Chapter 11
His brother is the king.
Gently, he pinches my chin to stop my strange grinning.
My chest jumps on more laughter. “So that makes you . . .”
Nicostratus Aetherion.
My Prince Nicostratus. The one I met as a child, in the royal woods, down south in Hinsard.
The one who saved me.
He casts his gaze to the road carved into green hills, where he’d saved us from a fate at the border. “I got waylaid yesterday . . . it was dawn by the time I reached him. I told him about you”—Prince Nicostratus snaps his head towards me—”without divulging your identity.”
I nod and nod.
He smiles, but the brackets around his mouth are thin, tired. “I wouldn’t want to cause you any more trouble.”
Trouble.
Branded redcloaks, dead. A dying Silvius. The blood River left behind . . .
Clouds roll overhead, casting us in shadow. Again, I snicker.
“I told him you were . . .” His voice is soft, and I wonder if he’s ever suspected I’m also the boy he saved in the woods.
“I don’t often ask for favours; he sensed my urgency.
He didn’t ask questions, just promised he’d keep the one I cared for safe.
So he defied our uncle and commanded the decree.
I don’t want to know what that cost him. ”
He’s Prince Nicostratus.
His brother—the person he’s gushed about in his letters, who he loves wholeheartedly, who he would do anything for—is the king.
The cause of so much pain in my world. I chuckle and chuckle until my eyes are stinging from squinting.
“Prince Nicostratus . . .”
“I like the way you say my name.”
“Nicostratus.” I’m familiar with the taste of his name on my tongue and say it again in my head. Nicostratus, Nicostratus, Nicostratus.
A smile. “You gave me a chance to live.” He pauses. “I hid my name—”
“For my safety?”
“Yes.”
“Did River—”
“He knew. I asked him, I asked all my men to . . .”
“Pretend.”
He picks up my hand. I let him squeeze my fingers, but I can’t squeeze back. I can only watch with strange fascination, not feeling any of the pressure but seeing how my fingertips turn white.
“Are you angry?” he asks.
Another abrupt laugh. “Actually we’ve met before.”
Nicostratus frowns at the canal where we first met River.
“I was nine. I was in the royal woods. Trespassing, I guess you’d say. We spent the night in the violet oak tree. It was freezing cold.”
His frown deepens.
He’s forgotten. I look away, hollering with laughter.
A hand touches my forearm. “It’s not that it wouldn’t have been memorable. I had an accident and lost a lot of childhood memories.”
“What happened?” I say, dabbing my watering eyes.
“A story for another time.” He looks away. “I like the idea we’ve met before.”
“I thought you might be a criminal. The good kind, who steals from the rich and gives to the poor.”
“I might as well be a criminal,” Nicostratus says. “I’m hunted like one.”
“You were . . . hunted last night?”
“Someone must’ve been spying on me during my mother’s last days. I was too distracted to notice.”
Has he even had the chance to cry for her?
Or is he like me?
“My beads caused all of this,” he says. “The pattern is supposed to match the palace, but they changed it after my mother died. Set a trap, expecting my return. My brother sent word, but it never reached me. I ended up fighting in the royal belt most of the night before sneaking into his quarters.”
“All that—” I blow out a bewildered breath “—and you still came for us? Did Skriniaris Evander tell you?”
“Evander?” Nicostratus frowns. “No. I had an aklo keeping me informed.”
I scan the forest behind us. “Do you have aklos with you now?”
“No. But I must return soon.”
I poke his arm. “Always coming and going.” Like Maskios. Always leaving too quickly. I push the thought with rough urgency to the back of my mind.
“Forgive me,” he says.
My brow quirks. “Withholding forgiveness from a prince . . . am I even allowed?”
Light gleams in Nicostratus’s eyes. “Finally, some good comes of this birthright.”
We share a smile, and Nicostratus points towards Frederica’s estate in the distance. “Go again to my aunt’s—”
I sit straighter. “She’s your aunt?”
“Her estate is special; a gift from her father, my grandfather, after she spent years as a hostage in Iskaldir. She has the right to govern her own hundred acres. The king cannot impose laws there. Even the high duke doesn’t dare interfere.”
“Frederica . . . is queen of her own kingdom?”
“She’d never call herself that. She uses the gift to help those in need. The displaced often come to her for protection until they can get proper documentation to live in the wider kingdom. She saves lives. My brother and I help when we can, and many others offer financial support.”
Like Quin the arrogant merchant?
A spluttering cackle has me doubling over.
Nicostratus pats my back. “You’re considered blessed if you give to Frederica.”
I shove Quin’s image to the back of my mind and sit up.
“Go to her estate in case you’re pursued,” he says. “They won’t easily search for you there.”
I nod, and Nicostratus captures my chin with a crooked smile that should make my heart ram against my ribs, but I can’t feel it.
He reads the numb fear in my eyes. He softly drags his fingers off and rises to his feet. “Will you be alright?”
“Of course! I am already. I’m fine.”
He hesitates, but is soon gone; the moment he’s disappeared, I rush to the hut and wake Akilah. “You won’t believe it,” I say. She grumbles and I prod her again. “Silvius. He’s the royal boy from the woods.”
She launches into a sitting position, disbelief and curiosity in her eyes.
And I . . . laugh.
River’s name has been etched onto a wooden tablet and placed on a small hill, overlooking Frederica’s hundred acres and the snaking silver canal.
Every morning, Akilah hauls me there and squints at me, waiting for something, while we sit on moist earth under the first rays of dawn.
We leave for breakfast on her sigh, and after, I busy myself helping around Frederica’s estate.
There’s not a minute where I’m not using my hands to wash dishes, or clothes, or carry buckets of bath water.
And after another long day, I return to our chamber.
Akilah is asleep, exhausted, snoring lightly.
I lie down for rest too, but like all the nights, I can’t find any. I toss and turn and chuckle.
Taking some candles and a flame-maker, I trudge out into the night and up the small hill to the tree, to the epitaph.
I set the two candles down. One of them tips over and rolls into my knees.
I put it up again, only to knock over the other.
On gritted teeth, I plant that up the right way.
I uncap the flame-maker and blow into it until a flame flickers.
Cradling a hand around the flame, I move it towards the candles.
The flame goes out in a stirring breeze.
I try again.
The flame fires over the wick, but it doesn’t catch.
Another breeze blows it out.
I dig into the dirt, making a shelf with my hands. There, now the candles will be protected.
The flame-maker doesn’t start and I blow.
I blow and blow and blow into it, yelling at the stupid thing to work. Quin would have said something sharp, clipped—Control and discipline, Cael. My throat tightens on the rawest laugh. “I just want light. I just want some light.”
I hurl the flame-maker against the tree beyond, take a candle, and throw that too. The other I bash against the hill, my eyes stinging.
A tiny little flame. Is even that so much to ask?
My shoulders shudder and a hot sob rushes through me. The candle under my hand continues to break apart.
My cheeks are damp where I swipe at them with waxy hands.
It’s not fair.
There should have been a first clammy kiss on a cold night overlooking a moonlit canal.
Gifting of sparkling lovelights on a rickety boat.
Exchanging rings in a luminarium as guests danced.
Bestowing a crying infant their given name.
Carrying children around a courtyard pretending to be a donkey.
Striking a cane on naughty wrists and trying not to cry.
Giving long-saved silver pieces and sending new adults off into the world.
Welcoming the next generation with a feast during blueberry season, losing half the food to magpies.
Grieving the loss of close friends, wearing black robes for months.
Singing a final song when all hearing is lost.
That’s what his life should have been.
Not his humming stopped before his voice had deepened.
I bow over his epitaph, resting my forehead against the wood.
Tears fall over his name all night.
Akilah finds me as I traipse down the hill. She glances at the dirt and wax mess behind me and touches my arm.
“Let’s go home.” When I don’t speak, she fills in the quiet. “Likely that redcloak didn’t want to get in trouble. I don’t think anyone is looking for us. Let’s go back.”
My stomach feels heavy, filled with sludgy guilt. We can go back. River can’t.
“If we leave now, we could be there in time for the examination this afternoon.”
I stiffen. “I can’t.”
“Skriniaris Evander could unseal you—”
“I can’t.”
Akilah grabs my hands and looks me in the eye.
I shake my head emphatically.
“Cael, stop. What happened is not your fault.”
I laugh hollowly; it stings. “I killed two men. I almost killed you.”
I pull free; she chases my hands and clutches them tighter. “Skriniaris Evander said the adverse effect with ippifras shouldn’t have been enough to kill him. You made one small mistake.”
“That had massive consequences!”
“Cael . . . please. Healing is everything to you.”
I close my eyes and breathe out deeply. “Maybe they’re right. I don’t have enough magic. Only pure linea have enough.”
“Stop it. No matter how little you have of it, you wield your magic well.”
“If I had more . . . If my magic were better . . . Maybe then I could be a proper healer. But—”
The ground trembles and leaves shush around our ankles—a soft warning before . . .