A handful of the Sun Guard and Helat servants from Shaden Second-Son’s household greeted the House Mattius party. The native servants would stay on until the transplanted Blazing Prairie staff had a firm grasp of the city.

  Obviously chosen for their firm grasp of Khinesian, the servants bowed and introduced themselves as Clarencio and Kelena made their way to the manse. Each one referred to him or herself as a slave, but this was not slavery as the Kingdom of Night knew it. Among the Helat, a man who could not provide for his family could sell himself and his children for a certain number of years to wealthier houses, where law required they be fed and cared for until their contracted time lapsed.

  One ebullient young man, named Luca for the first emperor, happily informed them, “I have only three summers left to serve El’Shadrien,” he used the Legate’s formal name along with the respectful prefix for a Helat lord, “but I will seek to sell myself again to the Legate Marshal’s family. I will tell my brothers do the same when they reach majority. He and Al’Gwynyss are fair and generous with their slaves, and they hold the best solstice celebrations.”

  Clarencio barely heard himself reply. Fists of hellfire were wringing the muscles in the back of his thigh like a chicken’s neck. If he didn’t get off his leg soon, he was going to collapse.

  Thankfully, Kelena was a natural diplomat. She sensed his weakness and intervened. “That’s wonderful! El’Shadrien has been so kind to us on the journey. We’re so grateful to have your help settling into your beautiful city, Luca.”

  To Clarencio’s great relief, there were no steps to navigate to enter the manse.

  Waiting just inside the cool entryway was a serene, willowy Helat woman nearly as tall as Clarencio, with stark black hair. Somewhere between five and seven children lurked around her, some with pale gold hair, others with locks as dark as Khinet. The little monsters moved too much for Clarencio to get an exact count, but most of them looked alike enough to be twins.

  “I am Gwynyss, Huntress of the Moon,” she said, inclining her head regally. A delicate circlet of silver had been braided into her black tresses. “It is my family’s pleasure to welcome you to Thimeriastor, Duke Clarencio of House Mattius and Princess Kelena of House Khinet.”

  Her olive skin was impossibly flawless and free of sweat; her slender, pointed ears fairly glowed against her dark hair. Next to the Huntress, Clarencio suspected the rest of them looked like beggars who’d just finished rummaging through a midden heap.

  Humor played about Gwynyss’s lips as she cast pale violet eyes at Shaden Second-Son. “I trust my husband has kept you safe and comfortable on your long journey?”

  “Despite our best efforts to the contrary,” Clarencio replied, managing a smile. Sweat poured from his face and soaked his clothing, but he suppressed a shuddering chill. He returned her shallow bow and said in Helesene, “It is our honor to meet you, Al’Gwynyss.”

  Kelena bobbed beneath her parasol and echoed his greeting. She was picking up the language quickly.

  “Your children are so lovely, Huntress,” she gushed. “What are their names?”

  She had hit upon the right question. The formality melted away, and Gwynyss happily introduced Kelena to each of the children, dragging them forward and giving names and ages. Kelena was delighted to find out that a tiny pair of blonde girls were seventeen years old—a year older than she was and considered hardly old enough to be out of the nursery.

  As they ducked into the shaded interior of the manse, Gwynyss explained to Kelena that it was rare for the Helat to have so many children. Most Helat marriages were blessed with only one child, two at the most, but Shaden’s bloodline favored twins. Just a few births had multiplied their family accordingly. This overwhelming fertility was seen as proof of the Sun Dynasty’s natural strength.

  “Of course, without a correspondingly strong wife, none of this would have been possible,” Gwynyss said, a smile softening her stately air. “This is why he chose to ally himself with a woman of the Houses of the Moon.”

  “The Huntress was the best match politically,” Shaden said. “Her strength in motherhood was an unexpected boon.”

  A teasing look passed between them, bringing to mind the eloquent glances that had once passed between Clarencio’s mother and father. After a month on the road with the Legate Marshal, it was strange to see his familial side.

  Alaan preceded them through the residence, searching out each room before allowing Kelena to enter. That required some explanation, as Gwynyss had little knowledge of Thorns beyond a few horrific legends and rumors.

  Clarencio left the task to Kelena and her Thorn. As he’d learned when he tried to spare his shy young wife at the Weir, the Helat saw one person speaking for another as controlling. In the Empire of Day, even the slaves were expected to speak freely.

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  Of course, speaking to the Thorn proved a complicated matter, as Al’Gwynyss quickly found out. Alaan was more focused on securing the residence than answering her questions.

  “But he has will?” the Huntress asked, turning back to Kelena. “He is not a mindless corpse responding to your orders?”

  “You’re thinking of bloodslaves,” Kelena said. “Thorns have their will and everything else intact.”

  “Everything except their souls and their freedom,” Shaden interjected.

  Kelena blushed and looked away.

  The intentional needling of his wife annoyed Clarencio over and above the growing throb in his leg.

  “You’re aware of the circumstances, and you’re aware that she regrets the grafting. Would you have her go back in time and reject her king father’s order?”

  Shaden raised a brow. “I have heard her say many things, but never that she regretted grafting the pirate.”

  Gwynyss laid a gentle hand on her husband’s arm. “This is a discussion better suited for the Court of the Sun, is it not?” She spoke a phrase in Helesene, then translated for the Khinet-born: “The home is no place for business, and a battlefield no place for a meal.

  “Come, Princess.” The Huntress offered a hand to Kelena. “If the legate marshal and the duke cannot leave their work for another day, let us inspect the upper stories together. This residence has a beautifully designed fountain and wading pool.”

  “I apologize, Al’Gwynyss.” Clarencio did his best to smile past what was quickly becoming a column of hellfire in the back of his bad leg. “The fault is mine. I became used to casually debating matters of state and culture with Shaden on the journey to Thimeriastor. It may take me some time to relearn proper domestic conduct.”

  She laughed. “If you do, please attempt to teach El’Shadrien. Shall we proceed to the second story?”

  Kelena agreed eagerly, but Clarencio didn’t need to see the winding staircase to know he wasn’t going to make it any higher than the ground floor that day.

  While he begged off, a messenger arrived from the Diamond Palace, bearing words for both Shaden and Clarencio. Emperor Tragion had been informed of the ambassador’s arrival and would be happy to receive him and his wife at court on the morrow.

  Shaden’s message was not announced to the room like Clarencio’s, but whispered discreetly aside.

  “I offer my apologies,” the legate marshal said. “I must take my leave. I am required at the palace.”

  The older dark-haired boy grabbed Shaden’s arm and asked in Helesene, “May I go, too? I want to show Grandfather my new sun magic technique.”

  “Tomorrow. Stay with your lady mother, help her with the little ones. And no mischief with our Khinet-born friends—” Shaden shot Clarencio a smirk. “—they’re only half your age.”

  Clarencio sent his acceptance of the emperor’s invitation with the Legate Marshal, then retired to the bedchamber while Alaan accompanied the women and children upstairs.

  The lord’s suite was located blessedly on the ground floor, to the rear of the manse. There was only one path through the antechamber and bedroom, as Clarencio had requested, both with doors that barred. Kelena would be pleased and her Thorn relieved at the lack of potential entrances and exits. A bed had been moved into the antechamber for Alaan. Narrow, almost a cot, but Clarencio imagined it would be an improvement over perching on the sleeping chest as the Thorn had during the journey. Thankfully, the new arrangement also meant that Kelena would be able to remain in bed with Clarencio rather than having to lock herself away in that chest each night for her Thorn’s sake.

  Cool and dark, the bedchamber featured a recently stoned-in archway that had once let out onto the manse’s portico, and a large canopied bed hung with sheer curtains that would allow breezes in while holding summer’s pests at bay.

  The indentured servant Luca brought in a bathing tub. While he showed Saro where to draw water for a bath, Clarencio began massaging liniment into a leg turned to boiling hell.

  The worried steward tried to get Clarencio to drink more of the opal sap, but Clarencio refused. He was already shaking and sweating and fighting chills he knew the summery climate of the imperial city hadn’t caused.

  “Only until I arrived,” Clarencio gritted out. “That was the plan, and I mean to stick with it. Pour what’s left in the privy.”

  Now that they had made it to Thimeriastor, he wanted to break the shackles of the drug as quickly as possible.

  Saro left Clarencio bathed and stinking of the herbal liniment, but within the hour, not only his leg but his entire body crawled with fiery ants.

  The House Mattius family healer had told Clarencio to expect as much when it came time to stop the doses. What the gruff old healer hadn’t mentioned was the blinding headache splitting Clarencio’s skull. Opening his eyes drove a dagger into his brain. Closing them made him feel like a smith was hammering on his eyelids in place of an anvil. He couldn’t find any tolerable middle ground, so he drifted between one and the other, dozing when he could and wishing for sleep when he couldn’t.

  Between wakefulness and sleep, he dreamed awful things. The royal inquisition tortured his ruined leg while demanding he confess his treason. Using royal blood magic, Hazerial turned the leg to a pillar of stone with angry beasts trapped inside forever trying to chew their way out.

  A frenzy of priests descended while his sister Mitchi died in childbed. Drool ran from the snouts of the priests’ grotesque leather masks. The footman wrapped the bloody sheet around Mitchi’s body, but she was alive inside, fighting to break free while she screamed for Clarencio to save her before they carried her to the death cellar. He couldn’t get to her fast enough; his leg was being eaten from the inside out by burning maggots.

  A little girl ran sobbing from a slaughtered vanner encampment with crows pecking at her gold eyes. Clarencio stood over the dead with his rapier dripping blood and wild dogs chewing at the back of his thigh. His father embraced him, but rather than the strong man Lord Paius had been, this was a shrunken, diseased, dying creature whose skin and bones rotted in Clarencio’s arms.

  Kelena writhed in a childbed of blood and begged Clarencio to save her as the priests descended like a murder of crows. A purple hair ribbon looped around his young wife’s throat, tightening and tightening, until the pale flesh around the ligature bulged and bruised—but it was Clarencio who couldn’t breathe. He gasped for air, but the ribbon around her throat strangled him.

  Soft hands, cool on his face. Panicked voices. The sharp tang of mullein smoke, and warm liquid pouring down his throat. He choked and tried to tell them no, he didn’t want it, but the opal sap dragged him down into dreamless, painless oblivion.