Cheran knew immediately that she was better. Her breathing was even and deep, and some time during the night she had moved to embrace him. Perhaps she had gotten too cold during the night. He should have closed the window before sleeping. She wasn’t awake yet, and he slowly extricated himself from her arms. He didn’t want to, but it would feel like he was taking advantage if he stayed as he was. Most of the time, he had slept in the armchair next to her bed, but he hadn’t realized how used to comforts his body was, until he woke up next to her in the morning.

  That morning had not been so pleasant. While she did heal, day by day, other than her shallow breaths she was nearly a corpse. Her skin burned up, and she writhed in her sleep from time to time, but for most of the day she slept without a single movement. Sometimes he had checked her under nose to confirm that she was still breathing. He had gotten very lucky, and he knew it. If they had called for a less skilled physician, if they hadn’t gotten back to the castle in time, if she had been a bit weaker, she would have died. Cheran paused for a moment, sitting on the bed and letting himself look over her before getting up and walking to the door.

  He motioned for one of the guards to call for the physician, and returned to the armchair next to her bed.

  “Vayu,” he called. She opened her eyes and sat up. She looked around the room, noticing the differences from how her room usually was. In the days since she had been poisoned, it had been transformed into an infirmary. Two people had donated their blood to her while she recovered. Her maids had come in every morning with fresh flowers and communion from the temple. They prayed to her gods as well, earnestly. During her months in Daivia, she had gained loyalty from those who served her. A few of the young ladies in court sent kind letters wishing her speedy recovery.

  Most of the court thought she had fallen ill, and Cheran had been able to keep it that way. They had gone into Daivia taking all the precautions he’d taken for decades. Whoever had poisoned her had been able to do so without difficulty, in the very first time they had stepped out of the castle. Their defenses were not strong enough, and no amount of searching had revealed who were behind the attacks. Everyone at the tea shop appeared innocent. The waitress that had shown an interest in him had disappeared. There was no trace of her anywhere, and none of the other employees recalled her.

  “Good morning,” she said. She pulled the blanket closer around herself and looked at the open window. Cheran hastened to close it. “How long was I…?”

  “Six days,” he said. She nodded.

  “We still don’t know who is behind this,” Cheran continued. “The emperor has sent a small army of men out into the city to search, but so far it has yielded nothing.”

  At first, he saw his father exhilarated at the challenge of finding such skillful criminals. But as the days passed and his search yielded nothing, he saw the emperor grow angry and frustrated. A challenge was only entertaining when it had a solution. Emperor Avyan had expanded the empire using his intelligence, and it was not a good sign that someone was outsmarting him.

  “Could you call my maids?” Vayu asked. “I think I need a bath.”

  She tried to get out of the bed, but stumbled as she stood. Cheran helped her into one of the sofas in her room, before taking a seat opposite her.

  “Sit, for now,” he said. “Your maids will be here on their way already. I’ll call for some breakfast to be brought in.”

  “Thank you,” she said. For reasons he couldn’t understand, she was more withdrawn now. She sat lightly at the end of the sofa, leaning onto the armrest.

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  “How are you feeling?” Cheran asked.

  “I feel fine,” she said, and it was a lie. The physician walked in, accompanied by one of Vayu’s maids. The maid grabbed a heavy robe from the wardrobe and laid it across Vayu’s shoulders. Her night dress was modest, but the maids cared more about propriety than their mistress. Cheran was glad for it, since Obal and a few other guards soon came into the room. It had become a daily habit to meet in the morning and discuss possible leads into the poisoning. Usually Vayu was in bed, under layers of blankets, in the far corner of the room.

  He didn’t want her to hear their conversations about her near death, and so he motioned for the soldiers to follow him. It would be better to conduct the meetings in his study. The emperor was conducting his own investigations, and in any other case Cheran would have been satisfied with waiting and letting his father work. That was only in other cases.

  “It is good to see you, your highness,” Obal said.

  Vayu waved away his greeting, and Cheran smiled at the way even when she was weak, she gave Obal a dirty look.

  “Is it, really?” she asked as they left the room. She was so sweet to him, and sometimes Cheran envied her frankness with Obal. He sometimes wondered if her amiability was because she didn’t feel comfortable showing him anything else. She tried to make her happy, but sometimes he wondered if the happiness he saw was just to satisfy him.

  “We’ve spoken to every dealer of herbs, medicines, and back-alley poison peddler in the city. None of them are admitting to being involved in this,” Obal said.

  “I would deny involvement too, considering the punishment is a straight road to the gallows,” Cheran said.

  “I believe them. No one in this city would be foolish enough to have any part in killing the crown princess, and also, none of them use the kind of poison we found in the tea,” Obal said. “The physician was able to cure her, but it took him this long to find out what the poison actually was.”

  “What is it?”

  “Poison from a deep sea fish,” Obal said. “Sometimes the coastal villages see these kind of poisonings. The deep sea fish rise to the surface, get caught in nets, and get sold. The poor don’t differentiate between bass and trout. A fish is a fish, even if it looks a bit ugly. They’re more careful now, for the most part, but no one expects meat to be poison.”

  “We were assuming that it was always a foreign nation,” Cheran thought aloud. “The queen died, then the general fell ill under suspicious circumstances, and then Vayu. What if it is someone from Noumin doing this? Someone was not happy with the way the alliance was formed, and they were so dissatisfied with the current rulers they decided to seize power for themselves. They started removing anyone who stood in their way.”

  “It’s possible.”

  The emperor walked in. “It’s a good theory, Cheran. It means that we have to move quickly, before they do.”

  “Move to do what?”

  If it was a struggle for Noumin, it would be simple enough. He could have Vayu formally abdicate all rights to her title. The message would be sent, her younger brother’s rule would be solidified, and Vayu would be safe from further attacks.

  “We’ll mount the first attack in a few weeks,” the emperor said.

  “The first attack?” Cheran asked.

  “My sources at the Nouminese court tell me that whispers are starting again, of how the princess was so much wiser and better suited for the throne as a child than the current child king,” the emperor said. “Everyone is eager to unseat him, but most of his cousins have spent their youth debauching themselves. While they have some supporters, most people do not see them as royal or capable of ruling the country effectively. We… we will offer them an alternative.”

  Cheran’s stomach sank. It had always seemed too magnanimous of his father and too simple of a solution. He was always so concerned about Vayu’s wellbeing and happiness, and Cheran had foolishly assumed it was because Vayu was now family. The war had never ended. His father had only orchestrated an truce until he equipped himself with a better weapon.

  “I can imagine it will not be a bad compromise. They will have the queen so many of them dreamed of, and with minimal bloodshed,” the emperor said.

  “Father, this is not—”

  The emperor held up a hand, silencing him.

  “I know you will say this is not right, that this is not good,” the emperor said. “But imagine the outcome if we do not intervene. How long do you think that child king will survive among wolves? When Noumin is under our control, we can protect him. If we distance ourselves from the nation, your wife will lose her brother. The nation itself will fall, and we gain nothing but the empty satisfaction that we were not greedy.”