Chapter 23

Edam walks to the middle of the arena until he stands so close I could reach out and touch him if I dared. I focus on keeping my heart rate steady.

Edam’s voice is scratchy and low when he says, “I shouldn’t have asked about yesterday. Your relationship with your sister is none of my business.”

I arch one eyebrow. “It’s so much simpler to just say ‘I’m sorry.’”

“Touché.”

“Besides, everyone knows Judica and I aren’t close.”

“She was out of line,” he says. “You’ve never threatened her, and I told her that last night.”

“Whoa, that didn’t go well.”

“It didn’t,” he said. “In fact, you could say it precipitated our breakup.”

So she dumped him because he defended me? I should keep quiet, but I don’t. “Sometimes change is for the best.”

“I hope so.” Edam reaches out to touch my arm and I jump back.

“So, what now?” I ask.

Edam turns away. When he turns back to face me, he’s wearing a strange expression I can’t read. “Hand-to-hand. Even if you don’t want to work with swords after yesterday, I think you could use some practice in dueling forms.”

“You’re probably right.” I spread my feet shoulder width apart and let my arms drop to my sides.

“Shouldn’t you take your necklace off?”

“This?” I gesture to the necklace I never remove. It’s a framework of silver in a ‘U’ shape, set with purple stones of varying colors. It circles my neck, the larger stones near the bottom. “No, I don’t think so.”

He raises his eyebrows at me. “Really? I could grab it and use it to take you down.”

“I’m prepared for that possibility. I never take it off. Mom’s orders.”

He looks curious but doesn’t press for more.

His stance shifts to match mine. “On my mark, then.” He claps and we’re off.

He’s good. He pins me in under a minute.

“Again,” I say.

And again, pinned in under a minute.

“Don’t pin me this time,” I say. “Hit me.”

“Full contact?” His words practically quiver with doubt.

“I didn’t do much right yesterday, but I think I proved that I heal just fine.”

He grins. “True enough.”

Less than two minutes later I’m lying flat on my back with a broken shin and a bloody nose. I roll over and spit blood all over the mat while I mend my shattered bone. “Why did I ask for full contact? Yuck.”

Edam chuckles.

I moan as I sit up. “If you aren’t better than Judica, I’ll eat my boiled egg tomorrow.”

“Not a fan of eggs, huh?”

I snort. “You may be the best fighter I’ve ever met.”

Edam smiles. “Didn’t you wonder why Balthasar’s finally talking about retiring, after nine hundred years as Security Chief?”

I hadn’t really thought about it. “He’s old. He has to retire sometime, but I guess you’re right. There are lots of people much more...” I was going to say more qualified, but that seems rude. “Well, there are people...” I trail off, not wanting to say older either. I also don’t mention that I think it’s dumb to choose someone to run all the family’s non-military security interests based on how good they are at one-on-one combat. A lot of evian traditions don’t make sense to me, which is another reason I’d make a terrible empress.

“I know I’m too young and I’m inexperienced. Everyone’s thinking it, but none of them can beat me in here, and I doubt anyone else could defeat Balthasar either, no matter how old he is.”

“Can you?” I ask.

He smiles. “I can’t take over until I do, and I won’t challenge him until I’m sure.”

“I hadn’t thought much about it.”

“My point is, don’t feel too bad about losing to me.”

“You’re just that awesome?”

He grins ear-to-ear. “Something like that, Your Highness.”

“I thought we were past that?”

“My apologies. Chancery.”

The sound of my name coming from him warms my heart. “I should probably practice my aim, now that I’ve been beaten so soundly in hand-to-hand.”

“I think I should teach you a few moves first. Melodics or not, there are some sneaky holds and a few strikes you ought to know.”

He demonstrates several moves I mastered long ago. I repeat them anyway, pretending to pay attention. Finally, he shows me a pull and strike combo that would have broken his elbow if I’d used it earlier.

He grabs my arm. “Now, you show me—”

I execute it perfectly. He grunts and straightens, and I watch in awe as his elbow mends. He heals fast, much faster than me.

“You obviously already knew that one,” he says, “so why didn’t you do it earlier? When I struck you on the left.”

“I hate it.” I look at the springy black floor of the arena, unable to meet his eyes.

“That strike? Why?” He’s trying to meet my eye, but I’m too embarrassed.

“No, not that strike, just the noise.” I swallow.

“Wait, do you mean the sound of a bone breaking?” He raises his eyebrows.

“Yeah.”

“I heal too, you know. I may not be from Alamecha by birth, but Malessa’s not a bad family. It’s the second best in fact, although if you ever tell my sister I said that, I’ll deny it.” He grins.

His smile is so contagious I can’t help grinning back.

“I’m seventh generation just like you, and I can heal a broken bone in half a second.”

“Wait, you are?” I’m surprised. Seventh generation is pretty rare. I assumed he was eighth, son of Analessa, the Malessa family’s current queen.

“I was Senah’s last child. She died when I was three. I have few memories of her.”

“How do you remember her at all? Weren’t you sold at birth?”

Edam shakes his head. “Nope. My mother kept me, I guess because she’d gotten nostalgic, but my sister Analessa sold me after she died.”

“Wait, really?” Most empresses sell their sons, because if they don’t, other rulers won’t sell theirs to them. It’s sort of a quid pro quo. Each family wants to raise any possible consort for the new Heir themselves, to ensure loyalty, so they all sell any sons of the current queen to other families. Occasionally, if a queen had already sold quite a few boys, they’d decide to keep one. It happened more often at the end of their lives. I guess it makes sense. People get sentimental with age. Even so, the idea of being sold at the age of three horrifies me. He would have remembered every single thing about his family, and being sold would have felt like a major betrayal. Combine that with losing his mother and. . .

As if he can sense my horror, Edam says, “Your mother was kind, for what it’s worth. She met me at the funeral and when Analessa announced she was selling me, your mother brought me home personally. She clipped me in right next to her on the jet. I believe she had just lost your brother Moses.”

Mom told me once she meant to keep a son, but it was too hard because it reminded her of all the boys she had given up. She sold Moses when he was twenty-five days old.

“Kind of sucks your sister sold you. Your mom died and then you got dumped in a new family at the same time.”

He shrugs. “I hated her for a while, but I’m sure Analessa had her reasons.”

“I’m still sorry.”

“Don’t be. I’m not sorry to be here.” His eyes meet mine and I can’t breathe.

They’re so blue. And his jawline is criminally chiseled. Oxygen. I need oxygen. I force a breath in and then out of my lungs.

Edam nods, as if he’s been considering something and come to a conclusion about it. “Look, you hate hurting people and I get it. You want to fix everything and everyone, but I don’t need fixing.” He stares at me with something very much like a challenge in his intense, stormy eyes.

He’s not the one who needs fixing. “I’ve always hated causing pain.”

Edam doesn’t say anything else, but I’m sure he agrees with Judica that I’m weak, maybe even fatally flawed. He crosses the room to another cabinet and pulls out a simple slingshot, which he passes to me.

“Let’s work on your aim.”

He presses a button and the targets pop up across the room in varying places. The targets differ in size and height. He drops a bag full of irregularly shaped pebbles into my hand.

“Timed?” I ask.

“Of course.”

“On your mark then.” He claps three times and I start shooting. I hit the closest ones first and then fan out. I shoot the last one and drop my hand. “Done.”

He looks at the screen, reading impact, precision, and timing. He doesn’t say a word, but he makes me do the same thing with moving targets. Then he makes me try a more complicated slingshot, a bow, and finally a crossbow. I’m equally good with all of them. He reaches for a gun, but then he notices the time. “I guess we can practice with guns tomorrow.”

I try not to show the shiver of excitement that races through me when he says tomorrow. “Sure.”

“You’re amazing at that,” he says.

“I know. Forget Goliath, I’d have taken out most of his army too, right?”

He smiles because I may suck at hand-to-hand and I may hate hurting people, but I dominate all projectiles. I glance at my watch. Five minutes after eleven. I should get cleaned up.

“Well thanks,” I say. “It’s been interesting.”

Edam smiles at me. “That it has.”

Do not freak out. Do not race, heart. Do not. But it’s not lost on me that he’s not dating Judica anymore, and he’s smiling at me. Maybe it’s not awful if he hears my traitorous heart racing along a little bit. . .

I turn to go and snap my fingers at Cookie. I reach for the handle on the door before I realize she didn’t get up. She’s still asleep. Weird. I walk over to her and shake her a little.

Nothing.

It takes me several seconds to register the import of something I don’t hear. Something I’ve heard every day for seven years. I can’t hear her familiar heartbeat because it’s not beating. I was so distracted with Edam that I didn’t notice until just now. I crouch down and cradle Cookie’s head in my arms. My sweet little dog is dead. She was in perfect health this morning. She came on part of my run, ate as much as always, but... she was acting oddly in my room before we came here. Almost as if she felt sick.

Or as if she’d been poisoned.

Seconds later I’m screaming a name and I’m not stopping until I get my pound of flesh. Judica, I’m coming for you, and this time I will relish the sound of every last crunch.