Page 103 of A Kingdom of Wild and Power
So her father had brought Rowan and Elowen to court and placed them before her as if they were gifts, telling her that they were hers now to command, to keep and to shape as she pleased.
Rio had wondered where they had come from. She had never asked outright, but the suspicion had always lingered. Bastards, perhaps, born of the pleasure court. Children spared from becoming Black Lotus for reasons she did not wish to imagine. The thought had terrified her. What if her father decided she no longer needed them? What would happen then?
So Rowan and Elowen had become her shadows. Her constant companions. Her protectors and conspirators. Over time, they became something more than gifts, more than servants.
They became her best friends.
And, in all the ways that mattered, her siblings.
Rio did not have eyes of her own, but Rowan and his twin sister, Elowen, had long since learnt to see for her. They became her sight upon the world by watching the court, and by watching her own father upon his throne, then bending close to whisper into her ear the truths no one wished a blind princess to hear. Secrets curled into her mind through their voices, sharp and dangerous, impossible to unlearn.
It was through them that Rio uncovered the truth of the Black Lotus. The truth of what became of the children born in the pleasure courts.
The high noblemen were careless with the women there, indulgent and cruel in equal measure. On more than one occasion, those women fell pregnant and when they did, the children were taken. Stolen from their mothers’ arms before they could even be named. The king claimed them as his own and handed them to the Black Lotus, where they were stripped of childhood and forged into weapons.
They were trained to kill.
Assassins shaped by pain and obedience.
Feared across all eight kingdoms.
And Rio had learnt it all not through sight, but through whispers in the dark, truths carried to her by the only two people who had ever truly been willing to see the world on her behalf.
‘My sister is never wrong,’ Rio said calmly. ‘We ought to know that bynow, Elowen.’
Elowen let out a quiet sigh. ‘I know. But what if this time it’s a trick?’
Rio waved the worry away with a small, dismissive motion. ‘She has never led us astray before. Why would she begin now?’
‘Because that isn’t really your sister,’ Elowen replied.
Rio stiffened at once. She tilted her head, attuning herself to the hush of the forest—the whisper of leaves beneath boots, the restless sigh of the breeze—listening for any presence beyond their small circle.
‘Watch what you say out loud,’ Rowan warned sharply.
‘Sorry,’ Elowen muttered.
Rio smiled and blew Elowen a kiss, earning a soft laugh in return. Even though they had once been given to her by the king, Rio could no longer imagine a world without them. They were her friends. Her only friends, truly. For years she had wondered whether they merely endured her out of obligation, bound by her father’s will. But when the king had died, she had freed them without hesitation.
She still remembered the way they had both embraced her, holding her tightly as they whispered that they would never leave her, for she was the only family they had ever known.
‘We’re only two days away from the wyverian castle,’ Rowan said.
Rio pictured him at once. The twins were both tall and slender, their builds not unlike her own. Their hair, however, was a striking blue; so different from her short, dark dreadlocks. Their antlers were smaller too, less elegant than hers, lacking the unmistakable mark of royalty. Elowen, of course, compensated for that in her own way, forever weaving flowers into them. Rio had once reminded her gently that she could not actuallyseethe blossoms Elowen insisted on adorning her antlers with. Elowen had only laughed and hushed her, sayingthat the rest of them could see, and that the world deserved something beautiful to look at.
‘Maybe you ought to…’ Rowan began.
He did not finish the thought. He did not need to. Rio understood him perfectly.
‘Maybe you shouldn’t,’ Elowen said quickly. ‘What if one of the gods realises?’
‘I’ll be fine,’ Rio replied, her voice steady. ‘Just make sure you watch over my body while I’m gone.’
‘Rio…’
She ignored the worry threaded through her friend’s voice. Carefully, she lowered herself onto the cold earth and closed her eyes. It made little difference—she could have left them open. Sight did not come to her either way.
Rio Hawthorne had not always lived in darkness.
