I was going to make my own head explode. I laid it back down gingerly, focusing on slow, deep breaths, and after a moment, Boojohni resumed his gentle strokes with the brush, as if the conversation were over. I was too nauseated to pursue it, too troubled to dwell on it, and regardless of what Boojohni suggested, I still couldn’t speak.
He started to hum again, but this time I didn’t join him, letting the melody drift around me. Before long my stomach settled, and my drowsiness returned.
“What word did ye give the prince that day, Lark? I’ve always wanted to know,” he muttered.
I was sure I hadn’t heard him right, sure it was just the pull of dreamy sleep, but in my mind a memory swelled and kissed the backs of my lids, a memory of an enormous horse and a black-haired, dark-eyed prince.
I awoke to a different set of hands in my hair, hands that caressed with careful strokes and eyes that reminded me that time was fleeting.
“I should have let you sleep, but I missed you,” Tiras whispered, apology written all over his face. I would have smiled at his sweet remorse, but he looked so desolate I reached for him instead, pulling his mouth to mine and relaxing his bleak expression with soft kisses. He returned them eagerly, and for a time we lost ourselves in the desperate reacquaintance of our mouths.
“There is much to do,” he whispered finally, and I sighed against his lips, hating those words, hating even more that I could feel his anguish and his desire to remain exactly where he was, with me, lying in our shadowy chamber, hiding from everything but each other. There was much to do, and my king did not want to do it. Yet he did, and it was one of the reasons I loved him so desperately.
If there is much to do, then we must do it.
He pressed his forehead to mine, and his gratitude and relief billowed around me, making my eyes prick with tears.
“Thank you,” he whispered.
When do we leave for Firi?
He stilled, raising his head slowly. His relief became trepidation once more.
“I cannot take you to Firi, Lark. I will not take you into battle again.”
Tiras, you know you must.
“I won’t,” he shot back, adamant. “Do you really believe I would take you to Firi to face the Volgar? That I would let Lady Firi huddle in my castle whilst I sent my wife into battle?”
Yes.
“No, Lark.”
We dressed for dinner in silence, and when we descended the stairs toward the Great Hall, he held me back and drew me close for the space of a heartbeat before letting me go again.
Kjell was waiting for us, pacing restlessly, and when we entered the hall and Tiras pulled the heavy doors closed behind us, Kjell glowered and folded his arms across his chest.
“What is the plan, Tiras? Firi is under attack, and we dress for dinner? We sleep yet another night in our own beds?”
“Quiet, brother,” Tiras said without heat, and Kjell sighed heavily.
“I will go,” Kjell said. “I will take two hundred of my best men. The Volgar cannot have recovered their numbers in so short a time. We will secure Lord Firi’s fortress and gather what information we can on the Volgar’s numbers. We will burn nests and destroy eggs. And you will stay in Jeru City with the queen. It makes the most sense,” Kjell summarized neatly.
“I am going with you,” Tiras said, and Kjell’s eyebrows shot up in surprise. He eyed me speculatively then searched his brother’s face once more.
“What if you don’t come back?” Kjell asked softly. Tiras closed his eyes and bowed his head, as if searching for the courage to continue. Dread coated my hands in perspiration. When he opened his eyes, they were as blank and hard as gold coins.
“Tonight I will acknowledge you as my brother,” he said to Kjell. “I will claim you. You will be Kjell of Degn, and as my brother, you will be in line for the throne.”
There was a moment of blaring silence. Then Kjell began shaking his head, and he took a step back.
“I don’t want to be king, Tiras. I won’t do it.”
“It is not about what we want, Kjell,” Tiras exploded, his calm sizzling in the face of his desperation. “Bloody hell! Save us all from our desires! None of us here can have what we want. None of us! This is about the future of Jeru. Do you want Corvyn or Bin Dar or Gaul to get their bloody hands on the throne?”
“I don’t care,” Kjell snarled. “I have never cared. My loyalty is to you, brother.”
“And my loyalty is to Jeru. I have sworn an oath to protect her. I can’t protect you or Lark if I don’t protect Jeru. I can’t protect my child if I don’t protect Jeru. Don’t you understand?”
“You don’t have to atone for your father’s sins,” Kjell said, pointing a shaking finger at his brother.
“Yes, I do!” Tiras answered. “Since I was thirteen years old my life has been about nothing but atonement.”
“So you married a Teller. Put a child in her belly. Outmaneuvered Corvyn. And now you want to position me in the wings?” Kjell raged. His eyes shot to mine, and I read the apology even as I flinched, scalded by his fury.
“I don’t want you in the wings. I want you at the helm. You and I will go to Firi to fight the Volgar. And I will meet my end,” Tiras said evenly. “It is time.”
Kjell and I both stared back at him in horror.
“What are you planning, brother?” Kjell gasped.
“I can’t continue to disappear and reappear. You’ve said it yourself. The people will lose faith in me, and eventually—sooner rather than later if my hands are any indication—I am going to change and never come back again. What then?”
“Your queen will rule, just as you intended. And when your child is of age, he or she will rule,” Kjell retorted.
“I have left Lark unprotected. I have left her vulnerable,” Tiras said.
I began to shake my head. No. No. No. This is not what I’d intended at all.
“She can protect herself, Tiras. She brought down the Volgar with mere words,” Kjell argued.
“She has no voice. You will give her one. And you will give her the protection of your presence. You will give my child a father.”
“I don’t understand you.”
“You will be king. And she will be queen.” Tiras didn’t even look at me. My legs became liquid and my belly floated away. I wrapped my arms around the small mound of my abdomen, sheltering the life that grew in me, even as Tiras was being ripped from me.
“No. I won’t,” Kjell whispered, incredulous. “You can’t do this, Tiras. You can’t manipulate and maneuver and will me to comply.”
My voice felt heavy and black, and it pulsed behind my eyes. I have bowed to your will over and over again, Tiras. But I will not be passed to your brother like an inheritance. I am going to Firi.
“No Lark. You aren’t. Kjell and I will go.”
We will all go! I’ve faced the Volgar. I will do it again.
“That was before.”
Before what? Before you accomplished all your designs? The words sparked furiously in my head. You need me.
“Jeru needs you more. Our child needs you more! And it is not safe. You aren’t a sword. You aren’t a weapon. Remember? What if something happens to Kjell, and I’m a bloody bird? Will you lead the men into battle alone? You will stay here, and you will do as I say!” He was so adamant. So sure. So cold and hard. Telling me what to do. But I was a Teller. And I would not be told.
I flung out my arms angrily, splaying my fingers in time with the words that shrieked through my head.
Winds outside this castle come,
Sweep away the king’s own throne.
The windows suddenly shrieked and shattered in the Great Hall, and wailing gusts filled the space, whipping my skirts and tangling in my hair. Tiras’s throne toppled and crashed against the gleaming, black floor before flying across the space and smashing into the far wall, burying its two rear legs in the colorful fresco of Jeru’s history.
“Lark! Enough!” Tiras bellowed, but I
was far from finished. My agony howled in my chest like the winds I’d summoned, and the tears I rarely released flooded my throat and filled my head. I called down the water from the skies to wash them away.
Rain that gathers in the clouds,
Wrap me in your velvet shroud.
I was caught in a torrent, spun up like a sea God, and the tears from my eyes merged with the rain soaking my skin and drenching my robes. I was floating without sinking, without drowning, without being submerged at all. Even the walls wept, paint dripping in long sorrowful streaks, destroying what once was.
“Lark!” I heard Tiras again, only this time his arms coiled around me, anchors in the storm, and his lips were on mine, warm and insistent, coaxing the war from my words.
“Be still,” he urged, and the shape of the plea made his mouth a weapon.
You cannot give me away!
“Forgive me,” he entreated.
“By the gods, Lark!” Kjell shouted, his voice whipping in the gale. “Stop!”
I’d forgotten where I was. I’d forgotten who I was.
Wind and water, glass and tears
Leave us now, disappear.
All at once the room was still. Tranquil. Almost remorseful.
But I was not.
The only sound in my head was my own ragged inhalations. My breath burned in my chest as if I’d run a great distance, chasing what I could never quite reach. I didn’t raise my head. I didn’t need to see my handiwork or survey the damage. Tiras was as silent and motionless as the air around us, his hands cradling my head, his mouth still pressed to the whorl of my ear. His clothing clung to his chest, and I could see the warmth of his skin through the fabric made sheer by water.
“For once I agree with the queen,” Kjell muttered, and without another word he strode from the hall, his boots squelching with every step. The great oak doors moaned, opening then closing behind him, and I heard him reassuring a servant—or many—in the corridors beyond.
You cannot give me away, Tiras.
“I cannot keep you,” he whispered, his voice as tortured as my breaths. “And I can’t continue doing this to you.”
My hands rose and fisted in his shirt, wanting to hurt him and heal him simultaneously. My nails scored his skin but he held me fiercely, his arms almost constricting, for the space of several heartbeats, pressing his mouth into my hair, and I beat my hands against his back, furious and heartbroken, even as I burrowed my face in his throat.
If you cannot keep me, let me go.
I felt his heart pounding against my cheek, but his arms fell to his sides, and he stepped back, as if he were truly mine to command.
“Where? Where do you want to go?” he asked, his voice so heavy I longed to call the wind again to lift us up and carry us away.
Wherever you are.
“I can’t do that either,” he whispered. “Where I’m going, you cannot follow.”
I wanted to rage, to compel, to call down heaven and summon hell. But though the words trembled on my lips, I could not release them. I couldn’t weave the spell that would give us a future or change the past.
Promise me you will remember and obey, my mother had whispered so long ago. Promise me you will remember.
I remembered.
I remembered the way the king’s sword sliced the air. I remembered the heat of my mother’s blood seeping through my dress. I remembered the words she pressed into my ear. I had never forgotten.
Swallow daughter, pull them in. Silence daughter, stay alive.
I took a step back from Tiras, then another, making myself let him go. He was right. He could not keep me. I could not keep him. My sopping dress wrapped around my limbs, slowing me, but I gathered it up in shaking hands and turned away from the king. I left him there, standing in the center of the Great Hall, the history of his kingdom streaming from the walls and puddling around him. It was a history I would do anything to forget.
At sundown, trumpets pierced the air, and the people stepped out of their homes and leaned out of upstairs windows, listening as the castle crier began to wail from atop the tower beside the castle gates.
“His Majesty, King Tiras of Jeru and Lord of Degn, has claimed the honorable Kjell of Jeru, Captain of the King’s Guard and son of the late King Zoltev of Degn and Miriam of Jeru, as his brother in blood as well as in arms, from this day forward, henceforth and forever. What the king has sworn let no man dispute. What blood has joined let no man destroy.”
I watched as Kjell assembled the king’s guard—a thousand men—leaving two hundred behind to guard the castle and the city wall in his absence. Tiras was not with them, though Kjell had saddled Shindoh and kept her tethered to his own mount. I hadn’t seen him since I’d left him in the hall. I hadn’t said goodbye, he hadn’t found me in the dark to press sorrowful kisses into my skin, and we hadn’t bridged the gulf between what we wanted and what we had.
Lady Firi and I watched, side by side, until the gates were lifted, and we were the only two left in the courtyard.
“The king was not with them,” she remarked curiously. Carefully. And I answered without hesitation.
He left at dawn with a dozen men. A scouting party. They will double back in shifts.
She nodded, accepting my explanation, and I wondered, not for the first time, if lying changed the way my voice sounded in her head.
“God-speed,” she whispered, her eyes on the trail of dust that followed the warriors beyond the wall. The castle stood on a rise, and we could see beyond the wall of Jeru City into the land of Degn. The army would head north to Kilmorda and veer west toward Firi, just beyond the cluster of hills on the border.
A cry pierced the air, and an eagle swooped overhead, perching on the castle wall. He spread his wings, posturing, the blood-red tips of his feathers vivid in the sunshine. Light, both blinding and warm, beat down on our heads like hope and redemption, yet the king was still a bird.
I would not speak his name, even in my head, for fear Lady Ariel would hear. So I gazed up at him, refusing to blink, my eyes burning and my hands cold.
Lark.
I felt my name drift across the way and land on my chest, a feather from his breast, warm and soft. Mine, he said. Another feather.
Always, I answered. Always.
Lady Firi reached for my hand, as if my always were just a simple amen to her prayer of God speed, but I didn’t let her take it. I needed both hands to hold the pieces of myself together.
Then Tiras flew, a swath of black against the blue, creating a hole in the sky that urged me to follow or fall in. Then I was. Falling, falling, falling.
“Highness?” Lady Firi asked, her voice a peal of distant bells ringing in alarm. The hole Tiras made became deep and black, without a sliver of blue, and I let it swallow me, pulling me down, down, down, to where my words lived.
For three days I existed in that hole. There was little sound, little light, and no warmth. I moved through my duties without knowing what I did. I slept without dreaming. I ate without remembering what I consumed. Boojohni slept on the floor by my bed, though I insisted he leave. He just looked at me with sympathy and made himself a nest of sorts. We didn’t converse. Not because he didn’t try, but because I struggled to find my words in all that black space. It took all my strength to keep my eyes from closing and the darkness from absorbing me. I had no hope. I felt no joy. I saw no future that didn’t fill me with anguish, so I didn’t think at all. I didn’t make words or cast spells. I just was. And that was all I could manage.
On the morning of the fourth day, The Master of the Mews asked for an audience in the Great Hall. He bowed deeply, dropping on one knee, and for a long moment, he didn’t raise his head.
I touched the arm of the guard who attended me, who then prodded Hashim to proceed.
“Sir?” he inquired. “Are you unwell?”
“We received word from Firi, my queen.” Hashim’s face was pale, and his hands trembled, making the small piece of parchment he clutche
d vibrate. He stood and extended it toward me. I didn’t take it. I couldn’t. His hand fell back to his side in surrender, and his shoulders collapsed.
“The message was brought by a carrier bird,” Hashim whispered. “The king . . . is . . . dead.”
The guards at my side gasped. I did not react at all. I sat with my hands in my lap, my face frozen, my heart silent, my mind as black as the hole I couldn’t escape.
“I’m sure there will be an official messenger, and his body will be escorted back to Jeru City. I will relay any further communications I receive,” Hashim said feebly. I reached out a hand to him, numbly, automatically. He took it, and I inclined my head, eerily poised, thanking him for his terrible words.
“Majesty?” A guard asked hesitantly. “What do . . . we do?”
“Do you have anyone who can speak for you, Majesty?” Hashim asked kindly. I wanted to reveal myself, to ask him if he would be my voice, but I hesitated, emptied of hope, not daring to trust. I reached for the bound book of blank parchment and the ink and quill I’d begun to keep on a small table near my throne. With hands that felt like a stranger’s, I asked for the only person who might be able to assist me. Someone who already knew my secret.
I wrote her name on the page, my shaking hand leaving behind ill-formed letters and splotches of ink.
Get Lady Firi.
“We will send word to the Council of Lords,” Lady Firi advised. Her manner was as closed as mine, her expressions unreadable. If she felt surprise or grief, it did not show. I made no judgement—behind my own walls was scorched earth. We’d retired to the library and I sat at the king’s desk, surrounded by his possessions but none of his confidence.
“The crier will make the announcement at sunset, and the city will begin Penthos, the period of mourning,” Lady Firi continued.
I nodded dully and met the eyes of my personal guard, who had suddenly taken on the role of royal spokesperson and official messenger.