The Fiery Crown
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Date Published: May 26, 2020
“A timeless tale of love and survival amidst a lush backdrop teeming with greed and deceit.”--New York Times bestselling author Darynda Jones
A desperate alliance. . A struggle for survival. And a marriage of convenience with an epic twist of fate. . .
WILL THEIR LOVE STAND THE TEST OF TIME
Queen Euthalia has reigned over her island kingdom of Calanthe with determination, grace, and her magical, undying orchid ring. After she defied an empire to wed Conrí, the former Crown Prince of Oriel—a man of disgraced origins with vengeance in his heart—Lia expected the wizard’s prophecy to come true: Claim the hand that wears the ring and the empire falls. But Lia’s dangerous bid to save her realm doesn’t lead to immediate victory. Instead, destiny hurls her and Conrí towards a future neither could predict…
OR TEAR THEIR WHOLE WORLD APART?
Con has never healed after the death of his family and destruction of his kingdom—he’s been carefully plotting his revenge against his greatest enemy, Emperor Anure, waiting for the perfect opportunity to strike. When Lia’s spies gather intelligence suggesting that Anure is planning an attack against Calanthe, Con faces an agonizing choice: Can he sacrifice Lia and all she holds dear to destroy the empire? Or does his true loyalty exist in the arms of his beguiling, passionate wife—’til death do they part?
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“Good morning, Conrí! I must congratulate myself—how did I know I’d find you here?”
I glanced at the wizard, not revealing that he’d surprised me and not bothering to return the empty pleasantries. I hadn’t asked him to find me. In fact, I’d come to the portrait gallery to be alone—not easy in the crowded and convivial court of Calanthe. “I don’t know, Ambrose. Probably one of the many dark arts you practice.”
Ambrose, cheerfully undaunted, shook his head with a smile. He’d decorated his light-brown curls with a garland of flowers in the Calanthean style, and he wore a deep-blue robe lavishly embroidered with glittering silver moons floating in a field of stars in pinprick jewels of every color imaginable. Even his familiar, Merle, a very large raven, sported a silver chain about his neck studded with small jewels that winked in even the dim light from the glass-paned, narrow slits of windows. The raven, perched on the enormous emerald stone topping the wizard’s staff, cocked his head at me and opened his beak in a croak that could be interpreted as a laugh.
“Ah, Conrí, I wouldn’t waste my prodigious magical talents on locating you when simple logic tells me you’d be lurking here in the shadows while Her Highness holds formal court.”
“Shouldn’t you be lurking in your tower, muttering spells over boiling cauldrons?”
Ambrose laughed. “You really know nothing at all of how wizardry and magic work.”
I only grunted, returning my gaze to studying the portrait above me. It was too much to hope that Ambrose would go away, but maybe if I ignored him he’d get bored of poking at me and spit out whatever he wanted to say and then get gone.
But no, he stepped up beside me, keeping his counsel for the moment, and gazed up also. The ornately framed portrait of Oriel’s last, doomed ruling family dominated this section of wall. That wasn’t just me, either. Anyone would be drawn to the portrait for its size and artistic execution, attracting the eye even among the many paintings that had been crowded into the gallery. The long arcade held hundreds, maybe thousands of drawings, etchings, and paintings. They hung shoulder-to-shoulder, like warriors out of history marching in frozen formation, relics of kingdoms scattered to ash.
Lia—and her father before her—had collected these works of art, smuggled out of the many forgotten empires and kingdoms, saving them from the self-styled Emperor Anure’s destruction and greed, bringing them to the island kingdom of Calanthe, to hang quietly in the shadows. It made sense, on one level, to keep the paintings in the dark, preserving them from the tropical sunlight, but a morbid part of me couldn’t help comparing the place to a tomb.
Of course, a tomb was the right location for interring this portrait among the others, along with the dead people it portrayed. My father, as broad-chested and vital as he’d been in my boyhood, stood behind my seated mother, both wearing the crowns of Oriel. He had one big hand braced on the back of her chair, the other on my shoulder. Or rather, on the boy prince of Oriel, a child who’d effectively died along with the rest of his family. That kid grinned with cocky confidence and the innocent joy of a stranger. Nothing at all like the man who looked back at me from Calanthe’s thousands of shining and unflinching mirrors.
I’d visited the painting enough times now that I could make myself look at my mother’s face, her light-brown eyes holding laughter and warmth. The painter had been the best for several kingdoms around—and she’d exactly captured my mother’s keen intelligence, her lips curved in a smile as if she might burst out laughing at any moment. My sister and I had inherited her black hair and tawny eyes, not our father’s bold blond, blue-eyed looks.
My sister . . . I hadn’t yet been able to make myself look at her face.
I tried. I visited the portrait several times a day as a kind of penance, and to test my will. It was the least I could do, when I’d survived and they’d all been consigned to unmarked graves, my mother and sister moldering when they should’ve been cleanly burned to ash. My sister stood between my father and mother, so I should be able to slide my gaze over a few inches from my mother’s face . . . but my will collapsed, the sick grief grabbing me, and I had to look away, taking a deep breath.
“There’s no bringing back the dead,” Ambrose said philosophically, though with a note of compassion in his voice. “Not those who’ve been dead a long time, anyway. It almost never works out well. I could tell you about—”
“Did I ask?” I retorted.
“I just thought I should mention,” he replied reproachfully, more of his usual bite to it. “Since you seem to have such a high opinion of my wizardry. In case your brooding and obsessive study of this painting led your thoughts in that direction.”
I set my teeth, resisting the urge to grind them. “I’m not brooding or obsessive. This is a good place to think. Normally no one bothers me here.” If I had to kick my heels in this oppressively cheerful paradise, growing softer with each wasted moment, I could at least contemplate next steps, anticipate Anure’s strategy to take his own revenge on Calanthe and her queen. “It’s not like I have anything else to do.”
“You could attend court, as consort to Her Highness,” Ambrose pointed out blandly, and I suppressed a growl of frustration. At least my throat hurt less, since Healer Jeaneth had been treating me—one positive of having time on my hands. My voice still sounded like a choked dog most of the time, however.
“Court.” I snarled the word. “I don’t get how Lia can waste time on diplomacy and posturing when she promised to discuss defense.”
“She does have a realm to govern.”
“She won’t if Anure arrives to destroy it while she drags her feet. The woman is uncommonly stubborn.”
“A perfect match for you.” Ambrose narrowed his eyes at my clenched fists. “Isn’t she gathering intelligence from her spies?”
I didn’t answer that. That’s what we waited on, theoretically, but I knew there were things Lia was avoiding telling me. I also suspected that she hoped it would all just go away. Both of us knew that Calanthe couldn’t withstand a full-out, devastating attack. When nothing happened immediately after our wedding, it seemed that Lia began to hope that nothing ever would.
I knew better. The painting helped remind me of all the dead waiting to be avenged—and what happened to those who fell before Anure’s might.
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