“Apologies to you both.” Cullen didn’t sound sorry at all. Eira glared daggers of ice into the back of his skull, stopping just before they manifested in thin air and actually hurt the man.
She didn’t want to hurt anyone. Even if her magic insisted otherwise… Eira couldn’t deny a dark and curious corner of her wondered what it would feel like to freeze him slowly, just like the journal described. Could she hold him in a frigid stasis without killing him?
“You too.” Marcus didn’t exempt her.
“I’ll be nice as long as he is.” This was why she never had spent time with Cullen and Marcus.
She’d met Cullen years ago and didn’t like him in the slightest, avoiding him like the plague. Every story she’d heard whispered about him since affirmed the decision. Cullen was a polarizing person and Eira knew she was on the right pole when Alyss had agreed with her assessment. Then, after the incident three years ago and his involvement…Eira had all the more reason to be skeptical of his intentions.
The Sunlit Stage was the royal receiving area and largest, grandest public entrance to the palace. A wide stage connected the palace with an arena below. Common folk flooded in while palace servants and staff began to fill tall risers that stretched up and away from the semi-circle like sunbeams.
Luckily, they were among the first to arrive and secured good placement on the lower risers right above the archway that the crown princess would ride in through. The younger Windwalkers packed in around them, staying close. The other palace servants gave them a good step’s worth of distance, even when it became crowded. The wariness that prevailed in public consciousness around sorcerers was a stubborn weed—nearly impossible to rip out from the roots.
Eira ignored the servants, as usual, gripped the railing before her tightly, and stared at nothing. She submerged herself deep into the ocean of her magic, down and down until everything was muffled. This was a noisy place. The people were as loud as the brick and mortar. Everyone and everything wanted to speak all at once in a din that only grew in volume the moment the emperor, empress, and younger prince emerged with their royal detail and took their place at the edge of the stage.
“Imagine what it’s like…” Marcus sighed wistfully. His voice brought her back. “To have people screaming your name.”
“It gets old,” Cullen japed.
“Oh, quiet, you.” Marcus elbowed his friend.
Eira kept her eyes downcast toward the archway below them. Any moment now, there would be—
The rumble of hooves brought the crowd to a hush. With the flutter of pennons catching on torchlight, moonlight, and the last dregs of sunlight alike, a group of twenty people rode through the center roadway and into the heart of the Sunlit Stage. Eira inhaled slowly, as though she could breathe in the unbridled air of a land across the sea…a land filled with unimaginable magic and peoples beyond her current comprehension. As if the people before her radiated that very air off their velvet-clad shoulders.
Elfin. They looked almost like humans, but weren’t. From their pointed ears to brightly colored eyes, they were something different. A race of people that had been unknown to the Solaris Empire for hundreds of years until Crown Princess Vi Solaris formed the Imperial Armada and sailed across the sea three mere years ago. In three years, the world changed for the Solaris Empire.
A fact Eira sometimes felt like she was the only one who understood.
“Where’s Vi?” Marcus whispered at her side.
Eira tore her eyes away from the ethereal creatures that were the elfin to take in the greater group. Sure enough, she saw the elfin’s delegation in their rich fabrics and careful stitching. There were the humans from Solaris in plate armor and the bland style Eira was familiar with.
But neither the princess nor her elfin betrothed were with them. A deathly silence had fallen over the assembled crowd as the masses seemed to acknowledge her absence and its possible implication. The dark eyes of the emperor were a blank slate as he regarded the group. The warmth Eira had seen earlier in the empress had vanished into something unreadable.
“Your Majesties.” A man with pitch-black hair tied back into a small ponytail at the nape of his neck spoke. Judging from the bars on the shoulders of his nautical coat, he was some high-ranking member of the armada.
“Ambassador Cordon.” The emperor’s voice was surprisingly frigid for a man who the stories painted as the Fire Lord. “We were expecting our daughter’s return.”
“I regret that I do not bring our crown princess, but I do bring good tidings on her behalf.” The ambassador ascended the stairs and sank to his knee, holding out a bound scroll to the empress.
Vhalla accepted the offering, broke the seal, and read it before passing it to the emperor. Everyone waited with bated breath. Waited to see if they were about to watch a massacre for the lack of a crown princess…or if there was truly good news.
“People of Solaris.” The emperor stepped forward, eyes still on the scroll. “These are good tidings indeed.” A smile cracked his lips. Eira recognized it as the smile of a proud father. She knew it because her own father had given the same smile to Marcus countless times. “Our crown princess has succeeded in brokering a deal—not just with the Queendom of Meru, but with the Twilight Kingdom, the Kingdom of Draconis, and the People’s Republic of Qwint. They are calling it the Five Kingdoms Accords.”
“Kingdoms?” Eira repeated. “Wasn’t one of them a queendom?”
“And one a…republic?” Marcus looked to Cullen and then her.
Eira shook her head. “I’ve never heard the term before.”
“It’s something like the East used to be, I think. Back before Cyven was a part of the Empire—a government run by the people.” Cullen was Eastern and the son of a politician; it would figure he’d know.
“How strange that there’s a larger state run
