turn to flames. You can still see the soot from when my grandfather died, and all the other princes of our line, back three hundred years or so. . . .” He swept his fingertips along the walls. “And then I’ll take the spark from here that will light his pyre, and this fire that was his will be put out. Mother and Tobin will clean the floor themselves—did you know that? It should be my wife, but I have no wife. I’ll come up here and light new flames that will eventually become my pyre.”
The shadows licked at his face as he talked, a proud and elusive face, not easy to know. But Andrade knew him, and kept silent.
“Someday my son will do for me what I’ll do for Father in a few days. And on it will go, for more generations. All that’s ever left is this.” He held up his blackened fingertips with an unpleasant smile. “Goddess, what a morbid thought!” The smile crumpled as he whispered, “Why does he have to die?”
It was the cry of a boy for the loss of a beloved father, but it was also a moan of dread. There had been a time like this for Andrade, too, over twenty years ago, when the Lord of Goddess Keep had died and she had been chosen to wear the rings in his place. She had been alone.
But there was someone for Rohan to turn to in his need. She caught his gaze and drew it to the flames by the force of her powerful will. Stretching forth one hand to the fire, she whispered Sioned’s name.
Rohan tensed, the pulse beating faster in the hollow of his throat. A face coalesced in the glowing flames, a pale oval of fine bones and green eyes framed in red-gold hair. Andrade held the conjure for a few moments, allowed it to fade, and sank wearily back into her chair.
“Who is she?” the young man breathed.
Andrade said nothing, almost too tired to care if he had any instinct for seeing into his own heart. It was a long while before he spoke again, and when he did his tone was deliberately casual.
“I haven’t seen you do a conjuring since I was eleven years old. You did it then to please a child. I think you did it now to promise me something. What will she be to me, Andrade?”
How odd that he had used Sioned’s word: promise. “You already know.”
“You want me to marry a Sunrunner witch?”
“Does the thought of a Sunrunner witch like me frighten you, boy?” she snapped.
“You don’t frighten me, and neither do your kind. But I can’t marry a faradhi woman.”
“Isn’t her blood pure enough for you, princeling?”
Rohan’s lips curved in a feral smile she had never seen before. “First let us clarify something. I am neither a ‘boy’ nor a ‘princeling.’ I honor you as my aunt and for your position, but you will remember who I am.”
She gave him an ironic little bow. “And forget whose nose I wiped and whose skinned knees I bandaged.”
All at once he laughed. “Oh, Goddess—I deserved that, didn’t I?” He sat and put his elbows on his knees, hands clasped between them. “Very well, Andrade, let’s talk things over like rational people instead of arrogant prince and Lady of Goddess Keep. I need an alliance as well as a wife when I marry. What do I gain by taking one of your faradh’im?”
“You could do worse. Much worse.” She hid her pleasure at what had just passed between them. Never having suspected him capable of such hauteur, she was glad he could not only use it but laugh at it. Arrogance—or its appearance—would help him rule, but laughter would keep him sane while he did it. “You don’t have any other women in mind, do you?”
“I was bemoaning their lack only yesterday.” He shrugged again. “You know, I’m not quite sure what to feel. I don’t want my father to die. I know I should be terrified of becoming ruling prince—but I’m not. Goddess help me, Andrade, I want the power of it. There’s so much I want to accomplish. But why does Father have to die in order for me to do it?”
“You’re tired of being one step away from the power that is your right. It’s only natural, Rohan, especially when you have dreams. One fire goes out and a different one is lit. You’re eager to try your wings and that’s