Chapter 10 #3
“Tomorrow, then,” the king replied to Chasin’s silent agreement, satisfied. “We shall see which of you three the sun favours.”
Footsteps shifted across the carpet. Confident, irritated strides that could only belong to Corvan—Ceran was too graceful—as he made for the door.
“So, we’re turning the sacred Godsguard into a marriage market now?” The crown prince’s voice dripped with a forced boredom that bled outrage through the cracks. “Do we get any say in this?”
Eiko’s brain stalled in shock.
Who’s getting married? she asked Hymn, reaching for him out of pure instinct. It better not be me. Please say it isn’t me.
“This isn’t up for debate,” the king snapped.
Well, it’s definitely him, her monster replied.
The king barrelled on. “The only choice to be made is who will be given to you, who will be given to Ceran, and who is utterly useless to us.”
Um … what? Eiko managed.
King Grigori values power. Hymn sounded concerned.
That is known around Lyra. The most powerful women in Lyra belong to the Godsguard.
He will want to curate his bloodline with that power, even if you aren’t highborn.
Especially since Chasin has already rebuffed him by taking up the position as Commander of the Godsguard.
He can’t take a wife or father children. Eiko recalled the gossip about the youngest prince that she had heard by the docks in Stonesigh. You think he did that to spite his father?
Even as the thought occurred to her, she remembered that day ten years ago, when Chasin’s father shoved him into the cave and left him there to die.
Why not choose from the women already on the Godsguard? she asked.
They would be stronger, Hymn guessed, of mind, I mean.
In the other sense, too, but I think it’s the mind he’s worried about.
They would be less malleable, older, more seasoned.
Perhaps more under Chasin’s control than his.
It’s incredibly rare for women to join the Godsguard, most of them refuse Silencing and attempt to flee Blackreach without a monster.
To have three in one year? King Grigori will think it’s fated, somehow, since he has three sons.
He will think this is a sign. His father was also very superstitious.
Ceran stood and moved for the door, quieter and steadier than his brother.
He didn’t speak, but something about the way the air moved around him made Eiko sit straighter.
She could have sworn he was studying her again as he walked behind the chaise.
But why her, when Rion sat so close? It made no sense.
Her stomach twisted nervously.
“Your Grace,” the attendant stammered from the doorway, sounding as though he had run up another fifty staircases. “I have brought tea, as requested.”
“Too late,” the king said. “We’re done here.”
It shouldn’t have mattered that she wasn’t going to be able to eat any of the cakes. It really shouldn’t have.
But it did.
She had endured three weeks of a torturous train journey, a full night of torturous walking, a torturous unmaking ceremony, and two days and nights of standing on a torturous cliff.
She wanted a bloody cake.
A hand touched the back of the chaise briefly, and Ceran’s voice slid down her neck like silk.
“Rest while you can,” he murmured, meant only for the three of them. “Tomorrow will be … taxing.”
Eiko’s breath caught, but she wasn’t the only one.
The two women on either side of her straightened in response.
Vana immediately ceased muttering lowly beneath her breath while Rion seemed to lean just a little closer.
Ceran didn’t seem to notice or care about the effect he had on them—he didn’t linger at all, simply straightened away and walked off.
Chasin hadn’t moved. Not once since the king had touched Eiko. He was a silent storm in the corner, his presence coiled so tightly that Hymn still refused to lift his head.
“Dismissed,” the king boomed.
Chair legs scraped. Clothing swished. Boots thudded.
The room emptied in a matter of seconds as Rion and Eiko moved to the door, still holding each other tightly.
Only when they were alone again, with Vana’s whispering and the attendant’s crisp footsteps leading them back to the barracks, did Hymn uncurl the tiniest bit.
Vana tugged at her sleeve. “They’re choosing,” she breathed out, a shiver in her voice. Eiko was beginning to recognise that Vana had two different voices: one, when the mania was gripping her, and one where she sounded almost normal. “Women and gowns and lace and crowns. They’re choosing.”
“We know,” Rion whispered back.
Eiko didn’t. Not really. All she knew was that standing anywhere near Chasin felt like cheating death, and that the king wanted to peel her open and inspect her innards.
That both the king and his youngest son had something terrible and terrifying cloistered inside them, a power too dangerous and sharp for her to properly comprehend, though Hymn’s reaction to them was enough of a hint.
She knew that Rion and Vana were soon to be married off to the eligible princes, Eiko was soon to be publicly declared as utterly useless.
She knew that Brightfort had roughly ten thousand staircases, and that she would never forgive the attendant for not bringing in cakes sooner.
Her fate was being stitched together in rooms she couldn’t see, by people she barely knew, with motives she couldn’t hear, no matter how hard she strained.
It seemed Maelon was right about there always being only two possible options for survival in Goldmoor, or whatever he had said.
She hadn’t been listening that closely. But the King of All had clearly decided there were only two possible outcomes for Eiko: marriage to one of his sons, or discarded by the wayside, bannerless, and useless.
She had already been discarded as useless once that day … two more times and she could declare a triple mark. She was already halfway there; she just needed to prove without any doubt how utterly useless she could be.
Except … there were three women and two vacant crowns. Either Eiko would be sacrificed to a prince … or her best friend would be, and while Rion would make a stunning and perfect princess in every way, she hadn’t chosen to marry either of the princes.
She hadn’t even met them, unless this very awkward high tea—in which no tea had been sipped and no cakes had been eaten, and they had been referred to as “girls” at least a dozen times, like they weren’t sitting right there—counted.