Kamran resisted the infantile impulse to kick something.
With great care, the seamstress slid loose the robes from his body, collecting every meticulously pinned article into her small arms, and nearly toppling over in the process.
Briefly, Kamran’s upper half was left bare.
Kamran, who spent little time staring at his own reflection, and who’d not been facing the mirror when he’d first undressed, was disquieted to see himself so exposed now. The triple-paneled looking glass loomed before him, revealing angles of his body he seldom studied.
Someone handed him his sweater, which Kamran accepted without a word. He took a tentative step closer to the mirrors, drew a hand down the length of his bare torso.
He frowned.
“What is it?” Hazan asked, the anger in his voice tinged now with concern. “Is something the matter?”
“It’s different,” Kamran said quietly. “Is it not different?”
Hazan drew slowly closer.
It was the tradition of Ardunian kings to hand over their heirs, on the very day of the child’s birth, to the Diviners—to have them marked by an irreversible magic that would claim them, always, as the rightful successor. It was a practice they’d stolen from Jinn, whose royals were born with such markings, sparing their kingdoms any false claims to the throne. Clay royalty had found a way to incorporate such protections into their own bloodlines, though what had once been considered a serious precaution had, over centuries, become more of a tradition—one they soon forgot had been borrowed from another people.
On the day of their birth every Ardunian royal was marked by magic, and it touched them all differently.
King Zaal had found a constellation of dark blue, eight-pointed stars at the base of his throat. The prince’s own father had discovered black, branching lines along his back, ominous strokes that wrapped partially around his torso.
Kamran, too, had been marked.
Every year of his boyhood the prince had watched, with a kind of horrified fascination, as the skin of his chest and torso gave the illusion of splitting open down the center, revealing at its fissure a glimmer of gold leaf. The burnished gold mark appeared, as if painted, straight down his middle, from the shallow valley of his throat to the base of his abdomen.
The Diviners had promised that the magic would display its final form by the end of his twelfth birthday, and so it had. The glittering lash had long ago lost his interest, for it had become as familiar to him as his eyes, the color of his hair. It had become so much a part of him that he seldom noticed it these days. But now—suddenly—
It looked different.
The fissure seemed a fraction wider, the once dull gold shining now a bit brighter.
“I do not see a difference, sire,” Hazan asked, peering into the mirror. “Does it feel unusual in some way?”
“No, it feels no different,” Kamran said absently, now running his fingers along the gold part. It was always a bit hotter there, at his center, but the mark had never hurt, had never felt strange. “It only looks . . . Well, I suppose it’s hard to say. I’ve not noticed it in so long.”
“Perhaps it only seems different,” said Hazan quietly, “because you’ve lately been rendered an idiot, and stupidity has clouded your better judgment.”
Kamran shot his minister a dark look and promptly pulled his sweater over his head, tugging its hem down over his torso. He looked around for the seamstress.
“You need not worry,” Hazan said. “She’s gone.”
“Gone?” The prince frowned. “But— Were not we the ones who were meant to leave the dressing room? Was she not meant to stay here to finish the work she’d started?”
“Indeed. The woman is a bit batty.”
Kamran shook his head, collapsed into a nearby chair. “How much time do we have?”
“Before the ball? Two hours.”
Kamran shot him a look. “You know very well to what I am referring.”
“To whom you are referring, you mean?” Hazan almost smiled. “The Tulanian king is with the ambassador now. He should be arriving at the palace within the hour.”
“Lord, but I hate him,” Kamran said, pushing a hand through his hair. “He has the kind of face that should be kicked in, repeatedly.”
“That seems a bit unfair. It’s not the fault of the Tulanian ambassador that he’s charged with an empire so widely detested. The gentleman himself is nice enough.”
Kamran turned sharply to face his minister. “Obviously I’m speaking of the king.”