Shield of Sparrows

The air warmed with the High Priest’s declaration.

Margot exhaled, her body swaying as she breathed, her breath no longer a cloud. She hated the cold because it hurt her knees.

The ice melted as the temperature returned to normal. The plop of water droplets falling on marble echoed through the throne room.

Father’s emissary raised his hand and, just like he’d done with my hair, spun his finger in a circle. Streams of water rushed for the closed front doors, escaping through its cracks.

As quickly as it had started, the show of Voster magic was finished. Other than its irritation against my skin, every trace was gone as if ice and wind had never touched this place.

Prince Zavier nodded to the Voster brothers, then turned and stalked for the exit. His rangers formed a line and followed close behind.

I guess they were done? He’d come for a bride prize—I gagged—and he’d gotten his way.

The Guardian left next, not sparing anyone a parting glance.

The High Priest lifted off the floor and floated at the Guardian’s side.

Only when the doors thudded closed behind them did I risk a breath.

“Brother Dime.” Father’s eyes were pleading as he addressed his emissary. “There must be something we can do.”

Dime. Strange that I’d never known his name.

He wasn’t a regular visitor at the castle, but he’d been around on a few occasions in my lifetime. Grandfather’s funeral. The feast of kings that Father had hosted five years ago. Arthalayus’s presentation as heir to the Quentin crown.

I should have introduced myself before. Maybe Brother Dime would have spoken for me, stood up to the High Priest, if I’d bothered to learn his name.

“Mae is to be the Turan queen,” Father said. “It cannot be Odessa. She is not capable.”

Ouch. Okay, so I wasn’t the chosen daughter, but was the idea of me as a queen really so inconceivable?

Not that I wanted to be queen. At. All.

“Oh, gods.” I pressed my fingertips to my temples, rubbing at the ache blooming in my skull.

This wasn’t happening. This wasn’t real.

Brother Dime walked toward me, his nearness making the throb in my head worse.

My hands flopped at my sides as I met his fathomless gaze. “Please.”

“This is your fortune, child.” He reached for me, long, spindly fingers extended.

But before he could touch my face with his bony fingers, I shied away, leaning closer to Margot, hoping her body would absorb the sting of his magic.

Dime studied me for a long moment, his head tilting to the side like it had earlier. He blinked those creepy eyes once, then swept out of the throne room, disappearing to wherever he stayed when he was visiting Roslo.

Did he have a castle wing? Or did he stay in the city? Maybe I should have asked about that, too.

Without having to fight against the irritation of his magic, the last shards of strength leaked from my body. I collapsed to the floor, knees landing with a crack on the marble. My stomach churned, and the meal I’d eaten hours ago threatened to make a reappearance, but I swallowed the urge to retch.

“Gods.” I signed the Eight, circling my hand around my face and around my heart. I doubted the Eight gods were listening, but if Ama, Oda, and their six children had a hint of divine intervention to spare, I’d take it.

“Odessa is to be my wife.” Banner stomped a boot on the floor.

“You heard the High Priest.” Father tore the crown from his head and dragged a fair hand through his golden hair. The strands at his temples appeared more ashen than they had before this debacle.

People called him the Gold King. His hair was the color of ripened wheat. His caramel eyes were flecked with the same golden shade as the coins in that chest. With the amber starbursts, Father’s gaze always had a glow.

The magic rooted deep in Calandra’s land tinged our irises at birth with those starbursts, linking us forever to a place. No matter where we lived, where we moved, that one color was unchanging. Every Quentin had an amber starburst.

Every Quentin except me.

My eyes were solid gold. Not a starburst in sight.

When I was a child, I used to ask Father why I was different. After he’d ignored the question countless times, I’d stopped trying to understand.

When Mae and I were girls, when the time had come for him to choose the Sparrow and he’d picked her instead of me, even though I was his eldest daughter, he hadn’t explained that, either.

The Gold King owed no one an explanation.

Father’s nickname was mostly due to the incredible wealth he’d brought to our kingdom since he’d been passed the crown from my grandfather.

Quentis hadn’t been wealthy prior to his reign. My grandfather’s passion had been women and parties and spending his people’s money on extravagance. He was the reason this castle had been plated in gold.

My father had chosen to use our resources more wisely. His fortunes were locked beneath the castle, not on its walls. Yet even the Gold King couldn’t pay this debt with riches.

“There must be another way,” Banner said. “The Turans cannot take her from me. This cannot be—”

“Banner.” Father’s voice cracked off the walls. “Leave us.”

“My king—”

“Leave. Us.”

Banner, the ever-faithful general, left without delay, his bootheels sharp as he crossed the floor.

“Out,” Father commanded to the guards. Unlike Banner, there was no argument.

With them gone, it was only us. Family.

A blade being unsheathed sounded a moment before a knife was pressed against my throat.

“What did you do?” Mae seethed.

“Get that knife away from me.” On top of everything else, I didn’t have the energy for my sister’s antics. I was moments away from throwing myself off another cliff, and she thought now would be a good time to test the sharpness of her knife? Really?

I pushed at her hand, forcing the blade away from my neck. Though not before she flicked her wrist, just enough to break the skin and draw a bead of blood.

“Shit,” I hissed, pressing my fingertip to the nick. “Did you really just cut me? Shades, you’re a demon.”

“Tell me what you did,” she snapped.

“Nothing. I did nothing.”

Her beautiful features contorted in rage. “Then why does Prince Zavier want you?”

“How should I know?” I wiped the blood from my neck, glaring up at her as I smeared it on the underside of my sleeve. “Maybe he doesn’t like blondes.”

My sister lunged, her other hand balled into a fist, ready to slam into my nose, but before she could get close, Father’s hand clasped around her wrist, halting her momentum.

He ripped the knife from her grasp and flung it across the floor. It skidded to a stop at the stairs of his throne’s dais.

“Mae,” Margot chided. “You are not helping this situation.”

“She did something, Mother. Tricked him or—”

“Enough.” Father’s command left no room for disobedience. He released Mae and lowered to a crouch in front of me, his caramel eyes searching mine. “Tell me honestly. Have you met Zavier before this day?”

“No.” I shook my head. “Never.”

“Have you crossed paths with any of the Turans since they’ve arrived?”

“Not once.”

“Where were you today?”noveldrama

Nothing good would come from the truth. Father didn’t know about the cliff diving. Banner only thought I went up to the overlook to sketch, get a better view of the city, and escape the castle’s walls. And Margot and Mae thought I loved to swim off the coast.

There was no chance that Father would see my beloved pastime as brave rather than reckless. “I went for a hike outside. Then I went swimming.”

His eyes narrowed as if he could sense the half-truth. “And?”

“When I came inside, I bumped into Brother Dime outside a gallery.”

“Which gallery?”

“The, um…crux gallery.”

“Damn your curiosity with that hall,” he snapped, nostrils flaring.

I winced. “I’m sorry.”

He’d told me on more than one occasion it wasn’t a suitable place for me to spend my time. Father didn’t understand my interest in the migrations. He also didn’t realize today hadn’t been about the art or monsters. That gallery was simply the easiest way for me to sneak in unnoticed.

Father sighed. “What else happened today?”

“Nothing. After I saw Brother Dime, I ran upstairs to change my gown. Margot helped with my hair.” Father didn’t move. He didn’t speak. Suspicion filled his eyes, like he knew I hadn’t given him the whole truth.

This silence was one of his favorite tactics. He liked to see who would break the quiet first.

Usually, it was me. I’d confess to hiding from my tutors or slipping table scraps to his hunting dogs. I’d admit to sneaking into the kitchen for treats or running away from my guards when I visited the docks.

But the truth about that cliffside was mine. I wouldn’t give in, not with this. If by some miracle he found a way to get me out of this mess with the Turans, I wasn’t going to lose that one freedom.

“Gods.” Father sighed, dragging a palm over his jaw. “I’m sorry, Dess.”

My entire body jolted. When was the last time he’d called me Dess? It had been years. And I’d never heard him apologize.

The gentleness in his eyes was so foreign that my heart clenched. He hadn’t looked at me like that in, well…a long, long time. Since I was a child. Since I’d wake in the middle of the night, screaming from a nightmare, and Father would hold me until sunrise. “I’m sorry that you must do this.”

“I can’t, Father. Please don’t make me.”

He brushed his knuckles across my cheek. “You must.”

“I don’t want to marry him. There has to be a way to undo this.”

He leaned back and gave me a sad smile. “The bride prize aside, we cannot afford to anger the Turans with a refusal. And we cannot break the Shield of Sparrows, not with the crux migration upon us. Mae was to go to Turah. You must take her place. You must be the Sparrow now.”

It was another treaty signed in blood and sealed with magic.

If a king refused to give his daughter to another king, then the father would die. To my knowledge, no man had ever chosen his daughter over himself.

I certainly didn’t expect that sort of sacrifice.

Beyond the stipulations of arranged marriages, the Shield of Sparrows was a trade treaty at its core. It kept all five kingdoms alive. Equitable-ish. It provided us all with the necessary resources to thrive. And when the crux migration came, survive.

We traded the resources we could reap—crops and cattle—for those we couldn’t. The iron Quentis needed to forge weapons came from Ozarth. The lumber we used for buildings from Turah. Laine gave us spices and gold. And Genesis mined the oil we burned in lanterns and stoves.

From the day the Shield of Sparrows was formed, the wars that had once been commonplace across the continent had come to an abrupt halt. But our ancestors had feared that trading goods alone wouldn’t be enough to keep the fragile peace, so they’d also decided to bind nations with blood.

Every generation, before every migration, a daughter would be married off to another royal family so that their children had ties to both countries.

The most recent arranged marriage had been between Laine and Ozarth.

The weddings were lavish affairs. Every kingdom was invited to celebrate, as the unions were to remind us all of the greater good. That peace must be preserved at all costs.

We could not war with ourselves and the crux. For the monsters did not care which lands they attacked. And they gave no mercy.

The crux would black out the skies for months, the sun blocked by thousands upon thousands of beating wings. Livestock would be slaughtered. Crops and harvests annihilated. Buildings razed and capitals destroyed.

Since the Shield of Sparrows, the five kingdoms had endured, surviving nine migrations.

Celebrating nine marriages.

Mae’s would have been the tenth.

If not for the fucking Chain of Sevens.

“I can’t believe this,” I whispered. “This isn’t happening.”

“Listen.” Father placed his hands on my shoulders and gave me a shake, the gentleness from a moment ago gone. “There is much to be done before tonight. Much you must learn.”

“Isn’t it a bit late to start preparing me to rule a foreign kingdom?”

“Odessa.” Father shook my shoulders again. “You must find the way into Allesaria before summer’s end. Then send word of how I can find and infiltrate the city.”

I gaped, replaying his demand. “Wh-what?”

Did he want to send a legion to the Turan capital? There was a clause in the Shield of Sparrows forbidding invasion of one kingdom by another. Disobedience came with the same price as refusing to deliver a daughter for marriage.

A king’s death.

Not only would invading the Turan capital start a war, it would cost Father his life.

He couldn’t be serious. Was he?

“Your lady’s maids will accompany you on the journey to Turah,” he said. “Invent a reason to send one or both of them back to Quentis with whatever you learn.”

“Brielle and Jocelyn?”

“Allesaria is your priority. Understand? It’s crucial to my plans. We cannot delay. But you must also learn everything you can about the Guardian and his powers. Find a way to kill him.”

My jaw dropped. “You want me to kill the Guardian?”

A murderer. A man who was rumored to slay the legendary monsters in Turah. Possibly the best fighter in Calandra. That Guardian?

“Yes,” Father said. “You must try. At the very least, find out what he is capable of. No matter how many spies I’ve sent to Turah, none have been able to learn the extent of his powers or their source.”

“Powers? He looks…normal.” Well, mostly normal.

The rumors about the Guardian said he was as fast as a viper. That he had the strength of ten men. But his gifts weren’t like the Voster’s. He didn’t seem to have fluid and blood magic. He certainly hadn’t demonstrated any power today.

Except his eyes. He had no starburst, like me. And his eyes had changed colors—unless I’d imagined it. I wasn’t sure what was real at this point. An hour ago, I hadn’t known there was such a thing as the Chain of Sevens or a bride prize, but here I was, about to pay it to some bored, brooding prince.

I glanced toward Margot, hoping for a shred of compassion.

Nope. Not a bit. She was still irate.

Mae kept inching closer to her discarded knife.

And Father looked, well…peeved. Like his marionettes weren’t obeying the tugs on their strings.

That’s all we were. Puppets. The spinning in my head came to a sudden stop as realization dawned.

“D-did you plan this?” The marroweels and the mercenaries and whatever else he had in his head?

He frowned. “Did you really believe that Banner’s legionnaires couldn’t kill a handful of marroweels?”

So yes, he had planned this.

“People died. Did you send soldiers into the Krisenth, knowing they wouldn’t return?” Say no. Please say no. I would not be able to look at him again if he’d willingly used his people as bait for some political scheme.

“The marroweels have been attacking along the trade route. Every life lost has been a tragedy. Once we realized it was no longer safe, we staged the disappearance of a few ships. All the soldiers aboard came home. But the Turans don’t need to know that.”

My frame sagged. Well, that was something. “I don’t understand. Mae was to marry him in three months. Why not just wait for the equinox? Why bring them here now?”

“I can’t wait three months. We’ve tried for years, decades, to find the way to Allesaria. From everything we can assume, the capital is deep within the Turan mountains. If so, it may be impassable for an army come winter. I wanted Mae to have enough time to find a way to breach the city and for a legion to make the journey before the snows. Otherwise, we’ll have to wait until next spring. If the crux migrate earlier than the scholars predict, I will lose my chance.”

“Chance at what? At conquering Turah?”

His jaw flexed. “They have something I want in that city.”

“What?”

“The details are not important for you to know. But it is crucial I find a way into the city before the migration. It is our only chance at stopping the crux.”

Time stilled. So did my heart.

Stopping the crux. Was it possible? Was there really a way to keep the monsters from destroying Calandra? A way to prevent the horrors shown in the castle gallery?

“How?”

“That, I cannot explain. Not yet. But for the good of our people, you must do this. You must trust me. Find me a way into Allesaria.”

“But the treaties. What about—”

“Treaties can be broken, Odessa. Remember that.”

The spinning in my head was back with a vengeance. “How? That would mean you’d die.”

“Not necessarily.”

What was he talking about? “I don’t understand.”

He placed his crown back on his head. “You don’t need to.”

It didn’t matter if I comprehended the subtle details. Father would keep me in the dark unless he had no other choice. He would tell me only what I needed to know to do his bidding, apparently.

“How did you know that Prince Zavier would come when you hired them to kill the marroweels?” I asked.

He sighed, clearly annoyed with my string of questions, but answered anyway. “We’ve gathered from different sources that he’s been traveling more frequently with his rangers. It wasn’t a guarantee but worth a chance. When we learned that the Guardian and High Priest were spotted with their group, I assumed Zavier was among them, too.”

“But you didn’t anticipate a bride prize?”

“That was…unexpected.”

I rubbed at my temples again, the ache returning as I tried to make sense of this conversation. “So you hired the Turans to kill the marroweels and brought them here so they could collect payment, knowing that Zavier would likely tag along, all in the hopes that the prince would, what? Take one look at Mae and fall desperately in love and demand they marry months earlier than planned?”

Father scoffed.

Silly me. I’d forgotten that Father didn’t believe in love.

“I had hoped that he’d be open to shifting the wedding date,” he said. “That if he came here, I could persuade him to marry her sooner under the guise of strengthening our trade routes. We have worked hard to build up stores in preparation for the crux. Turah has suffered two years of drought. Their production has not been enough to sustain them through the migration. I was hoping to accelerate the wedding in exchange for increased grain shipments. Then Mae would get to sail with them this summer. She’d have more time to gain knowledge of Allesaria.”

“What if the prince hadn’t come? What if he hadn’t wanted to move the wedding?”

“Worst-case scenario, they’d take our gold as payment and she’d marry Zavier at the equinox.”

Except this was the worst case. I was the worst case.

“Why would he choose me?”

A crease formed between Father’s eyebrows. “I don’t know.”

“Does he suspect Mae was going to be a spy?”

“He’d be a fool not to. It’s no secret every kingdom in Calandra is curious about Allesaria’s whereabouts. But this is the only opportunity where they cannot refuse us.”

An opportunity that only came with this marriage.

“I didn’t think he’d dismiss Mae entirely,” Father said. “A fault in my plan.”

Planning, plotting, was how his mind worked. He trusted no one. He expected betrayal. And he was rarely surprised.

Mae’s lip curled. “We should have left her out of this.”

“You’re probably right,” he murmured.

But there had been no reason to exclude me today. I was a nothing princess content to blend into the walls and stand a pace behind my sister. I was Father’s insignificant oldest daughter born to his dead wife. I was already engaged to his general and in no way competition to Mae’s beauty or charm.

There had been no reason for anyone in my family to suspect I’d catch Prince Zavier’s eye.

My hands began to shake. “I’m not a spy. I’m not a warrior. I’m sure as hell not an assassin. I can’t do this.” The last time I’d held a sword, the weapons master had shuffled me off to the infirmary because I’d sliced open my own palm.

“You will,” Father commanded. “Repeat your orders.”

I swallowed hard. “I am to find the way to Allesaria. Then I’m to learn about the Guardian’s powers. And if I have the chance, you want me to kill him.”

Another person.

He was asking me to take a life.

“Yes.” Father’s relief was palpable. “You can do this. You must do this. Then I will bring you home.”

Impossible. When I sailed away from Quentis, I doubted I’d ever return.

Especially if—when—the Turans realized I was a spy.

Or when the Guardian killed me first.

“You must trust me,” Father whispered. He brushed a kiss to my forehead, then stood and nodded to Margot. “Get her ready.”

For my wedding. Tonight.