Knight, Heir, Prince

“What happened in there?” she demanded.

Thanos forced a smile, but it came out tighter than he intended. “His majesty chose to remind me that prince or not, I am not worth as much to him as Lucious.”

Stephania put her hands on his shoulders. “I told you, Thanos. It was the wrong thing to do. You can’t put yourself at risk like that. You have to promise me that you will trust me, and never do anything so foolish again. Promise me.”

He nodded.

“For you, my love, I promise.”

He meant it, too. Going and fighting Lucious in the open like that wasn’t the right strategy, because it didn’t achieve enough. Lucious wasn’t the problem. The whole Empire was the problem. He’d briefly thought that he might be able to persuade the king to change things, but the truth was that his father didn’t want things to change.

No, the only thing to do now was to find ways to help the rebellion. Not just the rebels on Haylon, but all of them. Alone, Thanos couldn’t accomplish much, but together, they might just bring down the Empire.

CHAPTER SIX

Everywhere Ceres looked on the Isle Beyond the Mist, she saw things that made her stop and stare at their strange beauty. Hawks with rainbow-colored feathers spun as they hunted things below, but were in turn hunted by a winged serpent that eventually settled on a spire of white marble.

She walked over the emerald grass of the island, and it seemed as if she knew exactly where she had to go. She’d seen herself in her vision, there atop the hill in the distance, where rainbow-colored towers stuck up like the spines of some great beast.

Flowers grew from the low rises on the way, and Ceres reached down to touch them. When her fingers brushed them, though, their petals were of paper-thin stone. Had someone carved them that fine, or were they somehow living rock? Just the fact that she could imagine that possibility told her how strange this place was.

Ceres kept walking, heading for the spot where she knew, where she hoped, her mother would be waiting.

She reached the lower slopes of the hill and started to climb. Around her, the island was full of life. Bees buzzed in the low grass. A creature like a deer, but with crystal tines where its antlers should have been, looked at Ceres for a long time before springing away.

Yet she saw no people there, despite the buildings that dotted the landscape around her. The ones closest to Ceres had a pristine, empty feel, like a room that had been stepped out from only moments before. Ceres kept going, up toward the top of the hill, to the spot where the towers formed a circle around a broad area of grass, letting her look out between them over the whole of the rest of the island.

Yet she didn’t look that way. Instead, Ceres found herself staring at the center of the circle, where a single figure stood in a robe of pure white. Unlike her vision, the figure wasn’t fuzzy or out of focus. She was there, as clear and real as Ceres was. Ceres stepped forward, almost to within touching distance. There was only one person it could be.

“Mother?”

“Ceres.”

The robed figure threw herself forward at the same instant Ceres did, and they met in a crushing hug that seemed to express all the things Ceres didn’t know how to say: how much she’d been looking forward to this moment, how much love there was there, how incredible it was to meet this woman she’d only met in a vision.

“I knew you would come,” the woman, her mother, said as they stepped back, “but even knowing it is different from actually seeing you.”

She pulled back the hood of her robe then, and it seemed almost impossible that this woman could be her mother. Her sister, perhaps, because she shared the same hair, the same features. It was almost like looking into a mirror for Ceres. Yet she seemed too young to be Ceres’s mother.

“I don’t understand,” Ceres said. “You are my mother?”

“I am.” She reached out to hug Ceres again. “I know it must seem strange, but it’s true. My kind can live a long time. I am Lycine.”

A name. Ceres finally had a name for her mother. Somehow, that meant more than all the rest of it put together. Just that was enough to make the journey worth it. She wanted to stand there and just stare at her mother forever. Even so, she had questions. So many that they spilled out in a rush.

“What is this place?” she asked. “Why are you here alone? Wait, what do you mean ‘your kind’?”

Lycine smiled and sat down on the grass. Ceres joined her, and as she sat, she realized that it wasn’t just grass. She could see fragments of stone beneath it, arranged in mosaic form, but long since covered over by the meadow around them.

“There’s no easy way to answer all of your questions,” Lycine said. “Especially not when I have so many questions of my own, about you, about your life. About everything, Ceres. But I’ll try. Shall we do this the old way? A question for a question?”

Ceres didn’t know what to say to that, but it seemed her mother wasn’t done yet.

“Do they still tell the stories of the Ancient Ones, out in the world?”

“Yes,” Ceres said. She’d always paid more attention to the stories of combatlords and their exploits in the Stade, but she knew some of what they said about the Ancient Ones: the ones who had come before humanity, who sometimes looked the same and sometimes looked like so much more. Who’d built so much and then lost it. “Wait, are you saying that you’re – ”

“One of the Ancient Ones, yes,” Lycine replied. “This was one of our places, before… well, there are some things that it is still best not to talk about. Besides, I’m owed an answer. So tell me what your life has been like. I couldn’t be there, but I spent so long trying to imagine what it would be like for you.”

Ceres did her best, even though she didn’t know where to start. She told Lycine about growing up around her father’s forge, about her brothers. She told her about the rebellion, and about the Stade. She even managed to tell her about Rexus and Thanos, though those words came out choking and fractured.

“Oh, darling,” her mother said, laying a hand over hers. “I wish I could have spared you some of that pain. I wish I could have been there for you.”

“Why couldn’t you?” Ceres asked. “Have you been here all this time?”

“I have,” Lycine said. “This used to be one of the places of my people, in the old days. The others left it behind. Even I did, for a time, but these past years it has been a kind of sanctuary. And a place to wait, of course.”

“To wait?” Ceres asked. “You mean for me?”

She saw her mother nod.

“People talk about seeing destiny as if it were a gift,” Lycine said, “but there is a kind of prison to it, too. Understand what must happen, and you lose the choices that come with not knowing, no matter how much you might wish…” Her mother shook her head, and Ceres could see the sadness there. “This isn’t the time for regret. I have my daughter here, and there is only so much time for you to learn what you came for.”

She smiled and took Ceres’s hand.

“Walk with me.”

***

Ceres felt like days had passed while she and her mother walked the magical isle. It was breathtaking, this vista, being here with her mother. It all felt like a dream.

As they walked, they spoke mostly of the power. Her mother tried to explain it to her, and Ceres tried to understand. The strangest thing happened: as her mother spoke, Ceres felt as if her words were actually imbuing her with the power.

Even now, as they walked, Ceres felt it rising up inside her, roiling like smoke as her mother touched her shoulder. She needed to learn to control it, she’d come here to learn to control it, but compared to meeting her mother, it didn’t seem important.

“Our blood has given you power,” Lycine said. “The islanders tried to help unlock it, didn’t they?”

Ceres thought of Eoin, and of all the strange exercises he’d had her doing. “Yes.”

“For people not of our blood, they understand the world well,” her mother said. “But there are things even they can’t show you. Have you made anything stone yet? It’s one of my talents, so I would guess it will be one of yours.”

“Made things stone?” Ceres asked. She didn’t understand. “So far, I’ve moved things. I’ve been faster and stronger. And – ”

She didn’t want to finish that. She didn’t want her mother to think badly of her.

“And your power has killed things that have tried to harm you?” Lycine said.

Ceres nodded.

“Do not be ashamed of that, daughter. I have only seen a little of you, but I know what you are destined to be. You are a fine person. All that I could hope. As for making things stone…”

They stopped in a meadow of purple and yellow flowers and Ceres watched her mother pluck a small flower from the meadow, with delicate, silken petals. Through the contact with her mother, she felt the way the power flickered within her, feeling familiar but much more directed, crafted, shaped.

Stone spread across the flower like frost over a window, but it wasn’t just on the surface. A second after it had begun, it was over, and her mother held one of the stone flowers Ceres had seen lower on the island.

“Did you feel it?” Lycine asked.

Ceres nodded. “But how did you do it?”

“Feel again.” She plucked another flower, and this time it was impossibly slow as she turned it to something with marble petals and a granite stem. Ceres tried to track the movement of the power within her, and it was as though her own moved in response, trying to copy it.

“Good,” Lycine said. “Your blood knows. Now you try.”

She passed a flower to Ceres. Ceres reached down, concentrating as she tried to grasp the power within her and push it into the form she’d felt her mother’s take.

The flower exploded.

“Well,” Lycine said with a laugh, “that was unexpected.”

It was so different from the way the mother she’d grown up with would have reacted. She’d beaten Ceres for the least failure. Lycine just passed her another flower.

“Relax,” she said. “You already know how it should feel. Take that feeling. Imagine it. Make it real.”

Ceres tried to do it, thinking about what she’d felt when her mother had transformed her flower. She took the feeling and filled it with power the way her father might have filled a mold at the forge with iron.

“Open your eyes, Ceres,” Lycine said.

Ceres hadn’t even realized that she’d closed them until her mother said the words. She forced herself to look, even though right then she was afraid to. Once she’d looked, she stared, because she could barely believe it. She held a single, perfectly formed, petrified bloom, transformed into something like basalt by her power.

“I did that?” Ceres asked. Even with everything else she could do, it still seemed nearly impossible.

“You did,” her mother said, and Ceres could hear the pride there. “Now we just need to get you to do it without your eyes closed.”

That took longer, and a lot more flowers. Yet Ceres found herself enjoying the practice. More than that, every time her mother smiled at her efforts, Ceres felt a burst of love expanding through her. Even as the minutes spilled into hours, she kept going.

“Yes,” her mother said at last, “that’s perfect.”

It was more than that; it was easy. Easy to reach out and pull power from inside her. Easy to channel it. Easy to leave behind a perfectly preserved stone flower. It was only as the rush of doing it faded that Ceres realized just how tired she was.

“It’s all right,” her mother said, taking her hand. “Your power takes energy and effort. Even the strongest of us could only do so much at once.” She smiled. “But your power knows what it is for now. It will rise up when someone threatens you, or when you summon it to you. It will do more, too.”

Ceres sensed a flicker of power from her mother, and she could see the full potential of her power. She saw the stone buildings and gardens in a new light, as things that had been built with that power, crafted in ways no human could understand. She felt full, somehow. Complete.

Some of the happiness seemed to fade from her mother’s expression. Ceres heard her sigh.

“What is it?” Ceres asked.

“I just wish that we had more time together,” Lycine said. “I would love to walk you through the towers here and tell you the history of my people. I would love to hear all about this Thanos you loved so much, and show you the gardens where the sun has never touched the trees.”

“Then do it,” Ceres said. She felt as though she might have stayed there forever. “Show me all of it. Tell me about the past. Tell me about my father, and what happened when I was born.”

Her mother shook her head though.

“That is one thing you aren’t ready for yet. As for time, I told you before that destiny can be a prison, darling, and you have a bigger destiny than most.”

“I’ve seen flashes of it,” Ceres admitted, thinking of the dreams that had come to her again and again on the boat.”

“Then you know why we can’t stay here and be a family, no matter how much either of us might wish it,” her mother said. “Although maybe the future holds time for that. That and more.”

“First, though, I have to go back, don’t I?” Ceres said.

Her mother nodded.

“You do,” she said. “You must return, Ceres. Return and free Delos from the Empire, as you were always meant to do.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

It was hard for Stephania to believe that she’d already been married to Thanos for six weeks. Yet with the feast of the Blood Moon here, that was how long it had been. Six weeks of bliss, every one as wonderful as she could have hoped for.

“You look amazing,” she said, looking over at Thanos in the rooms they now shared in the castle. He was a vision in deep red silk, set off with red gold and rubies. She could hardly believe that he was hers, some days. “Red suits you.”

“It makes me look as though I’m covered in blood,” Thanos replied.

“Which is rather the point, given that it’s the Blood Moon,” Stephania pointed out. She leaned in to kiss him. She liked being able to do that when she wanted. If there were more time, she might have taken the moment to do a lot more.

“It hardly matters what I wear though,” Thanos said. “There’s no one in the room who will be looking at me when you’re there beside me.”

Perhaps another man could have put the compliment more elegantly, but there was something about the earnest way Thanos said it that meant more to Stephania than all the perfectly judged poems in the world.

Besides, she had worked rather hard on picking out the most beautiful dress in Delos. It shimmered in shades of red like a flame wrapped around her. She’d even bribed the dressmaker to ensure that the original, destined for a minor noblewoman lower in the city, was irretrievably delayed.

Stephania offered her arm, and Thanos took it, escorting her down toward the great feast hall where they’d had their wedding. Was it already six weeks that they’d been married? Six weeks of more bliss than Stephania could have believed, living together in apartments set aside for them by the queen within the castle. There were even rumors that the king was planning to bestow a new estate on Thanos, a little way from the city. For six weeks, they’d been the most watched couple in the city, lauded wherever they went. Stephania had enjoyed that.

“Do remember not to punch Lucious when you see him tonight,” Stephania said.

“I’ve managed to keep from doing it so far,” Thanos replied. “Don’t worry.”

Stephania did worry, though. She didn’t want to risk losing Thanos now that she had him as her husband. She didn’t want to find him executed for attacking the heir to the throne, and not just because of the position it would put her in. She might have set out to acquire him for a husband for the prestige it would bring, but now… now she was surprised to find that she loved him.

“Prince Thanos and his wife, Lady Stephania!” the herald at the door announced, and Stephania smiled, leaning her head against Thanos’s shoulder. She always loved hearing that.

She looked around the room. For their wedding, it had been arranged in white, but now it shone in red and black. The wine in the glasses was a thick blood red, the feast tables had meat left just on the edge of bloody, and every noble in the place wore the colors of the shifting moon.

Stephania walked on Thanos’s arm, parsing the relationships there, keeping track of the latest intrigues even as she simply enjoyed being seen. Was that Lady Christina, slipping off into the shadows to talk to a merchant prince from the Far Islands? Was Isolde’s daughter wearing fewer jewels than usual?

Of course, she saw Lucious drinking too much, eating too much, and eyeing the women. Briefly, Stephania thought his eyes flickered to hers, his look one that would have guaranteed a fight if Thanos had seen it. It was a pity, really, that her attempt to poison him at the wedding feast had gone so badly. If Thanos hadn’t made him so angry that he’d crushed his wine glass, then Lucious would have gone to sleep that night and not woken. It would have been done.

Since then, there had been no opportunity to deal with him. The usual people she might have employed were being more cautious now that the one she’d used for Thanos had gone missing, and the trick with killing was never the act of it; it was always doing it in such a way that people didn’t suspect. There had simply never been a chance to get close to Lucious without it being obvious.

“Ah, Prince Thanos,” a white-whiskered man said, approaching them both, “Lady Stephania. You make such a wonderful couple!”

Stephania searched her memory for the man, coming up with the answer effortlessly. “General Haven, you’re too kind. How is your wife doing?”

“Happy enough to spend my gold on new necklaces. I take it you’ll be keeping Prince Thanos from the new expedition to Haylon?”

“There’s a new expedition?” Thanos said. Stephania could hear the curiosity there. It was obviously the first her husband had heard of it.

“Heading out tomorrow,” General Haven said. “I tried to persuade his majesty to let me head this one, but he decided on Olliant instead.”

Probably because the man was capable of organizing something more than a long-winded speech. Stephania had heard that Haven had once been a competent general, but now he hung onto his role only through his connections.

“Well,” Stephania said, “I’m sure your wife will be happy to have you home. I know I’m glad that Thanos isn’t going anywhere.”

The old man drifted away, and Stephania turned to Thanos.

“We should go and mingle,” Stephania said. “I should go and hear all the gossip the women of the court have to tell, and tell them how glorious their choices of dress are. You should go and pay your respects to the king. People have been muttering about how little you’ve been there for formal audiences lately.”

“I’ve just been busy,” Thanos said. “Enjoying married life, for a start.”

Stephania knew her husband better than that. She still laughed though. “I’ve been enjoying it too, but you know you can’t afford to offend the king. Think of it as a game, Thanos. A big game, where the prize is getting to live happily, and where you don’t get a choice if you play.”

“Is that what you do?” Thanos asked.

Stephania spread her hands. “Why do you think I’m about to go and tell General Haven’s wife how lovely her new necklace is?” She kissed his cheek. “Please, Thanos. I love how honest you are, but whatever happened when you spoke to the king, you can’t get on his bad side.”

“I’ll try,” Thanos said, heading off in the direction of the king and queen.

Stephania watched him go. She loved watching him. Even as she started making her way through the room, she kept glancing back to keep an eye on where Thanos had gotten to. She’d never thought that she would be like this, giddy as a milkmaid swooning over him. But that was love, and Stephania wasn’t going to allow anything to jeopardize things.

“Do we have any information on the boy, Sartes, yet?” Stephania asked one of her handmaids in a whisper. She made sure that none of them ever knew all of her affairs, but she also made sure that she picked clever girls, drawn up from the lower end of the acceptable classes. Girls who would owe her everything, in other words.

“We know that after his escape from the army, he joined up with the rebellion,” the handmaid said. “I believe I know which group, my lady.”

“Well done,” Stephania said, with a brief touch of her hand bestowed like a blessing. “Go to Captain Var and tell him that I want the boy in chains.”

“Yes, my lady.”

The girl hurried off. Captain Var was a necessary evil. The mercenary was a lecher and a torturer, but curiously, he was surprisingly loyal, and he was good at the… specialized jobs Stephania had him perform. Probably it helped that Stephania was in a position to outbid everyone else for his services. At least one would-be rival had found herself disappearing into the slave pits thanks to the good captain’s graces.

Stephania continued her smiling way around the feast, sampling a bite of food here, a sip of wine there as she moved from acquaintance to rival to would-be friend, never stopping long in one place, never letting her eyes stray from Thanos for long.

Perhaps she shouldn’t be making such an issue of Ceres’s younger brother. If he hadn’t already died in one of the rebellion’s raids, he almost certainly would soon. Even if he lived, did it really matter?

It did. Just the thought of it was enough to make Stephania dig her nails into her palms, bringing with it a sharp stab of pain. The boy was no threat in himself. Stephania bore him no ill will, but just the fact that he existed was a connection to the memory of Ceres. Stephania could not allow her to intrude on her marriage. Not in life, and not in death. No, she had to be certain, whatever it took.

Stephania looked over to Thanos again. He seemed to be done with the king, and she wanted to dance with him now. She wanted to draw him close to her and feel the strength of him pressed up against her. She wanted to remind all those there that she had gained the greatest prize worth taking. Above all, she wanted to fill his thoughts so full of her that there could never be any room for Ceres ever again.

She started to make her way over toward him, but she only got a little of the way there before she started to feel so sick that her head swam. Had she been poisoned? No, she couldn’t have been. She was always careful about what she ate and who she took it from. She consumed antidotes every morning, and she knew better than anyone what to taste and smell for.

Even so, she found herself stumbling in the direction of the courtyard. One of her maids helped her, and Stephania found herself leaning on the girl more than she would have liked. The night air was cool, but it didn’t really help.

“Are you all right, my lady?” the maid asked as they got out there.

Stephania wanted to snap that of course she wasn’t, but her body chose that moment to betray her and she vomited. It tasted foul, but Stephania was mostly just glad that she’d gotten out of the hall before anyone saw. Her maid held her hair back.

“I don’t know what’s happening,” Stephania said. “It can’t be poison. It can’t.”

“My lady,” the maid said, “is it… is it possible that you’re pregnant?”

Stephania wanted to tell the girl not to be stupid, but it fit, didn’t it? Could she be? Was it possible? She stood there in shock, trying to think as she cleaned herself up with her maid’s help. It had never occurred to her that she might be pregnant. It had just seemed so much more obvious in her world that she might have been attacked by some enemy.

“Tell no one about this,” Stephania said. “Go back to the feast. If anyone asks you where I am, say that I felt unwell and returned to my rooms. Fail and I’ll have you skinned, do you understand?”

“Yes, my lady,” the girl said, looking frightened.

Stephania offset that with a hug. “Thank you. I should have thought of it myself.”

She hurried through the castle, but even so, it took her a while to find the chambers of the royal apothecary. In general, if Stephania needed a potion or a poultice, she was more than capable of putting it together herself. Yet this wasn’t something she kept the materials for, and she didn’t want to waste her time with the toads and rabbits of so-called wise women.

Of course, when Stephania got there, the door was locked, the apothecary away. Thankfully, the lock was a poor one, easy to force open even though Stephania rarely stooped to such things for herself.

She made her way inside, looking through the jars of powders and herbs. It was dangerous, working with someone else’s stocks, but Stephania thought that she could recognize what she needed. There were enough ladies of the court having enough affairs to need to know these things, and it seemed the apothecary kept vials made up.

Stephania found one and used it, ignoring the embarrassment of doing so in the middle of the place. She stared at the clear solution with impatience, waiting to see what would happen next.

When it slowly shifted to blue, Stephania felt a rush of feelings spreading through her. Shock, because she’d never expected this. Apprehension for all that might happen next. Above all, though, there was joy. Joy for one simple fact:

She was having Thanos’s child.