Chapter 10

"The governor wants to speak with you," a tithe said.

Soren looked up from sorting his end-of-day transcriptions into their correct boxes, frowning at the tithe. "Now?"

The tithe nodded, gaze solemn. "She's outside waiting for you."

Soren knew better than to keep Delani waiting. "Run and let her know I'll be out shortly, then head off to dinner if she doesn't need you for anything else."

The tithe darted off at a fast clip between desks, the clack of telegraph machines running loud in the air. Soren put his desk in order for the next warden on shift before taking his leave. He swapped the warmth of the space for the cool, late-spring evening, the sky black in the east and a deep, fading orange in the west. Delani waited for him out front, the tithe nowhere to be found.

"You wanted to speak with me?" Soren asked.

Delani curled her fingers at him as she turned away, heading down the road that led toward the center of the fort. "We have visitors."

"I heard an E'ridian airship landed with a jarl."

"Not just a jarl."

Her expression was unreadable, but Soren knew whoever was on that airship had to be important, or Delani wouldn't be hunting him down to talk. For one moment, Soren thought it could be Vanya, and it left him wanting with such desperation he had to take a deep breath to settle himself. Vanya wouldn't be traveling on an E'ridian airship. What's more, Vanya probably didn't even know where he was, and that made his heart ache. "Who arrived that you needed to personally meet with?"

"The queen of Ashion doesn't want to meet with me. She wants to meet with you."

Delani turned her head to look at him as she spoke, keeping him in view of her good eye. Soren managed to keep the shock off his face through sheer will alone. "Why?"

"You know why."

Soren clenched his teeth together, stopping there in the road. They stood in the shadows between two gas lamp lights, no one else around due to it being the dinner hour. Normally, Soren would be in the refectory taking his evening meal, but the thought of food just then left his stomach churning in protest. "I have nothing to say to the Ashionens."

"Caris claims to be your sister."

Soren looked away, jaw twitching. "I have no family but my fellow wardens."

Delani started walking again, her footfalls quiet on the road. "You were made to be a warden, and the alchemy that runs through you can't be reversed. But I can't trace which country tithed you, and your background could be a problem that harms our standing beneath the Poison Accords. We are not meant to interfere with heads of state, and yet, here you stand."

"I'm no prince."

Delani looked over her shoulder at him. "Perhaps you should rethink that."

Soren caught up to her, matching his stride to Delani's. "You won't give me a border because of my actions in Solaria, and now you won't keep me as a warden based on some stranger's statement?"

"This stranger looks remarkably like you."

"That doesn't make us related."

Delani shrugged. "I was reminded today that Eimarille has no respect for our commitment to keeping Maricol safe. If Ashion falls, we'll have Daijal at the shores of the Celestine Lake and limited support to fight back. There's no guarantee she might not retaliate against us for pulling out of Daijal. I won't see wardens annihilated just so she can more easily conquer another country."

"What does that have to do with me?"

"Listen to what Caris has to say." She didn't outright order him to agree to whatever offer awaited him, but it was heavily implied that he should.

Soren followed Delani to a small building that had been designated for visitors to the island. Men in Ashionen uniforms guarded the entrance. He ignored their stares and followed Delani inside. The gas lamps were all turned to their brightest settings, the light shining warmly all around them. Two people Soren remembered from Glencoe stood in the entryway, both of them dressed in the trousers and shirts of E'ridian aeronauts. The blond had been missing part of his arm last year but seemed to have received a mechanical prosthetic in the time since. The dark-haired man with the intricate metal hair ornaments woven through his long braid gave Soren a friendly enough nod.

"Thank you for agreeing to come," he said in the trade tongue. "I'm Honovi, jarl to Clan Storm. We've met before."

"I remember," Soren said warily.

Honovi gestured at the blond man standing beside him. "My husband, Blaine, also of Clan Storm."

"Once of the Westergard bloodline," Blaine said in the same language, just as deft at the pidgin structure as Honovi.

The name didn't mean anything to Soren, and he just stared at them. Delani sighed, hand still on the doorknob and holding it open. "Speak with them and find me after you've thought about what they've said."

Delani nodded goodbye at the E'ridians before leaving Soren to face them alone. Blaine shifted on his feet, angling his body toward the hallway. "Caris flew all this way to speak with you. I hope you'll take the time to hear her out."

"Your queen?" Soren said.

"And your sister."

The pointed statement had Soren rolling his eyes. "I'm a warden. We have no family."

But Delani had given him an order, and as much as Soren wanted to turn around and leave, he trailed after the E'ridians farther into the home. More of the soldiers stood guard outside a receiving room, though the only people who waited for them inside were three Ashionens who weren't dressed like any nobles Soren had met before. The two women and one man all wore practical clothing, and each person had a gas mask clipped to their belt.

Soren's attention settled on the younger woman, her gray eyes the same shade as the ones that stared back at him when he looked in the mirror. Her hair was a darker brown than his, falling to her shoulders in thick waves. She was pretty, not striking, and if she was meant to be queen, she lacked the magnetism Vanya had as emperor, that confidence that came with being a ruler and knowing one's place.

It seemed she was still learning it.

Blaine gestured at the three seated on the sofa and armchair. "May I introduce Mr. Nathaniel Clementine, Lady Lore Auclair, and Her Royal Majesty Queen Caris Rourke."

Wardens didn't bow to any government, and so Soren merely stared at the young woman who claimed to be queen and much more than that where he was concerned. She wore no crown or tiara, no jewelry or other indication of her rank. When Caris stood to greet him, he found her to be shorter than he was, slightly built, but she had faint cuts on her hands from doing work royals typically left for others. She said something in Ashionen, which Soren didn't understand.

"I don't speak your language," he replied in the trade tongue.

Caris blinked at him, and her next words were in the language shared at the edges of every country's borders. "Do you only speak the trade tongue?"

"I know Solarian. My border was in that country."

"You've never been to Ashion?"

"No."

Caris nodded slowly, her gaze never leaving his face. "I'd like to speak to Soren alone."

Lady Lore Auclair said something quick in Ashionen. Soren didn't understand the words, but he understood her tone. Caris shook her head and remained firm in her request. After a moment, the others filed out of the room, closing the door behind them. She retook her seat and gestured at the chair across from her. "Please sit. There are things I want to speak with you about that don't deserve an audience."

Soren thought about leaving, but Delani had wanted him to hear Caris out, so he sat, resting his elbows on his thighs, hands hanging between his knees. The weight of his poison short sword shifted along his back but remained secured. He was dressed for the poison fields, a place he hadn't been to in months, and he would rather be camped outside on the back roads than sitting here.

"Blaine said you were born Alasandair Rourke," Caris said.

"Whatever name you think I had, it was stricken when I came here as a tithe. My name is Soren."

"I know a thing or two about claiming an old name."

"We differ there," Soren said sharply. "I don't want whatever it is you think is mine."

Caris straightened her shoulders, folding her hands together over her knees. She looked tired, a bit strained, but that didn't stop her from speaking her mind. "You must know of the war in Ashion, perpetuated by Daijal and Queen Eimarille Rourke. Our sister is determined to murder me to claim the starfire throne. She will try to murder you as well."

"And you are determined to tie me to a bloodline and a fight that isn't mine. I'm a warden. We remain neutral."

Her mouth twisted slightly, shoulders rising a little toward her ears. "Eimarille keeps sending Blades to try to murder me. My hometown, Cosian, is routinely bombarded by Daijal's war airships. The front line of the war keeps pressing eastward, and soon enough, our defenses will break. No country has accepted our request for aid, and I fear that if Eimarille is successful in killing me, Ashion will truly fall if there isn't another to take up my mantle and stand against her."

"You need an heir," Soren said slowly, thinking of Raiah and everything that Vanya had done and sacrificed to keep his daughter safe.

"Yes."

"You're not married?"

Caris' gaze flicked toward the door behind Soren, and he wondered which of the two—Nathaniel or Lore—she loved. "Not yet."

"You have no husband or wife, no child to carry your bloodline. What makes you think me lying for you will help either one of us?"

"Would it be a lie?" Caris reached up and tucked a stray lock of hair behind her ear, meeting his gaze once again. "Blaine carried me out of Amari when I was a just-born infant under the Dusk Star's guidance. His bloodline guarded the Rourke bloodline for generations, and by doing so, I lived as someone else for the majority of my life."

Soren thought of Callisto and the handful of times she'd guided him down his road. He didn't want to share a past with Caris, but the similarities were difficult to ignore. "I am a warden."

"But you weren't always such."

"We're nameless and stateless once we arrive here as tithes. Whatever past you think to find in me, it doesn't exist. The attack last summer destroyed our records, our history?—"

"Which means no one can argue you aren't my brother," Caris interrupted.

Soren raised an eyebrow. "I think everyone would see through that lie. You Ashionens live and die by your genealogies like every other country on Maricol. No one would believe I am of your Rourke bloodline."

"They would if you could cast starfire."

Soren resisted the urge to physically recoil from her words. He'd learned much from living within the Imperial court over the years and watching how Vanya comported himself. How one physically reacted was just as telling as the words spoken. "The wardens do not take in those who cast starfire."

Caris slumped a little in her seat before straightening her spine. "You'd still be Rourke, and perhaps that would be enough to put out the North Star's decree if Eimarille's Blades are successful where I am concerned."

"I'm not the answer you were hoping I would be. I'm not your brother."

There was more to family than the blood flowing through one's veins. Soren was twenty-seven years old, and whatever memories he had of his time before becoming a warden, they were meaningless in the face of his duty.

"Could you pretend?" Caris beseeched quietly. "Just until the war is over?"

Soren shook his head. "You're asking me to give up my entire way of life and risk the wardens' standing beneath the Poison Accords."

"Eimarille won't stop with just me or Ashion. She wants to rule the entirety of Maricol. Do you think the wardens will have any freedom beneath her crown? She'd rip up the Poison Accords the moment she's able to. I don't want your people to suffer the way mine have. Maricol needs wardens, but we need you whole and unsubjugated. Daijal already permits debt bondage. Do you think Eimarille won't attempt that with all of you, especially after you pulled out of her country?"

Soren couldn't quite ignore the shiver that slid down his spine at that frank assessment of a possible future. "She wouldn't dare."

Caris managed a half-smile that didn't reach her eyes. "Nathaniel knows what lengths our sister would go to. She made him into a rionetka and ordered him to murder me. He very nearly succeeded. My advisors wanted him jailed, but I refused to punish him for something out of his control. You wardens gave him back his mind, but his heart is gone, replaced by clockwork gears. Eimarille doesn't care about the lives she ruins if it gets her what she wants, and what she wants is Maricol. She has the backing of the Midnight Star, so I think she would dare a great deal."

"And what star god backs you?" Soren asked, trying not to think of Callisto and the moments when she'd been so real to him.

"None, at the moment. I've not been blessed by any of them, but I'm not fighting for a star god's favor. I'm fighting for my people." She hesitated before continuing with, "And I'm asking you to fight for them with me."

Soren stared at her, seeing bits of himself in her face and wishing he didn't. Wishing, too, that she was anywhere else but here, asking him to step off the only road he'd ever known. The one that had given him purpose and which had, for a time, given him Vanya.

He stood, walking away from everything she represented—everything he never wanted to be. "I'm not your brother, and I won't be your heir. Find someone else to pretend for you."

He had his hand on the doorknob when Caris spoke again, her voice firm and steady in a way that reminded him of Vanya in that moment. "I tried to deny our bloodline, tried to deny my road, but I ended up walking it anyway. Some roads the star gods deem inevitable."

Soren tightened his grip on the knob but didn't respond, yanking open the door. He left the room, ignoring the people in the hallway and the heavy weight of their stares. Soren headed back into the spring night that had fallen over the island, appetite gone but body filled with a tension he couldn't quite shake.