Chapter 6
Chapter six
Inheritance
“Aman?”
Greyv looked torn between amusement and disbelief.
“Keep your voice down!” Skyre hissed, sending furtive glances at his attendants.
The dining room was quiet, save the crackle of fire and the monotonous rattle of window latches.
Wind blew in cold off the sea, battering the glass.
Skyre felt besieged on every side. He’d been given his permanent quarters—an apartment in the northwest tower.
The rooms were more spacious than his others, opulent even, but it did nothing to alleviate his frustration.
He slumped in his chair.
Twice in a fortnight his crown had been challenged by forces outside his control. A control, he had been told, was absolute.
Skyre’s memories narrowed to bath salts and steam. He couldn’t get him out of his head. That… druid.
Everyone was expecting a queen. And with reason. Cerys was not the sort of name men carried. If he could even call him that.
The image of that thin, unfed body draped in wool clung to his mind. That long tangle of pale hair… and those eyes… quiet as the moon.
Skyre’s fingers tightened around his tankard.
He had not been brought a queen—no nimble woman of impeccable beauty, but a sad excuse of a man.
“What do we make of that?” Greyv laughed.
His dark strands were swept shamelessly aside and bound loosely at his collar.
Uncouth, their betters might have said. But then, the Vaich’s companion was a powerful son from a powerful family, and there were few in Cullach with enough coin to tell him otherwise.
Skyre certainly wasn’t going to scold him for the excessive liberties he took with his dress, nor the lazy manner he’d grown into.
They’d both been attentive pupils in their younger years, but Skyre couldn’t remember the last time his friend took anything seriously.
It occurred to him Greyv might not have been the best person to talk to. Simply his only person.
“What do you think of it?” Skyre asked, anyway.
Greyv shrugged. “This moon business… seems like bullshit.”
Skyre stared at him.
“Corral a bunch of women in a room and they’re bound to start plotting.
And can you blame them? They’re sharing quarters with corpses.
I’d start talking to ghosts, too.” Greyv tipped his tankard to his lips, taking a long swig.
“Though that Oracle might say too much, you ask me. And the Speaker… well, she could do better with her lips.”
Every Vaich was assigned a Speaker upon their ascension to the throne; a liaison between Rhyd-hal and the Augeri.
Historically, Speakers had been court diviners—heralds of the calamitous and the mundane.
Skyre had been granted a young priestess by the name of Hirí, though Medhin had warned him not to let her youthful innocence deceive.
“She’s an exemplary talent,” the Sun Matron had told him. “They say she was inducted into the Nytherim at only thirteen. She’s a prodigy, and that makes her dangerous.”
Hirí had first been given to Lach’Dun, though; had only occupied the position for two years before the old Vaich was slated for death.
She was beautiful and had tempted half of Rhyd-hal before the first sunfall of his reign.
But he didn’t need a fortune teller—he was destined to live forever.
And so he’d been quick to send her away to retrieve his queen.
Now they had both returned, and he was exceedingly—
“… fucked.”
“What?” Skyre bleated.
“I said you’ll be fucked if you let this get away. This mangy tree dog is not your equal. You’re better off cutting his throat and being done with it.” Greyv waved an attendant over, miming for more ale. “If people start getting ideas—”
“They’ve already got ideas! They heard the prophecy on Aghmuir, and I cannae bring him all this way just to kill him in his bed. Everyone will ken I’m the one who did it!”
It’d be folly to undermine the Nytherim so openly. It was grim enough his reign had begun with uncertainty—to sever the moon goddess’ prophecy would be inviting dark omens.
“Alright, so his throat is off-limits, but his pride isnae,” said Greyv. “You said you saw him naked. If his cock was small, that’s worth telling. And if it wisnae, tell it, anyway.”
It was small, but saying so wasn’t going to do him any good.
Skyre scoffed. “You’re useless.”
Greyv chuckled. “And to think, not four weeks ago was the best day of your life.”
It had been.
Since he was a child, he’d held a million promises in his hand.
It never occurred to him they wouldn’t come true.
He’d longed for the outside world; for the field and the grandeur.
All those years spent waiting—biding his time in Righnach’Dúir, sating himself on illusions of glory.
Now the links were breaking, weakening the chain that held his hope.
“I thought I would prove myself on a stage of grass and blood,” muttered Skyre. “Instead, I fight paltry battles of scandal.”
Hearing his shift in tone, Greyv softened. “It will come, Skyre. Your place is here, with that crown on your head and that brand on your chest. Centuries willnae be undone by one woman’s blathering. You are the last Vaich. These fortune tellers have simply made a mistake.”
Night churned outside the window, desperate to come in. No matter how hard the fire worked, even a king’s hearth could not hold back the dark.
“Then, am I also a mistake?” Skyre asked.
Greyv sighed. “Every Vaich has been foretold—prophesied before birth. The moon witches had their purpose, and that purpose is spent. The Oracle just means to stay relevant. This queen ordeal is political nonsense. Petty rumblings from pettier heads. They are thunder, and we are the fury.”
Skyre smiled. He remembered the words from their boyhood, playing in the grove. When they would make believe themselves great warriors, bathed in their enemy’s blood.
Greyv’s hand perched on his shoulder. “Fifteen long years we waited. Dinnae let some fool doubt have its way with you. Have you nae always kent what you wanted?”
He had. And it was there at his fingertips; threatened, but no less sure. “Aye,” he said, glancing at his amber signet.
Greyv grinned. “Now I’m curious to see this man who’s come to uproot it all.”
A thousand years and never had a king of Cullach questioned his place. Challengers had come, but never with authority. The Vaichs were named by gods. And now… now there were two.
No, Skyre reminded himself, there was only one Vaich.