A Brother's Price

said. “Good night, Whistler.”
    “Your Highness.” And Eldest Whistler left with a bow that was hardly more than a nod.
    “Gods above, Halley.” Ren murmured to the fire. “Where are you? Are you even still alive?”
----
    Chapter 9

     
    It had been a night of nightmares and Ren jolted awake at dawn. A light rain during the night had dampened the fireplace ashpit, and the ghost of winter fires lingered in the room. Ren tumbled from her bed still half asleep and flung open the windows. After a couple of deep breaths of clear summer morning air, she sat on the window seat, staring as the sun turned the river molten, letting the glitter fill her eyes and blot out the night images. Her nightmare had been twisted by fears of losing Jerin. Halley was missing in a burning building, while the dwarflike shopkeepers from Heron Landing were carrying Jerin off to marry a stranger. No, it wasn’t difficult to tell what had triggered her nightmare.
    Where had Halley gone? More importantly, how could they get her back in time?
    While Halley hadn’t said where she was going, it hadn’t been hard to guess why she left. More than any of them, Halley had been marked body and soul by the explosion that killed their sisters and husband.
    Typical of Odelia’s luck, Odelia had not gone to the theater that night. Ren could never remember why, except a hazy notion that it came as punishment for some small crime. Trini, fortunately, had not gone either— she was still recovering from Keifer’s unnaturally vicious treatment of her. Lylia and the youngest sisters, of course, were too young to take to the theater. With their husband, Keifer, all ten oldest princesses, however, and two of the middle princesses made a rare appearance at a public performance.
    After six years, odd memories remained crystal clear. A virgin layer of snow had covered the city, not yet touched by the omnipresent soot of deep winter. They arrived late, delayed by another fit of anger from Keifer, and the great arching windows sent pillars of light into the night. Ren and Halley came through the doors a step behind Lieutenant Raven, and the music struck them all of a sudden, as if they had been deaf up to that moment. Behind them. Eldest ignored Raven’s older sister Hawk as she explained that they hadn’t vetted the building yet due to the sudden plans and pleaded for the royal family to wait in the coaches. They swept up the stairs to the Porters’ private box, where a handful of ancient Porter mothers already waited. In the next box over, their middle Moorland cousins acknowledged the princesses with slightly cool nods—they were still angry with Keifer for slapping Cullen.
    The opera was Barren Winter , which had been banned for two generations. The princesses settled into the Porters’ box as the opera’s opening lines reminded the audience that Ren’s great-grandmothers had split their royal daughters into two families. Ren’s grandmothers married Michael and took rule of Queensland. The younger sisters took Rafael as a husband and were given the newly annexed island of Southland to rule.
    Ren started out bored. She knew the story well, the events having triggered the War of the False Eldest, and the repetitive nature of the lyrics annoyed her. Ann Kinsen, however, gave a brilliant performance as Michael, her powerful alto sweeping Ren up in the story of a man’s sterility destroying his family and country. As the younger sisters grew more strident in their demands that their children be considered heirs of the childless elder sisters, the more tortured Michael became by his affliction.
    It was Queen Titia, however, who made the opera painfully real and personal. Nana Titia had been a woman forever undecided. To wear the red shawl or the blue one. To sit next to the fire, or near the lamp. To take the fish, or eat the lamb. She wavered on the smallest of details, always with a twittering laugh to cover her awareness of her own weakness.
    There on the stage, with her embarrassed polite laugh, Titia dithered about delivering a secret offer to share a noble husband, an option that would have saved Eldest from visiting the disease-ridden cribs in a desperate attempt to produce an heir. Titia hesitated when action would have prevented pregnant Beatrice’s murder and thus the entire war. She wavered as Michael begged for divorce, which would have allowed him to escape the sense of responsibility for the growing tragedy that ultimately led to his