A Thousand Heartbeats

As much as I’d have preferred to stay in my room, it was Wednesday, and I knew that Father would be teaching Escalus; I hated missing a lesson.

Just as I reached the library doors, Rhett walked out, on his way to deliver some books. His smile had returned, and he looked perfectly at ease. I couldn’t help but think, That boy kissed me.

There was something about this fact that left me stunned. He’d worked so hard for his place in the palace. The position, the comfort . . . people would fight for what he had.

And he was more than willing to throw it all away for me.

It was the kind of thing I read in my books, the kind of thing that made people fall. So why? Why wasn’t I prepared to abandon everything for him? If he loved me like he said, it would be more of a waste to stay than go.

“Your Highness.” Rhett greeted me with a rare bow as the wide door shut behind him. “Shall I prepare the horses?” His tone was playful, but the desire for an answer could be heard behind the joke.

“Not just yet.”

“Not yet . . . but soon.”

I giggled at his confidence. “You think you know me so well?”

He straightened, shifting his books to his opposite hand. “You doubt me? I know you prefer picking small locks to big ones, and you have a strange affection for cinnamon. Your favorite color, for some bizarre reason, is white, and you don’t mind rain but hate the cold.” He paused, shaking his head and making me smile even more.

“What else? You prefer evenings to mornings. You tend to put others before yourself. If you could spend the entirety of your day in a sunny patch of grass with a book, you would. Particularly that patch out in the far side of the garden.”

I put my hand over my heart. “I do love it there. The pretty flowers and that smooth, round stone in the ground.”

He nodded. “I know. I know everything about you. And I know that you both want and deserve more than that,” he said, flicking his chin at the library door before carrying on his way.

Confused by his words, I went inside. Sure enough, I could see over the low rows of shelves near the front that Father and Escalus were at their usual table. But, surprisingly, Nickolas was there as well.

You deserve more than that. Well, yes, I supposed I did.

“You’re late,” Father said briskly. “Today’s lesson is for the lot of you. You’re the next generation of leaders for Kadier. How could you be late?”

I wanted to correct him, to tell him that he’d never formally invited me to these lessons in the first place, and I only came because Escalus started dragging me along. That I stayed because I loved it.

“My apologies, Your Majesty. I am most ready now,” I said, taking my seat. I could tell he was not in the mood for pleasantries today.

Before him were several books. The largest one lay open, showing a map of the entire continent. There were the hard lines of the borders, the pretty strings of rivers lacing across them or sometimes defining them. To the north, across a small sea, sat a lump of land we owned simply titled “The Island.” Mountain ranges, oceans, vast plains . . . all very typical. But there were two words on this map that sent literal chills up my spine.

The label that defined the space beyond the edges of Stratfel, Roshmar, and even Ducan: “Unclaimed Land.”

A few years ago, a strange man had attempted to kill my father. I had long believed that man was from those lands. I also thought that if my mother was alive, she was somewhere out there. Distance-wise, it wasn’t impossible to get to—a capable man could probably ride through in a day, day and a half—but there was the issue of a forest so thick and threatening I’d never heard a single account of anyone crossing it. Someone could go up by sea, but around the southeastern coast, the rocks were so jagged that when we tried sending a ship that way looking for Mama, we ended up with a single survivor returning on foot.

Father cleared his throat, and my eyes went to his. He looked at us, his face stern. “You three are the future of our kingdom. And I wanted to give you a moment to think about where we’ve come from, and where you could take us.”

He reached over and opened a book to a page he’d marked with a long ribbon, placing it over the open one that I’d been staring at before. In front of us lay the outline of Kadier. Except it wasn’t Kadier.

A hundred and fifty years ago, Kadier was nameless. The land we kept had held six large clans—Jeonile, Cyrus, Crausia, Etesh, Obron Tine, and Straystan—united by language, divided by greed. This land was so good, so easy to work, that each clan scraped and fought for more, taking what they could. But the division turned out to be a bigger problem than we knew. With our backs to the ocean and our faces to Kialand and Monria—who both desperately tried to push us out to sea—we were all in a dangerous position. After decades of battles, losing land, losing lives, the six clans met and agreed to unify under the leadership of one. My four-times great-grandfather was voted to lead the masses. Back then, our clan had gone by Jeonile, changing it to Kadier in honor of a brave woman who’d fought valiantly, according to legend. I couldn’t find her story in our history books, so I didn’t know who she was. But the name served to unite all six clans, forsaking our old names and clinging to the new.

After evaluating skills, dividing men, harvesting resources, and much planning, the newly unified Kadier mounted an attack on Kialand, not only pushing them back but claiming some of their land as our own. When Monria heard what we were finally capable of, they came offering gifts of peace. The crown I wore had Monrian gold in it, passed down through all those years.

Early on, there were attempts from other clan leaders to take the throne, claims that their bloodline was longer, that they were blessed in ways we weren’t. But we knew how to fight, and those who wouldn’t kneel were buried. Through the years, the leaders of those clans tapered off, the relatives of some marrying into the royal line. It was all now down to Escalus and me on one side, and Nickolas on the other. With us united, there were no claims left. We would lead Kadier into unparalleled peace.

We stared at the faded lines, the pen strokes that had wedged us into enemies at one time. My father had a gift for making his point.

“Founding Day was yesterday. We announce Annika and Nickolas’s engagement tomorrow. After seven generations, with your marriage, we’ll have taken Kadier from six feuding clans to one fully unified kingdom. Our ancestors could only dream of such a thing,” he said.

He swallowed, meeting each of our gazes before shifting the old map of Kadier back to the one of the entire continent. “And that is why you must work together. You will be an example for the rest of the country, an example of peace and unity. You will face obstacles, without a doubt. And there will be those trying to win your favor for their own gain.

“When your mother went missing,” he said, pausing for a moment after uttering the words, “we thought it must have been done by a neighboring country, someone trying to break the peace we worked for. In fact, I was sure your people had been behind it, Nickolas.” Father nodded to himself, voicing his theories, some I’d never heard. I didn’t know if any of this was based on fact or if he spent his nights dreaming up answers. “When Jago had come for me a few months earlier . . . I knew he must have been working for someone. Another king out there wants me dead; they all want Kadier. They always have.”

His eyes were wide, staring at nothing. “Jago . . . he wasn’t working alone. He tried to kill me for someone’s gain. I feel it in my bones. And when he failed, they took your mother to break me.”

I didn’t want to admit that he was scaring me, talking like that.

I remembered when the assassin came for my father, sneaking in at night and getting into his rooms. It was my mother’s scream that woke my father and alerted the guards. Another few seconds, and they both might have been lost. Because Mama went missing shortly after, he assumed the two incidents were linked. If they were, we had no way of knowing. There was no ransom asked, no note left behind. There was no sign of struggle at all. Except for the fact that I knew my mother would never, ever leave my side, I’d almost think she just stepped out of the palace one night and never came back.

“But no one will break us,” he went on. “We will be poised and prepared. One day, when we find a lead, we will do what we must to execute justice. Until then, we will be the finest examples of a royal family anyone has ever seen. Escalus, we must take care choosing your bride; every princess will come with strings attached, but a smart alliance will give us further stability. And Annika, you and Nickolas will go on a royal tour soon after your wedding, introducing yourself as a couple to the surrounding monarchs. As such, I expect you to do research on etiquette for Caporé, Sibral, Monria, Halsgar, and Kialand. Those five will be the bare minimum.”

I nodded, knowing Rhett would point me in the right direction.

“We should invite them here, yes?” Nickolas suggested, sounding offended. “Surely they should be the ones to make the trek once we are married.”

I exchanged a look with Escalus before replying on my father’s behalf. “As the youngest newly established royal couple, it’s proper that we make the event easier for our elders.”

“If you insist,” Nickolas said, sounding unsatisfied. “Is that all?”

I looked to Escalus again. What an impertinent question.

Father nodded. “For today.”

Nickolas turned as if he was about to address me, but Escalus beat him to it.

“I hope this isn’t rude, but if you two don’t mind, I wondered if I might borrow my sister. We have some personal matters to discuss.” Without waiting for a response, I took Escalus’s arm and let him escort me out through the doors and off to another part of the castle. Anywhere, really.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

I nodded, though the gesture was hollow. “I just wish doing the right thing didn’t feel so wrong.”

We walked in silence for a moment before I remembered why we were here in the first place.

“Oh, silly me. What did you want to tell me?”

“Something incredibly important . . . My favorite color is blue.”

I rolled my eyes. “Was that all?”

“I just wanted to see how your leg is. You scared me yesterday.”

“I’m fine,” I told him. “It hurts, but I didn’t open a wound. I’m doing better than I thought.”

“Oh, really? So when do you want to have another lesson?”

“Tonight!” I exclaimed. “But it needs to be in the stables this time, and not my room. I can’t move in there.”

“But I like practicing in your room.”

“I need to be able to make noise, to hit things.”

He huffed.

“Please!” I tugged on his sleeve over and over like a child.

“Ugh, and you think Nickolas’s the worst? Fine. The stables it is.”

“I knew you loved me.”

He kissed my forehead. “Who doesn’t?”