A Chill in the Flame (Villains #1)

Eighteen

Eighteen

Now

Some things happen slowly.

Dwyn had once heard that one could boil a frog if the water began at a comfortable temperature. The creature wouldn’t understand its fatal flaw until it was too late. The successful erosion of kingdoms happened gradually, void of fanfare, without detection.

Patience is a virtue, yes. Patience is also a ploy.

Dwyn was not in a hurry.

She’d carried a quill and stack of parchment with her to bed and doodled Sulgrave’s distant mountains as she waited. It took three days, but at long last, she heard a knock at her door.

“Who is it?” Dwyn called in a light, airy voice.

She smiled when Harland identified himself. This was patience’s reward.

A decade of vigilance had taught her what everyone knew: Raascot was ruled by King Ceneth. He bore no heirs, nor had his parents survived. Farehold’s king and queen had given birth to two daughters, Caris and Ophir. More careful reconnaissance had helped her to understand the heirs for who they were, and what she needed to do.

By the time she’d made her way to Aubade, Farehold’s princesses were already fully formed fae well into their adulthood. Caris was the princess of goodness and spring. She was the continent’s purest hope for love and unity, particularly after centuries of persecution of her people within the confines of her kingdom. Fae born with fearsome powers had been hunted nearly to extinction. Had Ceneth not opened his borders to Farehold’s refugees, the southern barbarians would have continued slaughtering anyone deemed unsafe.

Ophir was the continent’s afterthought. While the blood of centuries of monarchs coursed through her veins, little was expected of her. The eldest princess would marry King Ceneth and unite their sovereign kingdoms through a long-anticipated marriage. The youngest princess, on the other hand…

Caris and Ceneth would surely reproduce, multiplying Dwyn’s opportunities, should she wait. Whether she appeared as a kind, benevolent aunt to royal children, or waited until a male heir was procured who could be beholden by her guiles, time was her ally. There were other strategies, of course. There was always something she could do, a friend she could make, a path she could take, should she want.

The Blood Pact had nipped at her heels for decades, though they knew little of how she did what she did, let alone how to achieve their ultimate goals. When new players were revealed on the continent, her timeline was shoved forward with harsh, indelicate hands.

Further boldness came in the form of Berinth. She’d adapted before, and she could do it again. He’d arrived to snatch the noble title of Lord from someone he claimed to be his uncle, though any discerning party would have more than a few questions as to how such a peculiar stranger had tumbled upon this prominent role. He’d tried his hand at shows of opulence. It was a brazen, indelicate strategy.

Dwyn had watched from a distance as the other player in her blood sport attempted to summon an audience with the royal family. He’d thrown lavish parties, hosted dinners, sent invitations, and made countless attempts to draw the women to him. While Dwyn’s strategy had been one intending to curry gradual favor, Berinth had attempted to lure. While she’d planned to ingratiate herself through trust and self-control, he had laid shameless, sparkling traps.

They were perfect opposites.

His impudence had revealed all of his cards to anyone who knew how to read the game.

The game was power, and the players were ones who knew how to advance.

The knock came again and she sat up with a light, kind smile on her lips for the royal guard as she called for him to enter. He didn’t need to see anything alluring or predatory from her. She withheld the vibrancy she utilized for sailors on the waves. She settled into a patient, somewhat indifferent smile as he entered her rooms. She arched a curious brow.

“Harland, is our princess okay?”

Her use of the possessive pronoun was intentional. She wanted him to know that she considered Ophir her monarch as well, even if it sounded unnatural coming from the foreign lilt of her words.

He was unmoved. “It’s time for honesty. I need to talk to you about what happened on the cliffs.”

Dwyn didn’t need to lie. She wasn’t interested in any too-hasty placating that might bite her further along the line. She hadn’t been left with only the past few days to think about her response but with decades far prior to the events that had brought him to her door.

“I’m ready,” she said, prompting the guard to speak first. She sat with a respectable rigidity to her spine, inclining her attentive, delicate features toward the man. She’d taken to borrowing a few of Ophir’s more modest pieces, covering up during the day to help herself appear somewhat less predatory. It seemed to be having the desired effect on all but the clever guard.

His expression was more than a little disconcerted. He closed the door behind him but did not move any closer to her.

“Dwyn, in your own words: tell me what happened on the cliffs.”

“Yes,” she said with cool certainty. “Princess Ophir conjured a snake.”

His brows lifted. He tripped over his inquiry as he pressed, “And you—you knew she had such abilities.”

This was where a lie was required, though all of the world’s best lies were born from truths. She answered his question with one of her own. “How do you manifest your abilities in Farehold?”

Parallel lines pinched between the guard’s ever-expressive brows. “Excuse me?”

“Your power, Harland. How was it discovered?”

“What does this have to do with what I can or can’t do?”

“Answer the question.”

He reached as if to rub the back of his neck, but stopped himself before giving into the informal gesture. “I’ve been able to do this since I was young, though I supposed I discovered it when I had been shut into a pantry and needed to escape. I punched a hole through the door with the strength of a battering ram. I was ten.”

She made a show of considering his information. “Is it safe to say that you uncovered your power in a moment of distress?”

She saw his expression change the moment Harland knew where she was taking her argument, and he didn’t care for it. “If you intend to imply that you put Ophir in distress to help her uncover her ability, then your logic is flawed. Not only has she possessed flame since she was a child, but I’ve seen you react to her fire. You’ve helped her in her night terrors, and you intentionally drenched her flame on the cliff when she was distressed so that she’d be forced to find another way to survive. You know she calls to fire.”

“Fire, yes—”

“You knew, Dwyn. Somehow, you knew there was more.”

Dwyn made no attempt to deny him. “I knew that her fire was not enough to keep her alive! Our abilities are meant to aid us in distress! I had no reason to believe summoning willpower or psychological stamina would be any different from manifesting power. It’s no secret that Firi has shown very little will to live. My hope was that she’d have as much power and strength in basic survival as she might in magic. What use is fire if she possesses no reason to stay on this earth? She didn’t lack supernatural ability. Your princess had no fight left in her.”

They were performing the careful steps of an eerie dance. The music was strange, but the movements were ones she’d made before. Her words were right. Her logic was firm. She knew enough of men to spy that he saw through her impishness, and more, still, to know that he had no counterargument.

Yes, she was aware she’d entered the castle under more than mysterious circumstances. She’d greeted the guard with the sort of iconoclastic irreverence of either a dream or a nightmare, fully nude in the princess’s bedroom with a towel wrapped around her wet hair just before daybreak. She hadn’t wasted her breath on a hope that the guard would ever trust her. If he was an intelligent man, however—and she didn’t take him for a fool—she counted on Harland seeing the value she brought to Ophir’s life. The man didn’t have to like her to appreciate that Ophir was finally eating, sleeping, and healing.

Yes, she’d appeared out of nowhere and, within months, was sleeping in Ophir’s bed, whispering in her ears, and glued to her side. Yes, suspicion was natural. But Dwyn was willing to bet that Harland valued Ophir’s happiness over Dwyn’s removal.

Her gamble paid off a thousand fold

“You knew,” he repeated. It was the only point he had.

She arched a carefully manicured brow.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

The guard shook his head. “Either cut your act or join a troupe to hone your skill, Dwyn. Violence has been used to manifest abilities, not to psychologically overcome trauma. If you were searching for a new ability, nothing would have been curated as it was. You made her picture a snake for weeks. I’ve heard her mutter that beast’s description until you made her believe she’d become it. This was no mistake.”

Dwyn puckered her lip in her best gentle, disarming pout. She’d sent many men to their knees with her doe eyes and gentle smile. She was clever enough to know that beauty and charm could be used to convince one’s opponent of the inverse. If she possessed the necessary cunning, Harland might walk away from their exchange believing she truly was an innocent, pretty, simple thing.

They stared at one another for a long moment, her brows knit, his eyes calculating. She hoped it would be enough, then saw the instant her attempts fell short. It seemed Harland would not be crumpling to her wiles, but she refused to incriminate herself.

“We both want what’s best for the princess,” she said seriously. It wasn’t an answer, but she would give up nothing more today.

As he left her room and closed the door behind him, she wondered if he could feel her satisfied smile.