Ambessa: Chosen of the Wolf

by C.L. Clark

Genres: Military Fantasy

Synopsis

Set in the blockbuster and award-winning universe of League of Legends: Arcane and written by award-winning author C. L. Clark, discover a thrilling epic fantasy novel where Ambessa Medarda truly learns what it means to be a Chosen of the Wolf.

Medarda over all.

Ambessa Medarda: Warrior, general, mother. She is a woman to be feared, and the Medardas are unrivaled in their pursuit of glory. She has led conquests and armies. She has slain legendary beasts. She has made grave sacrifices in her ascent up the ranks. And for this she was rewarded: She entered the realm of death and was granted a vision of herself upon the throne of the vast Noxian empire.

But before she can lead her empire, she must become head of her own clan. Yet the title is contested by her cousin and former confidante, Ta’Fik. He knows the bloody sins of Ambessa’s past. And he knows he cannot allow her to rise.

They will fight a war for the very soul of the Medardas.

But the war won’t be fought on battlefields alone. Ambessa’s daughter, Mel, can deftly break through the walls around anyone’s heart, and she’ll put her talents to use for her mother. Yet despite Mel’s strength, Ambessa sees only a child who lacks her killer instincts. Mel knows she can be the leader Ambessa wants her to be, if only she gives her time.

With her family betraying her, enemies closing in on all sides, and unseen forces moving in the shadows, every day proves more dangerous than the last. But Ambessa will not bow. She will burn the world down to claim her place in it.

Release date: February 18, 2025

Publisher: Orbit

Print pages: 400

Sample

Ambessa Medarda flexed her fist around her katar. She sat heavily atop her mount as she watched the Raxii tribe’s warriors clash against her grandfather Menelik’s warbands on the rocky beach of the southern coast. The sound of weapons clashing and men and women dying was matched by the crash of the turbulent sea. She rested her hand upon the ungainly warmth that was her rounded belly. She had come home to Rokrund to fight a different kind of battle.

The Raxii were one of the old Noxii tribes who refused to join the Noxian empire at its founding. It was hard to say who had the strongest claim; Ambessa’s family had ruled it for centuries. Though they dwelt in the mountains, the Raxii put their name to a claim as well, and clearly they had decided how to solve the dispute. So they would. As Noxians did. Rokrund was Ambessa’s home. Her second child would not be born outside its walls, even if she had to fight through an entire army to make it so.

“Wolf’s Reapers!” She raised her katar above her head, and the warband behind her roared their readiness. The Wolf’s Reapers was her prized warband of the strongest warriors she’d seen fighting in arenas all across Noxus. The Raxii tribe would be too busy with Menelik’s warbands in front of them to see the army that would ride down from the north and sweep them into the sea. “We have marched a long way, just to find our gates blocked. Come now, and open them!”

They rode down the rolling hills, the thunder of their mounts’ hooves enough to drown out the ocean itself.

The first Raxii she met came at her with an axe in both hands, aiming high, to sweep her down from the saddle, but Ambessa’s horse sidestepped the blow. Ambessa sliced through one of his arms, and he screamed, dropping the weapon. Blood sprayed, and he might have cried out again, but she was already gone.

Time slowed until Ambessa thought she had always been here, in this red mud, her breath heaving, her back aching. At some point, she was dragged from her horse, and she kicked herself free as the beast was killed. The weight of her belly was difficult to bear for long. Every step became a greater and greater struggle. Her right eye stung with blood from a cut on her face, but she couldn’t reach it to wipe. She squeezed the eye tight and glanced around with her good eye.

As soon as she turned, she felt the rush of air behind her and ducked, falling to her knees to face her new opponent. A woman with a spear, muscled arms, teeth bared in fury. Ambessa had her own fury to contend with. She had not come all this way to watch her home fall into someone else’s hands.

She pushed herself to her feet and leapt.

The woman was quicker than she looked and just as strong, parrying the thrust of Ambessa’s katar and twisting away. She spun the haft of her spear, aiming for Ambessa’s legs, but Ambessa had moved, arm cocked back ready to strike—

Pain pinned her arm down at her side. She looked around, but the blood in her eye still blinded her. If she were not a Medarda, Ambessa might have felt the first tickle of fear then.

Instead, she brought her katar up to deflect the spear woman’s incoming blow, sidestepping until she could see her and the crossbowman whose bolt dug into her left shoulder. She couldn’t raise that arm anymore. But he was reloading, and that meant she had time.

She ran to get inside the spear woman’s guard, and this time, Ambessa broke through. The woman gasped as the katar pierced her. Her mouth opened, as if she would dispute the fact of what Ambessa had done to her. There was no disputing death. Ambessa pulled her blade free and pushed the dying woman to the ground.

She heard the whistle of wind before the second bolt hit her in the side.

My baby. Her first thought. Then came the pain. The pain in Ambessa’s shoulder was nothing to the agony that tore through her side. It bit deep. Still, she raised her katar again. Her next step faltered, though. Her knee went weak and she fell to the ground. She tried to catch herself on her hands, but her wounded shoulder gave out, too. She cried out as she fell onto her belly and rolled onto her back.

Every breath was agony. There was not enough air in the whole world.

Ambessa fought to stay awake as her vision narrowed, but the world around her was closing off, fading to blackness. Beside her, the woman she had killed stared up at the gray sky. Like Ambessa would, soon.

Then, instead of the woman, she saw a wolf, its muzzle low to the ground as it studied her. A harbinger of Kindred.

It came for her.

Ambessa steps through the darkness—and she is no longer on the battlefield she left. She wipes away the muck that covers her—afterbirth is the only way she can describe it, though she knows this is the opposite of birth. She walks upon a path of thick stone blocks. All around her rise broad pillars of the same black stone, and the room is saturated with a red glow. Figures are etched upon the walls, but they aren’t clear. She knows not where she is, but she knows what she is doing: She is waiting. For what? No, she thinks, for whom.

“Hello?” she calls. No one responds. Her voice does not echo.

Ahead, the gloom lightens slightly. She glimpses a throne in the distance, and someone is sitting on it.

“Hello!” she calls again. But the person on the throne doesn’t respond. No one stops her as she approaches the throne and its occupant.

A sudden eruption of stone to her left makes Ambessa crouch defensively. There’s no enemy to fight, though. There’s a figure amidst the rubble, which floats around her, around the—figures. Ambessa sees herself among them, in the center of them.

She watches herself, apart from herself, watches this other Ambessa dancing in a room full of others, lost in the feel of her body, of its strength, its beauty, its hungers and the beautiful hunger of those around her. This is what the body is for, this is what she is. Her feet carry her closer. She wants to join them. She reaches her hand out—

No.

That is not why she is here. Some part of her knows this. She feels a pang of loss. That life is gone now. That body. She knows where she is now. Volrachnun. Where the Wolf takes great warriors after death.

She holds her hands out in front of her face. She can feel them more easily than she can see them in this penumbra, their certainty. Their strength. They are still hers.

“Who are you?” Ambessa calls to the throne, turning away from that vision of her own ecstasy. “What do you want with me?”

She quickens her pace, half jogging to get closer. All the while, she wishes for a weapon. Her hands are still hers, but she feels naked, unarmed and unarmored. She is naked.

And then, as if obedient to the logic of this dreamlike death-world, Ambessa is suddenly clothed: a sash that drapes across one shoulder, a breastplate that leaves her midriff bare, and a battle skirt with golden hip guards.

At the throne, she knows she will find her purpose. She continues . . .

… and is interrupted again by another scene, this one—a young Ambessa, a child, holding a lamb in her arms. She can’t remember ever having carried a lamb like this, and yet—there is something familiar. She is so young, so innocent— When was she last so innocent? She doesn’t know and she weeps for it, this gap within her like the socket of a tooth.

She steps toward this smaller self and sees, too, her faithful drakehounds, Quench and Temper. No matter where she went, they followed her until they died. That loss is more tangible—she can place that pain directly, and the adjacent pain: the loss of another friend, a friend who could be here now.

Ambessa turns to look for her, but instead, she sees the throne again. It is closer, but she still cannot see the figure who sits upon it. And her hands are no longer empty. Two half-moon blades, the same gold as her armor, gleam in the dim room.

She frowns. Armor. Weapons. What good are these things with nothing to fight? She is on her guard now, and approaches the throne more carefully.

Though the journey should be short, it is interrupted over and over again by these visions of herself, moments she recognizes and moments she does not.

A young Ambessa on the battlefield, holding a dead woman’s sword.

Ambessa and Azizi with their first child on her lap, holding Kino against her breast.

Ta’Fik and Zoya, surrounded by drakehounds.

Ta’Fik and Ambessa, surrounded by drakehounds.

An older Ambessa in a great chair, with a young woman and young man at either side.

Ambessa and that same young woman standing opposed, each ready to attack the other.

An entire life, lived and unlived, that she must pass by. Ambessa pulls herself away from the images of her past and of futures not to come. They will not come, they cannot come, because she is dead.

She stands at the foot of the stairs to the throne.

She cranes her neck up. She should not be surprised, and yet, she is.

High above her, the figure on the throne is her.

Ambessa swells with pride. This is what her valor has earned her. She takes the first step toward the dais, and her bare foot sticks.

“You must earn the right.”

The voice comes from everywhere and nowhere, pressing in on her ears and echoing in her mind. Two voices speaking at once, deep and high, gentle and forceful.

“How?” she asks.

“How do you think?”

From the shadows, a creature emerges, walking on two hooves. Their maned head dips and searches, as if sniffing her. They have four ears, two erect like a wolf’s, and two that hang to their jaw.

Kindred.

“I have earned my place in battle, have I not?”

It is, perhaps, impertinent, but the throne is right there. She is in Volrachnun. What more must she do to prove herself ?

“You have earned your place in Volrachnun,” the twin voices say. “But have you earned your place in legend?”

They hold out a trinket, a three-headed wolf that floats, spinning, between them.

Ambessa reaches for it, but with a gesture, Kindred pulls it out of reach.

“You must face your trials.”

Ambessa grows impatient. “I will face any trial you set for me.”

And though Kindred does not have a face for smiling, Ambessa senses their amusement.

Suddenly, Ambessa is in a great arena surrounded on all sides by ledges and daises, and on those ledges are her audience. She sees their weapons, their armor. They are her audience and also—her competitors. Though none of them move toward her, she knows this is true.

She hears the shift of metal behind her.

A great warrior with a golden shield stands before her. His chest is bare save for the golden armor that wraps around his shoulders and upper chest. Gauntlets, greaves, boots, helm, all gold. A cloak the color of fresh blood. This is a land of heroes. Ambessa feels drab in comparison.

There is no sign of the throne, but Ambessa understands.

You must earn the right, says the voice. Voices.

She runs toward the shielded warrior, striking with the half-moon blades, but suddenly the Shield is behind her. He shoves her skidding across the ground.

The crowd bays for her blood, for the Shield’s blood, the blood of all and any, and she will give it to them because this is what the body is for, this is what she is!

Ambessa dodges his spear and strikes again and again, each blow met by a parry, each parry, a counterstrike. For a moment, she thinks they are evenly matched, she and this legendary warrior.

There is not enough time to congratulate herself, though. The Shield cracks his helm against her face, and she staggers back. Another blow from the Shield’s spear and she rolls beneath it—belatedly, she realizes that her stomach is small enough to roll; where is her child? There is no time to ponder that, either. She leaps into the air to strike him from above, like lightning from the sky.

He catches her and throws her down like thunder. Her blade skitters out of her hand.

She thinks, This is death? Because there is cheering. The cheering sounds like mourning, sounds like weeping. It sounds like her grandfather Menelik in the training yard, telling her to get up!

Someone is watching her. Their voices echo her grandfather.

Get up.

From her back, Ambessa stares up at the Shield. She cannot see his face, and yet, she feels the dispassionate stare. Though she is wounded, Ambessa rolls onto her stomach.

She is not done.

She pushes herself up again. She picks up the half-moon blade. She rises to her knee. Every wound she has ever had is open now, bleeding afresh as the Shield approaches, flanked by more warriors: an assassin with her twin red daggers and her golden breastplate; a rigid man with a whispering arm and a cloak of black raven feathers, his gold pauldrons gleaming; and more, and more, and more. They come for her.

She is not done. She stands. She faces them.

With a nod that Ambessa can only interpret as respect, the Shield lowers his weapon. His golden shield retracts.

“What is this?” she asks.

He does not answer. None of these heroes do. So Ambessa steps toward them—

—and takes another step toward the throne. She is suddenly back in the dark room of stone and memories.

The throne is empty again, and Ambessa climbs toward it, only to find Kindred there, between her and the throne, again.

“I passed your trial. Your heroes have let me pass.”

“One trial,” Kindred says. “We have long known you are willing to kill, Ambessa, war leader of the Medarda clan. Your trials are not over!” The voices twine together in a great screech, echoing each other, harmonizing and discordant by turns.

Ambessa shudders and presses her hands against her ears.

“I will face your trials!” she shouts back into the darkness.

And suddenly, she is no longer in darkness at all. The only hint that she was ever in that dark hall is an echo:

“You will shed the blood of others, but what of yours—your own—your heart—will you sacrifice?”

She turns to find Kindred, but they are not there.

The path before her is bright and burning beneath a desert sun, and people, people, so many people—they weep for her in their masks. They sing and weep and scream, and she can feel their grief, and still others do not grieve at all but surround her, all wild legs and wild arms in tattered wanderers’ cloaks. There is no space for her except for the space they make, so she steps into it, going where they lead. Above her, drummers in the sky beat the rhythm of her steps.

In her arms, she cradles a golden lamb. It is hard and cold and made of many pieces. There is something familiar about it.

“What is this?” she asks. Where did it come from?

There is no answer but the sense that it is precious, and it is hers and she must protect it, no matter what.

Ambessa struggles forward without knowing what she is looking for, shoving away the creatures wailing at her, with their eyeless faces, their blue skin, their mouths wide enough to devour the lamb she clutches to her chest. She ducks her head down to protect it, to protect herself from the cacophony around them, in this bright, blinding desert.

She is afraid. Ambessa has not felt fear like this in a long time.

Give it to me.

The words come to her, and she clutches the lamb even tighter.

Let it go.

“No,” she whispers, shaking her head.

The shrieking mourners in their robes press closer and closer until Ambessa falls to her knees. The lamb in her arms seems to shiver. How is she supposed to let it go? It is a part of her. It is hers. Though it is a thing of metal, its wide dark eyes are warm and welcoming. It needs to be protected.

But the echo of Kindred’s last question comes back to her.

Sacrifice.

Ambessa holds the lamb up and releases it.

It floats upward, and immediately, she wishes she had not. The lamb rises above her, above them all. It is out of reach now. She will never get it back. The sun burns hotter against Ambessa’s skin. The white wraps she wears do not protect her. The dancing guides grow more frantic, encircling her. The drumming drowns out her heartbeat. The wailing, open mouths smother her own cries.

The lamb rises to the mouth of the many-headed wolf. She remembers this wolf. The token, spinning before Kindred, offered to her. The lamb will be devoured if she does not save it.

Let it go.

But I can’t, she thinks.

You must.

Then the lamb is no more, and the many heads of the wolf bare their teeth, and she screams for the lamb as it is devoured, screams like those who mourn her, raking her nails across her own face, drawing blood, but she does not care. Something is gone, someone is gone, all she has known—

“A sacrifice,” say the twinned voices of Kindred.

Ambessa is back in the dark hall of Volrachnun before Kindred, and they offer all that she wants most. She reaches for it, it, shapeless, it, untouchable, it— What will it cost?

“I will pay it,” she says. Whatever the cost, she will pay it.

She closes her hand around the many-headed wolf, and blood-red light sears along her veins like seams in a volcano venting fire. It burns. It is agony.

Ambessa screams as Kindred’s light passes through her, and she understands what they are truly offering her for the first time. A possibility. A future: She sits upon the stone throne with a sword at her side. This is her destiny; if she goes back, she can take it.

Or she can die. She can take her place here, in the realm of heroes. She can stand in the arena beside the Shield, dressed in the armor of a legend, her leonine mask in gold, her hair flowing white, a billowing mane, a golden torc at her neck. These warriors would follow her, and she would lead them on the hunt of champions. The hunt of the chosen.

It is what she has always wanted—to die a wolf’s death. To be worthy of Volrachnun, and here it is, offered.

Earned.

She will ride with them—a throb pulses in her stomach, heat—in this land of heroes—her stomach is flat, but that is not right—forever with those who have passed the Wolf’s tests—light, white light, and with the pulse comes a cramping spasm—her victory is already certain, here in Volrachnun—

Ambessa woke with a gasp from a beautiful, terrible dream. In the distance, she thought she saw a wolf’s tail vanish into the fog creeping up the beach. At another agonizing spasm, she reached for her belly. A contraction. She found the crossbow bolt that had taken her—killed me? She felt for the edges of the arrowhead. It was deep, but she did not think it was barbed. The echo of the dream gave her strength to grit her teeth against the pain, and she pulled it out with a growling groan.

She needed to get back to Rokrund Citadel. The baby was coming.

With an effort, Ambessa pushed herself to her feet. She supported her belly with one hand, pressed down on her wound with the other, and picked her away across the bodies littered on the rocky beach. The sea’s roar had died with the end of the battle. She could barely tell who won; the fallen on both sides were mixed together, but the Citadel’s walls still stood.

She looked back over her shoulder for any sign of the wolf she was sure had been there. Her dream had been too vivid to be only a dream. So much of it was hazy now, but she remembered one thing: She sat upon a black throne, atop a mountain of—of what? Stones? Bodies? She didn’t know. But she knew she had earned her seat with blood, the blood of her own body and the blood of those who stood in her way. The Wolf had given her this gift, but she had felt a promise in it—

It is yours—if you can take it.

Fifteen Years Later

Ambessa rose to her feet, her katar leaving the body of the Binan captain. The dead man’s blood dripped down her weapon and onto his leather armor. He was the soldier who had come to challenge her on her arrival. The feather in his helm had briefly been a beautiful gradient, lively in the wind as he barked orders to his soldiers, other loyal soldiers of the Binan family, here at their fortress-palace near Kumangra. Now that feather lay limp and all one color: the red-brown of a boot-churned battlefield.

He should have surrendered.

Instead, he had wasted his life and the lives of his command against the inevitability of her conquest. Now Ambessa had territory in the east and possibly, just possibly—a connection to Ionia via the Binan family. When Ambessa took her place as the matriarch of the Medarda clan one day, she wanted Darkwill to owe her. She would show him what she had to offer early, so he would understand how indispensable she was. And after that, perhaps… Ambessa pushed aside thoughts of the distant future. There was still the present to contend with.

All around her, her warband rounded up the survivors who were smarter than their captain. They gathered and bound the soldiers in the lush grass outside the palace proper. The yellow-brown stone leading into the palace was littered with bodies that many of them watched fearfully. Most of them followed her with their eyes, though.

The palace itself was more jungle than building, surrounded by trees—not the pines Ambessa knew from the mountains near her home in Rokrund, nor the palms in Bel’zhun, where she and her armies had marched from, but great drooping things that devoured, dripping with vines.

“Ambessa.” Rictus, her second-in-command, was dragging a young woman to her by the arm. Flat discs and black cords hung from piercings in her face. The woman was frightened, but he was being gentle.

Ambessa looked the girl in her wide eyes. “You’re one of the Binan family?”

“Yes,” she said. “Lady Mion of Binan.”

Ambessa’s sources had described the Binan land as lush and verdant. The exotic fruit would sell well throughout the rest of Noxus, and the positioning was perfect to get ahead of Piltover’s canal tariffs. The Binan family itself was an old one, wealthy, though they had left Ionia some time ago for reasons Ambessa did not yet know. There would be time to learn that.

“General Medarda!” A shrill voice broke the moment between them. The messenger skidded to a stop before Ambessa, one hand on her knee and one hand holding out a sealed letter. “Urgent from Bel’zhun.”

Ambessa was ready to dismiss the girl from her warband entirely for this interruption, but the last part stayed her. Bel’zhun. Her daughter was here, safe with her, but her son, Kino, was there with their father, Azizi, seeing to certain trade agreements. The letter was stamped with the Medarda star, four sharp points of guidance. She flicked a glance to Rictus and Lady Mion. The girl trembled where she stood. Ambessa turned her back on them and flicked the letter open.

She skimmed it and gasped, barely able to hide it. She read it again more slowly and felt a strange twisting in her stomach. She refolded the letter and handed it back to the messenger.

“Put it with my things.” Ambessa’s voice did not betray her.

She turned back to Lady Mion.

“Where is the rest of your family?”

“My father is dead and my mother is elderly. My sister cares for her,” she said. Though her voice was soft, her mouth was set firmly. “I manage the estates alone.”

“There were also… prisoners.” Rictus’s pause was weighty.

Ambessa let her glance linger a moment longer on the girl before saying, “Take me to them.”

Rictus handed the noblewoman to a pair of soldiers, then led Ambessa into the palace. This was no new construct; the Binan family had been here for generations. Some of the trees the Binans had cultivated within the stone building had to be older even than Ambessa herself. The rooms they passed were, on the whole, uninteresting—no great treasures, though there was a room full of books and scrolls that might have been a library or one person’s study, and she made a mental note to have them transported to Bel’zhun. Rictus stopped her at the end of a hall, unlit by the curling sconces that illuminated the rest of the palace. The door was already broken at the handle. Someone—one of hers—had kicked it in.

Slouching against their binds sat a handful of vastaya, some of them with grubby fur, others with limp feathers or dull scales. Ambessa’s nose twitched at the stench. They’d been kept here a long time. They watched Ambessa warily as she entered. One in particular stared more sharply than the others, with unnerving square pupils.

She nodded to him. “You. What are you doing here?”

“The Binans are keeping us prisoner,” he growled, lowering his horned head as if he would ram a Binan if given the chance.

Ambessa shared a glance with Rictus, who shrugged one massive shoulder. “Why?”

“Because we’re tired of the Ionians taking over our homes.”

Ah. Ambessa began to understand, and with understanding came a thrill of possibility. Especially now that her accession was painfully closer than she had ever expected.

“If we free you, you will swear to Noxus.”

The vastaya swallowed and sat up straighter, his short tail steady though it was still fluffed with tension. “We will make a deal with Noxus.”

Ambessa narrowed her eyes. “Yes?”

“The Ionians are destroying the vastaya’s magical forests. As our lands weaken, so do we. We’re left with nothing. Some Binan men in Ionia caught me as I was trying to—” He shook his furry head, his muzzle wrinkled in disgust. “Our tribes tried fighting back, but something is—happening to us. We’re not as—as strong as we used to be. There are fewer of us. But if Noxus came, they could help us overthrow them. Take back what is ours to shepherd.”

“You would get Noxus into Ionia?” Ambessa knew how impenetrable the islands were—rumors said the land itself was alive, fighting against any and all invaders. It was unheard-of, enough raw magic to put the bravest, most experienced soldiers on edge.

“If it would get us our homes.”

Ambessa nodded slowly. Ionia. The untouched islands beyond the sea, a tantalizing fruit just out of Darkwill’s reach. His greatest ambition. When her scouting bands had told her of the once-Ionian family here, she had come. The vision she’d had that day she had died—almost died—in Rokrund loomed great in her mind. The letter from home made that vision even more urgent. Darkwill would be more than pleased to learn this, and once she took her place at the head of the Medarda family, she would be that much closer to it.

“Good. I will take you to Grand General Darkwill, and you will swear to Noxus. We will see you home.”

Before she could do any of that, though, she needed to get back to Bel’zhun.

Menelik was wounded, Ambessa.

He is unlikely to recover.

Return swiftly.

Return to Bel’zhun, where her grandfather would have no choice but to name his heir. And that meant Ambessa needed to prepare her own.

Ambessa stopped in the main hall of the palace and considered the large chair waiting in the middle, raised upon a dais. It was dim and dark, the windows curtained off to block the bright sun as it rose, and more trees stretched from floor to ceiling alongside stone pillars. The throne itself was broken, a streak of blood marring its pale, striated stone surface.

“Rictus. Where is Mel?”

“She has… taken to speaking with some of the Binans, General.” He raised an eyebrow, as if to ask if he should stop it.

Ambessa sighed. “Send for her. And ready Lady Mion.”

It was time for Mel to know death.

From outside the palace, unseen, Ambessa watched Mel enter the throne room and take in the destruction. Chunks blown out of the stone by black powder, a Rokrund specialty. Blood streaking the walls, the pillars, the floor. The trees, however, seemed untouched. The girl studied it all carefully. At fifteen years, it was past time for her to learn this lesson. After giving her a moment alone, Ambessa followed her in.

Mel turned at the sound of her approach.

“When I was ten,” Ambessa said, “your grandfather brought me to the aftermath of the Battle of Hildenard. He offered me a gold coin for every blade I retrieved from the fallen. Said we needed the steel.” Loose stone skittered down a pillar. “But I knew it was a lie. He wanted me to know death.”

Mel furrowed her brow. “Kino says war is a failure of statecraft.”

Ambessa bit back her snort of irritation. “Your brother thinks he can talk his way out of anything. He fancies himself a fox among the wolves. But mark me, child, if you want to last in this world, you must learn to be both the fox and the wolf.”

Mel considered this, taking in the throne. The wall behind it was shattered in a radial, as if by a heavy blow.

“We’ll paint the walls in gold. Import crystal chandeliers. Advisors will enter here.” Mel gestured toward a side corridor off the main room as she approached the throne. “But the regent will have her own secret entrance.”

Hope rose in Ambessa’s chest.

“She should have a kind, fat face,” Mel continued, skimming her palm along the seat back of the broken throne. She seemed unbothered by the blood painting its surface. “Clever, to charm her subjects, but pliable so we can mold her.”

Ambessa let herself imagine the picture her daughter painted. Already, Mel was poised, and she knew the power of appearance. Her high-collared dress with its pointed sunburst across the chest suited her—elegant, but sharp. The gold holding back her hair, already like a crown. She had mastered one of the most difficult parts of the Medarda Code: A clever tongue is as valuable as sharp steel.

“Perhaps she could be my daughter.”

Mel’s hazel eyes widened in surprise, the first shock she’d shown since she arrived