Echoes of Silence

  “Your royal cape.” The High King gestured to the pile of silks the servant had draped over his arm. Another flick of the High King’s wrist brought Cris stumbling forward. I couldn’t tell if he didn’t move properly because of his haste to obey his father or because his legs had been wounded.

  Cris took the scarlet silk and flung it around my shoulders. As it settled into place and he pinned it closed at the throat, the air became easier to breathe. The color in the room brightened.

  I’d need to remove this cape as soon as possible. Through magical interlacing, my senses were subdued, though it seemed quite the opposite. Grandmother had warned me of such tricks.

  “Beware of potions or dressings, which seem to enhance that which was dull before,” she’d rasped while we worked in the garden. The sun had been so hot that day, and everything had felt too bright.

  Now, in the depths of the High King’s castle, a place where shadows prevailed, it seemed as bright as that intense summer day with Grandmother.

  “Thank you,” I said, my voice unable to achieve the desired regality and importance I’d been attempting. I held my hands still against my sides, hoping to show the High King that he didn’t scare me.

  I glanced at Cris and found him looking at me with wide, little-boy eyes, the way children did when hoping their mothers would buy them hard candy at the market. I stepped forward and placed my hand in his, squeezing as I did. My magic fluttered at the contact. He wore a cape identical to mine. It flowed down around his ankles, covering a suit of deep navy. Everything about him spoke of his usual sophistication, but I knew him well enough to know something was wrong.

  Perhaps it was the vicelike grip he inflicted on my fingers. Or the nervous side-step that made us touch at the hip. The High King watched every movement, his expression excited and cruel at the same time.

  “I’ll show Echo to her wing, shall I, Father?” Cris didn’t sound nervous, but the way my magic thrummed beneath my skin sang a different story. I couldn’t wait to take my leave of the High King, couldn’t wait to get this cape off, couldn’t wait to address what new horror Cris had endured.

  “She’ll need an assistant.” The High King’s teeth clacked against themselves as he spoke, and I focused on them so I wouldn’t have to look into his eyes. “I believe a girl has just returned from her service in Umon.”

  Cris’s hold on my hand sharpened into pain, and he paled. “I’ll send for her.” His jaw twitched in a way I’d never seen before.

  “We’re meeting in council tomorrow morning,” the High King said. “Don’t be late.”

  Cris had been scared a moment ago, but now anger raced across his face. The High King and his son seemed locked in a silent battle of wills. They glared at each other with such hatred that I was reminded of Bo and Gibson and how they’d been bound by magic but not brotherhood. With a start, I wondered if Cris and his father were bonds. I quickly dismissed the notion, remembering that I’d sung a spell at the compound to discover all the magicians, and Cris’s image rebounded individually.

  Finally, Cris nodded once. “Come, dearest.” He tugged on my hand and led me away from his father. I didn’t want to turn my back on the High King, but found I couldn’t walk sideways very well.

  Our capes fluttered behind us as Cris and I crossed the hall. At the back wall, he held a tapestry to the side, and I ducked into the welcome darkness of a corridor. When the fabric dropped back into place, I immediately extracted my hand from his and fumbled with the clip at my neck.

  “What are you doing?” he whispered.

  “This cape is bewitched,” I hissed back. “Yours is not?”

  Though darkness bathed the corridor and I couldn’t make out his features, I felt him frown. “Yes, but my father thinks I do not know such things.”

  “I’m going to take mine off.” I finally got my fingernail under the clasp and the clip released. My breath shuddered in my chest as the silk slipped from my shoulders. I felt like I’d been doused with chilled water, and the corridor grew twice as dark as before.

  Cris cursed and I felt his silk pool at my feet. “I hadn’t realized how much this cape accomplished.”

  “Trickery.” I reached for the wall I knew to be on my right. My fingers grazed the stone, which felt as cold as the air breezing around my body. “Which way?”

  “Down and right,” he said.

  “I can sing an enchantment to light the way,” I said. “Shall I?”

  His arm snaked around my waist and brought my body close to his. “If you’d like. Do not feel like you cannot use your magic here. My father already suspects what you can do. Gibson’s reports were always extremely detailed.”

  “I can only imagine,” I said. “I wish you’d dismissed him long ago.”

  “I wish a great many things,” Cris said. “Let’s not get started on my failures so soon.”

  “That’s not—”

  Cris silenced me with a groan. He stumbled, leaning his whole weight on me. “I need that cape. It soothes my wounds.”

  My chest squeezed at the thought of him being hurt. “Put it back on and let’s get to my wing.” I waited while he collected his cape, then I shrugged his arm higher so it rested across my shoulders. I took my first steps into the unknown.

  #

  By the time we had turned right, and right again, climbed a flight of stairs, and wound around the circular courtyard, Cris’s skin had paled and sweat beaded his forehead.

  “Don’t you have servants to help you?” My back ached as I continued to bear most of his weight. “Magicians trained in the healing arts?”

  “Father has forbidden them to provide relief from this.”

  “From what?”

  He simply gritted his teeth and took another step. Once we’d come out of the corridor and up the stairs, the castle had dressed in its splendor. The walls stretched like tall marble soldiers, their faces gleaming and swirled with graphite. Thick rugs adorned the floor. The doors we passed had been handcrafted by those with exceeding skill.

  We exited the building and walked along a breezeway between two towers. The wind whipped through the tight space, and I hummed a spell of strength in my throat. Within one step, Cris’s head lifted, the color blooming back into his cheeks.

  “Your wing,” he said when we left the breezeway. He carried his cape over his arm, not fully using its protection.

  “This is all mine?” My sense of direction could be wrong, but it appeared I had an entire tower to myself.

  “Mine as well. There’s plenty of room for both of us.”

  “Of course there is,” I said. “Let’s get you to your bedroom.”

  “My father has given you access to every room in the castle,” he said as we curved toward the back of the spire. “It’s been a long time since a princess has lived here.”

  “I’m not sure a princess does live here.”

  “She does.” Cris’s voice sounded heavy and sure. He stopped in front of a carved door that depicted a stag emerging from the forest. It held its head high, looking bold and cautious all at once. It fit Cris perfectly.

  Once inside his room with the door locked, I took his cape and, together with mine, tossed it on a settee. “Let me see.”

  “See what?” He labored to breathe now that I’d stopped the strengthening chant, now that his cape no longer touched him.

  “What he did to you. Let me see.”

  “I cannot.” Cris collapsed onto a couch.

  “Why not?”

  “I cannot lift my arms to take off my shirt,” he said. “And I cannot bend to lift my pant leg.”

  Fury reared inside. “Then I’ll do it.”

  Cris began to weep, fat tears slinking over his cheeks. “Please, don’t.” He didn’t attempt to cover his face or hide his shame. “I do not want you to see me like this. I do not want this to be what you imagine when you think of me.”

  I knelt in front of him and took his face in my hands. “When I think of you, I see a man who c
alled for a magician in the middle of the night to heal his brother. I see a man who does not want to use magic to accomplish wickedness.”

  I swiped my thumb over his eye, smoothing away an errant tear. “I imagine a king when I think of you.”

  A sob choked in his throat and he shook his head, releasing himself from my grasp. “You do not have to lie.” He leaned back into the couch and closed his eyes, completely without energy to lift his arm and cover his face.

  I sat back on my heels. I desperately wanted to help him. I wished to save him from the injustices of his life. Protect him from the cruelty of the one person who should love him unconditionally.

  I stretched my arms above my head and rotated my shoulders. Cris’s chest rose and fell in a steady pattern, his emotion spent.

  With sure fingers, I rolled up his left pant leg. He stiffened and sucked in a breath through his nose, but he didn’t stop me. Holes pierced the circumference of his calf, some the size of a pin and some deep and oozing from what looked like nails.

  I yanked up the other pant leg to examine the carnage there. The same puncture wounds decorated the calf.

  I began a healing haiku without thinking, tracing my fingertip lightly around one of the deeper wounds. In seconds it healed shut, leaving a trickle of blood speckling his skin. I switched the poem to a midrange healing note that floated through the room on snow-silent wings.

  “Echo, stop,” he pleaded, and though I heard him through the music, I didn’t obey immediately. I breathed as the song faded, and the silence sounded loud in the absence of the healing magic. I stood, humming a tale of comfort and easiness as I searched the room for a door to a bathroom.

  There I found a cloth, wetted it, and returned to Cris, who hadn’t moved. I cleaned the blood from his skin, keeping the lilting melody vibrating in the back of my throat.

  “Echo—”

  I silenced him with a cutting look and began unbuttoning his jacket. He wore a pale green shirt but splotches of blood seeped through in spots, especially along his shoulders. My fingers trembled as I released the buttons on his shirt and carefully peeled it away from his skin.

  My fingers skimmed over his scars lovingly, as if they were things to be treasured. “I can erase these,” I whispered, very aware of the intensity of his gaze.

  “No,” he said. “They remind me of him, of what I don’t want to become.”

  I nodded, impressed by the strength he drew from the tragedies of his life. I hadn’t heard him speak such things before, and I wondered where this new courage stemmed from. The wounds on his upper body had sealed, though they looked like knife wounds. After several minutes of healing song magic, and a few trips to the bathroom and back to rinse the cloth, and Cris was good as new—at least physically.

  I leaned in the bathroom doorway, having left the bloodstained cloth in the sink. I closed my eyes in a long blink, spent from using my magic and the confrontation with the High King. I couldn’t remember when I’d last eaten, and a jolt of vertigo made the darkness swim behind my eyelids.

  My eyes flew open when a knock sounded on the door. Smoothing my hair back, I straightened out of the doorway and darted a glance to Cris, who hadn’t moved from the couch. He sat there, half-dressed, looking as panicked as I felt.

  Had his father come to punish me for healing him?

  The door swung open and a feminine voice said, “Echo?”

  Cris snatched his jacket and draped it over his bare chest as Mariana entered the room. She kept her eyes unnaturally trained on mine. “The High King said you needed an assistant.”

  My heart thumped in a strange rhythm as pieces clicked into place. Mari hailed from Nyth.

  “What are you doing here?” I flashed on the time I had seen her sneaking out of my husband’s bedroom, shoes pinched between her fingers, guilt laid open for all to see.

  But only I had seen her, and I hadn’t spoken of it to anyone. Somehow it felt like the High King knew her appointment would bother me. Perhaps he’d sent her to spy on me—both in Umon and here in Nyth.

  Another woman walked through the door, and all worries about Mari evaporated.

  That earth-colored hair.

  Those nimble fingers.

  Those beautiful blue eyes.

  “Olive?” I whispered.

  Thirty-Seven

  I pressed one hand to my heart, hoping to calm it through the layers of skin and bone. It leaped against my palm, beyond relieved to see Olive alive. As the days passed, and Matu hadn’t been able to find her, I’d presumed her dead. But there she stood, in the flesh, alive, breathing, her eyes trying to tell me something.

  Cris could hide his bare skin beneath the jacket, but he couldn’t conceal the bloodstained shirt or his tear-stained face. Mari said something to him I couldn’t hear through the roar in my ears.

  Olive hadn’t looked away from me, and I found myself trapped between being a princess and being a little sister. I didn’t know how to act, what to say, or where to stand so that I commanded the room. Those were lessons provided to men like Cris, who always dressed the part and knew what to say and how to say it.

  Olive broke the straining band between us by striding forward and grasping me in a tight embrace. “Echo.” Her voice came softly, and I squeezed my eyes closed and inhaled deeply.

  “I’m sorry.” I clutched her, afraid to let her go and see disappointment in her eyes. But when she stepped back, I found only love and relief in her expression. “I thought you’d returned to Iskadar, but when I sent for you, no one could find you.”

  Mari gestured to us, saying Olive’s name loudly. My sister turned toward my husband, trepidation now shining in her face. He smiled—such a kingly thing to do—and stood in his regally graceful way. He shrugged into his jacket, pocketing his hands and bringing them together in front of him to hide himself as much as possible.

  She still saw his scars. She glanced between us, her eyes narrowed like we were two pieces of a puzzle that didn’t quite fit together. “So you are Echo’s husband.”

  Though I needed to eat and nothing sounded better than collapsing into a pile of sheets, I strode across the room and linked my arm through Cris’s. “Yes.” I forced my voice to stay neutral. “He’s mine—” I wanted to shoot a glance at Mari, but refrained, instead choosing to keep that secret to myself, should I need it later. “He’s my husband.”

  I increased the pressure on Cris’s arm slightly. “Cris, this is my sister, Olive del Toro.”

  “Ah, of course,” he said, ever the perfect diplomat. “Echo has spoken quite highly of you and most often.”

  It was a complete and utter lie. We’d never discussed my sister, for like Grandmother, I kept her closely guarded. But his words made Olive blush, and she dipped her chin in a subservient way.

  “We’re to be your ladies’ maids,” Mari said. “When we didn’t find you in your rooms, we thought we’d find you here.”

  I pinned her with a look I hoped would convey the thoughts of my heart. I bet you wished you would find Cris—and only Cris—here.

  “Did my father send you?” Cris asked, his tone much too light.

  “Yes,” Olive said. Mari simply nodded, and I got the message. Forcing Mari to attend to me was a way to punish Cris—and he did know she served the High King, not me, and definitely not him. No wonder he’d paled in the hall earlier.

  I extracted my arm from Cris’s and managed to separate Olive from Mari. I glanced down to her feet and back, looking for outward signs of abuse. “How did you come to be here?”

  She glanced over her shoulder to where Mari stood with Cris, watching us. “I did return to Grandmother’s house.” She spoke so quietly, I had to lean closer to hear her. “I sent you a letter. Did you not receive it?”

  I shook my head, a pressing heat beginning behind my eyes. My sister’s word surely would’ve helped me endure my time in the compound.

  “I’d just gotten the garden cleared and planted when I received a summons to come to the H
igh Castle of Nyth. I didn’t have a choice in the matter.” Her eyes stretched too wide, her voice stayed too hushed, for this to be a casual conversation.

  True terror flowed through my bloodstream. “What have you been doing here? Why were you summoned?”

  I hummed the first few notes of a detection spell, and Olive’s magic—limited as it was—reacted violently. She took a step back as if I’d struck her. Naked fear shone in her eyes. She simply shook her head, her gaze focused behind me.

  New worries ate their way through me. “Come, you can show me to my rooms. I haven’t been there yet.” I returned to Cris and stretched up to kiss him on the cheek. “Something is wrong here,” I whispered. “Send for me in a few minutes.”

  “Of course, dearest,” he murmured. I felt his eyes on my back as I left his rooms with Mari and Olive. The door clicked closed, and I mourned Lucia more strongly than ever.

  #

  My suite matched the grandeur of the compound with its rich rugs of brown and blue, cream-painted walls, and thick quilts. The difference here came in the windows. In the compound, I only had the sliding glass door for natural light. Here, glass composed entire walls, and when I went out on the balcony, the sky yawned so wide over my head that I felt small and insignificant.

  I breathed in the scent of the early fall breeze and leaned on the railing of the balcony. I looked down into garden, now in the late stages of harvest. Fat pumpkins lounged among brown spider-leg vines and red ripe tomatoes bulged on bowing stems.

  Nothing had been said in the few minutes it took to walk from Cris’s rooms to mine. Olive had opened the door and stepped back to wait for me to enter—very maidlike.

  Mari had waited, her face masked of emotion. I stared at her, a clear warning for her to stay away from Cris, and we’d entered the apartment with thick silence between us. She refused to leave Olive and I alone together, and I’d escaped to the balcony.

  I stayed outside as long as I dared. Finally I had to return to the safety of a room with four walls. Due to my healing of Cris’s wounds, I felt weaker by the moment and didn’t want to fall over the railing and become like the stalks of corn in the garden, broken and spent.