"Upon this arises the question: whether it is better to be feared or to be loved."

—From The Prince

By Niccolo Machiavelli

IT FELT AS THOUGH THE rug had been pulled from under Jovana's feet as she stood, staring at Ilyas Durand.

He looked completely out of place in the Atlan court, standing still in his fur and leathers, his boots laced up to his knees, a growth of greying beard on his face. The men here were clean-shaven, their hair close-cropped. They wore lighter clothes in more colourful hues, clad in free-flowing garments.

Ilyas took a few steps closer. Her stomach roiled at his very nearness, something clenching and burning inside of her. She wanted to light herself on fire just looking at him. Alastair squeezed her hand. "You were expecting me, weren't you?"

"You hadn't sent a message ahead," Kaiden said, strolling forwards. Holly hovered in the corner, watching the action play out. "It is good to see yo ounce more, though, as an erstwhile ally."

"Erstwhile?" repeated Ilyas. "And here I thought we could almost be called friends."

"Friends," Kaiden repeated, as though savouring the taste of the word in his mouth before deciding he didn't quite like the tang of it. "No, I'm afraid I have very few friends. It is a hazard of my birth, you see. Not that you would understand it, being a mere regent yourself."

Jovana hid her smile behind Alastair's shoulder at the remarks that Kaiden was making.

"You will regret your words, king," Ilyas said.

Kaiden kept on striding towards the regent. "Are you threatening me on my own soil? I must assure you, that would be a great and terrible mistake."

"I was merely warning you against making some hasty and regrettable decisions." Ilyas shrugged. His dagger shone at his side.

"Like the one you made when you sent an assassin to kill the queen?" Alastair demanded.

"Is that what you call it?" Ilyas said. "An assassination? I sent that man to deliver a message, son."

"Well, I assure you, the message was received," Jovana said, tilting her chin up. The dagger that Alastair had slipped her was heavy in her hand, the weight of duty centring her, calming her. "You can now accept one in return."

She pulled out the knife and threw it at him, landing it squarely in his heart. Or she would have, if he had not dodged it, causing the blade to lodge itself into his left shoulder. He cried out, gritting his teeth.

"Now, now," Kaiden said, his voice booming out throughout the room. "You mustn't be too testy in my courts. I do despise getting blood on the tower's tiles. It is quite inconvenient for the servants to clean up, you know."

"You are nothing more than a pompous, spoiled, brat," Ilyas began to say, but then, he simply... stopped.

Jovana twisted her fingers, feeling the contours of his windpipe as it constricted, turning his face blue. "But you forget yourself, Regent. All that you are now is a weak, frustrated lord without lands, without power, and no country to govern over. I will not be controlled by you anymore, and I will never allow your crimes to go unpunished."

She released him, watching him as he clawed at his throat, and dropped to the floor.

As Ilyas Durand sucked in air, his son stood over him, one foot hovering above his chest. Alastair's eyes bored into his father's. "I could end your life here and now, for slaughtering your daughter, and my sister."

The room fell silent, every ear straining to hear the rest.

"But I won't," he said. "Not because I've forgiven you or because I consider what you have done to be redeemable. But because you have done far, far worse to Jovana, and she deserves to taste your death before I take your life."

Alastair nodded, as though grimly satisfied, and kept his arm around herself. She allowed herself that much comfort, that little. It was all she deserved, all she could manage. A stiff breeze blew through the tower room, bringing with it the scent of freesias and the sound of crows cawing.

Sprawled in a heap on the floor, Ilyas wheezed. "Good... luck... with... that."

They filed out of the room and stepped over his body, hearing him gasp for breath.

//

JOVANA GRIPPED ALASTAIR'S ARM, NOT allowing herself the mere possibility of falling. Would she make it out of this tower, out of this palace alive?

Though her last glimpse of Ilyas had been immobile on the floor - though her last image of him had been with her tormentor and abuser completely helpless and at her mercy - still she could not shake the fear that gripped her. She could not live while he did. She refused to live in a world where he was alive.

Jovana refused to live in a world where the man who had killed her best friend, who had slaughtered his own daughter without mercy, who had exiled his own son and never even bothered to look for him... A man who did all that he could to push others away only to pull them back in like puppets for him to manipulate... That man did not deserve a drop of her pity. Nor did he deserve another lungful of air, another instant in this world.

"We have to kill him." Alastair's words reached her as though from inside her own mind. "Before we can get married or proceed with anything."

She kept walking, feeling his fingers slide between hers, his heartbeat a steady reassurance of the safety that he would provide, the security that was hers. "I agree. But he should be punished as all traitors to the crown are."

Ilyas would be a traitor for having colluded with the enemy, for having killed a child of Mordanian blood. She knew the Mordanians would support her rule in Atla, knew they would view it as conquest and not a conspiracy. At least, she hoped so.

Kaiden must have overheard their conversation, turning to look at them. He was silent, for once.

Holly spoke up, her voice soft, but her golden-brown eyes sharp. "We don't execute traitors here."

"How do you make examples of them, then?" Alastair asked, his voice tinged with curiosity.

"We set them adrift in the roughest oceans, on a boat with nothing more than the clothes on their backs," Kaiden said. "If they live, it is to their own detriment."

"That seems like a longer form of execution," Jovana said.

Though, their own execution style was no more humane. She kicked at an orange clump of fallen leaves on the cobblestone path that led to the castle. It rose up above them, looming white stone and gleaming gold.

"Don't you freeze people to death in a pit of ice?" Kaiden said, frowning. "Hardly kinder or more merciful."

"No, but at least we can make sure they die," Alastair said drily. "If he is to die, he dies the Mordanian way."

They had not exactly left Ilyas Durand alone. Kaiden had arranged for two guards to haul him to the dungeons for entering the castle uninvited, especially the council room. That alone was grounds for imprisonment. She disliked that Kaiden had been the one to do it. If she was being honest, as it felt like she now owed him a favour. The majority of her relationships were transactional. The only one that had not been was hers with Alastair, but he was so deeply intertwined with her that it hardly could be deemed equal to any other connection.

She had to admit that she didn't harbour a single frisson of guilt to think of him in prison because he had tried to attack her. It did not make her a bad person, did it? A glance at Alastair told her he was feeling the same way. That he did not regret a single action he had taken because they had all led him to where he needed to be.

"Then you might have to drag him back across the border," Holly said. "Hardly a wise decision in these tenuous times."

"Not necessarily..." An idea blossomed in her mind like one of the numerous pink cactus flowers surrounding the castle. "Why not create our own ice pit here, and watch him suffer in it?"

Alastair's blue eyes turned to ice, to fire. "I like the way you think, Jovana."