The Beauty of Darkness

  Colonel Bodeen’s mouth quirked awkwardly to the side. “And she is … your prisoner?”

  Considering the circumstances, the current animosity between our kingdoms, and my wretched appearance, it wasn’t an unlikely conclusion.

  Orrin snorted.

  Sven coughed.

  “No, Colonel,” Rafe answered. “Princess Arabella is your future queen.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  A low growl rolled from Griz. Rafe had usurped his claim. I knew, as far as Griz was concerned, that once he had raised my hand to the clans at the Sanctum, I was queen of one kingdom and one kingdom only.

  I shot him a sharp glance, and he clutched his side, wincing as if that had been the source of his untimely noise. But Griz’s growl was little compared to the pall of silence that followed. The scrutiny was smothering.

  Right now it seemed that being Vendan within these outpost walls was preferable to being the impudent royal who had abandoned their precious prince at the altar.

  I squared my shoulders and lifted my chin, though it surely only exposed more rings of dirt around my neck. I suddenly ached with the trying, ached for a way of belonging that was always out of my reach, ached for Pauline, and Berdi, and Gwyneth to be by my side, to hold me, a tight circle of arms that were invincible. Ached for a hundred things lost and gone, things I could never get back, including Aster, who had believed in me unconditionally. It was an ache so deep I wanted to bleed into the ground and disappear.

  But the trying never ended. I stiffened my spine and set my jaw in good royal form. I wedged my voice into something firm and even, and I heard my mother speaking, though it was my lips that moved. “I’m sure you all have a lot of questions, which I hope we can answer later once we’ve cleaned up a bit.”

  A thin, whittled woman with severe cheekbones stepped forward, elbowing the colonel aside. Her raven hair was streaked with silver and pulled back in an unforgiving bun. She addressed Rafe. “Quarters will be prepared for Her Highness as well. In the meantime, she can retire to my chamber, and the other ladies and I will attend her needs.”

  She eyed me sideways, her thin lips drawn in a tight, tawny line.

  I didn’t want to go. I’d rather have cleaned up at the soldiers’ showers and borrowed another pair of trousers, but Rafe thanked her, and I was escorted away with the wave of a hand.

  As I left, I heard Rafe order that the guards posted at the gate be doubled, and rotations at the watchtowers shortened so soldiers were always fresh. He didn’t say why, but I knew it was because he feared more Rahtan could still be out there. After so many weeks of looking over our shoulders, I wondered if we could ever stop watching. Would peace ever be ours again?

  Deliberate efforts were made to step back and avoid touching me. Because of my filth or position? I wasn’t sure, but as I followed this thin, angled woman, the crowd parted, leaving me wide berth. The woman identified herself as Madam Rathbone. I looked back over my shoulder, but the crowd had already seamed back together and Rafe was gone from my view.

  * * *

  I was offered a stool in Madam Rathbone’s sitting room while we waited for a bath to be drawn. Two other ladies who had introduced themselves as Vilah and Adeline had disappeared into their own quarters, and began returning with assorted clothes, trying to find something suitable for me to wear. It was quiet and awkward as they shuffled around me, laying garments over chairs and tables, eyeing them for size rather than holding them up to me. That would require more intimacy, and I was still filthy. Their stares were too cautious, and I was too tired to try to make small talk.

  Madam Rathbone sat across from me on a wide tufted settee. She hadn’t taken her eyes off me. “You have blood on you,” she finally said.

  “By the gods, she has blood all over her!” Adeline snapped.

  Vilah, who was probably only a few years older than me, asked, “What in the heavens did they do to her?”

  I stared down at my arms and my blood-soaked chest, then reached up and felt the crackling roughness of dried blood on my face. So much Vendan blood. I closed my eyes. All I could think of was Aster. The blood all seemed to be hers.

  “Are you injured, child?”

  I looked up at Madam Rathbone. There was a tenderness in her voice that caught me off guard, and a painful lump lodged in my throat.

  “Yes, but not recently. This is someone else’s blood.”

  The three women exchanged glances, and Madam Rathbone muttered a long string of hot curses. She noted the slight drop of my jaw, and her brows rose. “Certainly traveling with soldiers you’ve heard far worse.”

  No. Not really. I hadn’t heard many of those words since my days playing cards in back rooms with my brothers.

  She wrinkled her nose. “Let’s get all this off of you,” she said. “The bath should be ready by now.” She led me into a connecting room. This was apparently an officer’s bungalow, small and squarely laid out, a sitting room, sleeping chamber, and a grooming chamber. The walls were smooth white stucco, elegantly adorned with tapestries. A soldier set a last bucket of steaming rinse water next to the copper tub and quickly exited through another door. Madam Rathbone dropped a bar across it.

  “We can help you bathe or leave you in privacy. Which would you prefer?”

  I stared at her, not sure myself what I wanted.

  “We’ll stay,” she said.

  * * *

  I cried. I couldn’t explain it. It was not me. But I was many things now that I had never been before. Slow tears rolled down my face as they peeled off clothes, as they unlaced my boots and pulled them from my feet, as they sponged my neck and soaped my hair. As every last bit of blood on my skin was washed into the water.

  You’re exhausted. That is all, I told myself. But it was like a vein had been opened that refused to clot. Even when I shut my eyes trying to stop the flow, the saltiness trickled past my lids in a slow languid line, finding the corner of my mouth, then spread across my lips.

  “Drink this,” Madam Rathbone said, and she set a large goblet of wine on a table next to the bath. I sipped as ordered and laid my head back on the elongated copper rim of the tub, staring up at the timbered ceiling. The women took handfuls of citrus crystals and rubbed them into my skin, buffing it clean, polishing away the grime, the scent, and the misery of where I had been. They worked longer on my hands and feet, and more gently around my stitched wounds. Another sip, and circles of numbing warmness spiraled to my fingertips, thinning my muscles, loosening my neck, pulling on my lids until they slipped closed.

  Vilah held the goblet to my lips again. “Sip,” she said softly. Familiarity, a field of vines, a silky sky, skins staining my fingers, velvet … home.

  “Morrighan,” I whispered.

  Yes.

  The caravans bring it.

  The best.

  Colonel Bodeen won’t miss one bottle.

  Much.

  I didn’t remember falling asleep, and only vaguely remembered standing with their assistance to rinse. I lay on thick soft blankets, where they worked on me further, massaging oils into my skin. Madam Rathbone examined the stitched scars on my thigh and back.

  “Arrows,” I explained. “Tavish dug them out.”

  Adeline sucked in air between her teeth.

  I heard the low cluck of their voices.

  Madam Rathbone rubbed a buttery balm into the scars, saying it would aid their healing. The scent of vanilla floated in the air.

  A deep purple bruise had bloomed on my hip where Ulrix had slammed me onto the pommel of his horse. Their fingers were gentle, working around it. I felt myself slipping again, voices around me growing distant.

  “And this?” Vilah asked, her fingertips grazing the tattoo on my shoulder.

  It was no longer my wedding kavah. Maybe it never had been. I heard Effiera describing the promise of Venda … the claw, quick and fierce; the vine, slow and steady; both equally strong.

  “It is…”

  The claim of a mad que
en.

  The one who was weak,

  The one who was hunted …

  The one named in secret.

  “Their hope.” The words were so thin and gauzy on my lips I wasn’t even sure I had said them aloud.

  * * *

  I woke to whispers from the sitting room.

  Maybe this and this together?

  No, something less intricate, I think.

  Do you think she knows?

  Not likely.

  I never thought it was right.

  Do you think the prince knew?

  He knew.

  The fools.

  Makes little difference now. Did you see the way he looked at her?

  And his tone. You don’t want to be on the wrong side of that.

  Especially now that he’s king.

  And his eyes. They can cut a man down.

  Just like his father.

  Doesn’t mean they still couldn’t use her as leverage.

  No, I’d say not. Not anymore, after all that’s happened.

  What about this one?

  I think this fabric best.

  And with this sash.

  I sat upright, pulling the blankets around me. How long had I been sleeping? I looked at the empty goblet beside the table and then at my hands. Soft. A glow to them that hadn’t been there since I left Civica months ago. My nails were trimmed and buffed to a natural shine. Why did they do this for me? Or maybe it was only for their king—the one who—what was it they said? His eyes cut through them?

  I yawned, trying to shake the fogginess of sleep away, and stepped over to the window. The sun was fading. I had slept for a few hours at least. A goldish pink haze was cast over the towering white wall of the outpost. I could view only a small slice of this soldier city, but the calm of twilight gave it a serene glow. Atop the wall I saw a soldier walking the length, but even that had a strange elegance about it that seemed out of place. Golden light caught the shine of his buttons and glimmered on his neatly trimmed belt and baldrick. Everything here seemed fresh and cleanly laid out, even this whitewashed bungalow. Though it was far from the actual border, this was the world of Dalbreck, and it looked nothing like Morrighan. It felt different from Morrighan. Order permeated the air, and everything Rafe and I had done had gone against that order.

  I wondered where he was. Had he finally gotten some rest too? Or was he meeting with Colonel Bodeen and hearing the circumstances of his parents’ deaths? Would his comrades forgive him for his absence? Would they forgive me?

  “You’re awake.”

  I spun, clutching the blanket close to my chest. Madam Rathbone stood in the doorway.

  “The prince—I mean, the king—was by earlier to check on you.”

  My heart leapt. “Does he need—”

  The women flooded into the room, assuring me he had no immediate needs, and they proceeded to help me dress. Madam Rathbone sat me down at her dressing table, and Adeline brushed out my tangles, her fingers moving with swift assurance, threading through my hair as effortlessly as an accomplished harpist, plucking multiple strands at once, braiding it with a rhythm as easy as a whistled tune, while at the same time weaving it with a sparkling gold thread.

  When she was finished, Vilah lifted a loose dress over my head, something fine and flowing and as creamy as warm summer wind. Now I knew what I’d heard about Dalbreck and their love affair with fine fabrics and clothing was true. Next came a soft leather vest that laced up the back, embossed with a gold filigree design. It was more of a symbolic gesture of a breastplate, for it covered little of my breasts. Next Madam Rathbone tied a simple black satin sash low on my hips so it flowed almost to the floor. It all seemed far too elegant for an outpost, and I imagined that if the gods wore any clothes at all, they looked something like this.

  I thought they were done, and I was about to thank them and excuse myself so I could find Rafe, but they weren’t ready to let me go. They moved on to jewelry. Adeline slipped an intricate lacy ring on my finger that had tiny chains on one end connecting it to a bracelet she fastened around my wrist. Vilah dabbed perfume on my wrists, then Madam Rathbone fastened a shimmering gold chain-mail belt over the black sash and—maybe most surprising of all—slipped a sharp dagger into its sheath. Last came a gold pauldron that flared out on my shoulder like a wing. Every touch was beautiful, but clearly the armor was more decorative than utilitarian. It heralded a kingdom whose history was built on strength and battle. Perhaps it was a kingdom that never forgot it began when a prince was thrown out of his homeland. They were determined that no one would question their strength again.

  But all this for dinner at an outpost? I didn’t mention the extravagance, fearing I might sound ungrateful, but Madam Rathbone was perceptive and said, “Colonel Bodeen sets a fine table. You’ll see.”

  I looked at their efforts in the mirror. I hardly recognized myself. This still seemed to be far more than just making me presentable for a dinner party—no matter how fine a meal.

  “I don’t understand,” I said. “I rode in prepared to be met with animosity, and instead you’ve shown me compassion. I’m the princess who left your prince at the altar. None of you harbor resentment toward me?”

  Vilah and Adeline averted their gazes as if uncomfortable with my question. Madam Rathbone frowned.

  “We did. And certainly a few others still do, but…” She turned to Vilah and Adeline. “Ladies, why don’t you go and dress for dinner too. Her Highness and I will be along.”

  When Adeline had shut the door behind them, Madam Rathbone looked at me and sighed. “For me it was a small omission of kindness that had accrued interest, I suppose.”

  I looked at her, confused.

  “I met your mother once many years ago. You look so much like her.”

  “You’ve been to Morrighan?”

  She shook her head. “No. It was before she ever arrived there. I was a maid working at an inn in Cortenai, and she was nobility from Gastineux on her way to marry the king of Morrighan.”

  I sat down on the edge of the bed. I knew so little about that journey. My mother never spoke about it.

  Madam Rathbone crossed the room, replacing the stopper on the perfume. She continued to put the finishing touches on her own attire as she spoke. “I was twenty-two at the time, and the inn was in near chaos with the arrival of the Lady Regheena. She stayed only one night, but the innkeeper sent me to her room with a crock of sweetened warm milk to help her sleep.”

  She looked in the mirror, pulling her bun loose and brushing her long hair. Her severe features softened, and her eyes narrowed as if she was seeing my mother all over again. “I was nervous to enter her chamber, but eager to see her too. I’d never seen nobility before, much less the future queen of the most powerful kingdom in the land. But instead of finding a regal jeweled and crowned woman, I found only a girl, younger than I was, road weary and terrified. Of course, she didn’t say she was frightened, and she forced a smile, but I saw the terror in her eyes and the way her fingers were tightly woven in her lap. She thanked me for the milk, and I thought to say something reassuring or cheerful, or even reach out and squeeze her hand. I stood there for the longest time, and she waited expectantly, her eyes fixed on me as if she desperately wished me to stay, but I didn’t want to overstep my bounds, and in the end, I only curtsied and left the room.”

  Madam Rathbone pursed her lips in thought, then turned, removing a short fur cloak from her wardrobe. She draped it over my shoulders. “I tried not to think about it, but that short exchange haunted me long after she was gone. I thought of a dozen things I could have said but didn’t. Simple things that might have eased her journey. Things I’d want someone to say to me. But that day and chance were gone, and I couldn’t get them back. I vowed I’d never worry about overstepping bounds and never let unsaid words plague me again.”

  Ironically, that was exactly what gnawed at me—all the words my mother never said. All the things she had kept from me. Things that might ha
ve eased my journey. When I got back to Morrighan, one way or another, there would be no more hidden words between us.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  PAULINE

  It was the first time I had ever broken the sacraments. I prayed the gods would understand as every First Daughter was called to come forward and light a red glass lantern and place it at the base of the memorial stone. Then they sang the Remembrance of the Dead for the departed prince and his fellow soldiers—the same prayer I had sung for Mikael, day after day back in Terravin. Had they all been wasted prayers, since Mikael wasn’t really dead?

  My nails dug into the flesh of my palm. I wasn’t even certain who I should be angry with. The gods? Lia? Mikael? Or the fact that I once held an honored position in the queen’s court and now I was little more than a fugitive sneaking in the shadows of a beech tree, unable to show my face to anyone, or even step forward and lift my voice to the gods? I had fallen lower than I ever thought possible.

  When the last prayer was sung and the priests dismissed the First Daughters to return to their families, the crowds began dwindling. I didn’t expect to see my aunt there—she would stay by the queen’s side—but I looked for her just the same. I’d been afraid to ask Bryn or Regan about her. She was a stickler for rules and had drilled them into me from the time I came to live with her at the citadelle. I didn’t even want to ponder how she had reacted to my complete breach of protocol or my new status as treasonous accomplice. I saw Bryn and Regan speaking with one veiled widow, then another, until finally they worked their way toward us, carefully, so no one would suspect us of being anything but mourners.

  They were silent at first, shooting questioning glances at Berdi.

  “You can speak freely,” I told them. “Berdi’s trustworthy. She loves Lia as much as we do and is here to help.”

  Regan continued to eye her suspiciously. “And she keeps secrets well?”

  “Without question,” Gwyneth said.

  Berdi squinted at Regan, her head tilting to the side as she scrutinized him. “The question is, can we trust you?”