"For why should I have sight. When the sight of nothing could give me pleasure?"

—From Oedipus the King,

By Sophocles

HE HAD KNOWN THIS WAS a preposterous plan bound to get them killed from the moment that Jovana, in a feverish, senseless panic, had told him about it. Yet he could not say no to her, to his queen. Whether it was magic or thoughtless affection and devotion that bent him to her will, he did not know, only that he both resented and wished to protect her. Yet she left him unable to do either.

Unable to resist. Were he anyone else, Alastair would have thought himself a fool, a helpless and broken man doomed to a life of wretched thralldom.

Instead, he merely paced the part of the floor that Jovana had not ruined by crashing to the ground from the ceiling, feeling invisible. Which was a good thing. And he was invisible. Jovana, on the way to Atla, had practiced weaving a shield around him that made it difficult for any pair of eyes to remain fixed on him for too long a time, certainly not long enough to discern his features and tell that he was Mordanian instead of Atlan. He appreciated the effort as much as he was secretly impressed by the strength of her powers.

As he recalled it, the rumours had said that her mother had been able to do the same thing. Whispers in Mordanian court had told him that her mother was capable of being both a queen and an excellent spy, rooting out treasonous traitors who were conspiring against the crown in a manner of espionage unbeknownst to anyone but herself. She had either taught it to Jovana, or it was inherited.

He slipped through the thinning crowds, half of the people leaving out of fear and the other half - well, they were not more loyal, perhaps, but more conniving and wishing to see how they could use the situation to their own advantage. Murmurs and mutterings reached his ears.

"The queen of Mordania? Please, she must be some impersonator! I had heard that the queen was only a sickly child, and that is why the Regent must take on so many of her responsibilities," said one man to another, stroking his waxed mustache.

"No, no, not at all," a woman said to him, her feathered hat bobbing with each emphatic shake of her head. "I have heard her magic was too much for her, that her power had driven her mad and so the Regent was forced to lock her up, like a prisoner."

"Now that is utter nonsense." Another man spoke in a booming voice, the knotted cravat at his throat straining against his loud tones. "Everyone knows women are not suited. I am certain the Lord Regent kept her in the palace for her own good."

The woman in the feathered hat gave him a disdainful look before sticking her nose in the air. Alastair almost chuckled before realizing the noise would draw too much attention to himself. Though Jovana had mastered the art of cloaking him from sight, she had yet to work on the science of making his footsteps or words soundless.

"Truly, Bernard, I never took you for such a... such a barbarian," snapped the feathered-hat woman. "What a very archaic view!"

The man with the waxed mustache made a noise of agreement. "Certainly."

He wondered what Jovana would have to say about that. If she was in power; if she was queen because she wished it; if she fought for power because she could not live without it. Or was it only because she knew it was her birthright and could not relinquish it? Did she love the crown she wore, or was it only a duty she bore, inherited from her mothers as her powers were?

He wanted to ask her. Wanted to, as he pushed through the throngs and past the people, as he tried to reach her.

He despised the idea of Kaiden Thorne even looking at her. No part of him trusted the prince: the man was nothing more than a scheming, slippery, snake of a courtier.

Finally, he stood by her side, his hand invisible over hers, and Jovana saw him, but her expression did not change, not wanting those who could not see him to recognize his presence. A bead of sweat slipped down her forehead from the effort of keeping the invisibility shield in place. He cocked an eyebrow at her. What do you want?

"If you wish to have a hope of succeeding in this competition, Jovana, then you shall have to fight like the rest," Kaiden said. "To the back of the line."

"And if I wipe out all of your competitors in one fell swoop?" she asked.

He raised his hands as though in surrender. Alastair caught sight of Holly Brown, Kaiden's guard, a dagger shining in her hands, and stood far too close for Jovana for his comfort. He dropped his hand from Jovana's and stormed over to her, keeping his footfalls light as he smacked the blade from her hands. It clattered to the ground and she stared as though searching for the source of the... accident.

Kaiden's head swivelled over to look at his guard, his green eyes flashing with alarm. It gave Jovana the perfect opportunity to send a net of poisonous vines shooting out over the remaining competitors, immediately immobilizing them. If possible, the room became even more chaotic, shouts and hollers filling the air along with the scent of poisonous gas.

Holly gave a cry. She was looking directly at him, and he drew his sword, the warmer climate of Atla having caused him to shed his furs and chainmail for a lightweight leather jerkin and linen trousers. It allowed him to move more nimbly on his feet, as she collected her dropped dagger. Jovana's magic must have worn off from the effort of using Atlan powers.

Panic welled up in his chest before quickly subsiding as he got into a fighting stance, melting clashing against metal as the clang of the hit reverberated down his arm. Weapons bared and nearly at each other's throats, Holly and Alastair faced one another. Her gold-tipped braids clinked softly as she held her sword, never wavering.

How odd it was, then, that an enemy might become something of a friend only to be an opponent once more. How quickly the tides of war and peace could change.

They both froze as Kaiden spoke. "Very well, then. You, Jovana Dusang, may become the first foreign queen to fight against me... for I am, after all, the final champion against whom to compete, for one to win the crown. Though why you would wish for another crown when you already wear one, I cannot imagine."

Jovana nodded. Both Holly and Alastair lowered their weapons reluctantly.

"Then we meet here, tomorrow, at dawn," Kaiden said. "Our fight will not be to the death, but a clear victor will emerge when the other is incapacitated. No weapons will be allowed."

"So it shall be." Jovana's voice rang out through the room, and the remaining courtiers looked aghast. "In my courts, Thorne, we seal our oaths with blood."

Kaiden grimaced, his face going white beneath the freckles. "We do no such thing here. It is far too gruesome for my tastes, frankly."

Jovana raised her dark eyebrows. "How very weak of you, Thorne. And here I thought you a man."

"An Atlan man," he quipped. "Not a Mordanian one."

"Then how do you seal your oaths, here in Atla?" Jovana cast a glance around the ruined wreckage of the room, where the majority of the fighters and courtiers had vacated the area - the ones who could move, at least.

"With witnesses, who attest to the veracity of our speech and enforce our bargain as they see fit," Kaiden said. "In this case, I believe our respective guards will do the trick. Holly, Lambert, do you declare that you have witnessed this oath between us?"

They both acquiesced. Despite the trail of events that had led up to this one, despite the fact that they had both agreed to this plan that seemed to loom larger and larger by the minute, he felt the sinking feeling of dread fill his stomach, sinking lower and lower in his gut. He raised his hand and swore the oath. Mirroring Holly, and was reminded of that day so many years ago, over a decade ago, when he and Jovana had sworn that oath to be betrothed to one another.

The realization nearly hit him like a horde of stampeding elephants, then. On the way to Atla, during this trip, he had realized. All those moments when he had hurt when she hurt, felt what she felt - it had been magic. Magic of the most rare, sacred, and primal sort: mating magic.

"Very well," Kaiden said, and there was a sly undercurrent to his tone that made Alastair clench his jaw. What did he have planned? And why? "We shall meet, as agreed, at dawn, to duel for the future of Atla."

Jovana agreed. "So we shall."

As he and Jovana swept out of the room, the courtiers and contestants alike erupted into sheer outrage. Jovana snapped her fingers and the vines keeping the competitors immobile were released, falling to the ground with a hiss that reminded him of a garden snake he had seen once at his father's country estate in Hartfall.

Jovana's hands were clenched into fists by her sides as they marched toward their waiting phaeton, ready to take them to their lodgings. She pulled the fur-lined hood of her dark violet cape over her dark hair even though not a flake of snow fell from the sky, and as she sat in the leather seat of the carriage, he thought he saw her body quiver. Was she laughing? Crying? The carriage took off at a trotting pace, the driver a trusted member of the royal guard.

"Remind me once more, Alastair, why we are doing this." Her voice was terse, shaking with the effort it took to speak.

He smoothed a hand over her back. "Because we are here to throw Ilyas Durand's crimes in his face, and to prove to him that he never should have dared to try and control our fates, Jovana. Nothing more, and nothing less. Because we are more than what he has tried to make us into."

She laughed, then, and it was the most beautiful and wretched sound he had ever heard. "I wish to be a weapon of his destruction, but I also wish to be more. I do not want to spend my life reacting to the crimes he has wrought against me, but I wish to be defined by my own successes and failures."

He pulled her close to him. "Jovana, you already are all of that."