Knight, Heir, Prince

“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.”