Green Wild (Thrones of the Firstborn Book 2) Read Free Page A

rose with their pleas and demands, she wiped the rain from her face and started the task of calming them.

Chapter 2

The Regent of the Blood
    T HE ROYAL BLOOD didn’t like to admit it, but the mountain of Sel Sevanth and its Citadel of the Sky was its own political entity, a nation within a nation. The little red flower the Citadel processed into the catalyst for magic grew nowhere else. Whoever controlled the mountain controlled the magic of the Logos.
    But the Logos couldn’t touch the Royal Blood’s native magic. They used it to control the approach to the mountain. No army could take the Citadel of the Sky while the Blood held Lor Seleni at its base.
    Of course, the clever found other ways of getting into the Citadel, thought Lady Lisette, Royal Regent. Sitting alone at a table in the communal dining room within the Citadel itself, she sliced a pear and drizzled honey over cheese. She kept an eye on the ‘pilgrims’ from the neighboring country of Vassay as they ate their dinner, too. They understood the alliance between the Citadel and Ceria’s Royal Blood. And they understood alliances could be changed. They were as dangerous in their own way as the dragon that had attacked the Citadel in the pre-dawn after the holiday Antecession, when so much had changed.
    Lisette, noble-blooded, served the Regency. As a Regent, she stood between the madness and power of the Blood, and their own people. She knew how dangerous the Royal Blood could be. She’d studied them, past and present, for the last ten years, after all. She respected the Regency. The system had worked for hundreds of years. And she loved Tiana as her best friend.
    But apparently not everybody in the Regency thought the system worked, Lisette thought darkly. The ‘pilgrims’ acted like an embassy, without shame or secrecy. Lisette couldn’t be sure, but she suspected they’d come at the secret invitation of the King’s Regent, before he’d died, weeks ago.
    Their leader smiled at her, as if she shared their goals. She gave him her most practiced smile back, and tilted her head as if she wanted to speak with him. She did want to speak with him, very much, so she could discover whatever he thought she knew.
    He stood, and then looked over her shoulder, affected an overly casual stretch and sat back down again. A moment later Tiana sat down beside Lisette with a thump.
    She put Jinriki, the great sword she carried carelessly in one hand, on the table between them, took a pear of her own and bit directly into it. Her hair needed combing and her simple woolen dress skewed lower on one shoulder than another. Lisette reached over the sword and tugged one side of the dress up.
    “Oh, thank you,” said Tiana, and looked around the dining hall. Her gaze passed right over the Vassay group, as if they didn’t matter to her at all. Then she inspected the table again: fruit, cheese, pastries. “This is dinner?”
    Lisette smiled, for real this time. “This is dinner. Nobody has time to cook right now, Tiana. There are wounded people, and structural instabilities, and Jinriki destroyed dozens of Logos workings on the walls and mountain.”
    “Well, yes,” said Tiana, looking discomfited. “But this is more like... dessert. Where did all the cakes come from? And, look, a bowl of reception cookies.” She grabbed one and cracked it open, but no little scroll fell out.
    “It’s the day after Antecession, too,” Lisette pointed out. “Sweets are traditional.”
    “Oh,” said Tiana. “Yes. Was that only yesterday?” Her gaze went far away and Lisette knew the sword spoke to her. She ignored the blade between them with practiced grace, but she couldn’t forget about it.
    Jinriki the Darkener, it—he—called himself, and she had extremely mixed feelings about the fiendish blade. He hurt those he disliked, he dominated the weak, he fought back violently against being held by anyone he didn’t choose, he broke things, he threw power around wildly and he