"And oftentimes to win us to our harm, the instruments of darkness tell us truths, win us with honest trifles, to betray us in deepest consequences."

--From Macbeth,

By William Shakespeare

"MAMAN!" JOVANA CRIED OUT, abandoning all propriety at the sight of her mother, wielding both steel and magic against two Atlan soldiers.

Her mother had not the time to spare a glance for her, but spoke clearly and firmly, like a true queen. "Jovana, take this and run!"

A dagger, its hilt studded with rubies, skittered across the stones, and in the midst of chaos she saw a hand reach out to grab it.

"No!" She shrieked, launching herself at the owner of the hand. "No, it's mine, you can't have it—"

A familiar laugh. "I was only attempting to keep it from the Atlan soldier who seems very keen on taking your dagger... and your head." Alastair passed it to her. She clung to it, not caring that the metal and cold stones dug into her freshly wounded finger.

"Let's go, shall we?" Jovana dragged the two of them along behind her, needing to keep moving. If she stopped, if she turned back—she might think of something she didn't want to. Might see something that would scar her for life, and the only scars she wanted to bear were from training. Alastair had stopped, dead still, as if some magic-wielder had frozen his muscles. She kicked him none too gently, while holding Mireille's hand in her empty one. "I am your queen, Alastair. I command you. Move!"

He unfroze, hazel eyes wide as he scurried after her. "You dont command me, Jovana. I will, after all, be your husband."

She lost her breath in her tight dress, and skidded to a stop when they made it out of the castle, snow and wind swirling around them. Carefully handing the dagger to Mireille, she scratched at her back, trying to undo the laces.

"Here."

Jovana nearly jumped as Alastair took the dagger from his sister and slit the laces. Immediate relief flooded her body but she refused to smile at him, to thank him, to do anything polite as the cold stung her bare hands and neck and face. If she used her manners—if she was nice to him—if she acknowledged the kind gesture, the world would have changed. He would have changed, from her enemy to something else, and she would die before she accepted that. Alastair didn't seem to expect gratitude, anyways, as he shoved the dagger back to her, warm from his grip.

"The armoury," she gasped out, racing through the snow. She saw in her peripheral vision that Mireille was clinging to her brother, frozen tear tracks glittering on her cheeks. "We can make it to the armoury. We'll be safe there."

The frigid winds buffeted them as they tore through the foot of snow that was now on the ground,  though it had been a clear, sunny day this morning. It must have been the Atlans, she thought. Their magic was nature-based, though her mother had told her that the Atlans were unable to shape the weather of any territory outside of their own. So this blizzard had to have been natural. She gritted her teeth, hiking up her skirt. Her own country was working against her.

Finally, gasping and panting with their clothes soaked and frozen, the three of them collapsed inside the armoury and barred the door.

///

SHE THOUGHT OF ILYAS Durand and mused, it didn't have to be like this.

Because he had not always been the villain in her story. Once upon a time, to an orphaned queen watching her friend's blood pool at her feet—to a little girl brandishing a dagger uselessly against hordes of soldiers—to someone who had lost everyone in her life that she cared about, Ilyas Durand had looked like a lifeline. He had looked like the last remnant of her past, some sort of parental figure. He had been the last person in the world that she had thought might care about her not just as the queen but as her sort-of father-in-law, as she was the friend of his dead daughter and the betrothed of his missing son. She had thought, for a moment, that she might be like a child to him to replace those that he had lost.

And for a while, she had been perfectly complacent to let him run the country, the bereaved orphan that she was—the grieving girl that she was. But when word of the decisions he was making, ones that reached beyond his realm of duties in administering the realm, and more into the realm of controlling her... When he told her what to wear, when to speak, how to act...

She had tried to brush it off. Jovana had clung desperately to that image of Mireille, of being soaked in her blood and seeing Ilyas Durand's hand, outstretched and pulling her to her feet, holding her to his armoured chest and murmuring that she was safe now. How he had smelled of war, of smoke and metal—of Atlan deaths and Mordanian victory, at least for now, pushing their enemy at bay. How odd it had been, to see a man usually so cold and so cruel be so warm and almost tender.

But of course, like all good things, it had ended. He had plied her with both carrot and stick, with promises of the things that all little girls liked--even half-broken, half-surviving little girls like her--and then made her sign off on treaties and negotiations that she did not even understand and that he surely did not attempt to explain. He had extended his regency to her sixteenth birthday, then her eighteenth, then her twenty-first. All the while, he had insisted that it was for her own benefit--that she was not ready for the responsibility. As if he knew anything about her mental state--as if he cared about anything save the throne.

She was the throne. She was the crown. She was a prize to him, a trophy conquered and stolen and safely secured under his thumb.

"There will be a banquet tonight," the Lord Regent had announced that morning at their gathering, sitting in his chair at her right hand. He had never been so bold at council meetings as to sit at the head of the table--but bold enough to humiliate her in all manner of other, more subtle ways. "I expect you will see to its preparations?"

"Most certainly." What had she to do, besides that, anyway? "And I expect you will not be so bold as to expect things of me--or the very least, not to word them such. Dismissed."

And now she found herself here, in the kitchen, wishing she was not.

"Your Majesty," the cook asked her, a sigh of frustration escaping his lips. "The menu for tonight's banquet?"

Ah, yes. This was what she had been reduced to--a glorified housekeeper of a manor house that was not even hers. "Duck, not pheasant. Wild boar, not bison. Five courses, not seven. It is nearly winter--we will need supplies for the soldiers at the border, in case of an invasion."

He nodded and hurried to scribble down all that she had commanded. "Is that all, Your Majesty?"

"It is. Arrange the rest of it at your own discretion--I have more important places to be." She wished desperately that the last part were true. Instead, she spent her days feeling useless, trapped, caged.

"Yes, Your Majesty." With that, he bustled off to another part of the kitchen.

Jovana exited that overheated realm, rounded a corner, and looked to see that it was properly empty of guards and servants before she let herself recline against a wall. Her legs and feet ached for a reason she couldn't name, making her feel as if she had been trudging for a long time through deep snow and mud of the Mordanian countryside. Yet, she had not. In fact, she had been sitting all morning and had no reason to feel such pain, so why did she?

Perhaps she had slept in an uncomfortable position. Surely, that was it. It was either that, or she was being cursed... Mordania, after all, has no shortage of people who could inflict physical pain—with magic or with weapons, fighting tactics, and armour. What if she was under a curse? What if the Lord Regent was slowly killing her, so that she died before her twenty-first birthday and he was free to take the crown permanently?

Her hand went immediately, reflexively, to the dagger in its sash at her side. The one her mother had given her—the last gift she had received from the Queen Dowager. A painful lump formed in her throat; no matter how many times she probed that grievous wound, it never seemed to fully heal.

"Your Majesty," a masculine voice came over her shoulder. She felt, oddly, her body relax and uncoil at the captain's nearness: at the crisp, refreshing scent of him, the contrasting heat of his body like a pillar of fire directly behind her. "The Lord Regent has asked that you tour the barracks before the battle."

"You mean, the minor skirmish that will doubtless take place on Mordanian land and result in Mordanian losses?" She asked, pivoting and tilting her head back to look up at Carlyle Lambert's face. His eyes were shadowed, as if he had not slept.

"The battle that we soldiers spent all of yesterday drilling and marching for, yes," he replied in his low baritone. His brows rose, though she didn't know why.

Marching. Drilling. "How interesting that you would contradict me." And how interesting that Jovana felt as if she had been the one to do the marching and drilling.

"Apologies, Your Majesty."

He did not look one bit apologetic. Not hateful, not quite malicious, nor rebellious—simply arrogant. Proud. As if Lambert felt like he was the ruler of all this, like he was her commander. No, not even—he had that same entitled look to him that noble boys grew up with, like the world was simply a collection of toys for them to sift through, play with, and discard at pleasure. And yet somehow it was a quiet confidence, not pompous and swaggering as other irritating members of the aristocracy were.

Who is his father again?

"Let us go to the barracks, then, shall we?"