“Nico,” Josef said, his voice warning.
She took another step.
Josef looked at her, his face as close to panic as Eli had ever seen it. “Nico, listen—”
Before he could say anything else, Nico vanished. There was no sound, no flash. She simply snuffed out like a candle.
After that, everything happened at once.
Josef roared curses as the startled guards rushed forward, swords drawn. Eli put up his hands as a blade pressed into his back, but when a guard tried the same to Josef, the swordsman whirled around, grabbed the sword out of the guard’s hand, and threw him to the ground so hard the man bounced. The guard’s sword followed a second later as Josef, still cursing, threw it hilt first at the man’s head.
With that, Josef straightened up, rolled his shoulders, and started for the door. Started, and then stopped cold. Eli blinked in surprise. He hadn’t seen her move, hadn’t heard her, but the princess was suddenly right behind Josef, the tip of her short sword pressed into his right shoulder.
“That’s enough, Prince Thereson,” she said quietly. “One more step and I sever the ligament that moves your sword arm. Hands where I can see them, please.”
Josef put his hands out slowly, and the princess turned him around to face the queen again.
“What was that?” the queen said in a low, angry voice. “What have you gotten yourself involved with, Thereson?”
Eli gritted his teeth. Things were rapidly falling apart. It wasn’t so much the sword at his own back. He could duck out of that easily enough. But he could see Josef’s hands shaking as the queen questioned him. The swordsman was pale with rage, the kind that took some good old-fashioned violence to pull him out of, and the queen wasn’t letting up. It was up to Eli to act fast before Josef did something they’d regret.
“Your majesty,” he said, stepping past Josef and the princess with a florid bow, much to his guard’s surprise. Josef whipped around, but Eli stomped on his toes before the swordsman could say anything and smiled his best smile at the queen. “I believe we’ve started this on the wrong foot.”
The queen looked down her nose at him, quite a feat, considering he was standing and she was sitting. “And who are you? What makes you think you have the right to speak in my presence?”
Eli’s smile grew even more charming. “Because I am the son of one of your oldest allies.” He reached into his coat pocket and drew out a creased slip of paper, which he handed to the queen with a flourish. “Eliton Banage.”
“Banage?” The queen frowned, confused. “You are Etmon’s son?”
“The very same,” Eli said as she took the paper from his fingers. “And every bit as much of a disappointment to him as our dear Josef is to you.”
The queen glanced at the paper. “This is a Council identity paper for a child,” she said. “And it’s almost two decades out of date.”
“I don’t get home much,” Eli said, his voice deepening to a tragic note. “My father and I don’t get along, as you can see. But he always spoke very highly of you and his time fighting for Osera against the Empress.”
Queen Theresa arched an eyebrow. “I sincerely doubt that,” she said, handing the slip of paper to the lovely lady in black. “You won’t object if I ask Lenette to check the validity of your statement? I will admit there is a family resemblance, but I must be sure. Still”—her eyes narrowed—“you are the right age.”
Eli gave her his best innocent look. The queen didn’t seem to buy it.
“Well,” Theresa said, sitting back. “If you are indeed Etmon’s son, then I welcome you, but this is a family matter. You’d do best to stay out of it.”
Eli’s face clouded with a look of deep pain. “I understand your reticence, your grace,” he said gently. “But your son and I have been thick as thieves for a while now. I know him as I know myself, and, if I may be so bold, I don’t think you have things quite by the right end.” He clasped his hands, and his voice shook with earnest emotion. “Whatever terms he may have left you on, your majesty, Josef dropped everything to come here when he saw those posters. Even I was inspired. He’s trying to do the right thing, but it’s not easy. He’s been living his life moment to moment as a mercenary for years, and now, to suddenly hear that he’s expected to father a child with a wife he’s known about for only a few months, that’s a bone for any man to swallow. As you saw, the mere mention was too much for our other companion.”
“Yes,” the queen said, leaning forward. “What about your companion?”
“Oh, Nico does that all the time,” Eli said, waving her words away. “She’s quite the escape artist. Some people swear she disappears into thin air, but I’m sure your majesty is not one to be fooled by such cheap tricks.”
The queen glared at him. “I don’t care for your quick tongue, Mr. Banage. Get to the point.”
Eli’s smile faltered just a hair. “My point, majesty, is that we’ve been traveling for a week solid to come into your presence, and we’re tired. Surely you would not begrudge your son a night to think things over before he’s forced into the marriage bed?” He turned his smile to the princess, who still had her sword pressed into Josef’s back. “Lovely as this young lady is, it’s a big change for our Josef, and he takes to change about as well as a rock takes to floating. I’m sure that in the morning, once he’s had time to think about what he owes his family, he’ll be much more tractable.”
The queen tilted her head, considering. “The young Banage makes a good point,” she said. “Adela, release him.”
The sword vanished from Josef’s back, and the princess stepped aside to stand next to the queen once again. The other soldiers stood down as well, and Eli breathed a sigh of relief.
Josef lowered his arms and turned around, glaring daggers at his mother. The queen met him in kind, glaring so hard Eli was afraid the air between them would start to boil.
“Your friend has bought you a night of reprieve,” she said at last. “You will stay in the palace tonight. The guards will take you to your rooms, but before that, I want you to look at me.”
Josef’s jaw clenched, but the queen cut him off before he could get a word out.
“No,” she said quietly. “Do not speak. Look.”
And with that, the queen tossed aside her blanket with a bony hand. Lenette and Adela both moved to help her, but the queen pushed them away. Slowly, painfully, Theresa pulled herself to her feet, standing by her own power before the fire.
It was a sad sight. The silk nightgown hung from the queen’s bony shoulders. Her arms were so thin, Eli could have wrapped his hand all the way around her bicep. If her back were straight, she might have been as tall as Josef, but the queen was bent with age, her spine curved in an unnatural arc that forced her to lean forward. Even so, she straightened as well as she could before holding out her arms.
“Look at me, Prince Thereson,” she said, her voice as hard as the stone around them. “Look at what is left of Osera’s queen. The Empress’s hammer falls on our shores, and this weak, dying body is all that stands to face her. You’ve been stubborn as a pig all your life, but if I ever did my duty as your mother, as your queen—if I ever instilled even a stirring of love for you homeland in that bitter, guarded heart of yours, then, just this once, listen to my command. Do your duty. Be Osera’s prince, if only to pass on the blood of our ancestors, and I will never bother you again.”
She stood a moment longer, and then fell back onto her couch. Lenette was at her side immediately, fussing and pressing the queen’s blanket back across her legs. The queen paid the lady no mind. Her eyes never left Josef’s, daring him to defy her again. Josef didn’t say a word. When the guards moved to lead them away, Josef let them, but he never stopped watching his mother until the guards closed her doors behind them.
In Eli’s experience, “room” was a royal euphemism for prison cell, and his suspicions proved correct. The guards led them up a flight of stairs to a nondescript hall lined with heavy wooden doors, not barred but not exactly inviting either. They stopped at two doors right next to each other. Josef went through the first, Eli the second, stumbling in as the guards locked the iron bolt from the outside with a solid click.
Eli sighed at the barred door and then took a moment to consider his situation. He’d been in nicer cells, but not many. There was a feather bed, a porcelain washstand, an ornate wooden table with books, cards, and a lamp turned low. The wooden floor was carpeted, and the bars on the narrow window were tastefully obscured behind thick curtains. It was all very well done and, for a lesser man, very secure. Eli, however, was the greatest thief in the world. Five minutes after the guards left, he was hanging off the palace’s outer wall, banging on Josef’s shuttered window.
