44. The Unsolicited Proposal
The Unsolicited Proposal
In my sleep that night, I take control of the world of my dreams. I’ve seen it dark and smoking. I’ve seen it torn by wind. I haven’t seen it, yet, truly reflect who I am.
And now is the time. Because for some reason – maybe because I’m so content – it’s nothing but a white, welcoming light. The same light that finds me when I use my magic.
I’ve never seen this light properly, only felt its presence, or caught glimpses of it in my periphery.
But now I know what it looks like, any remaining fear I had of my power fades in its glow.
Because it’s bright, not blaring. Whole, not fragmented.
Open and wide and full of possibility, like a canvas. I can do so much with it.
I start by imagining the beach by Vikemy Village.
I try to remember the way the rough plains of sand strewn with shells, seaweed and stones slope outwards and down toward the sea.
The outcrops of washed-out, craggy rocks.
The dark cliffs behind me. The light sea in front of me.
Gradually, what begins as an idea, a memory, becomes reality.
The shoreline is there, exactly as I remember it.
The sand is not nearly as golden and fine as that on the desert island, nor is the sea as blue.
But the scene is still beautiful, in its own rugged way.
I focus on what I want to inhabit my world next.
With a movement of my fingers, I bring back the crane flies.
But I also will into existence the other insects I’d loved from the Palace.
Bumblebees, butterflies, moths. I look up at the sky, wishing I could see swans swooping overhead, the way they did in the dome, and then there they are.
One flies right by my waist. The beating of its wings sending my old dress fluttering around me.
Then I fill the water with the fish I used to catch, sea bass and black mullet and saltfins.
Then I cover the sand in the little crabs from the desert island.
I admire my work. It’s all of the many different parts of me.
The carousel is in the distance, out of place on the beach, like a shipwreck. I hadn’t even wanted it to be here, it just appeared without me knowing. Maybe it will go with me wherever I go. And maybe, it should.
There’s one thing I have left to do.
I use no magic for it. Just a simple piece of driftwood.
I write in the sand the names of all of those who have been lost. There may be survivors in Vikemy, I know that, but even if there are, they will be rebuilding themselves among their ghosts. And that, too, is worth mourning.
Writing the names of the dead in sand is tradition in Hevalla on days The Assembly designates for remembrance.
Hevalla has no religion – and having any religion is discouraged – but the tradition dates from hundreds of years ago, when the country was still a kingdom.
The idea is that as the tide rises, swallowing the names, these people will be committed to the memory of the sea, which – unlike humankind – never forgets.
The salt water from the sea, meanwhile, will flow through and strengthen those mourning them.
Old Mother. I smooth that over with my hand, opting instead to write her birth name. Junara Elisia Kiriyan.
Eric Tomlyn Merran.
Rissa Rone.
Sal Platt.
Tam Protcher.
I keep going.
Larise Kem.
Comery Kem.
Jerram Brodie.
Soon, I have a list that runs as long as a scroll.
I sit on the beach to wait for the tide to come in. A gentle breeze from the sea stirs in. Sends sand skittering over some of the names, like a blessing.
And Drake is here. I am aware of his steps over the sand behind me as he approaches.
The truth is, I felt his presence. He slipped in a while ago and has been watching me prepare the memorial.
I couldn’t shut him out this time.
Not when what I was doing was so important to me – and was already taking up all of my concentration.
Not when it always takes so much strength in me to even think about fighting him.
“May I add a name?” he asks, softly.
“Y-Yes,” I say a little surprised.
He treads over to the memorial. Writes, with the same piece of driftwood, at the bottom of the list,
Caloyan Zars Abennon.
His father. The late king. I didn’t know him personally, but knew he was a mild-mannered man who generally kept to himself, and was always well respected.
Drake avoids my gaze as he comes back towards me again.
I pull up my legs, locking my wrists around them.
“But you never knew him.”
He clasps his hands behind his back.
“In itself, a reason to mourn. Is it not?”
I suppose it would be.
“I have others I could add,” he says, softly. “But I rarely knew their names. Only the sounds of their voices.”
“Why?”
He stares at the ground. Speaks stiltedly. “I was not the only captive in the compound I grew up in. There were others – I believe, taken against their will – also being treated.”
It’s as if screws are driving into my chest.
His pain. I’m just feeling it.
It’s awful.
“I’m sorry.”
“I find it difficult to discuss.”
“Of course.”
“And there is something else more important right now.”
He stands still for a moment, the breeze catching the ends of his hair.
And then he does something that shocks me to my core.
He drops down onto one knee.
There is a box in his hand, open to the most ornate, beautiful ring I’ve ever seen of rubies and diamonds.
“It is probably not the right moment, or the right place,” he starts, voice low. “But time is running out. We will be in Rhavna soon—”
I snap back into my senses. Jump to my feet. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
“Asking you to be my queen,” he replies simply.
With a slight shake of his head, he confirms, “Not my advisor. Not my friend. My queen.” He pauses.
Nothing moves but the waves, the insects, the swans, and my beating heart.
“This ring has been in my family for generations. It was always going to be yours.”
“No,” I say. And then I’m tearing at my hair with my hands.
“You know it’s a no. Sisters,” I say, my voice high but clear.
I’m surprised I’m not screaming at him. “How many times can I rebuff you? I’m going around and around in circles with you.
Like…” I skim my gaze across the shoreline.
Point at the carousel at the far end. “Like that carousel.”
The ring vanishes from his hand.
He stands.
“Your plan isn’t going to work,” he states. “We need to do this, the way the fortune foresaw.”
“It will work,” I stress, my whole body rocking. “It already is. Dezeeves will speak to the Queen. Our power can thrive regardless of any attachment—”
He cuts through, edged. “I can feel you, when you are with him.” He adds, as an explanation, “Your rapture. Through the bond.”
I gawk at him. “You can feel me?” I physically recoil.
He nods. “I could not before. But now I can. And that is one of the reasons your plan won’t work. There are many. But that is one.”
Rage bursts through me. This sounds entirely like his problem, and not a reason my plan won’t work.
“Well, you’ll just have to get to used to feeling me,” I say, nauseous.
He exhales thickly through his nose, something flaring in his eyes. “And you. Would you be able to get used to feeling me? If I married someone else?”
“I’d have to.”
He’s disappointed.
He takes a step forwards. A crab scuttles away from him.
“I can feel other things, Ara,” he states, almost inaudibly. As if we’re not the only ones here. “I can feel how he lets you down.”
I reply instantly. “He doesn’t let me down.”
“He does. Quite regularly. He loses his temper. Says the wrong things. Acts irrationally – which endangers you. He can be rude and unkind to others, and to you. He lets you down.”
Any patience I had left is gone. I let my voice become a shriek. It sounds like how my soul feels.
“I’m not perfect either, Drake!”
I’m panting.
“I’m not perfect,” I repeat, “And neither is he. But he doesn’t let me down. You think you are telling me things I don’t already know about him? I know who he is. I love him anyway.”
He shakes his head again. As if my own mind is wrong, and only he knows it.
“You love that he suffered for you,” he says, disappearing like a trick of the light. Then he reappears right in front of me, dropping his head towards me. “But he has suffered for you no more than I have.” He holds out his arms to me, showing me the scars by his rolled-up sleeves.
“That’s not the same. You were made to suffer for me. No one made Cosmer—”
He’s interrupting me again. “I was made to, then. What about now?” Slowly, he sinks his head into the crook of my neck. I stand, completely frozen, as he whispers into my skin, “No one is making me now.”
I go cold all over. Swallow nothing.
Hesitantly, my pulse in my ears, I lift his heavy head with my fingers.
I try to form thoughts through the haze in my brain he put there. “You’re saying you have feelings for me. Beyond just wanting my power.”
“I am saying,” he says carefully, “I want you to marry me.”
I separate myself from him fully. “I’m sorry,” I say, because I am. “I sympathise for you. But my answer is no. And,” I add, “I would appreciate it if you would stop coming here. Especially when there is another man in my bed—”
“There isn’t.”
I almost laugh. “What do you mean, there isn’t?”
“He left your room. A while ago.”
The smile I’d half-made slips off my lips.
“What? No, he didn’t.”
He shrugs. “He did.”
I say, in a breath, “But where would he go?”
Drake flicks a crane fly off my shoulder, then dusts my sleeve with the palm of his hand. The movement is absent-minded, gentle. Almost a caress.
But his words wound me like violence.
“To that which he loves more than you.”
“There isn’t anything—”
I stop myself, my eyes widening. Because there is.
There is.
I hear Riss’ voice, like she’s standing by my shoulder.
You can’t even really fall asleep. You have to make sure they don’t get away from you.
I let Cosmer get away from me.
And he’s filling himself with something even my love can’t compete with.
Wake up, I will myself.
I do.
I’m in a cold sweat, as if I’ve had a fever.
I know without checking that Cosmer isn’t beside me. Of course he isn’t.
I’m in a dark room, on a virtually deserted ship, somewhere in the sky…
Alone in the world.