The ink on the Peace Decree was the only thing in the Kingdom of Astris that hadn't begun to rot.
In the Great Hall of Solaris, the air was a stagnant soup of unwashed silk, dying gardenias, and the metallic tang of fear. It had been thirty years since the walls had seen a fresh coat of gilt, and the peeling gold leaf hung like dead skin from the vaulted ceilings. Outside, the commoners huddled in the shadow of the barbican, their bellies empty, waiting for a miracle. Inside, the miracle was being traded for a girl.
King Alaric's hand shook, not from the weight of the golden quill, but from the terrifying realization that he was signing away his youngest daughter to buy himself a few more years of wine and quiet. He was a man who had once been compared to a lion, but age and a long, grinding cold war had turned him into a scavenger. The scratch of the nib against the vellum sounded like a bone breaking in the oppressive silence of the hall. It was a final, jagged sound that severed a bloodline.
Behind him, standing in the shadow of a fluted marble pillar, Princess Anastasia watched the ink dry. Her gaze was a physical weight on the back of the King's neck, a silent judgment that made the old man's shoulders hunch. She did not blink. She did not breathe. She was a study in stillness, her violet gown blending into the deepening shadows of the afternoon.
"It is done," Alaric whispered.
The words were pathetic. They barely traveled past the dais, swallowed by the thick velvet curtains that muffled the room. Yet, the three hundred nobles packed into the hall reacted as if a thunderclap had struck. There was a collective intake of breath a mixture of relief from those who feared Kaelum's iron-shod horses, and predatory glee from those who saw a vacuum of power opening.
Anastasia didn't move. She didn't offer a hand of comfort to her father, nor did she cast a glance of pity toward her sister, Ana, who sat like a porcelain doll on the sacrificial stool in the center of the room. To the court, Anastasia was a statue of ice the cold, unfeeling eldest daughter who had stood by and watched her sister be sold to the Empire of Kaelum for a border truce.
Let them stare, Anastasia thought. Her pulse was a slow, rhythmic thrum in her throat, a soldier's march. Let them count my sins. Let them whisper that I am heartless, that I am the architect of my sister's exile. Every glare they waste on my face is a second they aren't looking at what Ana is hiding in her sleeve.
The Wolves and the Lamb
The Kaelum ambassadors stepped forward, their black-and-gold armor clanking with a discordant, aggressive rhythm. These were not diplomats; they were conquerors in silk capes. They were men built of sharp angles and obsidian-hard intent, their eyes scanning the room not for friends, but for structural weaknesses both in the stone and in the men.
At their head stood High Chancellor Voren. His face was a landscape of old scars and calculated indifference. He was a man whose reputation for flaying the minds of his enemies was whispered in the capital's darkest taverns, a man who had never lost a negotiation because he usually killed the other party before they could say "no."
Voren bowed. It was a shallow, insulting gesture. He did not bow to the King. He bowed to Ana.
"The Third Prince awaits his bride with… anticipation," Voren said.
The word anticipation hung in the air like a wet blade. Everyone in the room knew the reputation of the Third Prince of Kaelum. Prince Malcor was a man of jagged edges and dark appetites, a hunter who preferred the screaming of prey to the music of the lute. To send a girl like Ana to his bed was not a marriage; it was a slow-motion execution.
Ana looked up. Her eyes were wide, watery, and seemingly vacant with terror. She looked small fragile enough that a stiff breeze might shatter her. It was a masterpiece of a performance. She had spent weeks practicing that specific shade of pale, that specific tremor in her lower lip. She looked exactly like a girl who was about to break under the weight of her crown.
"I shall strive to be a worthy bridge between our peoples," she murmured. Her voice trembled perfectly, a dying bird's chirp that made the Kaelum ministers smirk and the Astris nobles look away in shame.
From her vantage point, Anastasia saw what no one else did. She saw the slight, almost imperceptible tension in Ana's jaw the clenching of a muscle that signaled a mind as sharp as a razor. It was the signal they had shared since they were children playing in the dirt of the royal gardens.
The wolves are in the pen, the jaw-set meant. Now, give them the sheep.
The Shadows of Solaris
The departure was not a grand affair; it was a hasty evacuation. The King, desperate to hide from the ghost of his own cowardice, had ordered the Kaelum caravan to be ready by twilight. There would be no feast, no long-winded speeches, no time for the people to realize their Princess was being traded for grain and a ceasefire.
In the shadowed transition between the inner sanctum and the courtyard, away from the prying eyes of the ministers and the Kaelum spies, the two sisters found a single moment of privacy. The stone walls here were five feet thick, damp with the sweat of the earth.
There were no guards. Anastasia had seen to that, sending them on errands of "high importance" that involved counting the wine barrels in the cellar. There was only the distant, rhythmic sound of carriage wheels being greased and the harsh shouting of Kaelum sergeants.
"The Third Prince is a man of appetites, Ana," Anastasia said.
She didn't whisper. In the palace of Solaris, a whisper was a neon sign inviting an eavesdropper. A flat, bored tone the voice of a woman discussing the price of wool was the only true camouflage.
"He will try to break your spirit because he is too weak to build his own. He lives in the shadow of his father and his elder brothers. He will use your pain to feel like a King."
Ana reached up to adjust the heavy Kaelum pearls around her neck. They were massive, cold, and dark. Against her pale skin, they looked like a noose.
"Then I shall give him a spirit that is already shattered," Ana replied. Her voice had lost its tremor. It was hollow, resonant, and cold. "Men don't look for traps in the debris of a broken woman. They walk right over the shards until they realize they are bleeding out."
"Do you have the coin?" Anastasia asked.
"Sewn into the hem of the handmaids' dresses. I chose the ones with the largest bustles. The guards think it's just lead weight to keep the silk from blowing in the wind. It's enough to buy the loyalty of a minor garrison, or the silence of a head cook."
Ana stepped closer. The mask of the "Victim Princess" flickered for a second, allowing the sister to show through.
"And you, Anastasia? Our father's heart is failing. I saw him clutching his chest when he signed the vellum. The Dukes are already sharpening their knives. They think you are isolated now. They think that without me to play the 'beloved' one, you are just a bitter woman sitting on a crumbling throne."
"Let them sharpen," Anastasia replied. She turned her gaze toward the eastern horizon, where the jagged peaks of the Kaelum border hid the rising moon. "A knife is only dangerous if you don't know where the hand is. I have been mapping their hands for years. I know which Duke takes bribes from the merchant guilds, and I know which General sleeps with his sister-in-law. Power isn't in the crown, Ana. It's in the secret you keep about the man who wants it."
Ana reached out. Her fingers brushed Anastasia's palm, and for a fleeting second, the air between them seemed to hum. The two identical rings they wore heavy, unpolished bands of star-iron found in a crater a century ago synchronized. The metal was so cold it burned.
"If I don't send word for three months," Ana whispered, the finality of the statement hanging between them.
"I will burn the Western Docks," Anastasia finished. "The fire will be huge. The smoke will be visible from the Kaelum border forts. It will be your signal to move to the secondary safe house in the marshes. If I burn the docks, it means Solaris has fallen, and I am coming for you with whatever is left."
The heavy oak doors at the end of the hall groaned open, spilling orange torchlight across the floor. The "Peace" was waiting.
The Great South Road
The carriage rolled away an hour later. It was a black carriage, draped in the mourning colors of Kaelum, pulled by four horses that looked like they had been bred in a nightmare.
Anastasia stood on the highest battlements of the North Tower. Her violet cloak snapped in the rising gale, a dark flame against the grey stone. She watched the long line of torches wind its way down the mountain, a glowing serpent carrying her sister into the maw of the enemy.
She stayed there until the last spark vanished into the forest.
A shadow detached itself from the crenellations. It was the Captain of the Guard, a man named Harlen. He was a veteran of the last war, a man whose face was a patchwork of sword-cuts and fire-scars. He had served Anastasia's father for twenty years, but he had belonged to Anastasia for five.
"The court is talking, Princess," Harlen said quietly. He didn't look at her; he looked at the empty road. "They are saying you orchestrated this. They are saying you whispered in the King's ear during his bouts of fever, convincing him that Ana was the only trade the Emperor would accept. They say you did it to clear your path to the throne."
"And what do you say, Harlen?"
The Captain turned. He looked at the sharp, uncompromising profile of the woman beside him. He saw the way her hands were gripped so tightly on the stone railing that her knuckles were white.
"I say that if I were the Empire of Kaelum, I would start checking my wine for poison," Harlen said. "And I would check my bed for daggers."
Anastasia didn't laugh. Laughter was a luxury for people who weren't at war. Instead, she reached into the hidden pocket of her bodice and pulled out a small, crumpled piece of parchment. It was a list. On it were twelve names the twelve ministers who had smiled and toasted with Kaelum wine when Ana's carriage departed.
"Not poison, Harlen," she said. Her voice was barely a murmur, but it carried a weight that made the Captain straighten his back. "Poison is a quick death. It's an amateur's mercy. We are playing a game that will take years to finish."
She looked down at the list. Lord Vane. Count Maros. Duke Hilliard.
"Go to the lower city," she commanded. "Find the Master of the Merchant Guild. Tell him the 'Silver Lily' has bloomed. Tell him that by tomorrow morning, I want the price of salt and grain in the capital to quadruple. I want the trade routes to Kaelum choked. If they want our Princess, they will pay for her in gold until their treasury screams."
She began to tear the parchment. Slowly. Methodically. The tiny white scraps fell from her fingers, dancing in the wind like the white lilies that had decorated the hall.
"They think they've achieved stability," Anastasia said, watching the fragments disappear into the darkness below. "They think they've bought peace. They don't realize that I've just spent my most valuable piece to put their King in check."
She turned away from the battlements, her cloak swirling around her like a storm cloud. She didn't look back at the empty road. She didn't look back at the decaying palace.
The first move of the Queen Maker's Game had been made. It had cost her a sister's presence, her own reputation, and the last shred of her youth.
She considered it a bargain.
The Night of the First Silence
As Anastasia descended the spiral stairs, she passed the King's chambers. She could hear him inside the clinking of a decanter against a glass, the heavy, wet cough of a man who was already dead but simply hadn't stopped walking.
She felt no pity. Pity was for the weak.
She entered her own study, a room devoid of the finery found in the rest of the palace. Here, there were only maps. Maps of Astris. Maps of Kaelum. Maps of the trade winds and the mountain passes.
On the center of her desk sat a single candle and a ledger. The ledger was bound in human leather or so the rumors said but in reality, it was just old, toughened vellum. It was a book of debts.
She sat down and dipped her quill. She didn't write about her sister. She didn't write about her father.
She wrote a single line at the top of a fresh page:
Logistics of the Kaelum Third Division: Estimated Grain Consumption for Winter.
To win a war of swords, you needed soldiers. To win a cold war of crowns, you needed to know exactly when your enemy would start to starve.
Anastasia leaned back, the candlelight flickering in her cold, violet eyes. Hundreds of miles away, Ana would be sitting in a dark carriage, surrounded by enemies, playing the part of a broken girl. Here, Anastasia would play the part of the heartless heir.
They were two halves of a single blade, separated by a border, but striking at the same heart.
The Queen Maker took a deep breath of the cold night air. The game had truly, finally, begun.