“Disappointing,” Ruti says as she presses her hand to the Regent’s. Her heart races as she struggles to keep a calm demeanor. “He always told me that I was his favorite.” She knows nothing of Kaguruk, but she can tell from the curious eyes on her that no one else here seems to, either.
The Regent eyes her gloved hand. The Heir says, “It is the custom in Kaguruk to wear gloves until soulbinding. The people choose to search for their Bonded before their bonding.” There’s a murmur at the table, and the Regent’s glare turns to his niece. “Imagine,” the Heir says dryly, “having a choice in your bonding.”
“An idiotic waste of time,” the Regent counters, pulling his hand from Ruti’s and sitting back at the table. The Heir takes the seat beside him, Ruti sitting with her and noticing with spiteful pleasure that Orrin remains standing. “As is you bringing this girl all that distance for what will be a quick soulbinding with no complications.”
The Heir lifts her chin. “Orrin thought it might calm me.” She shoots a rare smile at the bodyguard behind her. His chest puffs out and Ruti makes a face at her plate. There is food on it already, a thick piece of meat and flat cornbread and a mixture of fruit, and she begins to eat.
She hears a gasp. When she looks up, she sees horrified, scandalized faces fixed on her, and she notices suddenly that every other plate is untouched. Orrin bends down to hiss, “Wait for the princess, you boor!”
The Heir sighs loudly. “Well?” she says, turning to Ruti. The Regent looks livid. The Heir ignores him, her eyes boring into Ruti’s but her lips curved into a polite smile. “Is it any good?”
Eyes are fixed on them, awaiting Ruti’s punishment. Ruti shrugs. “I’ve had better,” she says, an outrageous lie that only one person at the table will recognize for what it is, and the Heir lets out a little huff of laughter and takes a bite.
The courtiers relax, turning to their food at last. The Regent still looks thunderous. “Orrin,” he says, seizing on the last thing that the Heir had mentioned. “That boy spends too much time around you.”
Orrin stubbornly stays where he is, three feet back from the Heir’s seat. The Heir says, her voice sharp, “He is my bodyguard.”
“But he is not your Bonded,” the Regent reminds her. “Forgetting that will cause you nothing but heartbreak.” A cool breeze whips around him.
The Regent’s wife speaks up. Ruti remembers that the Regentess Adyana had been a third princess of Guder before she bonded with the Regent. She is plain-looking, not nearly as radiant as the Heir, but her smile has a brightness that brings warmth to the room. “I once thought I was in love,” she says. “I had a dear friend in my city with whom I was sure that I would spend my life. But when I met your uncle, Dekala, everything changed. I knew before our palms ever touched that he would be my Bonded.” She touches her hand to her glass and water fills it, clear as crystal. “It will be like that for you as well.”
The Heir’s voice is cold, a sharp contrast to her aunt’s words. “It will never be like that for me,” she snaps, thunder rumbling through the banquet hall.
The Regent’s voice is just as sharp. “Very well,” he barks. “You wish to get to know each suitor before you attempt the soulbinding? I will grant you that. But you will attempt the soulbinding.” He impales his meat with a sharp fork, cutting it vigorously.
“I don’t want to be Bonded at all,” the Heir says irritably. She sounds younger in the presence of her guardian, closer to her twenty years. Ruti focuses on her food, unwilling to attract the Regent’s attention again.
The Regent pops a piece of meat into his mouth. “An Unbonded girl can hold no kingdom,” he says definitively. “You are weak and uncontrolled.” He chews, the food visible in his mouth. “Perhaps Prince Kobe of Machajabe will change that when he arrives next week.”
The air in the room grows abruptly thin, as though they have all scaled a great peak and can hardly breathe. The courtiers choke, as does the Regent, spitting out his meat onto his plate as the Heir glares at him. Ruti struggles for breath, but it comes in jagged bursts.
The Heir’s fingers dig into her palms, and she grits her teeth. Slowly, the air level returns to normal. “You see?” the Regent says, satisfied. “You are incomplete Unbonded. I simply can’t give you your kingdom like this.”
The Heir stands, knocking her chair back into Orrin. “I will take my leave,” she grits out, and she twists around and walks from the banquet hall.
Ruti casts a wistful look at her meat, juicy and delicious and hardly touched, and follows.
The Heir is in a foul mood in the days that follow. When Ruti is in a bad mood, she tends to take it out on debris in the streets or Markless kids fool enough to harass her. Ruti likes to fight, to get out her anger until there’s nothing left.
The Heir is different. She bottles up her anger and lets it simmer, emerging only in wisps of uncontrolled power. Though the Heir has sewa, by far the least destructive of marks, Ruti is beginning to understand exactly what it’s capable of when she wakes up for the third night in a row because thunder is crashing around her. This time, even Kimya stirs, and she sits up and squints around while Ruti lies stubbornly in her bed with her eyes clamped shut. She knows who has come to visit again, and she refuses to acknowledge her until forced.
“Stop,” the Heir says, and she sounds frustrated. “Stop making those motions; I don’t understand you.” The bed creaks again, and the Heir says, “I ordered you to stop.” Kimya lets out a little whimper.
Ruti rolls over, ready to tell off the Heir for being cruel to Kimya. But when she opens her eyes, she’s startled to see the Heir crouching in front of Kimya, her dark eyes searching Kimya’s gaze for something. “You’re cold,” the Heir finally guesses, and Kimya nods vigorously. The Heir crooks an eyebrow. “That’s my doing,” she says dryly. “I tend to bring my presence wherever I go.”
Kimya jabs a finger at the door, a clear dismissal, and Ruti tenses. But the Heir only laughs lightly, the thunder calming around them. “I will leave in a moment,” she promises. “I have need of your witch sister.” Ruti snaps her eyes shut a moment too late, caught watching them, and she sees an instant of the Heir’s rueful regard. She opens them again, and the Heir still has the ghost of a smile on her face, painting little lines into the skin beside her eyes. Ruti stares. The Heir purses her lips together, the smile fading. “Well? What are you waiting for?”
Kimya waves at them as Ruti follows the Heir from the room, and Ruti looks between them. “What?” the Heir snaps.
Ruti shrugs. “Just wondering if you’re going soft.” It’s meant to provoke, as most of what she says to the Heir is.
The Heir scoffs. “In my uncle’s fantasies, perhaps.” A low chill falls over Ruti as they creep out of the Heir’s chambers. “A caravan has arrived outside of the Royal Square, and Prince Kobe must be with it. I want you to strengthen your magic on my mark.”
Ruti sighs. They’ve followed the same routine every day since Ruti has gotten here. In the morning, the Heir practices with Tembo. She departs at lunch to sit with the Regent in judgment, but in the afternoon Ruti is expected to join her with her tutors. They dine with the court at dinner and Ruti makes up new outrageous statements about what happens in Kaguruk, and then she’s free to wander the Heir’s chambers with Kimya until bedtime.
And every single night, without fail, the Heir has roused Ruti in the middle of the night and commanded her to do some paltry magic on the mark. At least tonight Kimya managed to distract the Heir from insisting that Ruti kneel first. “It’s strong enough,” Ruti says. “I can’t make the spirits give me more than they’ve offered.”
“Then I will find someone who can,” the Heir snaps.
“You keep saying that, but you haven’t replaced me yet,” Ruti points out. “Is finding a witch harder than you thought?”
The Heir gives her a dark look. “Ntuka has three witches. Aelin has eight. Somanchi’s Merchants’ Circle alone has a dozen witches who would be happy to serve their future queen. Zidesh has no shortage of witches.”
Ruti blinks at her, startled. The Heir says it with confidence, no lie in her voice, and it occurs to Ruti for the first time that the Heir means it when she says that Ruti can be replaced. “Then why pick some Markless girl from the slums?”
The Heir says, “No one will notice your disappearance.” It’s coldly calculating, a cruel thing to say, and Ruti does her best to shrug it off and fails.
“So that’s it? You brought me here to … what, die after I’ve served my purpose?” Ruti pieces it together with sudden dread. “If you never find your Bonded because of what I’ve done—what you’ve had me do—then I’m the only one keeping that secret,” she says. The Heir regards her silently. “And you can’t leave anyone behind who might know it.” She stops in the middle of the hallway to stare up at the Heir, aghast at her betrayal. It hits all the harder after she just saw that glimpse of the Heir’s unexpected gentleness with Kimya. “You’re going to kill me no matter what, aren’t you?”
She remembers, very suddenly, exactly how good the Heir is at combat, exactly how many guards are around them at any time, exactly how close the dungeons are. She’s known that she might die if she fails, has pushed herself night after night to ask the spirits for more because of that, but it hasn’t crossed her mind that even success will doom her.
She spins around, ready to turn back and grab Kimya and flee, but a hand lands on her arm, restraining her. “My life is in your hands,” the Heir says, and she sounds more subdued now, the coolness tempered with an emotion that Ruti can’t read. “My future is yours. If I have to take precautions, then.…”
Ruti clenches her jaw, furious and terrified, and the Heir murmurs, “I will have use for a witch in my court when I am queen. If you give me no reason to silence you, then I will not.” It is distant, disinterested, and that infuriates Ruti even more.
“So either I die or I’m yours forever? Will I never be free of you?” She cherishes her freedom, power, and agency because she’s scraped and fought for them for years. Now, in a flash, they’ve been stolen away from her.
