Excerpt:

Chapter 1:

Lady Alixia Mit’Zahra was bored---something she couldn’t remember being in all her 16 years prior to being inducted into the Ylvan nobility, but a state she was becoming increasingly used to in the months since. She imagined that most other ladies of her age and current station were well amused by spending hours readying themselves for the different social activities in the afternoons and evenings.

But Alix had spent over a decade training to be a Shadow Blade---a member of the elite arm of the Azarian imperial army, an order of assassins trained out of childhood, whose service one only left in death. Or at least that was the case until the Azarian emperor decided to gift neighboring Ylva with a pair of Shadow Blades---Alix and her brother Darius---and those Shadow Blades were subsequently released from service and promoted to the nobility by the Ylvan king and queen for, as they put it, serving “above and beyond” their duties (though, to Alix’s mind, she and Darius had neither failed nor surpassed the task provided them, the task being to defend the royals---with their lives if need be). In any case, years of training ensured that Alix dressed swiftly and efficiently---and she dressed herself, except on the rare occasions when she allowed her maid, Treva, to assist with the finishing touches. (Treva usually communicated hurt feelings otherwise.)

Darius at least had a job, Alix mused with some measure of envy. Her brother had been asked to serve Ylva as one of the assistant spymasters. He worked closely with Kioran fin Darnatha, who was sometimes a friend and frequently an irritation. Alix couldn’t really say what rubbed her wrong about Kio; they had gotten along quite well initially, despite his being a few years older than her. It had been Darius who had been violently suspicious of him. But Alix had not known him as a spy, for all she had noted and respected the secrets he kept. And when it was revealed, she had been . . . irritated. She wasn’t entirely sure why, when duplicity was such a vital tool of her own trade and Kio had not misled her so much as neglected to reveal certain aspects of his life---which Alix would have been the first to say was his prerogative.

It was funny, Alix thought, that several months ago, it was she who had had to play peacekeeper between Darius and Kio. Now Darius served as the sort of go-between, since Alix tended to avoid Kio, and Kio, on his part, was fully willing to give her the space in which to be thoroughly irritated with him. Which, perversely, only irritated her further.

Boredom, Alix decided, was the cause of this---the reason why this had carried out as long as it had. If she had had other things to do besides stew in the pretty dresses the queen kept foisting her into and had less little social gatherings during which her mind had a tendency to dwell on itself even as her mouth moved to form the obligatory niceties that always had to be on the tip of her tongue, for all they did not require much mental faculty to dole out. If she had not been so bored, Alix confirmed, she would have ceased being irritated with Kio and, most likely, ceased being at all affected by him.

The solution, then, was to find herself an occupation of some sort. A hobby, even. And not the sort the queen and her ladies seemed to want her to take up---such as needlework or gossiping. The queen, princess, and ladies of the court took up archery on occasion, but they seemed to prefer bows with pretty ribbons dangling from the end, and dull-tipped arrows that would do little more than tickle an armored attacker.

Perhaps she could take up teaching self-defense again, Alix mused. She and Darius had taken to teaching the Azarian princess, Zandra, who had married the Ylvan crown prince, Pheric, earlier in the year, and Mikhal, the Ylvan “spare heir” to defend themselves. The two Shadow Blades had come with Zandra from Azaria as a betrothal gift to the royal house of Ylva, and the king and queen had been hard-pressed to find them roles in which they would not incite too much outcry in the political circles.

The Ylvans, Alix remembered with a great deal of amusement, had been completely appalled by the idea and lifestyle of the average Shadow Blades, and for a long time they had been the scandal of the nobility, following the prince and princess around wherever they went---although it seemed that Alix, who had been given the duty of guarding Prince Mikhal, had had the somewhat more adventurous duty, following the prince into his forays into the streets of Draden under his alias as Markis, the son of a custom weaponry merchant. In fact, it was during one of these forays to the city that Alix had met Kio. But Alix didn’t want to think about that now.

Anyway, somehow Mikhal and his friends had gotten Alix and Darius to teach them the basics of how to defend themselves. Remembering, Alix smirked. The very basics, anyway. Though they had put what little they had learned to good use when they were shipped off to Maris in the south to fight in the war between the two countries. Alix smiled wistfully. Not that she wished another war on Ylva---she had grown remarkably attached to Ylva in the year she had lived here, and she had observed with a mixture of both amusement and bafflement that the loyalty she felt toward her adopted country somehow went far and beyond the duty with which she had served the country to which she should have been born a princess---but she did miss the action and the constant sense of purpose.

She would offer her services to the military, Alix thought decisively. She had made a few connections in the war, and she thought she might be able to convince some of the officers to allow her to teach some of their soldiers a few of the specialized skills she had picked up here and there---after all, before their “retirement” in Ylva, she and Darius had been one of the best Shadow Blade teams and had killed and learned new ways of killing in virtually all of Azaria’s neighboring countries (not to mention a few far-flung kingdoms whose borders never even whispered on Azaria’s). She would rather shamelessly take advantage of the fact that King Gerian had declared her and Darius heroes of the war, and she’d get Darius and Mikhal to lean on a general or two if they proved stubborn.

Having decided on her course of action, Alix stood up from where she had been idly staring at the window as the guards changed shifts (she was quite satisfied in the increase of security she and Darius had managed to institute last year when the king had asked them to consult with artificers and mages to make the palace somewhat more “assassin-proof”). Heading for the door she stopped, hearing footsteps approaching. She only relaxed when she recognized her brother’s step---they had both taken to using a louder step than they were used to so as to fit in more after Princess Zandra had complained one day that their “sneaking around” would result in an early delivery of the king’s grandson. (The babe had been delivered on time and with less fuss than Alix had expected, but she and Darius had made a habit of consciously giving sound to their footsteps nevertheless.) It made people a bit less nervous of them, which was helpful to Alix in that the queen did not have to keep soothing her ladies-in-waiting, who had initially been convinced that Alix was there to kill them all. And Alix knew it lent weight to the notion that she and Darius were trying to become “normal” nobles in the Ylvan court, rather than blood-thirsty assassins. This helped Darius in the regular bits of subterfuge he engaged in, ferreting out traitors and foreign sympathizers, and putting spies in place in appropriate households and entourages.

The door opened; Alix knew her brother would have known she would have heard his footsteps as he approached. “There you are,” Darius said wryly. “Stop moping around, keirea. Their majesties might get it into their heads that we are ungrateful for the stations to which they have elevated us.”

She answered him in an equally dry voice, just to ease the worry she knew he veiled behind his bored tones. “Can’t have that, can we?”

“No, indeed.” He smiled at her---a genuine smile and, as Alix and few others knew, rarely given. “But come, Kio’s asked to see us, and he says it’s important. He wants to see us in the king’s library, so it must be of some import.”

“Us, not you?” Alix asked with curiosity and some surprise. She knew her brother would not have come for her had he not been sure, and Darius was not in the habit of mishearing things, especially orders thinly veiled as requests, but since she and Kio had been busily avoiding each other in the past several weeks, she found it strange that he would now be requesting her presence.

“Yes, us. Let’s go.” He headed back out the door, and Alix, after a moment’s hesitation, joined him. As she fell into step beside him, he frowned down at her. “You’re developing bad habits. Letting emotions cloud your judgment and therefore your actions. Is Ylva making you soft?”

She gave him a quirk of the mouth that might have been half a smile. “No, I don’t think it’s Ylva, or its people. They’re not soft, just . . . different. I think it’s more a question of boredom. Many more afternoons spent gossiping with the queen’s ladies will soon have me thinking and acting as one of them, if only out of self-defense. I’m positively rusting as far as my training has gone. You’re too busy for morning workouts these days, and without the challenge, I find mine only adequate.”

He shrugged. “So find something to do.” He frowned a little harder, then said, “I know Melantius would like to see more of you.”

He always called their father by his name. For that matter, so did Alix, but she did so out of respect for her brother, and sometimes tried out the name Father in her head.

“I did, actually.” Knowing they would soon be at the library, Alix met his raised eyebrows with an “I’ll tell you later.”

“All right,” he said, nodding to the guards who stood outside the doors leading to the royal family’s private area. They headed to the door that opened up into the library, which was ajar.

Alix followed him into the room, and was surprised to see the not only Kio, but the king and queen and Mikhal as well. She was even more surprised to see her father there.

“Ah,” the king said when he saw them. “Alix. Darius.”

“Majesty,” they murmured dutifully.

“Come in, and close the door. Sit down.”

They did so.

“Well,” he said. He was frowning. “I don’t quite know how to say this, but we’ve recently heard from your grandfather.”

“Our grandfather, sire?” Darius was surprised into asking.

“Yes,” the king said, obviously perplexed. “Your grandfather, the emperor of Azaria.”