Next to me, Kilorn puffs out a low scoff. I’m more obvious, rolling my eyes at Julian. When I shift, so does the collar of my shirt, sending a steady drip of rainwater down my spine. I clench my fists to keep from flinching.
“Are you saying your nephew is cursed to his crown?” I sneer.
Julian hardens, and I feel a tinge of regret for being so callous. He shakes his head at me, like I’m a child to be scolded. “Forced to choose between the woman he loves and what he thinks is right? What he thinks he must do, because of everything he’s been taught to be? What else would you call that?”
“I call it an easy decision,” Kilorn growls.
I bite down hard on the inside of my cheek, trying to gnaw back a dozen rude responses. “Did you really come here to defend what he did? Because I’m certainly not in the mood for it.”
“No, of course not, Mare,” Julian replies. “But to explain, if I can.”
My stomach churns at the thought of Julian of all people explaining his nephew’s heart to me. With his dissections and ruminations. Will he boil it down to simple science? An equation to show that the crown and I are not equal in the prince’s eyes? I simply can’t stand it.
“Save your breath, Julian,” I spit. “Go back to your king. Stand at his side.” I look him dead in the eye. So he knows I’m not lying. “And keep him safe.”
He sees the offer for what it is. The only thing I can do.
Julian Jacos bows low. He sweeps out his soaking robes in an attempt at courtly manner. For a second, we could be back in Summerton, just him and me in a classroom piled with books. Back then, I lived in terror, forced to masquerade as someone else. Julian was one of my only refuges in that place. Alongside Cal and Maven. My only sanctuaries. The Calore brothers are gone. I think Julian might be too.
“I will, Mare,” he tells me. “With my life, if I must.”
“I hope it doesn’t come to that.”
“So do I.”
Our words are warnings to each other. And his voice sounds like a good-bye.
I think Bree keeps his eyes closed for the entire flight. Not to sleep. He just really despises flying, so much so he can hardly look at his own feet, let alone peek out the window. He doesn’t even respond to Tramy’s and Gisa’s gentle teasing. They sit on either side of him, content to poke and prod. Gisa stage-whispers to Tramy, leaning across Bree to say something about jet crashes or engine malfunctions. I don’t join in. I know what a jet crash feels like, or at least close to it. But I won’t spoil their fun either. We get so little of it these days. Bree keeps still in his seat, arms tightly crossed, his lids glued shut. Eventually his head lolls forward, chin resting on his chest, and he sleeps the rest of the way.
It’s no small accomplishment on his part, considering the route from the Piedmont base to the Free Republic of Montfort is one of the longest flights I’ve ever taken. Six hours of flying at least. Too long a journey for a dropjet, so we’re on a larger carrier, a transport more like the Blackrun. But this isn’t the same craft, thankfully. The Blackrun was torn apart last year, by a contingent of Samos warriors and Maven’s own fury.
I glance down the fuselage to the silhouettes of two pilots working the jet. Men of Montfort. I don’t know either of them. Kilorn hangs at their backs, watching them fly.
Like Bree, Mom isn’t keen on the flight, but Dad twists with his forehead glued to the glass, eyes on the land as it sprawls out below. The rest of the Montfort escort—Davidson and his advisers—spend the time sleeping. They must intend to hit the ground running when they get home. Farley sleeps too, her face pressed up against her seat. She took a spot without a window. Flying still makes her ill.
She is the only representative from the Scarlet Guard. Even in sleep, she curls her arms around Clara, rocking with the motion of the jet to keep her settled. The Colonel is back at the base, and probably ecstatic about it. With Farley gone, he’s the highest-ranking member of the Scarlet Guard left behind. He can play Command all he likes, while his daughter relays information back to the organization.
On the ground, the verdant green of Piedmont, braided with muddy rivers and rolling hills, steadily gives over to the floodplain of the Great River. The disputed lands line both banks, their borders strange and always changing. I know little about them, except the obvious. The Lakelands, Piedmont, Prairie, and even Tiraxes farther south fight over this stretch of mud, swamp, hill, and tree. For control of the river, mostly. I hope. Silvers fight for nothing most of the time, spilling red blood for less than dirt. They control this land too, but not as tightly as they do Norta and the Lakelands.
We fly on, heading west over the flat grasslands and gentle hills of Prairie. Some is farmland. Wheat sprouts in golden waves, patchworked with corn in endless rows. The rest looks like open landscape, pocked by the occasional forest or lake. Prairie has no kings that I know of, no queens, no princes. Their lords rule by right of power, not blood. When a father falls, his son does not always take his place. It’s another country I never thought I’d see, but here I am, looking down at it.
It never goes away, this strange feeling bubbling up from the odd divide between who I was before and who I am now. A girl of the Stilts, of familiar mud, trapped in a small place until the doom of conscription. My future was so empty then, but was it easier than this? I feel detached from that life, a million miles and a thousand years ago.
Julian isn’t on our carrier, or else I might be tempted to ask about the countries beneath us. He’s on the other airjet, the Laris jet striped yellow, with the rest of the Calore and Samos representatives, as well as their guards. Not to mention their baggage. Apparently a would-be king and a princess require a good deal of clothes. They trail behind us, visible from the left-side windows, metal wings flashing as we chase the sun.
Ella told me she came from the Prairie lands before Montfort. The Sandhills. Raider country. More terms I don’t really understand. She isn’t here to explain, left behind at the Piedmont base with Rafe. Tyton is the only electricon coming with us. Besides me, of course. He’s Montfort-born. I suspect he has a family to visit, and friends too. He sits near the rear of the jet, sprawled across two empty seats, his nose buried in a tattered book. As I look at him, he feels my gaze, and he meets my eyes for a brief second. He blinks, gray orbs calculating. I wonder if he can feel the tiny pulses of electricity in my brain. Does he know what each one means? Can he distinguish between bursts of fear or excitement?
Could I, one day?
I hardly know the depth of my own abilities. It’s the same for all newbloods I’ve met and helped train. But maybe not in Montfort. Maybe they understand what we are, and how much we can do.
The next thing I know, someone nudges my arm, jolting me out of an uneasy sleep. Dad points at the rounded window between us, set into the curved wall behind our seats.
“Never thought I’d see anything like that,” he says, rapping the thick glass.
“What?” I ask, adjusting myself. He snaps the buckle on my belts, giving me full range of motion to turn and look out.
I have seen mountains before. In the Greatwoods, from the Notch. Green ranges fading into autumn’s fire and then winter’s barren, bone-branched chill. In the Rift, where hunched ridges ripple into the horizon, rising and falling like leafy waves. In Piedmont, deep in the backcountry, their slopes shifting into blue and distant purple, glimpsed only from the windows of a jet. All of them were part of the Allacias, the long line of ancient mountains marching from Norta to the Piedmont interior. But I have never seen mountains like the ones before us. I don’t think they can even be called mountains at all.