Taming the Wild Beast of Alamina

Sylvia studied its narrow windows and high walls. ”It looks like a detention facility.”

”It was highly regarded.”

”That does not contradict me.”

Marianne looked pleased. ”He hated it.”

”I did not.”

”You dismantled part of the western gate.”

”The lock was defective.”

”You were nine.”

”I identified the defect.”

”You also left the gate in twelve pieces.”

”I repaired it.”

”Three days later.”

Thomas looked through the window as the school disappeared behind them, declining to continue the defense.

A few streets farther, Daniel indicated a bakery beneath a red awning.

”Thomas broke their front window when he was twelve.”

Sylvia looked at the building, then at Thomas.

”There was a fight,” he said.

Marianne folded her arms. ”You threw another child through it.”

”He frightened my grandmother.”

The explanation ended the matter as far as Thomas was concerned.

Sylvia could already picture him at twelve: too large for his age, silent, frighteningly serious, and entirely prepared to launch someone through commercial glass in defense of a person he loved.

She squeezed his hand.

Thomas glanced at her, uncertain whether she was comforting him or silently approving the act.

It was a little of both.

The roads widened again as they climbed beyond the denser neighborhoods. Houses stood farther apart, hidden behind stone walls and trees. The mountains appeared closer here, their slopes dark with pine beneath the low clouds.

At last, the car turned through a pair of old iron gates marked with the Lancaster crest.

A broad stone house stood beyond them.

It was large but lacked the calculated symmetry of a palace. One wing was older than the other, ivy climbed the southern wall, and several of the upper windows had clearly been replaced during different architectural decades. Gardens spread around it in informal layers, giving way behind the house to a training field and the edge of the forest.

Near the circular drive stood an enormous tree, its lower branches extending almost horizontally above the grass.

Thomas looked at it.

Sylvia followed his gaze.

”You climbed that.”

”I fell from it.”

”He broke his arm,” Marianne said. ”Then told the physician that crying would not repair the bone.”

”I was six.”

Daniel glanced back. ”You also attempted to refuse pain medication because you believed it would affect your situational awareness.”

Sylvia looked at Thomas.

He showed no embarrassment.

Somewhere inside the commander beside her remained the solemn child who had believed pain could be defeated by refusing to acknowledge it.

Her field moved before she could prevent it, warmth and tenderness unfolding around him.

Thomas turned his head.

For once, he did not question the emotion or brace against it.

He simply held her hand more tightly.

”This is where you were raised,” Sylvia said.

”Yes.”

The car stopped before the house.

Marianne opened her door and stepped out, but Daniel remained long enough to look at Sylvia.

”No court today,” he said. ”No officials, no reports, and no one asking you to explain decisions made while Thomas was bleeding to death.”

Thomas’s expression hardened faintly at the description.

Daniel ignored him.

”You will eat, rest, and see whatever parts of the city interest you. Heather can wait two days.”

Sylvia looked toward the house again.

The front door had already opened, and familiar household staff were beginning to gather inside, visibly trying not to appear as though they had been waiting impatiently for the car to arrive.

Marianne stood beneath the old tree, watching them with a warmth she made no effort to hide.

Thomas stepped out first, then turned and offered Sylvia his hand.

This time, when she took it, she did not feel as though she were descending into a foreign country or approaching a royal judgment.

She was entering the place that had raised him.

The childhood he rarely discussed waited behind those doors: the rooms he had crossed before his stride became military, the garden walls he had climbed, and the people who had taught him how to become the Wall before anyone understood that walls also required somewhere safe to rest.

Marianne met them at the foot of the steps.

”Welcome home, Sylvia.”

Sylvia glanced at Thomas.

His field had softened around her, dark and familiar, carrying no warning now.

She tightened her fingers around his.

For two days, the Queen of Rohan could wait.

—

Sylvia met Heather two days later and discovered that the long hostility between Rohan and Draxil had become considerably more complicated when the Queen of Rohan married one of the enemy king’s sons.

Prince Eryx of Draxil explained the matter with the elegant ease of a man discussing an amusing family inconvenience rather than a political marriage that had enraged two royal courts.

”Our first common interest,” he said, adjusting one of the jeweled cuffs beneath his cream-colored jacket, ”was that we both hated our families.”

Heather gave him a level look from across the private sitting room.

”That was not the foundation of our marriage.”

”No, but it made conversation remarkably easy.”

Sylvia had expected the Draxilian prince to be severe, guarded, or visibly burdened by the fact that his homeland had spent years treating Rohan as an enemy.

Eryx was none of those things.

He was charming, extravagant, and so clearly accustomed to luxury that Sylvia suspected he would consider plain silverware a personal insult. Gold edged his collar and cuffs, a sapphire flashed at one finger, and he occupied the sofa with the comfortable entitlement of someone who had never questioned whether furniture would accommodate him.

Yet the longer Sylvia listened, the more obvious it became that the frivolity was deliberate.

Eryx noticed every pause in the conversation. He understood the shifting loyalties inside Draxil’s court, knew which advisers supported each of his brothers, and could describe the weaknesses in their competing claims without once appearing to take the matter seriously.

His father was still alive, but illness had left the throne vulnerable.

Eryx’s older brothers had fought each other since childhood. Now they were doing so with armies, ministers, and factions behind them, each trying to secure enough authority to make the succession inevitable before the king died.

”And all of them are furious with you,” Sylvia said.

”Deeply,” Eryx replied, looking pleased by it.

Heather rested one hand against her temple. ”They cannot understand why he married me, secured an alliance with Rohan, and then made no attempt to claim Rohan for himself.”

”My brothers believe every advantage must become a weapon.”

”And you do not?”

Eryx looked toward Heather, his expression softening beneath the practiced amusement.

”I used mine to escape.”

That was when Sylvia began to understand them.

Heather had not been rescued by Eryx, nor had Eryx married her to gain a throne. They had recognized the same exhaustion in each other: two younger royals raised by families that viewed affection as leverage and children as extensions of state policy.

Chris had been the link between them.

He had known Heather since she was young and had somehow also acquired Eryx’s confidence, becoming, in Eryx’s words, ”a semi-babysitter with no respect for royal dignity.”

”He thought we might understand each other,” Heather explained.

”He also thought placing us in the same room would reduce the number of problems he had to manage separately,” Eryx added.

”Did it?”

”No. It consolidated them.”

Heather’s mouth twitched despite herself.

Sylvia loved Eryx almost immediately. He was spoiled, theatrical, and enjoyed being underestimated far too much, but there was no cruelty beneath it. His intelligence appeared most clearly in what he chose not to display, and his loyalty to Heather was too instinctive to be political.

Heather was easier to admire and more difficult to understand.

She had taken the throne six years earlier with Marianne’s help and inherited a kingdom weakened by her father’s extravagance. Since then, she had spent every year attempting to undo decades of corruption, neglected infrastructure, ceremonial waste, and royal vanity.

Each reform revealed another problem hidden beneath it.

”My father believed ruling meant commissioning marble,” Heather said. ”Preferably with his face carved into it.”

Eryx considered this. ”He did have a face suited to monuments.”

”He named the capital after himself.”

”Yes, but that was less successful.”

Heather ignored him with the ease of long practice.

In private, she spoke openly about how little chance she would have had without Chris and Dax. They had protected her, challenged her, and helped her survive long enough to become something other than the daughter her father intended to control.

”I love them like parents,” she said simply.

Then her expression shifted.

”When I was fifteen, however, I attempted to take Dax from Chris.”

Sylvia nearly dropped her cup.

Thomas’s hand, resting behind her chair, became very still.

Heather did not appear embarrassed.

”I was young. Dax was impressive, powerful, and terrifying. I believed that made him an excellent future mate.”

”And Chris?” Sylvia asked.

Heather’s dignity weakened slightly.

”I spent more time with him and decided I liked him better.”

Eryx leaned closer to Sylvia, green eyes glinting. ”She still does.”

Heather pushed his shoulder without looking at him.

Sylvia laughed, and the last of her nervousness disappeared.

Rohan’s queen was rebuilding a kingdom her father had nearly hollowed out. Her husband was a Draxilian prince whose brothers resented him for escaping a throne they had spent their lives destroying each other to possess.

And Chris, apparently, had looked at both of them, recognized two disasters created by royal families, and decided they should meet.

Sylvia loved them already.