Chapter 19 #2
I turned around, made for the glassless windows beyond the dining table, slowly this time, knowing she’d follow. The air was cold going down my throat, but it was still much hotter than it ought to be at this time of night.
I had yet to even begin to understand how the court had changed, and now that I knew why it had, I thought it would be easy to identify it all, record it for history books. I thought it would be easy once I had the space in my mind to think it through.
“A sky without a sun. It’s strange,” I found myself muttering for no particular reason other than to hear one thought clearly without having the tangled mess in my head take over.
“I find it beautiful,” Jasewine said, leaning over to rest her elbows on the windowsill.
The higher up I looked, the smaller I felt. “If it wasn’t for the stars, it would be…nothing. Just nothingness.”
She laughed almost completely silently. “Isn’t it curious how we romanticize the stars but vilify the darkness that makes them visible?
You wouldn’t see the stars at all without it,” she said.
“If you stare at it for long enough, you’ll find that it’s not nothing. It’s everything that hides up there.”
Certainly food for thought.
For a moment, we were both silent, looking at the same sky though we saw different things in it, looking at the water pouring soundlessly down the mountain, some of it spraying my side every now and again.
A waterfall without sound—how…wrong it seemed to me now that I paid it a little attention. The sound was a part of it and without it, it was…half. Like me.
“What is it that you want, Jasewine?”
She did not hesitate. “Freedom.”
I looked at her, and for the first time I began to understand the kind of a life she’d led in this palace. I began to understand that she’d been more a prisoner than a princess. Suppressed by her own father, just like I was banished by mine.
“You have freedom. You can do whatever you want. I will not get in your way of anything.”
“I know that,” she said and smiled. “Like I said, I think you’re a good man, Rune Kalygorn.
I think you can do great things for the Midnight Court.
” A hand over my forearm. She’d painted her long nails a matte black, and they suited the rest of her aesthetic perfectly.
“But you can’t do it all alone. Not even with Aunt Raja.
She’s good—the best, but this is a kingdom. Ruling it requires people.”
Didn’t I know it. I’d come to the same conclusion countless times in the Seelie Court. A team was needed to rule a kingdom. Not a single man or woman.
“I thought you said he kept you dumb and uneducated.”
Laughter, and I was beginning to get used to the sound. “I said he tried to keep me dumb and uneducated. I never said he succeeded.”
“Is that so.”
“Yes. For me, mind you. I speak only for me,” she said. “This is my home. I want to see it thriving. I want to help you, and I know how much this mortal means to you. Let me go. I will find her. I will bring her back here safely no matter what I have to do. You have my word.”
So many emotions ran through me at the same time. I did not trust this woman because sister or no sister, I did not know her. But I was looking at possibly days locked up in this palace.
Jasewine would only need three to get to the Neutral Lands. Just three days to find Nilah, keep her safe until I got there.
Unfortunately, things were much more complicated than that.
“There’s a lot you don’t know,” I told her. She kept calling Nilah mortal, and she thought she understood, but she didn’t.
There would be no thriving of her home, not ever. This kingdom could not be saved, with or without me. All of Verenthia was already doomed.
So why couldn’t I say that to her?
“And you may tell me everything when I come back with her.” She turned to face me with her whole body.
“I know how to fight. Most importantly, I know how to use magic.” Both her hands rose and the black of her fingernails extended into perfect tips—with shadows.
Controlled shadows. “Helem never let us learn, but I did. Despite his punishments, I learned through the years. I’m strong.
I’m a royal, after all. I can keep her safe, and I will protect her with my life.
” Her shadows became larger and spread around us, wrapped us up in a circle.
It was just a show of strength, and I did feel the magic.
She was right, it was strong. She had power.
I raised a hand to touch the wall of shadows she’d created around us, dipped my fingers into the energy, memorized it with mine so that I could find it. I could search for it. I could connect with it the way I did with Raja’s.
“What about the others?” I asked her as the thoughts in my head turned, gave shape to a new idea, dared to allow hope that it might actually work. “Are they spying on me, too?”
Jasewine looked at me like she suddenly didn’t think I was all well in the head. “No,” she said. “I could never get any of them to read a single book, let alone study something.”
“Are you sure?” Because if she had done all this without my knowing about it, then who was to say others couldn’t, too?
“Rune, how do you think Father found out each time I practiced magic, or with a sword, or spent the night downstairs in the Great Library?”
There was a hint of sadness to her voice, in her eyes, but it disappeared too quickly. Suddenly I was curious to know more about her, so much more about what it had been like to grow up in this palace with King Helem.
But all of it would have to wait.
“The palace allowed your shadows in the throne room with me. You claim it listens to you. You’re…connected.”
“It does,” Jasewine said. “We are. Not the others, though. I spy on them, too—believe you me, they could not care less about controlling anything. They’re too busy complaining.
That’s how they go about all their days.
” A flinch and she rubbed her arms like she had goose bumps under the sleeves of her dress.
“I don’t say this lightly, either—they’re my sisters. But they are boring as hell.”
Once again, I smiled. “You’re not going to the Neutral Lands, Jasewine.”
She leaned back like my words assaulted her physically. “I am trustworthy, Your Highness. But you’ll never know that if you don’t allow me to prove it.”
“And I will.” I looked at the ceiling, prayed once more that it would work, that this insane idea that had taken shape in my head was actually doable.
“How?” my half-sister demanded, and she had more fire in her than most people I’d met. She reminded me so much of Raja, who was her actual distant aunt from her mother’s side.
“By staying here,” I told her, and every inch of her body froze in place. “By taking over this throne room, this kingdom. By wearing the crown in my stead, until my return.”
This kingdom I trusted her with. But Nilah? Never. Not her, not anyone.
Not yet.
It took Jasewine a long time to process what I told her. She was in shock for real, and it was easy to see by the way she opened and closed her mouth, looked at me, at the ceiling, at the floor, at the sky outside, unable to utter a single word.
“I think—hope the palace will accept, if you do,” I said eventually, and I did feel sorry for her. She looked like a fish out of water standing there in front of me. “So, do you?”
Our eyes locked. Her hands stopped shaking. “I do,” she breathed with barely any voice.
It was enough for me.
I moved toward the dais again, to the edge of the armrest of the throne made of shadows where I hung the crown King Helem had worn all his life. I kept meaning to change that, too, but all in due time, I figured.
My intentions were perfectly clear. The palace felt them, no doubt. And if it wanted me to stop me when I reached for the crown on the armrest…
It didn’t.
The palace didn’t stop me. Didn’t take the crown away. Didn’t make it disappear.
Instead, it let me walked back to Jasewine, who hadn’t moved an inch from her place. It let me put the crown right in her hands, and nothing happened. No shadows detached from the floors or the ceiling. The palace didn’t even make a sound or give me any kind of sign.
We waited a heartbeat, then two. Our eyes, almost identical, were locked, our breathing heavy.
“I, Rune Kalygorn, King of the Midnight Court, grant you, Jasewine Teneris the right to rule in my stead, to bear the crown’s weight and command—until my return. The Midnight Palace is my witness, and should there be a reason why you are not fit to temporarily lead in my place, it shall act now.”
Seconds ticked by.
No sound, no magic, no shadows.
The palace remained perfectly calm.
I smiled. Jasewine smiled, too, and tears slipped down her pale cheeks as she looked at the crown in her shaking hands.
“I’m queen,” she whispered.
“For a few days, until I return,” I said, and whether this was the most brilliant idea I’d ever had, or if it was the biggest mistake I would ever make, I wasn’t sure.
But I would be on my way to Nilah—one way or the other—today, and I believed I could handle whatever waited for me back here when I returned with her.
I believed the palace knew what it was doing, that it would have intervened if Jasewine hadn’t been worthy.
And most important, I believed in Raja.
“Temporary queen,” she whispered, running her fingertips over the sharp edges of the crown.
“Raja remains your second in command, Jasewine. And everything else remains as is, until I return. Do you understand?” A nod and a shaky sigh. “Do you think you can do this?”
Again, she looked at me. “Yes,” she whispered, but it was good enough for me.
I nodded. “Good. Go, eat, prepare, do what you need to do before you come back and take over.” I took the crown from her hand. “Send Raja to me while you do.”
She bowed her head and moved back a couple of steps, but she didn’t leave just yet.
Instead, she looked at me, now with a completely new light. “Why? Why would you leave your kingdom to me? I’m a stranger.”
Because I won’t leave Nilah’s life in anybody else’s hand.
“I think Helem was a bad man, too, Jasewine,” I told her, which was a big part of the truth as well. “And I think you’re good.” At least for now. I’d seen power corrupt, and I didn’t think anybody strong enough to preserve themselves in the face of it, but it would be only days.
And there was something about Jasewine that had all my instincts at ease.
“You’re…you’re absolutely sure this is a good idea?” she asked, her voice shaking still, though the color on her cheeks had already returned.
“I am.” I wasn’t. “I’ll call for you when I’m ready.”
Another bow of her head. “Yes, Your Highness.”
By the time she walked out the doors, I put the crown on the table and went back to the windows, thinking of the best way to break this to Raja. Thinking of the best way to walk out of the palace without being stopped by it.
It won’t, I told myself. The throne won’t be empty. The palace will not stop me. That’s what I hoped for with my entire being.
While I waited for Raja to come give me a piece of her mind, I reinforced the throne room with clearer instructions, not only to keep anyone who wanted to harm me out of this throne room, but any kind of magic at all that wasn’t mine.
And lastly…
“Let me hear you.” I raised a hand and released my magic onto whatever spell kept the sound of that waterfall muted.
It took more effort than I thought it would, but whatever sound barrier had been put on it broke under the pressure of my shadows—and the sound came all at once, burst out into the world like it had finally been set free.
I breathed deeply, heard every drop of water rushing down the mountain, and my mind cleared a little bit instantly, following the sound.
And as I watched the stars for a moment longer, the night didn’t feel all that dark anymore.