Myrae’s palace was built to outshine the sun, and on the first night of the harvest festival, it did. Each terrace of the Hall of First Light was sheathed in colored glass that caught the dying sun’s embers and refracted them into the vast, columned rotunda where Queen Allandra sat among her courtiers. The light, thick as honey, made every surface shimmer. On the high tables, jeweled fruit pyramids rose between vases of living flame, and the ceiling’s frescoes—scenes of Luinan glory and bloody conquest—simmered with reflected fire, so that the painted faces seemed to breathe and watch and weigh.
At the center, beneath a suspended globe of purest Solvari glass, Allandra Luina presided. She wore emerald silk that bared the sharp cut of her shoulders, the bodice stitched with sun-gold thread and banded at the throat with a chain of citrine. The color set off her skin, which was not so pale as the northborn but possessed a luminance all its own, and her hair, pinned with perfect severity, was the bright gilt of a coin new-minted. When she spoke, the glass caught her voice and spun it back in a thousand glittering echoes, so that the court’s laughter always had a bit of her in it, even when she was silent.
The festival demanded her presence, but the real work of the night was seeing and being seen. Allandra let her gaze drift from table to table, cataloguing alliances, measuring the angle of a whispered head or a hand placed too intimately on a goblet. She had learned the game from her mother and perfected it in the years since, always aware that the whole of Avalusia could be mapped in a single glance, if one had the patience and the will.
The orchestra, perched on a balcony above the west doors, played the same raucous tune that thumped up from the city’s lower tiers. Myrae’s harvest was not a solemn feast; it was a contest to see which quarter could out-sing, out-dance, and outdrink all others before the sun rose. On the rotunda’s edge, the lesser nobles and their guests swirled in a riot of color; spun saffron, ice-blue, the deep maroon of foreign silks, and their laughter rose in sheets, occasionally punctuated by the crash of a dropped glass or the squeal of a child escaping a wet-nurse.
The real court, though, stayed close to Allandra.
Hagen, her brother, sat at her right, shoulders squared to the hall, one hand draped with calculated looseness on the table’s edge. He had always known how to appear at ease in a room that was watching him. His eyes were the color of old honey, and just now they fixed on the wine decanter as if nothing else in the world deserved his attention. At intervals, he tipped a glass for himself and another for his sister, but Allandra noticed he drank only from his own.
He broke the lull in conversation with a low, precise voice. “You’re unusually quiet tonight. Is the entertainment too provincial?”
She did not turn. “I was considering how the glassblowers engineered the new dome. Last year, it was all candle smoke and colored banners.”
He gave a small, appreciative grunt. “The city’s expecting a record yield from the southern vineyards. The least we can do is put their taxes to work.”
“I’ll send a letter,” she replied. “It always means more if the queen has noticed the décor.”
Hagen’s smile was a subtle, sideways thing. He followed her gaze down the row of tables, landing on the cluster of gold-braided soldiers who toasted each other with the reckless gusto of men who had seen real war and lived in spite of it.
“Your Captain Daravan is at it again,” he murmured.
Allandra shifted her focus, finding Daravan instantly. He was, as always, difficult to miss and harder to read: tall even among Sun Fae, dark-haired, broad-shouldered, and still enough that the noise of the room seemed to move around him rather than through him. He was younger than most men who carried that much command without trying to prove it, but there was nothing boyish in the way he watched a hall. He said little, and missed less. Just now, he leaned in toward his second, a pale, sharp-nosed woman in a new uniform, and Allandra saw the faintest twitch of a warning, a movement so small it might have been a joke, or a dare, or the start of something worse.
She let her hand rest on the table, fingers loose, nails buffed to a shine. “I’m told the Lady of Aymer in Lyehira spent their festival in mourning for her late consort. The city tripled the order of festival banners in black, to show sympathy.”
Hagen’s expression did not change, but she felt his amusement in the set of his jaw. “They have to pretend it’s a tragedy. The rest of the world already knows Xuiven marriages are one long negotiation.”
Allandra dipped her head, acknowledging the truth. “Still, it’s a useful lesson. If we ever want to outdo the Night Fae, we’ll have to start killing our own spouses for effect.”
Her brother snorted, the sound quickly contained. “Bold strategy. Perhaps wait until the court has recovered from surviving one reigning queen.”
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This time, she did look at him, holding his gaze a moment too long.
They both remembered the past two years: what the city had whispered, what the court had feared, and how many people had tried to make grief into a succession crisis. She sipped her wine, letting the acidity bite the back of her tongue, then set the glass aside.
The orchestral tune shifted, signaling the entry of children, dozens of them, some Sun Fae bright and wild, others of the minor lines, and a few children of diplomats from beyond the sea. They darted and capered, a riot of ribbons and uncombed hair, shrieking as they evaded the stern arms of nursemaids.
Allandra’s daughter, Everly, moved with them.
She wore green, unadorned but for a single strand of topaz at her throat, and her hair, loose to the waist, caught every stray beam of light. She threaded through the crowd with unerring purpose, a small boat knifing straight for the royal table.
Hagen saw her coming and straightened in his chair, offering his glass as if in salute.
Everly ignored it.
She planted both palms on the table and rose onto her toes, trying to make herself tall enough to be considered. There was a smear of honey at the corner of her mouth and one ribbon slipping from her hair.
“Mama,” she said, breathless and urgent, “they are doing the fast song next.”
Allandra let her lips curve, a micro-expression only the child could see. “Are they?”
Everly nodded hard enough to make the loose ribbon slide another inch. “And I know the twirly part. I practiced. Lessa said I can’t do it in these shoes, but Lessa is wrong.”
“Lessa is rarely wrong.”
“She is wrong this time.” Everly leaned closer, lowering her voice to a whisper that carried perfectly to Hagen. “I need to stay.”
“You need to?”
“Yes.”
“For reasons of state?”
Everly’s brow furrowed. “For the twirly part.”
Hagen pressed his knuckles lightly to his mouth, hiding a smile. “A grave diplomatic matter.”
Everly brightened at once and turned to him. “Uncle Hagen says it’s diplo… diplo-magic.”
“Diplomatic,” Allandra corrected.
“That,” Everly said, with the confidence of someone who had never been defeated by a word for more than three seconds. “So I can stay.”
Allandra arched an eyebrow. “You were promised until the first bonfire.”
“But I can see the bonfire from here,” Everly protested. “So it still counts.”
“The promise was not that you could see it. The promise was that you could stay until it was lit.”
Everly considered this with the solemnity of a judge handed a flawed treaty.
Then she looked at Hagen.
“If Uncle says yes, is it queen yes?”
“No,” Allandra said.
Hagen sighed theatrically. “Tragically, I have been overruled.”
Everly frowned at him. “You didn’t even say yes.”
“I was preparing to be persuasive.”
“You were too slow.”
“An error I shall carry forever.”
Everly looked unimpressed. Then she turned back to Allandra, grasped the edge of the table with both hands, and deployed her most serious expression.
“Please, Mama. Just the fast song. I will not spill anything, and I will not bite Lord Merrow’s nephew even if he steps on me again.”
Hagen made a strangled sound into his wine.
Allandra’s mouth twitched.
“That is a very generous offer.”
“He steps on purpose.”
“I know.”
Everly’s eyes widened. “You know?”
“I am Queen. I know many things.”
Everly absorbed that, then nodded as if this confirmed a useful suspicion.
Allandra reached out and slid the loose ribbon back behind her daughter’s ear. “One song. Then Lessa takes you to the balcony for the bonfire.”
“One whole song?”
“One whole song.”
“With the twirly part?”
“If your shoes survive.”
Everly threw both arms around Allandra’s waist in a brief, fierce hug, then released her just as quickly, already turning toward the table.
“Can I have that?”
She pointed at a glazed tart.
“You may have half.”
Everly took the entire tart, bit into it with carnivorous focus, and vanished before the ruling could be clarified.
Hagen watched her go, openly amused now. “She looks more like you every year.”
Allandra’s smile faded by degrees. “She has your stubbornness.”
“And my charm.”
“She bites Lord Merrow’s nephew.”
“Then she has your judgment as well.”
Allandra did not answer.
Instead, she let her focus drift beyond the table, to the high archways at the head of the hall, where Daravan now stood with his second. He did not gesture or call for attention. He merely watched her, and when he saw she was watching back, he inclined his head.
A signal with the precision of a dropped knife.
She rose, smooth and unhurried, the motion drawing the eyes of the court with effortless inevitability. Hagen stood with her, but she waved him down, a gesture with just enough warmth to disguise its finality.
“Hold my place,” she said, and Hagen bowed, just enough to remind the room that he still outranked every soul in it but her.
The walk to the archway was a gauntlet of flattery: lords and ladies rose from their seats, offered wine, bent at the waist in elaborate half-curtsies. Allandra accepted each with a nod, her face as perfectly neutral as the palace itself. When she reached Davaran, she paused just long enough for the world to notice.
He stepped into her shadow, so that no one but the Queen could hear him. “There’s a problem in the lower dungeons,” he said. “A Night Fae was caught using magic at the festival. She’s in our custody.”
Allandra stilled. She felt the old reflex; panic, rage, the memory of her husband’s blood and her father’s, and smothered it before it touched her features. “What kind of magic?”
Davaran’s mouth ticked. “A shield. But the manner was unusual. She’s young. Alone.”
“Then why the urgency?” she said, already knowing the answer.
He did not hesitate. “The look of her, Majesty. It’s not a merchant’s daughter. She has the Xuiven blood. The eyes.”
Allandra let out a slow breath, then said, “Bring me to her.”
“Now?”
She met his eyes, and for a moment the world shrank to just the two of them. “Now.”
Davaran nodded, then motioned to his second, who peeled off down the hall at a run.