“Yes.” Malahi curled her hand lovingly around one of the blooms. “Yara chose me when I was ten. I was so happy—the idea that I could help to feed my people seemed such a blessing.” She shook her head sharply. “Children are fools.”
Killian didn’t agree, but he remained silent.
“My mother was horrified, of course. This was after my father had made the enforced service of Marked Ones law. The revelation that I’d been marked would’ve meant me being taken from her, sent for training at Yara’s temple and then to work the fields day after day until the gods took me. For my father to make an exception for me…” She dragged in a ragged breath. “Impossible. So she begged him to keep my mark a secret. And he agreed.”
Gods … If it were discovered that the man who’d forced hundreds of families to give up their marked children into servitude had protected his own from such a fate, Serrick’s reign would be over. His life might be over given that it was his law that mandated that helping a marked individual avoid service was punishable by death.
“Everything that’s happening,” Malahi continued, breaking Killian from his thoughts, “the invasion, the lack of new marks, the failing of the land—my father believes to be the result of a lack of devotion in the Marked. And to him, I epitomize this lack of devotion—he sees me as blasphemous. But to reveal my secret would see him lose what he sees as his gods-given duty to lead the Marked, and more than once since my mother died he’s told me that if I am not able to serve I’m better off dead.”
Killian didn’t need to ask whether she believed that threat was real. Every instinct raging through him said that it was.
“I want to protect our people. To help keep them fed. To use my gift for their benefit.” Malahi withdrew her hand from the plant. “But not under my father’s terms. Not as a slave to the Crown. Service should be a choice, and I believe that in taking that autonomy away from the Marked he has weakened rather than strengthened our devotion to the gods.”
Though he was far from cold, Killian shivered, feeling the weight of six sets of divine eyes upon him. Upon both of us, he silently amended as Malahi rubbed her arms, casting a glance over her shoulder.
Retrieving her cards, Malahi hid their faces in the folds of her silken skirts. “What is it that you want most, Killian?”
Not that long ago, he’d have struggled with the answer to the question. Now the words came straight to his lips. “To push Rufina and her damned army back across that wall and make them regret ever coming near it.”
“If we work together, we might both get our wishes. We could save Mudamora.”
Killian narrowed his eyes, considering both her words and his cards. With the way she was clutching hers, he wasn’t going to win with a pair of sevens, so he folded. “How?”
“By putting the crown on my head.”
Succession was no simple thing in Mudamora. While the right of primogeniture determined inheritance within the twelve houses, simply being heir to the ruling house did not ensure a rise to the throne when the High Lord of said house met his end. The heir needed the support of a majority of the twelve great houses—seven votes from High Lords or Ladies—in order to assume the crown. But never in the history of Mudamora had a woman been allowed to inherit the throne. That had been the reason House Falorn had lost the crown when King Derrick and his family were assassinated. His younger sister, the then fifteen-year-old Dareena, had inherited control of House Falorn, but despite Killian’s father’s best attempts, the other High Lords had been unwilling to stand behind the young High Lady as queen, their weak excuse that she was not of age.
The result was two years of civil war while the great houses jockeyed for control of the kingdom. Serrick Rowenes eventually won the majority under the condition that command of the Royal Army remain with High Lord Calorian.
All that aside, there was a larger obstacle to Malahi’s ambitions. “Your father is still alive.”
“There is precedent to the Twelve voting to move the crown to an heir’s head prior to the death of the King.”
Killian huffed out a breath. “Yes, when the King is on his deathbed or consumed by dementia or in some other way