“Oh, hello.”

I stare up at him. “I...there’s...Reaper Storm!” I stammer, just before the alarms begin to peal.

“Oh.” Leaving his pants half-laced, the reshaped man dives for a pile of clothes on the floor, digging through it till he comes up with a set of earplugs. The first screams hit a heartbeat before he jams them into his ears. His eyes flash around wildly as the disorientation sets it. Then they settle with a sudden rigid fixation on the tent flap, and he rises and starts towards it. I lurch forward, grabbing his wrist. He twists around to face me, eyes wild for one terrifying moment, muscles tensing as he prepares to fling me off—but then the moment of madness passes.

He takes a deep, trembling breath. “Thank you,” he signs after gently retracting his hand to run it over his pulled-back hair.

As he resumes dressing, I realize he’s changing out of his black Trial Director’s uniform and into the silvery-gray one of a royal guard.

I wave to catch his gaze again. “Weren’t you one of the Directors?” I sign.

He chuckles. “We were just standing in for them temporarily,” he signs back, his pants slipping.

“Oh. I see.” I do my best to hide my laugh as he hurries to catch the rogue garment, feeling a faint heat paint my cheeks. The Reapers are far enough away at the moment that the earplugs are actually enough to withstand them on their own, thank Lutra.

The guard gives me the side-eye and an odd sort of crooked smile. Deftly, he fixes the last embossed coat button into place, and my jaw slackens.

He’s not just any royal guard. The crest and glyph embroidered over the left side of his chest marks him as Shield to the Heir Premier.

“What—“ I begin to sign, but a crashing roll of thunder cuts me short, and my hands go up immediately to clamp over my ears. The screams are closer now, much closer. My blood runs cold. They draw nearer still, and my bones feel like shattered glass embedded in my flesh. My mind reels. 

But as deep as the Reaper’s wails tear into me, its nothing to what they’re doing to the Shield, who’s already weakened by having caught the full brunt of them moments before. He drops to his knees, eyes wild and darting. His face twists into a rictus of pain and despair, skin drained of color, tears streaming down his cheeks.

I’m kneeling on the ground beside him before I realize I’ve even decided to move. I don’t know what makes me do it—I don’t know this man, and he works for the one family I hate most in this world. I suppose something about seeing a strong man crumble like that, seeing him break before my eyes…but no. That can’t be it. I’ve seen men crumble before. Been the one to crumble them and laughed. So then why—?

“It’ll pass soon,” I say out loud, though I know he probably can’t understand me. “It’ll pass soon.” I wrap my arms about him, press his head to my shoulder to block off one of his ears as I cover the other with my hand over his. With only the earplugs to block them, the wails rip deeper into my soul. But they’re just muffled enough. Just enough that I can hang onto myself. But it’s like dangling at the edge of a cliff by my fingertips while trying to hold on to someone else, too. The Shield’s arms snake around me suddenly and tighten, tears soaking my dress, my hair.

A voice like a beam of sunlight breaking through cloud pierces the thunder, the screaming, the dampening of the earplugs. A sound that tastes of honey liquor, of glacial mountain water, of cleansing juniper—my new namesake. Immediately, the Shield’s shoulders cease their shaking. He takes in a deep, grateful breath. His arms loosen, and he pulls backward to look down at me.

“Sorry about that,” he signs, a smile spreading across his face. And again that damnable heat rises to my cheeks, like I’m some freshly-debuted noble girl at her first ball. Why?!

The singing goes on, and we both lose ourselves in it, frozen in place, until finally the storm passes on and the shrieking fades away. A moment later, someone bursts into the tent.

It’s the other director from earlier, the Bard. Only she’s not dressed as a director anymore. Now she wears a dress of black velvet and silvery-iridescent stormsilk embroidery, all palm fronds and flowers and the fish-tailed rabbit of Lutra.

No one wears stormsilk. No one but royalty. Her hair’s loose, now, falling down almost to her elbows in tousled waves, revealing several locks that shine golden at the tips—not blonde but truly metallic, shimmering gold—though soft and lustrous looking as the rest of her hair. A gem-encrusted blindfold dangles from her fingertips. Another guard begins to follow her in, but she shoos him away.

“I don’t need you now,” she says. “My First Shield is here.”

Her eyes fix on my one for half a heartbeat as she turns away from him, and at last I recognize her for who she is.

The residual calm left behind by our savior’s song dissipates, and my blood runs boiling hot.

It’s her.

I let my hands fall into my skirts as I stand up and back away, hoping she won’t see how they’ve balled into fists.

“Gods and goddesses, Cedro. You look awful. Tell me you got your earplugs in in time—“

“Er, only just,” he says, eyes flashing sideways to me as he utters the half-truth. “Thanks to this one.”

Now she looks at me in earnest, teeth bared in a dazzling smile. The hairs on the back of my neck raise on end. I remember her smiling like that, back then. It never ended well. I resist the urge to take a step backward as she glides up to me.

“Thank you for rescuing my favorite Shield,” she says, reaching out in offering. But I keep my hands hidden, bending into a bow instead.

“Of course, Your Highness.”

“You are…one of our new Gourmands, yes?” She tilts her head, studying my face in a way that reminds me of a saltmarsh crane sizing up its prey. Her regard lingers on my eyepatch, but it’s the last thing she comes to. 

“That’s correct Your Highness.”

She huffs, tossing a few locks of hair back over her shoulder in that same agitated, compulsive way that I remember. “Please, all that rigid formality…it’s so tedious, isn’t it? Part of the reason it’s nice to slip into different roles from time-to-time.” She smirks. “Just call me Chiara.”

At that I’m taken completely by surprise. I think I nod my head, but I’m not sure. She smiles at me again, closed-lipped this time, though the smile still reaches her eyes.

“What’s you name, Gourmand?”

“Ju-Juniper. Your High—Chiara.” I’m stammering now? Unacceptable.

I straighten my back. I am not the little girl this princess once ground beneath her heel. Not anymore.

“Wonderful to meet you, Juniper. I think I’d like to reward your service tonight. Do you have any plans?”

“I planned to pass the trial. After that, though,” I shrug, eye skirting away so I can pretend I’m talking to someone else. “I didn’t really think it out much past eating some good food and getting really drunk.”

“Well then” says the princess and Heir Premier, pearl-white teeth flashing. “You’re in luck, as I have the best food and the best drink. Come.” She reaches forward, actually fishing my hand out from the folds of my fuchsia dress and clasping it in hers.

And for the life of me, I can’t think of an excuse or a graceful enough way to refuse her. So I just let her tug me out of the tent, her First Shield falling in behind us. The other guard, who’d lingered outside in spite of her dismissal, hurries off.

“You have a beautiful vitei,” she calls back to me as we wend our way through the crowds of emerging revelers and palace staff alike. They part for us like fish before sharks—or at least, the ones who aren’t curled up on the ground do. Those ones, the people who didn’t shelter themselves in time, we just have to skirt around. Thrashing and writhing and mad in the aftermath of the storm, there’s nothing to do but leave them for other guards to deal with.

But the bells of storm’s ending are pealing still, and it’ll be a while before anyone gets to them. With midnight past and the storm blown by, the palace’s celebration of the beginning of the month of Lutra, the Fête, can begin in earnest. For many here, it’s much more than that. It’s the Last Night. And they’re wasting no time whatsoever in making the most of it. More than half the people we pass are deep in the cups, several others higher than the stars or both. Already, moans issue from tents and amongst the darkened shrubbery and pagodas of the labyrinth.

I don’t know where I’m expecting her to take me—the central pavilion, perhaps, where the party is starting up in earnest. But instead we veer off, following the path leading around the labyrinth and straight for the palace’s main entrance.

The guards stop us at the door.

“I’m sorry Your Highness. But this guest is unauthorized.”

“She’s one of the new Royal Sensari. She’ll be living in the palace as of tomorrow.”

“Be that as it may, Your Highness, protocol—“

“Old protocol, written by those long past. Is any word but that of our current King of greater truth than mine?” She tosses her hair again, eyes narrowing as the guard swallows. The others around shift nervously. “You attempt to sully the shining rightness of my authority with your challenges? Are you certain?” Her voice hums with the magic of her Blessing. 

“N-no, of course not, Your Highness.”

Chiara maintains her air of regal indignation just long enough for us to get past the guards, then she breaks into laughter—looping her arm through mine. “Come along now,” she says. “I want to show you my favorite place.”

It was hard enough to hold her hand before. Now it’s everything I can do not to wrench my arm away as she leads me down through this place that embodies, that is, all of my most treasured and terrible memories at once. So bittersweet its hard not to let the taste twist my features.

The palace interior hasn’t changed much since my exile. Unlike the outside with its pale facades, in here it’s all dark teak—elaborately carved and layered, with tiered lanterns hanging from fixtures carved to look like plume snakes, their feathers and scales rendered in meticulous detail. Vaulted ceilings soars over the central spaces, where the open upper levels form long balconies connected by bridge-like walkways that look down over the greenery and fountains set beneath the skylights.

She leads me to one of the lifts that always reminded me of birdcages, pulling the tasseled rope in the corner in four long tugs as Cedro the Shield draws the barred door shut, trapping me in. The lift lurches slightly before transitioning into a smoother ascent. All the way past the open inner levels with their balcony-walkways. Up into a broad hall and towards a door at the far end. 

For a moment fear bolts through me as I realize that most of the guards stationed there are charging down the hall towards us—but I calm as they trundle past, towards some loud disturbance from a room in the opposite direction. But the one who remains steps in our path as we approach.

“Your Highness—“

“Don’t even bother,” says Chiara, in a tone hard as iron, resonant with power. The guard moves out of the way, and the princess leads me through the door into a shrine-lined chamber with an exit at its other end.

Dragging me across the room, Chiara flings open the door before her Shield can do it for her, urging me out into the fresh air beyond—revealing another part of the palace I’ve never been to before. Surrounded on all sides by the exterior walls of rising towers, a lofty hidden courtyard.

Palm fronds and velvety flowers brush my skin as the Heir Premier leads me through a fragrant rooftop garden I never knew was here. Tree frogs and moon birds sing from amongst the fronds, and the trickling of water issues from an inset pool with a stone fountain carved in Lutra’s animal form at its heart.

“This place is called the Sky Grove” says Chiara, cupping a fuchsia flower and dipping close to inhale its scent. “The most sacred place in the entirety of the palace and its grounds. Only those of The Blood and their anointed guardians are permitted to step foot here.”

I go rigid.

“Then why—“

“Oh, don’t worry,” laughs Chiara. “You saw how things are. As I say it, so it is.” She gestures dismissively.

“But—“

“Please…Juniper, was it?”

I swallow back my rising disdain and uncertainty as she plucks the flower and steps in close to plant it in my hair, lips tugging up in a smile that can only mean trouble. But gods and goddesses, she smells so good. Why does she have to smell so good?

And her vitei…

I can taste it so much better here, up close, without the flavors of so many others to muddy it.

There’s a smooth creaminess behind the chili spice and tangy sugar-mango. And something more, something floral and profound. 

Saffron.

It’s different, much different than it was before. Back then at it had been so acrid and sour it turned my stomach. And yes, it may be doing somersaults now in the cradle of my belly, but instead of a sickness rising in my gorge—a thrill shoots up my spine as she leans towards me. As her left hand comes up to lightly clasp my jaw. To travel over my throat. 

And she’s going to kiss me. Oh goddesses she’s going to—

And then she is. And, Lutra curse me, it feels as amazing as it does wrong. I don’t push her away. I don’t know why I don’t push her away. I don’t understand what’s happening. But her lips are so soft, so—

The door to the grove flies open, and through it strides an enormous man, face red with fury, black-and-silver hair flying back as he charges forward, guards barely able to keep up.

My entire being burns with rage at the sight of him. The man who ordered my father’s death.

Beside me, arms still draped around my body, the first Heir to all of Aijur smiles with obvious satisfaction.