“Auntie, I’m terribly fatigued.” I put on my best whiny noble voice. “Can we go home now?”
The tension fractures as Y’shennria excuses us, and we bow. I sneak one last smirk at Prince Lucien over my shoulder, the carriage a welcome rest from pretending to be oh-so ignorant and empty-headed. Y’shennria is quiet as the carriage rolls away from the palace, and I look upon the grand fountains, thoughts swirling in me as the water of the man-made rivers swirls.
Of all the nobles Whisper could have been, it had to be the prince. Of course it was. Fate has never once shied away from the opportunity to take a massive shit on my life, and this time is no exception. Whisper could’ve been anyone—someone harmless, someone without a target painted on his back. Someone I could’ve been friends with, instead of enemies. Equals, instead of predator and prey.
When the palace is just a distant white glow behind the trees, Y’shennria lets out a breath.
“I never thought I’d say this.” She looks at me. “But I’m grateful to you, Zera.”
“For what?”
“Pulling me away from that man,” she says. I gasp.
“You don’t like the archduke? Is it the rancid attitude or the genocidal tendencies?”
Y’shennria scoffs. “Both, and more. No one in court likes him. They simply pretend to because they must.”
“And Gavik doesn’t like you, either.”
“Me, particularly.” Y’shennria fusses with her sleeve, almost nervously. “Because my family once worshipped a god he hates.”
“Is that all? It seemed like a little more than religious differences.”
She’s quiet, and then she chuckles. “I’ve taught you too well, haven’t I?”
Y’shennria doesn’t speak again until we reach her manor, and I don’t press her. The far-off look in her eyes is the same she gets when she looks at the portrait of her husband in the hall—reminiscent. And I’m not so cruel as to pull a woman who’s been through so much out of her last kind haven—her memories.
“Why did you call out to the prince?” she finally asks as Reginall helps us shed our coats. “What secret do you have of his?”
“I was going to tell you, but you heard him—I can’t tell anyone.”
“I’m very good at hiding secrets,” Y’shennria insists. I laugh.
“Don’t I know it.”
“You must tell me. For the good of our goal.”
“Trust me when I say I’d love to. But if he finds out, he’ll hate me, and that’s the last thing we want.”
“There’s no possible way he’ll find out.”
“Are you willing to take that chance?” I tilt my head. “Because I’m not. Not after you’ve done so much to get me this far.”
Y’shennria thins her lips. “You must not blackmail him, at the very least. Such a thing will never endear you to him.”
“I know it seems odd, but I think it might work to our advantage.”
“How? It’s a negative thing, a terrible thing—”
“I don’t know how, but it’s different. You’ve seen the way the other Brides look at him, the way the court looks at him. All they do is try to get on his good side. He expects me to.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” she snaps. “If you stick to what we discussed earlier, you will surely succeed. I’ve poured months of thought into this, all of my years of noble upbringing. But this? This is just a gamble! And we can’t afford to gamble!”
“Now that I’ve met him, now that I’ve seen him in the flesh—” I swallow at the memory of his proud shoulders, his bitter eyes. “Your plan is good. Thorough. I’m going to stick to it. But that plan is tailor-made for the Crown Prince, the Black Eagle of the West, the archduke of the Tollmount-Kilstead mountains. Not Lucien. Just Lucien.”
There’s a beat as she considers this.
“What are you saying?” she asks carefully.
“I’m saying…” I clear my throat. “That to be young and lonely is a terrible thing.” She doesn’t speak for a long moment, and I press. “I trust you, Lady Y’shennria. You’ve taught me so much, given much to get me here. But you have to trust me, too.”
“I cannot. You’re a Heart—” She swallows. “You’re inexperienced with this sort of intrigue.”
I pull the quartz pins from my hair. “I’m a Heartless.”
Reginall and Y’shennria share a look before Reginall bows out and leaves us there in the hall, with only the grand sandclock’s ticking daring to break the silence. The disappointment is so bitter in my mouth it burns. Even after everything, all my training, all my effort, I’m still just a Heartless to her.
“If I were human,” I manage, “would it be easier for you?”
She doesn’t look at me. “Yes.”
I walk up the stairs to my bedroom, and she doesn’t follow or call for me. And I’m glad. I did everything right. I followed her every teaching, I pleased the king, I gambled with risky moves, earning us the upper hand. I caught the prince’s eye, so much so that he waited outside the palace doors for me. I did everything right.
But it’s still not enough.
Of course it’s not enough. Y’shennria’s fear is a clear, rational reminder that I’ll never be anything but a monster until the day I have my heart returned to my empty chest.
So long as this hunger infects my mind, my body, no human can fully trust me.
I bury my selfish sadness in cleaning Father’s sword with an oiled rag. The indents in the faded brass handle, the scratches on the blade—at this moment they feel like the only friends I have. I’d give anything to spar with Crav right now or sing to little Peligli, anything to ease this gnawing emptiness. Father’s blade reflects my face back at me—a flash of sunlight over my eyes, and my teeth are long and jagged, my eyes blackened completely, my chin stained with blood…
How delightful those five men tasted, but their screams were more delicious.
Hours later, when the three moons are cold gemstones against the black sky, Reginall knocks on my door with a tray of fresh livers, from Y’shennria no doubt, and a strange note on fine parchment paper.
“This message came for you, milady, from the watertell.” I thank him and move to close the door, but he clears his throat. “Are you all right?”
“No,” I say shortly. “But I didn’t come here to be all right, did I?” I hear myself, and I sound awful. Angry. But I can’t stop it. “At least in the forest, I could be a monster in peace.”
“Could you?” he asks. “Forgive me, milady—I simply find it so very hard to imagine. Never once was I able to live peacefully as a Heartless.”
His words aren’t a salve over my open wound, but they’re a splash of cool water. Of reality. Of the difference between him and me—one a former soldier in a long-ago bloody war, the other a spy in a bloodless court. He makes a little bow and leaves me with my food and my note. I read it once I’m full, once the hunger is muffled.
There, in sharp, curled handwriting and rich ink reads a sentence: What is your price?
Prince Lucien sent this, no doubt. Insistent, isn’t he? I go to my desk and begin writing with a quill, only to see blood smearing across the paper. Red on white. White like the bandits’ skin stained with their own blood, like Mother’s neck as she gasped for air, her torn lungs never giving it to her.
My hands are still dirty from the livers. Cursing my clumsiness and my memory that insists on keeping only the nightmarish things, I wash in the basin nearby and return to the desk with fresh hands.
Fresh as they can be, anyway, when I’ve killed five men.
But as I write this letter, I’m not a murderer. I’m a human girl. That’s what Prince Lucien thinks I am. No matter how fleeting, I can pretend for a moment I haven’t done terrible things. I can pretend, in so many delightfully illusory steps, that I’m a coy lady writing a letter to the object of her affection and nothing more. It’s easier to be her than it is to be me.
I ink my response on a new sheet of pape
r.
Time. I want your time, Your Highness, and nothing more.
I think back to today. I told him the honest truth. I told him I wanted his heart. He said he warned me about the court.
But I warned him, too.
7
Fire For
Their Thralls
I send the letter out in the morning, before breakfast training. Reginall takes it with a smile and assures me he’ll deliver it to the watertell. I’m positive Y’shennria knows the prince sent me a letter, and that I sent one back, but she doesn’t mention it at the long table over our plates of perfectly poached eggs and seared ham hock. Unlike my first time eating human breakfast, I can hold my tears in for a good twenty minutes before the pain becomes unbearable. It’s a new milestone. But Y’shennria doesn’t comment on it, strangely quiet as she sips her tea and I wipe the blood from my face.
“We’re going to court, aren’t we?” I ask.
“Not today,” she finally says.
“But—”
“Today is for blessing,” Y’shennria clarifies, getting up from the table. “Be sure to wear white and keep the makeup simple.”
She’s acting strange, but before I can comment on it she disappears upstairs. Was it what I said yesterday? Feeling somehow responsible, I return to my room and riffle through my wardrobe. I find the pure white dress, modest and yet achingly delicate in its lace hem and ruffled collar. I’d wondered what this was for—it stuck out like a sore thumb among so many gold-threaded, complicated court garments.
Blessing. How long has it been since I’ve gone? Four years? Five? My gap-filled memory insists Father and Mother and I used to go, to get our yearly blessing for Father’s trading business. Was it yearly? Or biannually? I can’t remember. But I do recall that before I was turned into an Old God’s servant, I was just as faithful as anyone else.
I prayed as hard as anyone else.
Did Kavar know my fate? When I knelt in His temples and listened to His priest’s songs, did He know that little girl was doomed to become a monster? Did He know my parents were going to be murdered?
If He did, He never told me. And I hate Him all the more for it.
In the carriage to the temple, I study Y’shennria. She’s in a similar white dress, though hers covers her entire neck and the scars there.
“Are we going because Gavik threatened you yesterday?” I ask. Y’shennria straightens but doesn’t say anything. In her right hand, half hidden by her sleeve, she carries a rosary of some sort—made of wood, a pendant shaped like a naked tree hanging from it. She rubs the tree over and over, almost nervously. Going to the temple like this means she’s being forced to worship a god she doesn’t believe in, just to keep up appearances.
To keep Gavik off her scent.
“Why are we trying so hard to please Gavik?” I ask.
“I’ve told you time and time again—he’s the most powerful man in Vetris,” Y’shennria snaps, then falls quiet. “And he hates me very much.”
“Why?”
She doesn’t say anything more. Noble carriages gather at the steps of the intimidating stone temple. The faint strumming of a dozen key harps wafts out of the main doors. Nobles filter in, all wearing varying shades of white, with only modest jewelry. Some—the more devout, I imagine—carry an iron eye of Kavar clutched in their hands, Gavik included. He ushers people through the doors, greeting them all warmly, or as warmly as an ice-eyed man can. When it comes to Y’shennria and me, though, he doesn’t bother hiding his disdain.
“There you are, Lady Y’shennria. I was beginning to think you’d never show.”
Next to me, in a motion too small for anyone but me to see, Y’shennria grips her rosary as if for strength, her whole hand covering it easily. She bows to Gavik and walks in without a word and I do the same, hurrying after her. I half expect to be smote by some bolt of god-light the second I walk over the threshold, but nothing happens. Perhaps Kavar’s taken pity on me.
I might not remember how often I went to blessing, but the temple’s shape is as familiar as an old scar; everything is made of stone, and in the very center is a massive pit, each level of it carved so as to make rings of seats. Even though all the nobles of Cavanos have seemingly gathered, it could seat so many more. Y’shennria takes the opportunity to pick a seat away from anyone else, and I sit beside her.
“It’s been years since I’ve been in one of these,” I whisper to her. Her face is so tense. “One time, when I was sick, I remember Mother brought me into a temple to pray for a cure, but I just ended up vomiting all over the eye.” I motion to the center point of the pit, where a huge eye of Kavar symbol rests, molded out of pure gold.
Y’shennria shoots me a look. “You lie.”
“Of course—I don’t have most of my old memories.” I smirk. “But you have to admit, it was an entertaining lie.”
She wrinkles her nose, a good change from tensed, at the very least. But as the final few nobles filter in with the priests, her anxiety returns, her fingers working over her rosary faster, and yet more hidden than before. The key harps stop, and the head priest enters with the royal family—King Sref and Queen Kolissa in fitted white garments. Prince Lucien lags behind them in a crisp white overcoat, his dark hair and eyes contrasting violently, his Beneather bodyguard in dark chainmail armor, grayish hair pale and short. They’re two perfectly inverted monochrome figures of each other. The prince and I meet gazes for a brief moment, the locket on my chest giving a start, but he quickly looks away to situate himself with his parents at the bottom ring of the pit. Did he get my letter, I wonder? He looks just as happy to be here as Y’shennria, but I’m certain that has more to do with who’s leading the sermon than religion itself. Gavik steps up to the eye altar with the high priest, and they speak in unison, their voices booming among the vaulted stone ceilings.
“Among friends and among foes.”
“Among friends and among foes,” the gathered nobles echo, Y’shennria’s voice only a bare murmur.
“From within and from without.” Gavik and the high priest leave a pause for the crowd to echo their every sentence. “His light of knowledge touches all who are true, his light of knowledge smites all who are false. In this law we pray, in this law we ask enlightenment.”
I glance at Y’shennria—I’ve never seen her worship. I never saw Nightsinger outwardly worship, either. I wonder how this compares to worship of the Old God, if there is any at all.
“Lifter of man and lighter of minds, may his enemies part before him as stone before copper, as flesh before blade. Let darkness of the unknown be chased into far corners by His light. In His name, Kavar.”
“In His name, Kavar.” The crowd finishes strong. Gavik clears his throat, the high priest seemingly deferring to him.
“Ladies and gentlemen of the court, I am heartened to see how few of these seats remain empty. I still remember thirty years ago, when I was but one of a handful to attend blessing. And yet now the temple’s bounty is full.” He smiles broadly. “This is just proof of how light can be found even in the darkness—that light can be born from war.”
A murmur goes around the temple, much softer than any palace whispering. It’s strange to think that the city of Vetris held both Old and New God worshippers before the Sunless War. You wouldn’t guess that from the state of things now.
“There may come a time when such light is needed,” Gavik continues. “Even now, the witches beat on our doors. I’m infinitely pleased to report our Crimson Lady has stopped five witches from entering Vetris just this fortnight. To think they would’ve been let loose on the streets if not for the polymaths and their invention—” He gives a theatrical shudder. “I quiver with fear at the possibility.”
“His bigotry might be strong,” I mutter, “but his acting is weak.”
Y’shennria doesn’t even reprimand me with an elbow to the side or a harsh look. And that’s how I know she’s really upset.
“But it is this fear that makes us s
trong.” Gavik makes a fist, touching it gently to the gold eye of Kavar. “It is by His knowledge that we endure—we’ve endured the witches. It was five witches this fortnight, but two the fortnight before, and one before that.”
The murmurs turn anxious, rapid. The Crimson Lady works perfectly, and yet here he is lying to them, for what purpose? To incite panic?
“Despite our best efforts, they are rising again, their foul magics returning them from the brink!” Gavik thunders. “My lawguards and the polymaths work night and day to ensure your safety from them. Many of you have attended my purges and seen this yourself—so many heathens must be purged, from within even our great wall. True peace is only an illusion, so long as a single witch remains alive in Cavanos!”
It turns my stomach to hear some nobles cheer at this. King Sref’s face remains emotionless, the queen’s likewise, but Lucien’s face brews with anger. Gavik, on the other hand, looks infinitely pleased.
“It is my hope Kavar will aid us and wipe them from the country with His swift justice!”
A louder cheer, but this time it dies down rapidly as Gavik gives center stage to the high priest, a tottering old man in white robes and a split hat with strings of crystal chimes on each end. He raises his liver-spotted hand and the key harps begin to play again. The priests all around the room join in song, in such specific and odd locations I can’t help but think it’s for acoustics. The head priest raises to his lips one of those copper volume-enhancing sticks I saw Gavik use at the purge and begins to sing, his voice powerful and rich despite his age. I can’t deny the song is beautiful, but it’s equal parts gorgeous and eerie. It’s so different from the witches—they don’t sing to their god, only speak.
“I don’t recognize the language,” I whisper to Y’shennria. She tears her eyes from the altar.
“It’s Old Vetrisian,” she answers softly. “From when the first d’Malvane king ascended to the throne. With the help of the witches, of course.”