Page 2 of Rule of Wolves

“Bring me a yellow plum.”

“But they’re sour!”

“Bring one to me and I’ll tell you a story.” She watched as the children ran toward the southern wall of the garden. The fruit was high in the trees and would take time and ingenuity to reach.

“She is a good child,” said Yerwei from the archway behind her. “Perhaps too biddable to make a good queen.”

Makhi ignored him.

“Princess Ehri is alive,” he said.

She grabbed the pitcher and hurled it down onto the paving stones below.

She tore the curtains from the windows and shredded them with her fingernails.

She buried her face in the silk pillows and screamed.

She did none of those things.

Instead she tossed the invitation onto the table and removed the heavy crown from her head. It was pure platinum, thick with emeralds, and always made her neck ache. She set it beside the figs and poured herself a glass of wine. Servants were meant to attend to these needs, but she didn’t want them near her right now.

Yerwei slithered onto the balcony and helped himself to wine without asking. “Your sister is not supposed to be alive.”

Princess Ehri Kir-Taban, most beloved of the people, most precious—for reasons Makhi had never been able to grasp. She wasn’t wise or beautiful or interesting. All she could do was simper and play the khatuur. And yet she was adored.

Ehri was meant to be dead. What had gone wrong? Makhi had made her plans carefully. They should have ended with both King Nikolai and Princess Ehri dead—and Fjerda blamed for the assassinations. On the pretext of avenging her beloved sister’s murder, she would march into a kingless, rudderless country, claim its Grisha for the khergud program, and use Ravka as a base for waging war with the Fjerdans.

She had chosen her agent well: Mayu Kir-Kaat was a member of Princess Ehri’s own Tavgharad. She was young, a talented fighter and swordswoman, and most importantly, she was vulnerable. Her twin brother had vanished from his military unit and his family had been told that the young man had been killed in action. But Mayu had guessed the truth: He’d been selected to become one of the khergud, inducted into the Iron Heart program that would make him stronger and more lethal, and not entirely human. Mayu had begged that he be released before his conversion could take place and returned to service as an ordinary soldier.

Queen Makhi knew the process of becoming khergud—of having Grisha steel fused to one’s bones or mechanical wings attached to one’s back—was painful. But there was talk that the process did something else, that the soldiers brought into the program emerged changed in terrible ways, that the khergud lost some fundamental part of themselves through the conversion, as if the pain burned away a piece of what had made them human. And of course, Mayu Kir-Kaat didn’t want that for her brother. They were twins, kebben. There was no closer bond. Mayu would take her own life and the life of a king to save him.

Queen Makhi set down her wine and poured herself a glass of water instead. She needed a clear head for what was to come. Her nursemaid had once told her that she’d been meant to be a twin, that her brother had been brought into the world stillborn. “You ate his strength,” she’d whispered, and even then, Makhi had known that she would one day be a queen. What might have happened had her brother been born? Who might Makhi have been?

It made no difference now.

Ravka’s king was still very much alive.

And so was her sister.

This was bad. But Queen Makhi couldn’t be sure of how bad. Did Nikolai Lantsov know of the plot against him? Had Mayu lost her nerve and told Princess Ehri of the true plan? No. It couldn’t be. She refused to believe it. The bond of the kebben was too strong for that.

“This invitation feels like a trap,” she said.

“Most marriages are.”

“Spare me your wit, Yerwei. If King Nikolai knows—”

“What can the king prove?”

“Ehri might have much to say. Depending on what she knows.”

“Your sister is a gentle soul. She would never believe you capable of such subterfuge, and she would certainly never speak against you.”

Makhi swatted the invitation. “Then explain this!”

“Perhaps she fell in love. I hear the king is quite charming.”

“Don’t be absurd.”