Chapter 1

A Solarian spy came to Oeiras in Seventh Month, when the summer heat had long since burned away the spring coolness. Vanya wasn't aware of the spy's presence on the Imperial estate until Caelum—who had traveled with him from Calhames back to Oeiras—interrupted Vanya's afternoon of reviewing military updates on the Legion's efforts to fight through another wave of revenants in the House of Kimathi vasilyet. The walking dead seemed to outnumber the living these days, which made gaining ground difficult.

"Your Imperial Majesty?" Caelum said from the doorway to the vast office that Vanya felt he lived in more than his bedroom these days.

"Yes?" Vanya replied, not looking up.

"You have a particular guest who wishes an audience."

Vanya paused in his perusal of a rather dense briefing before setting it aside. He looked up and met Caelum's eyes. Someone stood farther back in the antechamber, his praetoria legionnaires having not yet let them come forward. Caelum's turn of phrase was one used when a spy had returned to the fold, and Vanya was never one to make them wait.

"The audience is granted," Vanya said as he leaned back in his comfortable chair, the leather warm from how long he'd been sitting there.

Caelum half turned and gestured with his free hand. The person in the antechamber came forward into the office, bowing deeply to Vanya. The pale yellow robe she wore over loose white trousers was neatly embroidered at the edges with green thread. Her blonde hair was tied back in a single thick braid that was twisted around her head and pinned in place like a crown. The gold bangles around her wrists and the few heavy rings she wore indicated a good career as a Solarian merchant but not one well-off enough to earn her name being written in the nobility genealogies.

"Your Imperial Majesty," the spy said.

Caelum closed the door behind them for privacy, though he didn't lock it. The windows that overlooked the private inner courtyard were open, but no one was outside save for discreetly placed praetoria legionnaires. None of those guards were within hearing distance.

"Your name?" Vanya asked.

"Bellanca, of no House. I hail from Karnak and was stationed in Ashion for business reasons over the last few weeks. Specifically, Cosian."

Vanya rubbed at his chin, studying her. "My understanding is that Cosian is a restricted city these days. It's Ashion's disputed capital, where their self-claimed queen holds court. It's been bombed several times over since last year."

She dipped her head in a shallow nod. "Yes, I'm well aware of the attacks. I and my company's airship survived the last two attempts. But my company exports durable cloth favored for uniforms, and we were cleared to remain in Cosian. The Ashionen military aides I did business with were desperate to buy."

"And what did you uncover while there?"

Caelum opened the folio he held and pulled out a folded broadsheet, which he set on Vanya's desk. It contained only the front page of an Ashion broadsheet, the language one Vanya was near fluent in. What caught his eye more than the neatly typed words and made his heart skip a beat was the photograph printed large, filling up a good section of the top page. In it, Queen Caris Rourke posed on a porch in a neat blouse, corset belt, and dark trousers, wearing no crown, a slight smile fixed on her face. Standing beside her was a man Vanya would recognize in any clothing, though he much preferred it when he could coax Soren out of them.

He carefully touched his fingers to the imprint of Soren's familiar face on the paper, the warden's expression giving nothing away in the glare of camera lights. The Ashionen suit Soren wore in the photograph lacked the leather he knew the warden preferred. Missing as well were the weapons he knew Soren never went anywhere without, even while walking the halls of the old Imperial palace.

"I know we received news last week of the third Rourke child returning from the dead. While all the broadsheets are referring to him as Prince Alasandair Rourke, there hasn't been a single photograph taken of him until this one shot for the Ashion press two days ago. Bellanca is aware of your warden and decided the news was worth flying back to Solaria for," Caelum said quietly.

"I was in Bellingham when he brought you home some years ago, Your Imperial Majesty," Bellanca added. "That is how I recognized him."

"Thank you for bringing this to my attention," Vanya said, managing to keep his voice steady through a lifetime of practice.

Bellanca glanced at Caelum before bowing and seeing herself out of the office. Caelum went to the side table and poured a glass of the sweet red wine one of the servants had brought in earlier, the carafe damp from condensation. He set the wineglass on the desk and nudged it toward Vanya. "Drink."

Vanya reached for it, taking a sip and thinking about that moment in the train so long ago, when he'd been poisoned with quiet killer and Soren had saved his life in the aftermath of the crash. He crunched a berry between his teeth, swallowing the taste but unable to swallow the hurt and grief that clawed at him as he stared at the Ashion broadsheet.

Caelum sat in front of the desk, adjusting his robes. Gone were the heavier ones of winter, the lighter one today a concession to the heat beyond the office. The mechanical fans that whirred away in the corners above provided enough relief, though that might change the longer summer wore on.

"Did he ever tell you that he was a prince?" Caelum asked.

Vanya had to stop himself from crumpling the broadsheet into a ball and tossing it in the bin. "No. He is a warden."

"Wardens are made from tithes. Before they go to the Warden's Island, they are someone."

I'm a warden, and that's all I'll ever be. Wherever I came from, I can't go back. I can never go home.

Soren's words spoken to him beneath a starry night sky after surviving the revenant incursion at the Imperial palace before Vanya burned it down were seared into his memory. So, too, was the way they'd said goodbye on silken sheets, the heat of the other man's skin bruised into his dreams.

He'd thought he knew all of Soren's secrets after that night. Raiah had survived Artyom's betrayal because of Soren's ability to cast starfire, the strength of which Vanya knew must be on par with his own. That revelation had left him with too many questions—too many moments of second-guessing what they'd been to each other—for Vanya to be rational in the face of that hurt.

It didn't matter that the Dawn Star had interfered in both their lives, changed their roads, to force their paths to cross. Vanya had thought he could have with Soren what he couldn't have with anyone else, but that, too, had been a lie. Knowing that—and now knowing the name Soren must have had before he was tithed—didn't stop the hurt.

"If he is capable of casting starfire as a royal of the Rourke bloodline, then the wardens must have known. They would have broken their own Poison Accords with that admittance," Caelum said.

"The wardens didn't know."

Caelum frowned at him. "How could they have not? Starfire isn't something that is easily ignored by a person who is gifted with it."

Vanya knew that all too well growing up as a young boy with the biting burn of it just beneath his skin. But he also knew what Soren had said—that the wardens didn't know about him because of the Dawn Star—and for all the lies Vanya had been told when they last spoke, he didn't think that had been one.

Callisto had warned him to keep the warden close, after all.

If she had wanted to break his heart, she had succeeded.

"Bring me my valide," Vanya said.

Caelum stood and bowed before leaving, closing the door behind him. Once alone, Vanya dragged the broadsheet closer, peering at Soren's face, some part of him wishing the warden stood before him. Despite his anger, he'd worried about Soren, wondered if the warden had been sent north to deal with the tremendous amount of revenants laying claim to the battlefields.

The wardens had yet to send any of their people into Daijal or Urova since the attack, the wardens' governor's order still in effect. For all that they patrolled the poison fields in Ashion, they weren't overtly supporting the war. He knew the ones assigned to the border around the House of Kimathi's vasilyet were hard-pressed to give aid to the Legion simply because of the sheer number of revenants. They had the Daijal queen to thank for that, even if Vanya knew Eimarille would never admit to such folly.

Despite the Legion's prowess when it came to their war machines, their sentinel-class automatons needed to be piloted. Placing people in the direct path of the walking dead—where spore contamination was a real risk and its spread through the ranks could be devastating—meant it was slow going. But Vanya would rather a careful push forward than risk scores of legionnaires dying due to spores. Solaria couldn't afford such a loss, not with what was happening up north.

Vanya traced the outlines of Soren's face on the broadsheet, torn between hurt and anger. Closure was out of reach because Soren wasn't there, and Vanya couldn't leave to go where he was. If this was how their roads were to end, he loathed it.

The sound of the doorknob turning had him looking up, watching as Taisiya was escorted inside by Caelum. The Chief Minister well knew when a conversation was meant to be private and so stepped back out into the antechamber. Taisiya sank slowly into a seat before Vanya, attention on the broadsheet rather than him.

"I see you enjoy a life of complications," Taisiya said.

Vanya pushed the broadsheet across his desk so she could reach it. "The purported Ashion queen has announced she found her older brother."

Taisiya reached for it, carefully picking it up and rotating it so she could read the headline. "So your warden is a prince."

"His name isn't in the article."

"His face is, and there are those of the Houses who will recognize it."

Vanya shoved his chair back and stood, walking over to one of the windows to stare out at the courtyard, fingernails biting into his palms. "He claimed to be a warden for the years I knew him. That the wardens didn't know who he was because of the Dawn Star."

"Did he know?"

Vanya thought of that night and the anguish in Soren's gray eyes, the promise that he had never used the vow because then he'd have to leave. But Soren had left anyway, pushed away by Vanya's hurt in the wake of so much betrayal. "He never said."

"Can Soren cast starfire?"

He ground his teeth together so hard his jaw clicked. The memory of Artyom holding Raiah and Vanya powerless to save her while Soren gave up all his secrets to do so flashed through his mind. "If I told you no, could you speak that lie as a truth?"

"Vanya." Taisiya's voice came out sharp, like a knife sliding between his ribs. "Did you know when you gave him your vow?"

"No." Vanya spun on his feet, throwing out his arm in a furious gesture. "If I had, do you think I would have offered it?"

"In my experience, one will do anything for love."

"I don't?—"

"Look me in the eye and finish that sentence." Her hazel eyes were bright with anger in her narrow face, unblinking in his rapidly fading rage. She held his gaze, and in the end, Vanya was the one to look away first. Taisiya didn't treat it like a victory. "You love him. A warden who is now a prince. Who was, quite possibly, always a prince."

Vanya stared at the painting on the wall depicting the side profile of a roaring lion that represented the House of Sa'Liandel, the animal head surrounded by golden starfire. His House had ruled for centuries and still ruled only because of divine intervention in the face of assassination attempts and treason. He hadn't been strong enough to keep the claim on his own, and the results of the Conclave of Houses would be questioned if it got out that he'd promised a blood vow to a foreign prince, no matter the road Soren had walked as a warden.

"Tell me I do not speak the truth," Taisiya said quietly.

He wanted to, but it would be a lie if he tried. Because—despite everything—he did. He loved Soren in a way he hadn't ever learned to love his wife after a year of marriage before Nicca died in childbirth. And it was that love that made him never force Soren to pick a payment for the debt Vanya owed him. Like Soren, Vanya had never wanted to let the other man go.

Except he had.

Vanya looked at Taisiya, and whatever she must have seen in his face made her expression soften. "Oh, my child. The best kind of love will always burn like starfire. I only wish it wouldn't hurt you so."

"It doesn't matter," Vanya rasped. "I can never have him now."

The confession felt dragged out of him, words brittle like summer-dry prairie grass, primed to burn with just one spark. Vanya dragged a hand over his hair, wrenching his gaze away from Taisiya's too-knowing eyes. If Soren truly was the long-thought-dead Ashion prince, then being together was an impossibility. For Vanya couldn't insert himself in some other country's volatile politics for love, because love would not keep his country safe, and Solaria had to come first. His heart—fractured as it was—would always come second.

A cool hand touched his jaw, startling him. He looked down into Taisiya's upturned face, unaware that she had moved to join him by the window. "We must get ahead of this. Once the Houses find out about Soren's past, they will find a way to call for your abdication in the face of the sanctions we're set to receive from the wardens. Solaria may be accused of breaking the Poison Accords, but so have the wardens, and that is something we can't ignore."

The wardens had already suffered enough at Daijal's hands. Vanya didn't want to strike another blow against them, but he knew he had no choice. Not if he wanted to keep the Imperial throne. "I know."

"If you reduce the sanctions by using Soren, the Houses will come around to your rulership."

He flinched at her words, but Vanya knew she was right. "I'll call the wardens' governor tomorrow, after my meeting with the Tovanian ambassador."

What it all came down to was protecting Solaria's borders, and Vanya's heart had no place in those decisions. His heart would break before Solaria could.

It had to.