The cold of the northern sea faded as memories of a morning in a ruined temple surfaced, and she pushed them down again. Therein lay a dangerous path, one of forbidden dreams. She turned to watch as the gray mist blanketing the shore thinned, allowing a view of ramshackle huts and nets hung on poles for mending.
The captain’s voice, hard with a black humor, sent shivers down her arms. “Madam il Veras, welcome to Hel.”
2
“She has arrived,” the royal steward announced. “I’ve instructed the servants to take her to the queen’s solar.”
Doranis nodded once and placed his son into the arms of the waiting nursemaid. The baby squirmed for a moment before nestling contentedly against the woman’s breast. Tiny and fragile, he looked much like his father, save for his coloring. The king still gave thanks to whatever deities listened that the curse of his blood didn’t pass to his offspring. He looked to his steward, finding the other man regarding him with hooded eyes. Marcilun always had more to say.
He didn’t disappoint. “The news of your wife’s death will come as a blow, Your Majesty. What do you wish me to tell Madam il Veras?”
Doranis thought for a moment, wondering if such tidings would be more merciful coming from a stranger or from him. In the end, it mattered little. Kareena was dead, and Castil il Veras didn’t know it. The pain would be no less, no matter who delivered the message.
“I’ll tell her. Kareena would have wished it, I think. She adored her friend. And if Madam il Veras was willing to travel so far, the sentiment was reciprocated.” He kept silent of his wish, his need, to once again speak with the woman who had haunted his dreams these many months.
“She will fear you, as Kareena did.”
Doranis’s light eyes narrowed. “Mayhap, but something tells me otherwise.”
Marcilun’s tone became diffident. “Forgive me, Sire. I meant no disrespect. I only wished to warn you that your meeting with this Caskadanian may not be pleasant. Like the queen, she may also consider us barbaric.”
Marcilun didn’t know Castil il Veras, but Doranis did, after a fashion. The idea that she might react to his people in the way Kareena did seemed ludicrous. He contemplated his son, content in his nursemaid’s arms. Kareena had despised most everything about her new home. Had she been a more forceful personality, her displeasure would have manifested itself in endless harping and screaming tirades. As it was, she was a stoic, withdrawn woman, one who shut herself away in her chambers as the weeks and months passed, and neither Helenrisia nor her son grew dearer to her.
Doranis didn’t mourn her, at least not in the way a husband might mourn a beloved wife. He and Kareena had remained distant strangers to each other, coming together only in the darkest hours of the night to beget an heir. Such couplings were always brittle, tense, no matter how gentle or coaxing he tried to be. His wife simply lay beneath him, colder and more rigid than a corpse, until he finished. Her disgust was palpable in the bedchamber’s heavy silence, though she accepted his touch without argument. Despite the parody of lovemaking in which they engaged, she soon quickened with child, and he left her to her solitary bed, as relieved as she that neither of them had to suffer the forced intimacy they both hated.
It was during those dismal moments, when he would rise from the bed, shivering with cold and a dull emptiness, that he thought of the fascinating Castil. Had the irony not been so harsh, he might have laughed at the turnings of Fate. But for her dowerless state and low ranking, she would have been a better match for him. She had lured him to her with her scholarly ways and ready laughter. There was about her a vibrancy, as if the heat of a Caskadanian sun burned in her blood. Unlike Kareena’s exquisite blonde beauty, Castil was nondescript in appearance—small and dark haired, with a smattering of freckles across her nose. He had barely given her a second glance at their first meeting. Until she recited the do Enrai verse stitched on his tunic.
From that moment, she grew progressively more beautiful in his eyes as he came to admire her intellect and easy humor. During the wedding celebrations, he sought her out several times to dance, uncaring that such attention drew conjecture. Castil fascinated him as no other woman had before, and as she swayed in his arms during the numerous pre-wedding revels, they spoke of old texts and ancient civilizations, laughing at each other’s quips concerning the oddities and quirks of court life.
He remembered the morning of his wedding day, when he slipped past the ever constant vigilance of his retainers and explored the city’s streets as the sun plated the buildings’ façades in gold. Servants already ran errands, preparing for the day’s work ahead. He moved among them, cloaked and hooded, gazing at the sights with casual interest. Doranis pulled his hood forward, protecting his sensitive eyes from the sunlight and hiding his face from passersby. None paid him any heed as he strolled by, nothing more than a tall man in a good cloak. Even the pickpockets left him alone.
A side street caught his attention, and he turned onto the narrow path that ultimately led to a small grotto partially hidden by vines and untended hedge. Its cool, dappled shade drew him in, and he discovered the ruins of a temple dressed in trailing veils of ivy.
He ascended the roofless rotunda’s steps on soundless feet and paused, surprised to find another had found her way here before him. Castil il Veras sat cross-legged on the floor, weaving a small garland of flowers with nimble fingers. Doranis watched her for a quiet moment, admiring the play of early light on her face, the way she chewed her lower lip in concentration while she worked.
She sucked in a startled breath, stumbling to her feet, when he made his presence known. He raised a silencing finger to his lips to halt any cry, and she blinked at him in bewilderment before tilting her head in question.
“Your Majesty?” The disbelief in her inquiry made him smile, as if it was far too strange a thing to find a king wandering among the city without a parade of servants and retainers in tow.
Doranis pulled back his hood, and Castil dropped her garland and bowed. “Rise, madam. We are not at court.” His smile widened to a grin when she straightened and looked past him as if searching for an army of retainers lurking in the hedges. “Tell no one,” he said in conspiratorial voice. “I have run away.” She laughed at his teasing, shaking a finger at him in a gesture of disapproval. He bent to retrieve the garland, handing it to her with a curious look.
Castil thanked him, threading the half-finished piece through her hands. “A garland for Kareena. These flowers represent good fortune. I’ve only found them growing here, at this temple.”
Her gray eyes were thoughtful, and he wondered what words were forming behind her lips. He didn’t have long to wait for the answer. Her shoulders stiffened with an internal resolve, her features becoming set and determined. “You will be kind to her, Your Majesty?” Her fingers plucked nervously at the garland, but she plunged onward. “Kareena knows her duties, but she’s frightened, as any new bride would be in such circumstances.”
Anxious she might be, but Castil didn’t lower her gaze.
Doranis admired her fortitude and devotion to her friend. Castil was brave in her way, speaking in support of someone she cared for, knowing she risked offending him with an impertinence.
He stepped closer. She refused to give ground, though he didn’t miss the slight shiver that shook her frame. “Madam il Marcam doesn’t fear becoming a bride. She fears becoming my bride.” He raised her chin with one long finger. A stray beam of sunshine passed across her eyes, making her blink. “And you, Madam il Veras, keeper of dead languages and old tales, would you fear me were you mine?”
Images flashed in his mind, the result of his concentration and touch upon her. A bright, full moon, blankets of snow on the Laybet Mountains. Things cold, beautiful, bound in winter. It was how she saw him in her mind, and his breathing slowed even as he felt hers speed up.
“Would you fear me, Castil?” he repeated.
She closed her eyes, dark lashes like fans on her cheeks. “No,”
she whispered against his descending mouth. “I would welcome you.”
He kissed her, swallowing her sigh. She tasted of tea sweetened with honey, and her lips were soft under his, welcoming. His spirit despaired at the knowledge that the wife chosen for him would never respond to him the way the wife he would have chosen for himself did now.
His hands settled on her hips to pull her closer when the sound of familiar voices calling his name brought him to his senses.
Castil also heard the calls and wrenched out of his arms. Doranis’s frustrated groan at the unwelcome interruption and her sudden withdrawal carried through the small temple. She stared at him, her gaze anguished. Bright flags of color raced across her cheekbones, and her lips were damp from his kiss.
The voices grew louder, closer, sharp and alarmed as they searched the streets for the missing king. Doranis resisted the temptation to pull Castil back to him.
“This is wrong,” she whispered, her voice and face stricken with remorse. “You are marrying Kareena.”
And how unfortunate was that for both him and his future bride? “She and I would have it otherwise.”
She clasped the small garland to her chest and backed away from him. “It cannot be otherwise. Today is your wedding day, and my closest friend will be your wife.”
His gaze strayed to the token of good luck. “I won’t apologize for something I don’t regret, Castil. Such a thing rings false, and this is no love match. Why do you suffer such guilt?”
Tears edged her lower lids, and she blinked them back. “Because I would rage at this, were I Kareena.”
He reached for her, but she held up a hand to ward him off. “Your people call for you, Your Majesty. May the gods bless your union.”
She peeked around him a second time before scampering down the steps of the temple to disappear among the overgrown hedgerow. Her scent—of sunshine and salt air—remained, teasing his nostrils and lingering in his memory even as he bound himself to a woman who despised him. Even as he sailed homeward the following day.
Doranis stretched out a hand to gently stroke his child’s dark hair. The baby lay against the wet nurse’s breast, nearly asleep. Marcilun shifted impatiently behind him, awaiting his next command. “See to it that her possessions are placed in one of the south chambers. There’s more light in those rooms.”
He glided his fingers through Joris’s wispy hair once more before leaving the nursery for the icy corridors. His steps barely whispered on the flagstone floor. Cold wall torches lit with green witchfire, lighting his path to the solar.
Kareena’s solar still held all her possessions. Servants had arrived earlier to light the fire in the hearth and deliver in a pot of tea and cups. The solitary occupant in the room had her back to him, and Doranis paused to enjoy the peaceful tableau of her warming her hands at the hearth fire. By custom, it fell to a lowly minister to greet guests and see to the their initial comfort. But he wanted to see her again, gaze upon her smiling face and discern whether or not the longing he had for her was returned.
She was even lovelier than he remembered, with the firelight playing across her flushed features and her dark hair tamed in a bun at her neck. He closed the door behind him, the snick of wood on wood alerting her to his presence. Hot blood rushed into his groin at her wide, welcoming smile. Her eyes revealed a hunger quickly smothered behind a more guarded gaze, but he had seen it, felt its caress before she bowed and greeted him a deceptively cool voice.
“I am honored, Your Majesty.”
He closed the distance between them and clasped her warm hand in his. Her fingers twitched in his grasp when he brushed a delicate kiss across the back of her knuckles. She gently pulled her hand free, but not before he felt its tremble.
“Welcome to Helenrisia, Madam il Veras,” he said. “You honor us with your presence.”
She laughed. “I’m so glad to hear it, Sire.” Her next words, uttered with such heartfelt eagerness, were a harsh reminder for why she had traveled so far, and why they stood in this particular room. “I’m looking forward to this visit. When may I see Kareena?”
3
Even cut so deeply into the mountain, away from the hard biting wind and squalls of snow, the burial vault of the kings was frigid. As if pulled by an invisible lodestone, Castil walked past the line of marble effigies. Ancient Helenese kings and queens, immortalized in stone, lined the walls, their features captured in timeless repose. Among them, a delicate woman of the south rested in eternal sleep.
Castil halted at the line’s end, and a sob caught in her throat. Were it not for the size and color of the statue, she could almost believe she faced a living Kareena. The sculptor had performed magic with his chisel—the stone woman who faced her was the perfect avatar for the queen. Likel the other statues, Kareena’s wore the ceremonial burial robes, standing with her arms crooked, elbows against her chest. Her hands faced outward, cupped to hold a gold urn containing her ashes.
Castil traced the hard edges of the statue’s robes with one finger. “My friend,” she whispered, “how I miss you.” A small draft, cold and sweetened with sea rose blossom, buffeted her gently, blowing strands of her hair across her face in a light caress.
She wasn’t a superstitious sort, though she did believe in spirits who lingered among the living for a short while until some task was completed or a grieving loved one comforted enough to resume the task of living. If asked, Castil would swear the companion of her youth hovered near her, glad for her company.
“Again you find me here, pestering your sleep with the dull details of my day.” A faint faraway laughter chimed like bells. “I visited your son moments ago. Joris is a beautiful child, Kareena. I see you and Doranis in his small features.” A mournful sigh replaced the laughter, and Castil grew ever more certain she was not alone among the monuments of the voiceless dead.
Such knowledge didn’t frighten her. She found comfort in knowing something of her friend lingered here, not yet beyond the reach of the living. That comfort was mixed with no small guilt, and Castil drew back from the statue.
“I’ve been here two months now. The ships return in two more, bringing their goods to trade. I return home then.” Again, that ethereal sigh drifted to her ear, and she shivered. “’Tis a good thing, for I must confess my failure to you.” Remorse made it difficult to speak. “I have fallen in love with the king, Kareena.”
Somehow she expected a bitter howling, an angry blast of frigid air that would spin her off her feet. But her statement was met with silence, a deepening quiet that waited for her next words. “He is a…” She spread her hands, palms up. “…a man like no other.” She sensed amusement at her words and smiled in return. “Beyond the obvious, of course.” Her smile faded. “He consoled me when the news of your death nearly brought me to my knees, opened his library to me as a way to distract me from my grief, allowed me to hold your sweet son and visit you here.”
Castil began to pace, the brush of her gown against the floor sounded loud in the vault. “I confessed to you my indiscretion at the temple. I did our friendship a disservice. But this is worse, far worse.” She faced the statue again. “I think of him constantly, look forward to his company when he joins me in the library. He’s a hard man, Kareena, but kind beneath that cold exterior. I’ve seen him with Joris, and he’s a proud, loving father.”
The scent of sea rose blossom teased her nostrils once more. “I will miss you when I return to Caskadan, but it’s been hard to resist his allure, and I long for the peace of my dull existence at home. You’re gone, and Joris is in good hands. I’m not needed here.”
Silence gathered around her and Castil swiped at the tears trickling down her cheeks. “I am so sorry, Kareena. I haven’t been much of a friend to you lately, dear one. He was yours.” She turned away from the effigy, her steps dragging as she made her way to the stairs, so lost within her thoughts that she didn’t hear the otherworldly whisper behind her.
“And now he is yours, my dearest frien
d.”
Castil returned to the fortress’s upper levels, both relieved and troubled by her confession. It felt right to say aloud what had weighed heavily in her thoughts—an acknowledgement of her feelings for Doranis. Such feelings changed little. Not long from now she would board a trading vessel bound for Caskadan, and forget her time here with the pale magus king.
The corridors leading to her room were almost temperate compared to the temperatures of the vault. Her cheeks were numb with cold, and she hurried to her chambers, eager to change into heavier clothing and linger by a roaring fire. She passed one of the many closed doors lining the cloister and paused at the sound of familiar voices and the ring of metal on metal.
“Come, old man. I could match you in my sleep.” Doranis’s deep tones reverberated through the wood, causing Castil’s hands to curl in reaction. Again the sound of steel striking steel echoed, and she could picture the scene, having once stumbled upon it when she first arrived in Helenrisia.
The king engaged in swordplay with his weapons master. Her mouth had fallen open the first time she witnessed Doranis sparring with Etane. Both were stripped to the waist, skin glistening with sweat as they circled each other like wary cats, the curving blades of their swords flashing in the torchlight as they came together in a mock dance of death.
Castil had paid no attention to Etane, her eyes riveted to the arresting sight of a shirtless Doranis. Though tall and slim, he was a study in hard muscle and sinew, his chest and abdomen flexing as he dodged the swinging arc of his opponent’s blade or attacked with his own. Silvery lines of perspiration streamed off his skin, and his white hair lay tangled on his shoulders.
She knew if she opened the door this time, a similar sight would again greet her, and Doranis would smile in that smug way when he caught her ogling him. An abrupt hiss of pain, followed by Etane’s gloating response of, “Old man, am I?,” made her lips twitch in amusement, and she continued on her way.