Chapter 17
Elva
It’s the darkest part of the night, and the Golden Palace is as silent as the grave.
I steal through empty hallways, ears pricked for the slightest sound – hushed voices emanating from any of the opulent chambers, a clandestine meeting of traitorous Eyes.
I figured that if such gatherings were taking place, then this would be a good time to convene.
Those operating under the cloak of darkness often have something to hide.
I should know.
A ribbon of shadow curls from my fingertip and begins to twine round my wrist. I shake it off, cursing, and it fades into nothing.
I spent the day slipping into the rooms of some of the courtiers Hal suspects may be working for his uncle, armed with a mop and bucket for plausibility, searching for anything that might confirm his suspicions, yet I found no incriminating evidence.
When evening arrived I helped ready Elaith for the feast, weaving tiny red fire-opals through her hair, then joined the other serfs in the banquet hall, pouring wine and fetching platters of food from the kitchens.
I mostly lingered at the Eyes’ table, listening in on conversations, paying attention to particular groups and pairings, to who was whispering in whose ear.
Ingra wasn’t in our bunk when I returned to the serf quarters just before midnight. I couldn’t account for her absence. I began to worry that she’d been tossed in the Pit, though if Matron catches me out of bed, at least Ingra will have some company.
The Pit is exactly as it sounds – a damp, dark hole.
The space is cramped and narrow. You just have to stand there, or sit, hugging your knees tight to your chest. The walls are uneven, filled with footholes used to climb back up again once you’ve served your time – if you’re strong enough to climb, that is.
Ingra once spent three days down there without food or water.
She was barely conscious and had to be hoisted back up.
I was eleven years old the first time I was thrown in the Pit.
There was this little girl – she couldn’t have been more than seven or eight.
She was from Obsidia too. I remembered her from the ship.
She’d cradled this sorry-looking piece of sack that I think was supposed to be a doll, and would whisper to it over the creaking sails.
One time, I found her crying in a stairwell.
Matron had confiscated her doll, claiming that it could be carrying any number of diseases.
I crouched beside the girl, speaking softly and comfortingly, just like my mother would have.
Only, I didn’t realize that I wasn’t speaking Ostacrian – the language of our oppressors we were forced to learn upon our arrival here.
No, I was speaking in my native tongue, Obsidian. And I was overheard.
Matron dragged me by my hair to the Pit.
I was too scared to scream, but I recall making this awful whimpering noise as she selected a key from the bunch jangling ominously on her belt.
She reached down to unlock the hatch, swung it open, and then shoved me inside.
I fell and hit the ground with a jarring thud.
Moments later, the trapdoor was slammed shut behind me, and I was swallowed by the darkness.
I was left in the Pit all night. It was to teach me a lesson, Matron said. So that I would never do it again – speak my own language. And I didn’t. At least, not out loud. I think in Obsidian all the time. Right now, in fact. My thoughts are my own, and so are my memories.
All of a sudden, I hear footsteps heading in this direction. In a crowd I might be inconspicuous, but wandering the corridors alone in the dead of night – not so much.
I spot a door up ahead and slip inside.
The candles are still burning, the flickering light dancing across the walls of the room, which have each been designed to represent a different Crown Court – one carved with golden flames, another with crashing waves, the next with towering trees, and the last with hundreds upon hundreds of feathers.
In the far corner sits a grand piano hewn from solid gold.
The Golden Palace is always sparkling. That’s because every day it’s cleaned by an army of serfs.
The floor is so well polished that I can see myself reflected in it.
Sometimes, when Blaze was at training, I would sit in front of the mirror in her bedchamber.
Though it wasn’t an act of vanity. It’s because I can see my family in my face.
Astrid’s straight nose and cornsilk hair.
My mother’s high cheekbones. My father’s eyes – dark amber, like the sunset.
I tense as I remember what the Earth Cleaver told me about my eyes, about how they glowed in the dark that night that changed everything. Just like my moon panther Kjara’s did. Just like my grandparents’ had in the years before the war.
The footsteps are louder now. I will them to keep moving down the corridor, but to my horror the door handle begins to twist.
It’s instantaneous the way the darkness springs from my fingertips.
Trembling, I shrink back against the wall, melting into the shadows.
I didn’t call upon them – I didn’t will them to appear – and yet here they are, tendrils of dark mist wrapping themselves round me.
Perhaps if I weren’t so afraid I’d feel something close to wonder.
At that moment the door swings open, and someone steps inside. I hold my breath, then exhale in relief. It’s Hal. Only, as his eyes slide over me without a flicker of recognition, the comfort I feel at the sight of him is swamped by a chilling realization.
He can’t see me.
Shock roots me to the spot, rippling up my spine.
The shadows – they must be concealing me from view. They’re hiding me.
I clamp my hand over my mouth to muffle the choked gasp that catches in my throat as understanding sparks to life amid the gloom.
The Earth Cleaver called my magic a gift, but it didn’t really feel like one.
I never asked for it. I still don’t understand how it happened.
I’ve spent these past few weeks terrified of accidentally revealing myself, since I never knew when those ribbons of darkness would emerge, or why.
I couldn’t see a connection – until now.
Or could it just be a coincidence that the shadows seem to appear when I’m frightened?
Almost as if my fear wakes them up, like they can sense I’m in danger and want to protect me.
I think of what my mother used to say.
Don’t shut fear out, Elva. Invite it in.
The idea is strangely comforting. I feel the knot in my chest loosen slightly. For if I’m right, then maybe I have a shot at controlling my power. Maybe I could … use it.
I watch as Hal crosses to the piano and sits down.
He opens the lid and flexes his hands before positioning his fingers gently on the keys.
He plays very well. Sometimes he follows the sheet music; other times he creates his own.
Today it’s the latter. He pours himself into every note.
The music echoes through me, beautiful and soulful and sweeping.
There’s a desperation to it, too – the difference between wanting to play and needing to.
It soothes me, listening to him, and after a while the shadows slowly recede into nothingness.
Steeling myself, I step out into the light.
Hal startles as I lay a hand on his shoulder, and the music stops so abruptly that my caress feels more like an assault.
‘Elva.’ He smiles softly. ‘I didn’t see you.’
I feign nonchalance. ‘You’re the one who said I’d make a good spy.’
His expression turns slightly sheepish. ‘I’m sorry for springing it on you like that. I know it’s a lot to ask.’
‘I want to do it,’ I assure him. ‘I want to help. And you were right, about me going unnoticed. None of the Eyes gave me a second glance at the feast. I’m invisible.’
‘Not to me,’ says Hal. ‘Never to me.’
He shifts to the side. I glance warily at the closed door before sitting down next to him on the piano stool.
‘Why aren’t you in bed?’ I ask. ‘It’s late.’
‘Too much on my mind. Anyway, I could ask you the same question. Why are you wandering the palace during the small hours?’
‘Why do you think? I’m your shadow, remember?’ My lips quirk in spite of myself.
‘I didn’t mean for you to not get any rest,’ he says reproachfully.
‘I like the nighttime,’ I reply with a shrug. ‘It’s peaceful, and it reminds me of home.’
The lines on Hal’s brow cut deeper. ‘You know you didn’t have to accept, don’t you? You know that you’re free to go, whenever you choose.’
‘I do, and I choose to stay.’
His voice is strained. ‘I understand why, and that it’s not only for me that you’ve decided to remain.’
My heart thumps painfully. He’s talking about the serfs.
‘I won’t abandon them,’ I say quietly. ‘I couldn’t live with myself.’
Hal rakes a hand through his hair in a manner that reminds me of his half-brother.
‘You know I always planned to free them when I came into power,’ he says.
‘To take action where my father did not. But my advisers still won’t even entertain the idea.
They think me too soft. If I’m to make them listen – really listen – I’ll have to target them separately.
Appeal to them one by one. Bribe them, if I have to. ’
I’ve seen the way they look at him – Kalf, Alator and the others.
They see him less as a leader and more as a boy.
A figurehead. I think back to a time not so long ago, when Hal was just a prince, powerful in name but powerless when it came to facilitating real change.
I thought everything would be different when he took the throne.
Yet now, even as emperor, he walks a fine line, subject to public opinion, governed by his own advisers.
‘Can’t you just … overrule them?’ I ask tentatively.
His face twists with anguish. ‘I wish it were that simple. But I have to tread carefully. I can’t give my enemies, or my allies, any more reasons to question my judgement.’
I hate it. I reject and resent it with every fibre of my being, but he’s right. Thanks to King Balen, the political climate is unstable. If Hal were to liberate the serfs now, the entire system might collapse. A decision like that could bury him. And then where would we be?
I make no reply, lightly tracing the dark circles beneath his eyes.
He looks even more gaunt than yesterday, his lean frame verging on thin, his cheekbones jutting out, sharp and angular.
It scares me, seeing him like this. I remember what he said in the observatory, about the Eyes spreading lies regarding his poor health.
Only, they don’t appear to be lies. Hal does look ill.
I assumed it was stress-related at first, but now I’m not so sure.
And no matter how many times I ask him about it, he just shakes his head and says, It’s nothing.
Hal threads his fingers with mine. ‘I’ve been thinking about … about the other reason you’re reluctant to return to Obsidia.’
I feel my throat tighten.
‘I know your parents died in the raid, and that you think your sister didn’t survive the journey over here.’
I glance down at our joined hands, grief tearing at my insides.
‘For days, I’ve been poring over old ledgers and treaties,’ Hal continues. ‘And tonight … I found something.’
My head snaps up. ‘What?’
‘The year you were … taken, my father made a deal with our neighbouring kingdoms. Rather than trading gold, he decided to trade serfs.’
My breath catches. I pull my hand from his grasp and brace it on the piano. ‘What’re you saying?’
‘That two of the slave ships departing from the Otherlands were not bound for Ostacre, but for Thaven and Vost.’ He pauses, swallows, looks me right in the eyes, then says, ‘Elva, there’s a chance your sister may still be alive.’
His words take a moment to land. But when they do, they hit me with the force of a falling star, lighting up the world with joy so bright it’s blinding.
Astrid.
Tears well up and spill over. A flood of relief breaks free from the carefully constructed dam inside my chest and cascades through me in dizzying waves. I sway where I sit, and Hal reaches out to steady me before I topple right off the stool.
‘Help me discover which Eyes are still loyal to me and I’ll send them as emissaries to make discreet enquiries,’ he says. ‘I can’t promise to find her, but I can promise to try.’
I make a sound somewhere between a sob and a laugh, and the next thing I know my arms are round Hal’s neck and I’m pulling his mouth down to mine.
His lips are cool and soft, always a little hesitant at first, as though making sure this is really what I want.
Then one of his hands moves to cup my waist as the other slides gently through my hair.
For once, I don’t object to my heightened senses. His touch is as warm and welcome as sunlight caressing my skin.
Suddenly Hal pulls back, his face twisted in pain, a fist pressed to his forehead.
‘What’s wrong?’ I ask, startled.
He stifles a low groan, his jaw clenched. Then, with obvious effort, he straightens up, his expression smoothing over.
‘What was that?’ I demand.
He shakes his head dismissively as he tucks me under his arm. ‘It’s nothing.’
I let him lie, let it slide, let him brush a tender kiss to my temple – but I don’t let it go.
I take the tunnels back to the serf quarters, and when I slip into my room, I find Ingra fast asleep and snoring, sprawled across her bunk. Wherever she was, it wasn’t the Pit.
In my dreams, I see Astrid, as beautiful as the night, beckoning me home.