Chapter 2 Becoming The King

By the time dawn touched the palace windows, the story had already begun to spread through the corridors, carried by servants who had seen the physician's grim face and guards who had heard the princess's scream and nothing more.

Prince Adrian had been attacked in his chambers the night before his coronation.

He had survived, but only barely. His condition was fragile. He was not to be disturbed, and he was not, under any circumstances, to be seen.

Chancellor Darius Mordane received the news standing in the corridor outside the royal apartments, his expression unreadable.

"How gravely wounded?" he asked the physician.

"Gravely enough that I will not vouch for his recovery," the physician said carefully, which was, Amara thought from where she stood listening behind the half-closed door, the first true thing anyone had said all night.

"And the coronation?"

"The princess insists it proceed as planned."

Mordane's gaze shifted toward the door.

"Does she?." Amara stood before the mirror in her brother's private study, Mira beside her, the door bolted.

"They believe he is alive," Mira whispered. "You have bought a day. Perhaps two, if the physician holds his silence. But you know your highness ,eventually someone will demand to see him."

"By then, the crown will already be on his head." Amara's reflection stared back at her, hollow-eyed, still in her nightclothes, blood dried along one sleeve. "Once Adrian is crowned, removing him becomes a matter of treason, not succession. Lucien will have to prove I am not who I claim to be, and he cannot do that without first admitting he expected my brother to be dead."

"And if the wound story does not hold? A king who was gravely injured last night cannot simply appear at his own coronation this morning."

"He cannot appear unchanged," Amara agreed. "But a man who nearly died in the night, who insisted on being crowned regardless of his physician's objections — that man is permitted to look pale. To speak little. To let his chancellor and his commander carry the ceremony around him."

Something in Mira's expression shifted, reluctant understanding creeping in beside the fear.

"You mean to use the wound as your disguise."

"I mean to use it for as long as it will hold." Amara crossed to the wardrobe. "Bring me his clothes. His military coat. His boots. His gloves."

"Amara, no—"

"His voice was already fading before he died, Mira. No one will think it strange if the king who addresses them today sounds unlike himself. They will think it strange if he sounds exactly like himself, standing at death's door."

Mira did not move for a long moment. Then, slowly, she crossed to the wardrobe and began pulling down the black coat.

"If you do this," she said, "there is no turning back."

Amara remembered Adrian's final words.

Take my place.

"There was no turning back the moment that blade went into his chest," she said. "I am only deciding what happens next."

She took the coat from Mira's hands and put it on. The shoulders were slightly broad, but it fit well enough. She fastened the buttons and turned toward the mirror.

For a moment, grief-stricken and coat-swallowed, she could almost see him.

Then she picked up the scissors.

Mira grabbed her wrist.

"Wait."

Amara looked at her.

"A wounded man does not need short hair."

"A wounded man who fought off an assassin last night," Amara said quietly, "might have lost some of it to a blade that came closer to his throat than anyone will ever know."

The first lock fell across the front of the coat.Then another. And another as Amara cut her hair.

Mira watched in silence as Amara transformed herself piece by piece.

When the last strand fell, Amara lifted her head her face was still feminine, Her eyes were still hers. but beneath the military coat and shortened hair, beneath the story of a man who had nearly died — the resemblance to Adrian was close enough to survive a coronation hall full of people who wanted, more than anything, to believe their prince had lived.

Mira swallowed.

"Your voice."

Amara straightened her shoulders. She thought of the way exhaustion had thinned Adrian's voice in his final minutes, and let that memory shape her own.

"Summon the council," she said. It came out low, and rough, and tired in a way that needed no performance at all.

Mira's eyes filled with tears.

"That sounded like a man who should be resting, not standing before a throne."

"Then it will do," Amara said, "for a king who insisted on standing anyway."