwavering. The gaze of a king. “I discussed it with the advisors before we came, and we all agreed. The House of Whispers might accept me for what I am, love me for what I am, but we need to show strength before the other houses.”
“You’re strong,” Rafe argued.
“With my words, yes. With my actions, yes. With my conviction and my love for our people, yes." Xander finished softly, "But for the requirements of the courtship trials, we both know that’s not the case."
Rafe tried to hold his brother’s gaze, to keep it steady and uplifted and proud. But instead, Xander dropped his eyes. And Rafe’s followed, landing where they had been led, on the empty space where his brother’s right hand should have been.
“The trials will test our physical abilities,” Xander said, finally looking up. Any other person would have been fooled by the calculated emptiness of his eyes, but Rafe knew his brother too well. He could see the hurt, the shame, and the pain his brother’s disability caused. None of it was warranted, but it was there all the same. “Before the other houses, during the trials, you have to take my place. You have to pretend to be me, so our people can finally have the mate match they deserve.”
Rafe knew what people gossiped about in the dark halls of their castle. How the ravens had lost favor with the other gods, how their patron god was weakening, how they’d been cursed. The House of Whispers had found a mate match in only one of the past five courtship trials. The royal families of all seven houses had been cursed with too few males to females, or too few females to males, and while love matches could be of the same sex, the matches of the monarchy must produce blood heirs.
For four generations, the ravens had been the odd house out, returning home from the trials empty handed, forced to find a mate within their own house instead of in another royal family—until the last ritual. Xander’s mother, the crown princess at the time, had been matched with a second son—a falcon from the House of Prey. But he had possessed a wandering eye in lieu of a sharp one. The king consort, meant to prove the gods had once more blessed the ravens, instead committed their most egregious crime. And Rafe, the evidence of that crime, understood how much pressure his brother felt to erase the ill omens of the past.
“Do you really think this is how Taetanos would want his favor won?” Rafe asked, eyes slipping toward the sky bridge and the snow-covered tundra on the other side. It stretched into the horizon, hiding the House of Peace within its folds.
“He’s not just the god of death, brother,” Xander pointed out, still looking at Rafe. “He’s the god of fate and fortune. He’s the god that gave us the same father and nearly the same face. The god that dealt me my hand and you yours. He’s the god that gave us these roles and these cards to play.”
A chill crept along Rafe's spine as his brother muttered those undeniable words. For the first time, he felt the bite of this frigid, foreign land.
“And what does the queen say?” Rafe asked, trying a different approach. Xander’s mother hated him and everything he represented, as did many of his people. There was no way she would agree to this insane plan, no way she would ever admit he was better equipped than her son for any challenge. Truth be told, Rafe thought she was right in that belief.
“She understands the necessity.”
It was all Rafe could do not to snap his wings wide open and fly away. Not to retreat. Not to run from this role he’d never wanted, not even in his imagination. “So that’s it? It’s settled, whether I want it to be or not?”
“You’ll don the royal seal until the final day of the trials, when the matches are revealed, and then we’ll switch places. Tradition dictates you'll be wearing a mask, anyway, and I’ll stay out of sight. No one will even suspect anything. My face will be the one they remember in the end, so you have nothing to fear.”
Rafe frowned. “Easy for you to say.”
“True.” His brother grinned.
The frown only deepened. “What will you be doing during all of this?”
Xander shrugged, bright lavender sparks flashing in the corners of his eyes. “I’ll be playing you, of course. The loyal, quiet, subservient second to the prince, who does everything his older brother commands.”