Chapter 1: The Dart
Princess Nyliana had learned years ago that there were advantages to standing half a step outside the center of attention. From the raised dais at the eastern end of the ballroom, she could see nearly everything without being required to participate in any of it. Chandeliers burned beneath a ceiling painted with old victories; musicians played from the western gallery; nobles and diplomats moved across the polished floor in silk, jewels, and carefully rehearsed laughter. Her own gown made anonymity impossible—deep royal blue, cut off the shoulders and fitted through the bodice, silver embroidery curling over it in delicate vines, sheer embellished sleeves glittering whenever she moved. The sapphire at her throat had belonged to a queen whose portrait hung three corridors from Lia’s rooms. Three men had complimented the gown. Two women had praised her hair. The Ambassador from the southern coast had called her the image of royal grace. None had asked what she thought of the trade agreement they had spent the previous hour discussing with her brother. That, too, was familiar.
The King stood at the center of the dais, The Queen serene in pale gold at his right and Prince Corren at his left. Lia’s place was farther down, close enough that no one could accuse the royal family of excluding her and far enough that no one needed to remember she was there. She had once wondered whether the arrangement was deliberate. At sixteen she had searched old protocols to see whether daughters were traditionally placed below sons at formal addresses. They were not. At twenty-three she had stopped searching for answers to questions everyone else seemed determined not to hear. She smoothed a hand over her skirt, felt the reassuring weight of the small knife concealed beneath the embroidered overskirt, and lifted her attention as her father stepped forward.
“My friends,” The King began, and conversation folded neatly into silence. Lia knew the shape of the speech: prosperity, stability, unity, another season of strong harvests described without reference to the northern districts that had petitioned for grain relief, another assurance that disruptions along the western roads were the work of criminals rather than evidence of anything worth examining. She kept her face composed. The last time she had objected to the revised grain levies, The Chancellor had explained with impressive patience that a princess could not understand the pressures placed upon the treasury. She had understood them well enough to find the accounting discrepancy in his report three days later. Her father had thanked The Chancellor for correcting it.
Movement above the ballroom drew her eye. A servant crossed behind the carved rail of the musicians’ gallery, visible for only a heartbeat between two violinists. Lia’s gaze followed automatically. He wore palace black, but the jacket sat wrong across his shoulders, too fitted through the arms, and there was no silver piping at the cuff. He moved against the flow of the attendants toward the narrow arch overlooking the dais. Lia stopped hearing the speech. The man raised one hand. Metal caught the chandelier light.
“Father—”
The sound was scarcely louder than a snap of fingers. Lia saw the dart before she understood that she had moved. One instant she stood three paces from The King; the next she had crossed between them, blue skirts sweeping around her ankles. Something struck high in her left shoulder with a sting so slight she almost mistook it for a pin. A guard shouted. The Queen screamed. Lia caught the slender shaft between two fingers and stared at it: dark wood, steel tip, a smear of something clear along the edge. Then her arm went numb. “Gallery,” she tried to say. “Upper—”
The ballroom shattered into motion. Guards surged onto the dais, not toward her but around The King. One seized her father by the arm. Another pushed The Queen behind his shield. Corren disappeared beneath a knot of uniforms as The Captain roared for the eastern passage to be cleared. Lia tried to point toward the gallery, but her hand barely rose. This was not ordinary poison; the weakness was spreading too quickly, smoothing strength from her limbs rather than burning through them. Sleep, she thought. Or paralysis. She pulled the dart free and let it fall. The floor shifted beneath her.
“The attacker,” she managed. “Up there.”
A guard looked directly at her. For one relieved instant Lia thought he had heard. He took a step toward her, hand outstretched.
“The King!” The Captain shouted. “Move!”
The guard’s head snapped toward the eastern doors. His hesitation lasted no more than a heartbeat. Then he turned and ran after the others. Lia’s knee struck marble. She braced one palm against the floor and fought to keep her head upright. Through the moving bodies she saw Corren dragged through the emergency passage, then The Queen, then her father at the center of a wall of steel. Her vision blurred, cleared, blurred again. She opened her mouth to call out and hated herself for it before any sound emerged. She was twenty-three, not six. She did not need to call for her father as though she had fallen from a horse.
The King looked back. Their eyes met across the ballroom, and relief rose so quickly in Lia that humiliation followed it. He had seen her. Whatever foolish thoughts had surfaced when the guard turned away, her father would not leave her sprawled on the floor after she had taken a weapon meant for him.
“Seal the doors,” The King ordered.
The doors slammed. Two guards dropped the heavy crossbar into place from the other side.
For several seconds Lia could only stare at the carved wood. The remaining guests fled through the public exits. Somewhere glass broke. Boots pounded overhead and vanished into the service corridors. Lia tried to rise; her arm buckled, and she barely caught herself before her face struck the marble. The drug had reached her legs. She fixed her eyes on the barred doors because looking anywhere else meant accepting what she had seen. A guard had looked at her. Her father had looked at her. They knew where she was.
A boot stopped beside her hand. Lia dragged her gaze upward. Black leather. Dark trousers. A fitted coat beneath layered straps rather than court silk. The man crouched beside her with the ease of someone who had not spent the evening drinking under chandeliers. He was blond, his hair rough and disordered across his forehead, and his eyes were dark brown and steady. Handsome, some traitorous part of her mind supplied. She blamed the drug.
“Don’t,” she whispered.
His gaze dropped to her right hand fumbling beneath the blue overskirt. She found the knife hilt but could not close her fingers around it. The stranger watched for a moment, then reached down. Lia tried to slash at him anyway. Her wrist moved perhaps an inch.
“That is deeply threatening,” he murmured.
“Go to hell.”
“There she is.”
He did not wrench the knife away. He folded his fingers over hers and eased the weapon from a grip that could no longer hold it. After examining the narrow blade, he looked toward the barred eastern doors. Whatever amusement had been in his face disappeared.
“They really left you here to die, didn’t they?”
Lia stared at him. Something in his expression—annoyance, and worse, pity—made the words land harder than if he had laughed. She concentrated on breathing and keeping her face blank.
“I’d heard about the unwanted princess,” he continued, quieter now. “Thought it was court gossip. This is extreme even for narrow-minded idiots.”
“Do not.” Lia barely heard her own voice. She was not sure whether she meant do not insult The King, do not pity me, or do not say aloud the thing I have spent my entire life refusing to name.
The stranger studied her, then one corner of his mouth lifted. “Well. Just because those idiots don’t know what to do with a prize like you doesn’t mean the whole world is blind.”
She should have been offended. She was offended. Unfortunately, warmth still touched her face. He slid one arm around her thighs and hauled her upward. The ballroom turned upside down as Lia found herself hanging over his shoulder, a mass of royal-blue skirts spilling down his back.
“Absolutely not.”
He paused. “You’re conscious again. Excellent.”
“You cannot carry me like this.”
“I can. Remarkably easily, actually.”
“I am not a sack of flour.”
He sighed. “My apologies, Your Highness.”
He lowered her. Her feet touched the ground, her knees folded, and before she could fall one arm swept beneath them while the other caught her back. Suddenly she was cradled against his chest in a parody of courtly propriety. Her breath caught. His coat was softer than it looked where it pressed beneath her cheek, the leather straps hard against a body that was all solid heat and muscle. His face was much too close now. Dark eyes met hers with unmistakable amusement.
“Better?”
“Worse.”
“I did try the practical method first.”
“You are kidnapping me.”
“Yes.” His grin widened. “I thought that part was obvious.”
Somewhere beyond the ballroom, a man called sharply, “Riven!” So the blond stranger had a name. He glanced toward the sound, then adjusted Lia in his arms with infuriating care. She tried to memorize the direction he carried her, the doors they passed, the turn into a servants’ corridor she had never seen used, but the palace dissolved into gold smears and shadow. Her head settled against his shoulder without permission. Beneath her ear, his heartbeat remained steady.
The last thing Lia saw before darkness took her was not the rebel passage opening ahead, nor the blond man carrying her into it. It was the eastern ballroom doors in her memory, closing while her father watched, and the certainty that no one had come back.
