Royal Bastards Read online

  “That was here,” Zell said, understanding.

  “Yup,” I said. “After the Titans vanished, a bunch of my ancestors finally braved the Frostkiss Mountains and discovered these big old forests on the other side of them. Those pilgrims settled this land, and eventually one family came to rule over all of them. My family. The Old Kings. The Kents.”

  “But they didn’t have magic,” Zell said.

  “No. No one did, not for a long time. See, most of the Titan cities collapsed when they vanished, but one of them—the biggest, Lightspire—kept standing. For a long time, it was just a powerful trade city, nothing more. But then the family that ruled it uncovered the secrets of Titan magic, hidden in some buried libraries or whatever. They learned how to use the Titans’ weapons, their Rings, and that was how the first mages came about. The Volaris founded the School of Mages, and created an unstoppable army. One by one, they conquered all their neighbors, turning Kingdoms into Provinces and making their Kings bow. And finally, they came for us. The Kingdom of the West.” I let out a deep exhale. “That was the Great War. A hundred and twenty years ago, after their mages killed almost half the men of the West, my great-great-grandfather Albion Kent surrendered. And the Kingdom of the West became the Western Province, just another territory of the great Kingdom of Noveris.”

  Zell was quiet for a while, thinking. “It sounds like your people have often been slaves,” he said at last. “First to the Titans. Then to this Lightspire King. Your father, then…he did what he did so your people could be free. There’s honor in that.”

  “I…I guess so,” I said, looking up at him. In the flickering orange light of the dying fire, his face looked serene, as calm and thoughtful as the statues of the Old Kings. But there was something else in his eyes, something that seemed almost gentle. Was Zell…trying to make me feel better?

  And was it actually working?

  Something rustled and flickered overhead. I looked up to see a dozen streaks of sparkling light cut through the night sky, zipping past us like blue-and-yellow shooting stars. Zell startled, but I held out a hand to calm him. “They’re just Whispers.”

  “Whispers?”

  “Magical little birds. We buy them from the Artificers Guild in Lightspire,” I explained. I’d spent hours as a girl gazing into the straw-lined cages in Castle Waverly’s Whisper roost, because how could I not? They were so damn cute, tiny little owls no bigger than your thumb, with big glistening eyes that looked like galaxies. A lot less cute was how they crumbled into bone and dust after they’d delivered too many messages, but I made sure to not be around for that part. “Most of our towns have Whisper roosts. You tell a message to a bird and which roost to fly to, and then it’ll go there and pass your message along, speaking your words in your voice. It’s how we communicate.”

  “Those came from your father’s Castle,” Zell mused. “He’s sending the word out.”

  “Yeah,” I said, but which word? That the Zitochi had killed the Archmagus, and, what, kidnapped the Princess? What was his plan now? Why had he done any of this?

  I thought again of the beach, of the crunch as my father drove the dagger into Rolan’s eye, his vicious grin. The Whispers vanished, leaving us in the dark. “My father was ready to kill an innocent girl in her sleep,” I said. “Where’s the honor in that?”

  “Honor,” Zell repeated, as if tasting the word in his mouth. “I suppose honor can mean whatever we twist it to mean.” He paused for a full minute before speaking again. “Do you know why I went with you tonight? To spy on you. To spy on your Princess. I thought that if I brought my father details of your castle’s weak points or some secret about the Princess, he might soften toward me.”

  I reeled at that. Before, Zell admitting that he just saw us as enemies to spy on would have gotten my blood boiling. But he sounded so lost it was impossible to feel anything but sympathy. “I pretended to be your friend so I could betray you,” he said. “And I didn’t do it for my people or my family’s honor. I did it because I wanted my father to be proud of me again. I did it for the man who threw an ax at my skull. So what does that make me?”

  “A bastard,” I said. “Same as me.”

  Neither of us said anything after that. The waves crashed in the darkness, and a light breeze tinged with their salty spray swept over us. Zell’s hair ruffled gently behind him. I shivered but hid it well. I tried to think of something to say, but nothing came to mind, nothing that could make sense in this impossible moment. There weren’t words for what I was feeling, for the knowledge that my entire world had crumbled in the space of one night, for the understanding that nothing would ever be right again. I looked at Zell, and he looked at me. I could tell he was thinking the same thing.

  So we sat there together in silence on the log, listening to the waves, staring out at the night.

  And I felt the tiniest bit of comfort that at least I wasn’t alone.

  THE NEXT THING I KNEW, I was waking up and it was midmorning. “Whu…?” I grumbled, blinking into the light. I felt like it had just been the middle of the night minutes ago, but now the hot sun hung overhead. My throat was so dry it felt like I’d swallowed a bag of sand. I jerked up, my back incredibly unhappy that I’d been sleeping against the log for hours. “What’s going on?”

  “Very little,” Zell replied. He was sitting cross-legged in the sand just a few feet away, facing the ocean. I had a feeling he’d been there for a while. Miles was standing next to him, his hair a frazzled mess, his hands in his pockets. Looking back at the camp, I could make out Lyriana’s silhouette by the gently smoldering fire pit, huddled in the shadow against the cliff’s wall. But where was…?

  “Jax went off to scout the area,” Miles said. “We’re just sitting tight until he gets back.”

  “Right. That makes sense.” I stood up with a stretch. Zell seemed to be in his own world, doing whatever weird thing Zitochi do in the morning. I felt a sudden flash of embarrassment. What had last night been about? What was that moment we’d shared? I didn’t want to think about it, so I turned to Miles. “You holding up okay?”

  “About as well as I can be,” he replied. “I keep racking my brain, trying to figure this all out. I’m sure if I could just sit somewhere quiet and concentrate, I could come up with something, a plan to fix everything, without anyone else getting hurt.”

  “How’s it looking?”

  “All I’ve got is step one,” Miles sighed. “Find somewhere quiet to sit and concentrate.”

  I looked back at the fire pit, where we’d set up camp. Lyriana wasn’t just sitting there. She was hunched with her face in her hands, crying, almost shaking with grief. Even from across the beach, I could make out her muffled wails, her despairing sobs.

  “She’s been like that all morning,” Miles said. “Jax and I tried to talk to her, but it…it didn’t help. Maybe you could try? I’m sure you’d do better than we did.”

  Why? Because I’m a girl? I bristled a little at that, especially since I probably had more in common with Zell than I did with a sheltered butterfly like Lyriana. But then she let out another heaving, shuddering sob, and I turned to head her way. I’d be a terrible person if I didn’t even try.

  Lyriana heard me approach. She glanced up sniffling, as I came over, and she looked even worse than I’d imagined. Her cheeks were stained with tears, and her eyes were bloodshot and weary. Her hair hung in tangled clumps around her face. A dark bruise had blossomed around her jawline, probably from the fall through the caves, and her lip was split open and bloody. She didn’t look like the Princess who had stunned everyone at the feast or the mage who had saved our lives. She just looked like a girl who’d been through hell.

  She sobbed again, a full-body wail, like a widow at a funeral. And maybe it made me a bitch, but I couldn’t help but feel kind of annoyed with her. We’d all had a bad night. We were all in huge trouble. But the rest of us were holding it together and not having full-on meltdowns. So why couldn’t she?

 
; “They killed Uncle Rolan,” she muttered softly. “They killed him like he was nothing.”

  That feeling of annoyance curdled instantly into guilt. Right. She hadn’t just had a bad night. She’d watched her uncle get slaughtered before her eyes. She had every right in the world to melt down. Hell, she had every right to punch me in the face.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, sitting down next to her. “It was terrible.” I desperately wished I could think of something better to say, something that wasn’t so trite or obvious or hollow. But what could I say? I hadn’t paid much attention to my etiquette lessons, but I was pretty sure there wasn’t a standard expression for Sorry my dad killed your uncle.

  “He told me it’d be dangerous. He said people would want to hurt us. But I didn’t believe him. I didn’t listen.” Lyriana’s voice quivered. “I don’t want this anymore. I don’t want to experience the world. I don’t want any of it. I just want to go home.”

  “We all do,” I said, and my chest ached. I felt terrible for having judged her so much the night before, terrible for all the misfortune my family had brought down on her. I reached out to hold her, pulled my hand back when I realized I shouldn’t touch the Princess, and then decided that we were well past the point of respecting those sorts of boundaries. I wrapped my arm around Lyriana and pulled her close and held her against me as she cried, as her tears soaked my shirt. Her body racked against mine, heaving with her wails, but I held her firm.

  That seemed to help, just a little. She stopped crying and turned back to me with a sniffle, her head cocked to the side as if really looking at me for the first time. “You betrayed your own father to protect me,” she said. “You could have handed me over, but you didn’t. You saved my life.”

  “Yeah, well, you saved us all from drowning,” I replied. “So I guess we’re even. And hey. You got to dip that foot in the Endless Ocean after all.”

  “I dipped a lot more than a foot.” She gave just the faintest hint of a smile. “If you can get me home, I promise you’ll be safe. I swear by the Titans, I’ll make sure no harm comes your way.”

  And what about my father? Would any harm come his way? I didn’t dare ask, because I already knew the answer.

  “Hey!” Jax’s voice shouted from up the beach. “I’m back!”

  I tried to help Lyriana up so we could see what was happening, but she didn’t budge. “Please,” she said. “I don’t want to talk to anyone else. Just leave me here for now. I’d like to grieve alone.”

  There wasn’t much I could say to that. I gave her shoulder a gentle pat and then headed back up the beach. I could make out Jax’s figure, his bounding strides recognizable even that far away. “I’ve got great news,” he huffed as he came to a stop next to us. “Really great news. Turns out we are insanely lucky!”

  “I’m going to have to disagree with that,” Miles muttered.

  Jax ignored him. “I figured out where we are! We’re in Beggar’s Reach, the stretch past the old quarry, through the thick old woods. That must be why this cove’s so hard to find. That river carried us even farther north than it seemed.”

  “How is that great news?” I asked.

  “Because you know who lives nearby?” Jax’s cheeks crinkled with a big ear-to-ear grin. “Tannyn and Markos!”

  “No way,” I smiled. Tannyn and Markos Dolan were a pair of brothers who Jax and I had grown up with. Their father had been the official vintner of Castle Waverly, and as kids, the four of us had been inseparable, tearing around the courtyard, splashing in the creek, pranking the visiting merchants, and hiding from Headmaiden Morga. Tannyn had been Jax’s best friend, a good-natured athletic boy who’d always been down for a race or a dare. And Markos…

  Markos was a year younger than me. He wasn’t the smartest boy, and certainly not the most handsome, and he stuttered when he got nervous. But he was sweet and gentle, and a lifetime ago, he’d been my first kiss.

  “They’re old friends of ours,” Jax explained. “Their dad used to work in the castle, and when he retired, Lord Kent gave him this vineyard out on the coast. He died a couple of years ago, but his boys inherited the place. And guess what? They’re just a few hours’ walk from here!”

  “Tannyn and Markos. Wonderful,” Miles grumbled. He’d never gotten along with the brothers. Once, when we were little, Tannyn had pushed Miles into a creek, and Miles had run crying to his mom. Both brothers caught a whipping for that, something they never forgave him for.

  “And what will these old friends do for us?” Zell asked.

  “They’re good guys,” Jax said. “Tannyn’s practically a brother to me. They’ll give us food, clean clothes, a place to lie low while we figure this all out.”

  My stomach rumbled audibly. I realized suddenly just how hungry I was. “It’s a good idea. Better than staying on this beach all day. And I can vouch for the guys.”

  “Oh, I’m sure you can,” Jax said, his smirk barely concealed. He never got over the fact that Markos and I had made out.

  Zell didn’t seem to pick up on it. “If you both trust them, then it’s good enough for me. We should leave now and travel along the coast as far as we can, staying hidden in the cliff’s shadow—”

  “Wait,” Miles interrupted. He rubbed the bridge of his nose with his eyes shut, the way he always did when he was thinking. “Wait, wait, wait. We have to split up.”

  Jax spun toward him. “What? Why would we possibly do that?”

  “Look, for all we know, every soldier in the West is out there looking for us. What happens if we all get caught together?” None of us answered. “Right. I don’t know, either. But I don’t think it’ll be good.”

  “And we’ll be better off if we split up?”

  Miles sighed. “Look around, Jax. What do you see? Because I see three worthless bastards, a worthless stable hand, and one absolutely priceless Princess.”

  Jax didn’t seem to get it, but I did. “Lyriana’s the one our parents really want. Until they capture her, the rest of us, well, we still have value to them….”

  “Because we know where she is,” Zell finished, then cocked his head at Miles. “Smart.”

  From there, it was just a matter of deciding who stayed and who went. Jax insisted he had to go, because Tannyn would be most likely to listen to him. Miles tried to insist I should stay, because I’d be safest with the Princess, and yeah, that kind of pissed me off. I pointed out that I had history with the guys, too, and that just made Jax snicker. Zell offered to stay back, but Jax didn’t trust him with Lyriana. In the end, despite Miles’s stammering protests, we decided that Jax, Zell and I would go, and Miles would stay back with Lyriana. They’d be safe, hidden here in the shadow of the cliffs. Safe as they could be.

  We gathered our stuff and prepared to set out. I checked one last time on Lyriana to make sure she knew what was happening and was okay with it; she let out a few soft meeps that I think meant yes. As I headed out to join Jax and Zell, though, Miles stopped me halfway up the beach. “Tilla, wait. Can I talk to you for a moment?”

  “Miles, I know you don’t want to stay behind,” I began. “But it just makes the most sense, okay?”

  “That’s…that’s not what this is about.” Miles stared down intensely at his bare feet. “I just…I wanted to give you something. Just in case.” He reached into his coat and took something out, a small leather disk.

  “Your Sunstone?” I asked. “I already have one….”

  “I was thinking we could trade. See, I modified mine this morning.” He turned it over in his hands. “I was thinking about what my mom did with that mage-killer, so I ended up tinkering around. Normally, there’s a safety that immediately vents the gas if the glass facade is compromised, so I used a hairpin to disable it and…” He must have noticed the glazed look on my face. “If you break the glass while it’s on, it’ll go boom. Not like the mage-killer or anything, but enough to start a fire and scare off anyone coming at you.”

  “Oh.” That did sound kind of
useful, actually. I took the Sunstone and turned it over. It was fancy, one of the really nice ones they sold in the upscale shops of Port Hammil. The lining of the disk was gold, inlaid with tiny sparkling rubies, and the back had an engraving of an owl, the sigil of House Hampstedt. Below was their House motto, Minds Before Might. I remembered this Sunstone: Miles’s mom had given it to him as a present for his thirteenth birthday. He’d been so proud of it he’d spent his entire visit to Castle Waverly showing it to anyone who’d pay attention.

  And now he’d turned it into a bomb. For me. “Miles…”

  “Just take it.” He closed my hand around it and pushed it away before I could change his mind. I awkwardly pulled my Sunstone off my neck and gave it to him, and he looked down at it thoughtfully. “Listen,” he said. “In case…in case this is the last time I see you…there’s something I should tell you. Something I should have told you a long time ago.”

  Oh no. Not an awkward declaration of love. That was the absolute last thing I wanted to deal with. “I’m coming back, Miles,” I said. “That’s a promise. Whatever it is, you can tell me then.”

  He nodded. “Yeah. You’re right. I’ll tell you then.”

  It was better that way. Way, way better. I left him back at the fire pit with Lyriana and caught up with Zell and Jax. “What was that about?” my brother asked.

  “Nothing,” I replied, heading up the coast as briskly as I could. “Now, come on, boys. Let’s get walking.”

  IT WASN’T THE WORST HIKE I ever took, but it was definitely up there. Jax led us along the beach for an eternity, until my feet ached from walking in the shifting sand. After that, it was just a climb up a steep, crumbling slope, and then a slog through some overgrown forest. If it were anyone else leading us, I’d be sure we were lost. But Jax knew the Western Coast like the back of his hand and could navigate a maze at night blindfolded. So I followed him, shoving past the rustling oak trees, tromping over crackling leaves, trying (and failing) to avoid muddy puddles.