Chapter 5 #2
As the King and I grew closer, Leilani gave me a wider and wider berth. I knew she resented our attachment, but I was so starved of affection, so desperate for a father figure, I made no efforts to pull back. I revelled in his company.
Six moonscycles after I arrived at the palace, Thawtide approached.
I’d expected lavish celebrations to mark the start of Estelia’s former growing season, was disappointed to learn the King wouldn’t countenance large public gatherings, not since the Queen’s illness.
On the eve of the feast, he summoned me to his chambers, told me he’d resolved to take his wife south for the celebrations, to visit a famed healer too old and infirm to leave the Low Lands.
Under such auspicious stars, he hoped the erstwhile bounty of Thawtide might augur the Queen’s recovery.
He presented me with a stick pin, the twin to the starred-sapphire Regent’s Ring he’s never without.
As he fixed the pin to my lapel, he made first mention of a future alliance with the Princess.
‘Your father wished it,’ he said.
‘I thought the Princess was forbidden to marry?’
He must have seen a shadow of trepidation pass over my face as I remembered those rivulets of strange, silver blood. The rumours I’d heard about the Starborn and their powers. Would I be expected to breed with her?
He crouched down so we were of an eye. ‘Leilani is many things,’ he said, ‘but she is my heir, first and foremost. I’ve rescinded the law prohibiting her binding.
It doesn’t follow that her blight must pass down the bloodline.
There’s no reason to suppose you can’t sire strong, healthy heirs upon her.
Untainted heirs, that is.’ He laid a heavy hand on my shoulder.
‘You have what it takes to manage her. You are your father’s son, Astrophel.
I would not trust her to anyone less worthy. ’
I stammered my thanks, knowing full well the surviving full-blooded male members of the coterie, those yet unbound and of an appropriate age, must have already been approached and refused the match on the grounds of Leilani being Branded.
This was less the King picking me, and rather him having no other available options.
But I had never hoped for such an honour. I never dreamt so high.
I grew two inches that night.
I rode out after our audience, accompanied by my limpet of a tutor, to the market square to purchase a box of mooncakes from one of the many night-stalls heaving with them.
My mother used to make the pastries every Thawtide and I thought to share a home comfort with the Princess the following morning, to start afresh now we were to be bound.
But when I returned to the palace, I noticed a lit taper in her chamber window.
After bidding my tutor goodnight, I waited for perhaps an hour, then stole upstairs, keeping careful watch for patrolling guards, but these were scarcer than usual, most already deep in their cups in the palace kitchens, carousing the health of the season.
I rapped lightly at Leilani’s door. It was late, I knew her liegemaid would be safely abed in her own chamber at this hour.
I waited, hands sweating where they gripped the box.
It seemed paltry the longer I looked at it.
I was about to leave, when the door creaked open.
Leilani stood in her antechamber, hair unbound, sleep-lidded eyes growing wide as she registered me. I opened the box, stuck out my hand.
‘Happy Thawtide. Wishing you light of the season.’ I made the neatest bow I could.
She hesitated. The honeyed scent of the cakes lay thick in the air.
Her fingers hovered above the box for what felt like an age.
I swallowed when she finally seized hold of one, was about to step inside as a crooked smile edged at her lips, but then her fingers curled to a fist, the smile faltered.
Her eyes rested on the pin at my throat.
‘Where did you get that?’ Her words settled cold as snowflakes.
I drew myself straighter. ‘Your father bade me wear it.’
‘But it’s a Stellarion jewel and you’re… you’re…’
My insides squeezed. I knew full well what I was. What I wasn’t.
‘He said I am to wear it, now you and I are betrothed.’
Her mouth fell open. Clearly, she hadn’t been told.
‘I won’t be bound,’ she croaked. ‘I can’t be. And never – never – to a lowborn like you.’ Her lips curled as she shoved the cake – now crumbling – back at me and slammed her door.
A moment she likely can’t remember. A moment I’ll never forget.
Shame swelled, but anger surged faster. She was Sistertouched. Who was Leilani to look down on me? I knew then there was little chance of a happy union between us. But binding to the Princess would cement my position at court, so marry her, I would. I kept my distance again after that.
Less than a sunring later, I left for the Asteum.
I worked hard there. Kept my eyes open – watching, listening, imitating.
I buried the parts of myself I didn’t care to remember, polished my rough edges, became someone the King could be proud of.
I thought occasionally of Leilani, wondering if she would also change.
What manner of bride would I return to? Hyperion visited me at the Asteum, but spoke little of the Princess.
Occasionally, he let slip stories of her disobedience, but always reluctantly – as if it pained him to admit to them.
Like the time she hoarded banned books about the vile traitors who killed my father.
Still, a picture crystallised in my mind of a headstrong young woman, prone to reckless behaviour, lacking in propriety, without proper respect for her position.
A tacit accord flourished between us during these visits. I would see to such failings after we were bound.
And at last, the time came for me to return to Meissa.
Again, Leilani stood alongside her parents on this very staircase to welcome me home.
Again, she wore a full veil. Again, she didn’t speak, merely offered a gloved hand for me to kiss.
It was hard to reconcile the image I’d constructed from the bitter crumbs gleaned from her father’s lips, with the slight young woman before me.
I wondered if we might not reach an understanding now we’d both matured.
But then came the news of her failed escape.
Rage simmering since the night of the spoilt mooncake boiled afresh.
I had condescended to this binding, agreed to serve as stud, to risk siring monsters, all for the good of the realm, to preserve the future of her line, and she deigned to flee?
Her father saw her punished, swore the lesson had been properly taught.
But I remembered the sour twist of Leilani’s lips as she pronounced me ‘low’.
She’d not changed at all. Still the same misplaced arrogance.
Still the same scorn. But I am no longer some peakscrub’s shame plucked fresh from the flats.
I’m a man grown, a member of The Nine, in manners and education now as well as name, if never by full blood.
If Leilani wants a cold marriage, she’ll have it. But I’ll do my duty. Binding gifts and all. Let her choke on them.
I slow as I approach the door to the Orbium.
It’s one room in the palace I’ve never entered, being reserved for the King and his Conclave.
I reposition the Stellarion pin at my throat, straighten my cuffs once more, smooth the silver brocade I spent hours selecting to match the dove-grey of my doublet. Everything must be perfect tonight.
A pair of Watchers flank the door. They step aside as I knock.
‘Enter,’ the King’s voice booms from within.
With a final adjustment to my short cloak, I push open the door and find myself inside a circular jewel box.
Every surface is gleaming, highly decorated, the kind of space so brilliant I can’t help but feel shabby – and yes, low – beside it.
Inhaling a cloud of thick incense, I cross the threshold, elongating my stride, squaring my shoulders – tricks I absorbed at the Asteum to take up space, to look as if I belong here.
I should have chosen the wider brocade.
‘Ah, Astrophel,’ the King says rising from his seat at the Star Table. ‘All ready, I trust?’ He takes in my binding clothes with a measure of approval, nodding once.
‘Yes, Radiance.’
‘A night I know we’ve both been anticipating for many a sunring,’ he says, clapping me on the shoulder.
‘A great privilege to bind our families. And ever my father’s hope.’
He frowns. Clears his throat. ‘A good man, Caelum. A loyal friend.’
There’s a pause. Why has he summoned me here?
I assumed it was to discuss the finer points of the ceremony, but the air feels strangely weighted.
As if to puncture it, the King turns, dragging an elaborately carved wooden box towards him.
He opens it. Candlelight winks off the rosy surface of a sickle blade.
By the Throne. My father’s sword.
My mouth runs dry. I lick my lips, try and keep my face ice-smooth.
‘For you,’ he says, proffering the sword by its pommel.
I bow from the waist. The blade is lighter than I expected but nicks the thumb I skim along its surface.
Wicked sharp. It also sparkles with a strange lustre, the same I glimpsed on Leilani’s skin when I found her by the fountain.
The rumours are true, then: starstone was mixed with the ore when the Crescent Swords were forged.
‘You do me a great honour,’ I say, still not believing I’ve been raised to a Conclave member. If my mother could see me now…
‘No greater honour than you do me, in marrying Leilani,’ the King replies darkly.
‘Tonight, you become my son in name, as well as affection. I know you’re loyal, Astrophel, that I can trust you just as I trusted your father.
And I need good men about me now. The starscribes speak of sky-signs, they suggest the Oralians mean to violate the Partition Treaties.
And the Northern rebels are clamouring…’ There’s the faintest tremor in his voice as he threads a handsome sword-belt around my waist.
I sheathe the blade, settle it at my side. I like the weight. Its every clank an avowal to my belonging.
‘Sit,’ the King says, drawing out a chair. ‘We’ve important matters to discuss.’
I do as I’m bid. ‘I shan’t fail you.’
He extends a hand, shakes mine with a crushing grip. ‘I know you won’t.’ There’s almost a bite to his words, a silent threat. Unbidden, a chill skitters through me. But then he’s pouring two goblets of wine, chinking his to mine. ‘And that’s why I’m trusting you with the Throne.’
I look up. A slow smile eases over his face.
I take a small sip.
He sets down his goblet, steeples his fingers. ‘After the binding, I have such plans for you, Astrophel. A reward for agreeing to this match with all its associated’—he wrinkles his nose—‘complications.’
It’s ever this way with him. He never makes an outright attack on Leilani, but there’s often an undertone; droplets of spite, which mean nothing on their own but, over time, have poisoned me against her, reinforced the knowledge that she’s volatile, that the King’s relying on me and the success of our binding to prevent his daughter from bringing the Throne into disrepute.
‘It’s nothing I can’t manage, Radiance.’
‘Hyperion,’ he says, a gleam kindling in his eyes. ‘High time you call me by my first name. Am I not soon to be as a father to you?’
Father. A word so long desired, so long denied.
‘I hope you’ll find my schemes agreeable,’ Hyperion says, draining the last of his wine.
Father. I roll the word once more in my mind. A gesture worth more to me than all the Crescent Swords in the realm.
I’d agree to just about anything after that.