Winter

Eight

The elevator doors opened into the queen’s solar—an octagonal room made up of windows on all sides. The cylindrical elevator itself was encapsulated in glass and stood at the room’s center so that no part of the view would be obstructed. The décor was simple—thin white pillars and a glass dome overhead, mimicking the dome over the city. This tower, this very room, was the highest point in Artemisia, and the sight of all those buildings white and glittering beneath them, and an entire jewelry case of stars overhead, was all the decoration the room required.

Jacin had been there dozens of times with Sybil, but never for his own audience with the queen. He forced himself to be unconcerned. If he was worried, the queen might detect it, and the last thing he wanted was for anyone to question his loyalty to the crown.

Though an elaborate chair was set on a raised platform, the queen herself was standing at the windows. The glass was crystal clear and showed no hint of reflection. Jacin didn’t know how they’d managed to make glass like that, but the palace was full of it.

Sir Jerrico Solis, the captain of the guard and technically Jacin’s superior, was also there, but Jacin didn’t spare him a glance.

“My Queen,” said Aimery, “you requested Sir Jacin Clay.”

Jacin dropped to one knee as the queen turned. “You may stand, Jacin. How good of you to come.”

Now, wasn’t that sweet.

He did stand, daring to meet her gaze.

Queen Levana was horrifically beautiful, with coral-red lips and skin as pristine as white marble. It was all her glamour, of course. Everyone knew that, but it didn’t make any difference. Looking at her could steal the breath of any mortal man.

However—and Jacin kept this thought very, very quiet in his head—the princess could steal both their breath and their heart.

“Sir Clay,” said the queen, her voice a lullaby now compared with the harshness from the trial. “Aimery and I have been discussing your surprising yet joyful return. I would like to see you reinstated to your previous position soon. Our guard is weaker without you.”

“I am yours to command.”

“I’ve taken into consideration the comm you sent to Thaumaturge Mira prior to her death, along with two years of loyal service. I’ve also had a team looking into your claims about this … device Linh Garan invented, and it seems you were correct. He unveiled a prototype he called a bioelectrical security device at an Earthen convention many years ago. As it happens, this discovery has also solved a mystery that my pack of special operatives in Paris had encountered earlier this year. We now know that Linh Cinder was not the only person to have had this device installed—but that her longtime protector, a woman named Michelle Benoit, had one too. We can only guess how many more might still exist.”

Jacin said nothing, though his heart was expanding at this news. Cinder had seemed sure no more of these devices had been made, but maybe she was wrong. And if she was wrong … if there were more of them out there … he could get one for Winter. He could save her.

“No matter,” said Levana, gliding a hand through the air. “We’re already finding ways to ensure no such invention will ever come to the Earthen market. The reason I called you here was to discuss what is now to become of you. And I have a special role in mind, Sir Clay. One that I think you will not find disagreeable.”

“My opinion means nothing.”

“True, but the opinions of my stepdaughter do yet carry some weight. Princess Winter may not have been born with my blood, but I think the people acknowledge that she is a part of my family, a true darling among the court. And I did love her father so.” She said this with a small sigh, though Jacin couldn’t tell whether it was faked or not. She turned away.

“You know I was there when Evret was murdered,” Levana continued, peering at the full Earth through the windows. “He died in my arms. His last plea was that I would take care of Winter, our sweet daughter. How old were you when he died, Jacin?”

He forced his shoulders to relax. “Eleven, Your Majesty.”

“Do you remember him well?”

He clenched his teeth, not knowing what she wanted him to say. Winter’s father and Jacin’s father had both been royal guards and the closest of friends. Jacin had grown up with plenty of admiration for Evret Hayle, who had kept his position even after marrying Levana, then a princess. He stayed a guard even after Queen Channary died and Selene disappeared and Levana ascended to the throne. He often said he had no desire to sit on the throne beside her, and even less to sit around drinking wine and getting fat among the pompous families of Artemisia.

“I remember him well enough,” he finally said.

“He was a good man.”

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

Her gaze slipped down to the fingers of her left hand. There was no wedding band there—at least, not that she was allowing him to see.

“I loved him very much,” she repeated, and Jacin would have believed her if he believed she was capable of such a thing. “His death nearly killed me.”

“Of course, My Queen.”

Evret Hayle had been murdered by a power-hungry thaumaturge in the middle of the night, and Jacin still remembered how devastated Winter had been. How inadequate all of his attempts to comfort or distract her. He remembered listening to the sad gossip: how Evret had died protecting Levana, and how she had avenged him by plunging a knife into the thaumaturge’s heart.

They said Levana had sobbed hysterically for hours.

“Yes, well.” Levana sighed again. “As I held him dying, I promised to protect Winter—not that I wouldn’t have regardless. She is my daughter, after all.”

Jacin said nothing. His reserves of mindless agreements were running low.

“And what better way to protect her than to instate as her guard one whose concern for her well-being matches my own?” She smiled, but it had a hint of mocking to it. “In fact, Winter herself requested you be given the position as a member of her personal guard. Normally her suggestions are rooted in nonsense, but this time, even I have to acknowledge the idea has merit.”

Jacin’s heart thumped, despite his best efforts to remain disconnected. Him? On Winter’s personal guard?

It was both a dream and a nightmare. The queen was right—no one else could be as trusted as he was to ensure her safety. In many ways, he’d considered himself Winter’s personal guard already, with or without the title.

But being her guard was not the same as being her friend, and he already found it difficult enough to walk the line between the two.

“The changing of her guard happens at 19:00,” said the queen, swaying back toward the windows. “You will report then.”

He wet his throat. “Yes, My Queen.” He turned to go.

“Oh, and Jacin?”

Dread slithered down his spine. Locking his jaw, he faced the queen again.

“You may not be aware that we have had … difficulties, in the past, with Winter’s guard. She can be difficult to manage, given to childish games and fancies. She seems to have little respect for her role as a princess and a member of this court.”

Jacin pressed his disgust down, down, into the pit of his stomach, where even he couldn’t feel it. “What would you have me do?”

“I want you to keep her under control. My hope is that her affection for you will lend itself to some restraint on her part. I am sure you’re aware that the girl is coming to be of a marriageable age. I have hopes for her, and I will not tolerate her bringing humiliation on this palace.”

Marriageable age. Humiliation. Restraint. His disgust turned to a hard pebble, but his face was calm as he bowed. “Yes, My Queen.”

* * *

Winter stood with her ear pressed against the door of her private chambers, trying to slow her breathing to the point of dizziness. Anticipation crawled over her skin like a thousand tiny ants.

Silence in the hallway. Painful, agonizing silence.

Blowing a curl out of her face, she glanced at the holograph of Luna near her room’s ceiling, showing the progression of sunlight and shadows and the standardized digital clock beneath it. 18:59.

She wiped her damp palms on her dress. Listened some more. Counted the seconds in her head.

There. Footsteps. The hard, steady thump of boots.

She bit her lip. Levana had given her no indication if Winter’s request would be accepted—she didn’t even know if her stepmother was going to consider the request—but it was possible. It was possible.

The guard who had been standing statuesque outside her chambers for the past four hours, relieved of duty, left. His footsteps were a perfect metronome to those that had just arrived.

There was a moment of shuffling as the new guard arranged himself against the corridor wall, the last line of defense should a spy or an assassin make an attack on the princess, and the first person responsible for whisking her away to safety should the security of Artemisia Palace ever be compromised.

She squeezed her eyes shut and fanned her fingers against the wall, as if she could feel his heartbeat through the stone.

Instead she felt something warm and sticky.

Gasping, she pulled away, finding her palm stained with blood.

Exasperated, she used the bloody hand to push her hair back, although it instantly tumbled forward again. “Not now,” she hissed to whatever demon thought this was an appropriate time to give her visions.

She closed her eyes again and counted backward from ten. When she opened them, the blood was gone and her hand was clean.

With a whistled breath, Winter adjusted her gown and opened the door wide enough to poke her head out. She turned to the statue of a guard outside her door, and her heart swelled.

“Oh—she said yes!” she squealed, whipping the door open the rest of the way. She trotted around to face Jacin.

If he’d heard her, he didn’t respond.

If he saw her, he showed no sign of it.

His expression was stone, his blue eyes focused on some point over her head.

Winter wilted, but it was from annoyance as much as disappointment. “Oh, please,” she said, standing toe-to-toe, chest-to-chest, which was not simple. Jacin’s flawless posture made her feel as if she were tilting backward, a breath away from falling over. “That’s not necessary, is it?”

Five complete, agonizing seconds passed in which she could have been staring at a mannequin, before Jacin took in a slow breath and let it out all at once. His gaze dropped to hers.

That was all. Just the breath. Just the eyes.

But it made him human again, and she beamed. “I’ve been waiting all day to show you something. Come here.”

Winter danced around him again, retreating back into her sitting parlor. She skipped to the desk on the other side of the room, where she’d draped her creation with a bedsheet. Taking hold of two corners, she turned back to the door.

And waited.

“Jacin?”

She waited some more.

Huffing, she released the sheet and stalked back toward the hall. Jacin hadn’t moved. Winter crossed her arms over her chest and leaned against her door frame, inspecting him. Seeing Jacin in his guard uniform was always bittersweet. On one hand, it was impossible not to notice how very handsome and authoritative he looked in it. On the other hand, the uniform marked him as the property of the queen. Still, he was particularly striking today, all freshly healed from his trial and smelling of soap.

She knew that he knew that she was standing there, staring at him. It was infuriating how he could do such a blasted good job of ignoring her.

Tapping a finger against the flesh of her elbow, she deadpanned, “Sir Jacin Clay, there is an assassin under my bed.”

His shoulders knotted. His jaw tensed. Three more seconds passed before he stepped away from the wall and marched into her chambers without looking her way. Past the covered surprise on the desk and straight through to her bedroom. Winter followed, shutting the door.

As soon as he reached the bed, Jacin knelt down and lifted the bed skirt.

“The assassin seems to have gotten away this time, Your Highness.” Standing, he turned back to face her. “Do let me know if he returns.”

He marched back toward the door, but she stepped in front of him and flashed a coquettish smile. “I certainly will,” she said, bouncing on her toes. “But as long as you’re here—”

“Princess.”

His tone was a warning, but she ignored him. Backing away into the parlor, she tore the sheet away, revealing a table-size model of their solar system, the planets suspended from silk strings. “Ta-da!”

Jacin didn’t come closer as she started fidgeting with the planets, but he also didn’t leave.

Winter nudged the painted spheres into a slow orbit, each one moving separate from the others. “I had the idea when the engagement was first announced,” she said, watching Earth complete a full circle around the sun before dragging to a stop. “It was going to be a wedding gift for Emperor Kaito, before … well. Anyway, it’s been a distraction while you were gone.” Lashes fluttering, she risked a nervous glance up at Jacin. He was staring at the model. “It helps, you know, to focus on something. To think about the details.”

It helped keep her thoughts in order, helped keep her sanity. She’d started having the hallucinations when she was thirteen, a little more than a year after she’d made the decision to never again use her glamour, to never again manipulate someone’s thoughts or emotions, to never again fool herself into believing such an unnatural use of power could be harmless. Jacin, not yet a guard, had spent many hours with her, distracting her with games and projects and puzzles. Idleness had been her enemy for years. It was in those moments when her mind was most focused on a task, no matter how trivial, that she felt safest.

Making the model without him hadn’t been as much fun, but she did enjoy the sensation of being in control of this tiny galaxy, when she was in control of so very little of her own life.

“What do you think?”

With a resigned sigh, Jacin stepped forward to examine the contraption that gave each planet its own orbital path. “How did you make it?”

“I commissioned Mr. Sanford in AR-5 to design and build the framework. But I did all the painting myself.” She was pleased to see Jacin’s impressed nod. “I hoped you might be able to help me with Saturn. It’s the last one to be painted, and I thought—I’ll take the rings, if you want to do the planet…” She trailed off. His expression had hardened again. Following his fingers, she saw him batting Luna around the Earth—the way Mr. Sanford had given Luna its own little orbit around the blue planet was nothing short of brilliant, in Winter’s opinion.

“I’m sorry, Highness,” said Jacin, standing upright again. “I’m on duty. I shouldn’t even be in here, and you know that.”

“I’m quite sure I don’t know that. It seems you can guard me even better from in here than out there. What if someone comes in through the windows?”

His lips quirked into a wry smile. No one was going to come in through the windows, they both knew, but he didn’t argue the point. Instead, he stepped closer and settled his hands on her shoulders. It was a rare, unexpected touch. Not quite the Eclipse Waltz, but her skin tingled all the same.

“I’m glad to be on your guard now,” he said. “I would do anything for you. If you did have an assassin under your bed, I would take that bullet without a second thought, without anyone having to manipulate me.”

She tried to interrupt him, but he talked over her.

“But when I’m on duty, that’s all I can be. Your guard. Not your friend. Levana already knows I’m too close to you, that I care about you more than I should—”

Her brow drew together, and again she tried to interject, thinking that statement deserved further explanation, but he kept talking.

“—and I am not going to give her anything else to hold over me. Or you. I’m not going to be another pawn in her game. Got it?”

Finally, a pause, and her head was swimming, trying to hold on to his declaration—what do you mean you care about me more than you should?—without contradicting his concerns.

“We are already pawns in her game,” she said. “I have been a pawn in her game since the day she married my father, and you since the day you were conscripted into her guard.”

His lips tensed and he moved to pull his hands away, the extended contact overstepping a thousand of his professional boundaries, but Winter reached up and wrapped her hands around his. She held them tight, bundling both of their hands between them.

“I just thought…” She hesitated, her attention caught on how much bigger his hands were compared with the last time she’d held them. It was a startling realization. “I thought it might be nice to step off the game board every now and then.”

One of Jacin’s thumbs rubbed against her fingers—just once, like a tic that had to be stifled.

“That would be nice,” he said, “but it can’t be while I’m on duty, and it really can’t be behind closed doors.”

Winter glanced past him, at the door she’d shut when he’d come in to check for a fictional assassin. “You’re saying that I’m going to see you every day, but I have to go on pretending like I don’t see you at all?”

He pried his hands away. “Something like that. I’m sorry, Princess.” With a step back, he morphed seamlessly into the stoic guard. “I’ll be in the corridor if you need me. Really need me.”

After he’d gone, Winter stood gnawing at her lower lip, unable to ignore the momentary bits of elation that had slipped into the cracks of an otherwise disappointing meeting.

I care about you more than I should.

“Fine,” she murmured to herself. “I can work with that.”

She gathered up the little compact of paints, a few paintbrushes, and the fist-size model of Saturn waiting for its kaleidoscope of rings.

This time, Jacin started a little when she emerged in the corridor. The first time he’d been expecting her, but this must have been a surprise. She bit back a grin as she walked around to his other side and slid down the wall, planting herself on the floor next to him with crisscrossed legs. Humming to herself, she spread her painting supplies out before her.

“What are you doing?” Jacin muttered beneath his breath, though the hallway was empty.

Winter pretended to jump. “Oh, I’m so sorry,” she said, peering up at him. “I’m afraid I didn’t see you there.”

He scowled.

Winking, she turned her attention back to her work, dipping a paintbrush into rich cerulean blue.

Jacin said nothing else. Neither did she. After the first ring was completed, she leaned her head against his thigh, making herself more comfortable as she picked out a sunburst orange. Overhead, Jacin sighed, and she felt the faintest brush of fingertips against her hair. A hint, a suggestion of togetherness, before he became a statue once more.