Prince Emory’s smile and pale eyes hold me steadfast in my seat. I will fight for this, come what may.

  “Good,” Clara says, like she’s disappointed she even had to ask if I could handle staying. I suppose she has a point, she trained me for this, after all.

  The Prince drops his gaze, but that curl to his mouth remains and I can’t help but hope it’s for me.

  Lord Venon spins around, his face blanched as he searches the shuffling crowd and his sons’ faces for someone to speak for him. “Please, sire,” he bumbles. “It’s the rebels. They ransacked my last three caravans to you. They must have attacked this one. It must be the rebels!”

  “I have no interest in complaints of peasants with sticks.” The King slams his goblet onto his throne’s broad arm. Crimson wine sloshes onto the marble tile.

  Perhaps I should feel pity, but I’ve no love for the cruel Lord who reigns over Farnell’s employment with a temper and a whip.

  King Giraldus rises from his throne, adjusts the Wyvernblade to his hip, and spreads his arms wide. “Do I not have a council of warriors? You have the Wyvernmail unfailingly passed down to you for generations. Train your guards, improve their equipment—Skies Above, guard the caravans yourselves and slaughter those rebel bastards. Or has invincibility made you all a bunch of rot-sniffing cowards? Do we need a Re-Heading of every House on this council?”

  The house Lords burst to their feet with a roaring cheer, fists thrust into the air. Like a pack of wolves smelling blood. Nearby hands shove Lord Venon forward and into the flat center of the room at the foot of the dais. Even his own sons take part.

  Nausea swirls in my gut. But not pity. No, I’ll iron this sight into memory to recount for Farnell later. It’s the least I can do.

  King Giraldus steps down from the dais. His massive frame sways as his right foot slides forward into the familiar battle stance of an old warrior. The same way my father once moved.

  He tugs his sword’s hilt and the sword dislodges from its sheath like a short exhale of breath. He pulls the blade free in one swooping arc and holds it aloft, lips curling. The black blade, as soulless as its hilt, doesn’t reflect the light, but appears to absorb it instead. The blackest black I’ve ever seen, deeper than the night sky on a moonless night.

  Looking at it feels dangerous, like I’ll fall into that darkness and lose myself forever. I want to turn away. Want to close my eyes and pretend I’m back home, quiet and alone on my rooftop or galloping through the fields on horseback. Yet I can’t quite tear my eyes from that lustful promise of endless power. The kind of power that makes a man unquestionably King, that keeps our country independent and free from invasion. Power I can’t stifle a longing for.

  Lord Venon draws his own useless steel even as he pleads for his life.

  The black blade rises, arching high overhead, and comes down upon the blubbering man, cowering beneath his useless sword. There’s no clash of metal, no cry of pain. The Wyvernblade passes effortlessly through Lord Venon’s sword, into his skull, his neck, his chest, down through his gut until it sinks into the marble tile. Only a soundless quake reverberates through the floor to my slippers.

  A red line traces down Lord Venon’s body along the Blade’s path, oozing thicker like spilled wine seeping into a napkin’s fabric weave, until the two halves of the man detach. Blood pours from each as they fall aside and the last shuddering beats of Lord Venon’s heart splatters the King with crimson.

  A once-Lord crumples to the floor.

  Bile climbs up my throat and I dig my nails through my gloves and into the bench. I will not vomit. I will not.

  “Control yourself,” Clara hisses into my ear. “You look like a frightened mouse. Does the Queen react?”

  No, the Queen sits poised like an immovable slab of granite with her gold-painted lips curved into a delicate smile. The way I have to be. Perfect. ‘As good’ won’t be enough. I have to be better than everyone else who outranks me in class, lineage, and connections. I must be as perfect as the Queen.

  At the center of the spreading pool of blood across the white floor, the corpse stirs. At first, only a shimmering of the exposed skin of the corpse’s hands and the two halves of his face. Blood beads and rolls away, as if repelled by this new substance.

  The shimmer grows to an iridescent sheen, then to an opaque silver coating over every inch of exposed skin, even his ankle where the pant leg has ridden up. It drips from him like liquid silver, coalescing on the floor into piles of silver links that rapidly darken to lusterless black. The piles inch across the marble towards one another, repelling the blood as they go and exposing tracks of stark white marble beneath, until they fused together into one.

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  A cohesive pile of black Wyvernmail lies unblemished at the center of the carnage, as impossibly black as the Wyvernblade itself.

  Sound rushes back into my ears, and with it comes whispers all around. Someone claps, others join in. The metallic tang of blood saturates the air.

  Cold crawls up my limbs into my core. I’ve never seen unattached Wyvernmail, only known it exists, that every Founder family possesses one suit of it, and that only the Wyvernblade can penetrate it. It is simultaneously the most incredible thing I’ve ever seen and the most vile.

  King Giraldus smirks and wipes the blood from his face with the back of his free hand. No blood dares to cling to the Wyvernblade. He lifts it from the gash it’s made in the floor and returns it to its golden sheath. “Who will accept the House Venon Wyvernmail?”

  “I, Titus, will accept the House Venon Wyvernmail.” The eldest Venon son steps forward into the blood of his father’s corpse without so much as a glance at it.

  “Titus is recently married. What a shame. I wonder how well-established it is…” Clara mutters.

  I stifle a gag. How can my stepmother even think of matchmaking after that?

  The King returns to the dais and his throne. “Will anyone challenge this Heading?”

  Maurus Venon rises and steps forward. “I will challenge him.”

  Not him. Anyone but that monster.

  “Now, that Venon has no ties yet,” Clara says under her breath.

  Every part of my insides recoil. The image of Ray’s cold, pale finger lying uselessly in the grass flashes across my mind. Maurus who’d tried to kill me, who’d gotten us both scarred by wyvernfire.

  “Come now, little brother. Don’t be foolish.” Titus Venon shakes his head with a patronizing smirk.

  Maurus draws his sword and steps into the low center of the room. Rumor has it Maurus only served three of his required four military service years because of multiple accidents involving Maurus’s bunkmates ‘falling’ onto sharp objects. Hopefully that means he’ll lose. I can stomach his death just fine.

  The King laughs and takes a guzzle of his wine. Then he slams it on the arm of his throne with a forward lurch. “Let it begin!”

  The brothers circle each other. Both have dark hair and olive skin, except Titus’s holds warm undertones and Maurus’s an ashen hue, as if it’s never exposed to the sun.

  Maurus strikes first. His blade thrusts viciously at his brother’s gut.

  Titus parries and leaps to the side, swinging his own in a countering arc.

  My father taught me a bit about swordplay as a child, but it pales compared to this. Titus moves with sharp, precise, and defensive footwork. Maurus is like a rabid wolf—loose, less focused, eager.

  Titus swings his blade at an opening. Maurus brings his sword up to parry and Titus twists his sword, clearly seeking to wrench Maurus’s from hand. Maurus withdraws just in time to maintain control, but too slowly to avoid Titus’s sword tip grazing his shoulder.

  Maurus cries out, but his grip on his sword doesn’t falter. Blood soaks through his shirt. He shakes himself and resumes his stance.

  The High Court cheers and calls out their favorite: Ti-tus, Ti-tus, Ti-tus. I dare to hope.

  “Stand down, brother,” Titus shouts over the chanting. “This has gone on long enough. I don’t wish to shed any more of your blood.”

  Maurus laughs. That sick laugh. It sends shivers down my spine. The laugh cracks into a roar and Maurus charges his elder brother.

  Thrust. Parry. Thrust. Pirouette.

  Again, their swords lock and they glare at one another, eyes vicious and unyielding. Titus grips his sword with two hands compared to Maurus’s one, and inch by inch, both blades move closer and closer to Maurus’s throat. I can’t understand why Maurus doesn’t just retreat, why he continues to hold his ground.

  Silver flashes between them. Titus stiffens and his eyes widen. Beneath their tangled swords, Maurus drags a dagger, buried to its hilt, across Titus’s stomach.

  Blood and entrails pour from the wound.

  Maurus shoves Titus away. A smirk curls his thin lips as he watches his brother slump to the ground to join their father’s carnage spilt across the white marble tile.

  Clara grips my arm, long nails biting into the tender skin of my wrist. “The Prince and a Founder Lord who’s actually accessible, too. It is time, my stepdaughter.”

  Sweat breaks out across my body as the stuffy heat of the room closes in around me. My head grows dizzy, my chest aches. Anyone but Maurus.

  The King returns to his throne. “Very good, young Maurus. You have until first snow to pay your father’s debts. Do not disappoint me.”

  Maurus bows to the King and the crowd erupts in applause. Upon straightening, he tears off his shirt, revealing the latticework scars that cover his shoulders and down his arm—the same scars that render my shoulders and upper back stiff and inflexible. Wyvernfire burns.

  The crowd awes, like he earned those honorably.

  The Wyvernmail links make no sound when he pulls them over his head. As soon as the black links contact his skin, they spread over his body. The armholes grew long and down his arms, the waist down into his trousers, the neck up over his face. He spreads and rotates his arms, clearly marveling at the process. The black links seep into his skin to nothing more than a faint sparkle.

  “Lord Venon,” the King says.

  “Lord Venon,” the other High Court members echo and bow their heads. Even Clara dips her chin.

  I am frozen, unable to tear my eyes away from the monstrosity. Ice spreads from my fingers up over my body in a wave that threatens to suffocate me. That evil has just become invincible. Invincible to even the finest sword or Wyvern’s breath. Invincible to all except the Wyvernblade.

  No, not just invincible. He’s just become the most desirable bachelor in the Kingdom, second only to the Prince.

  My stomach contracts and the urge to vomit almost overwhelms me.

  Prince Emory’s gaze locks with mine.

  Composure. Commitment. Conviction.

  I’m going to the ball tomorrow night. And there I will win the Prince’s heart. There is no alternative.