Chapter 8
Awoms value the life of all things and are rumored to have a connection with souls. As they worship Wala, their Mother Awom, they avoid violence at all costs, strive for peace, and harbor harmony within their habitats. In the eyes of the great continent, this is what makes them perfect for slavery.
—Examinations of Economy and Trade
Sometime later, a soft knock sounds from the tall door of my room. I flip a page in my book. “Enter.”
Yisabell peeks inside, her white hair and ice-blue eyes juxtaposing the blackness of the castle. Her twelve-year-old self beams at me.
“I”—she looks over her shoulder toward my guards—“I came to empty your waste bins for the night.”
I quickly wave her in.
She closes the tall door behind her, and runs to me, embracing me in a hug. I squeeze back tightly before letting go.
“Is your father gone again?” I say in Awom, her native tongue. She has that tightness in her eyes that’s only there when he’s gone.
She nods.
Alto, my father’s closest bondslave, has been gone more and more lately.
I take her hands, “He will return. Just stick with Haren and you’ll be fine.”
“I know.” She nods again then says, with a smile breaking through those ice-blue eyes, “I made something for you.” Her eyes wander toward the jewelry on my vanity and her smile fades. “But I understand if you don’t want to wear it.”
“Nonsense. Show me.”
She retrieves a small metal ring from the worn pocket of her black slave garb.
“It’s a snake,” she says, holding the roughly forged strip of iron shaped into a snake chasing its tail.
I take it from her palm. “The symbol of transformation and rebirth.”
“You don’t have to wear it,” she says. “I know my beliefs are considered a weakness in your kingdom.”
I hold the ring in front of my eyes. “Valuing life does not make you weak.”
She smiles. “Even smaller forms of life, like snakes or toads?”
I ruffle her hair. “Even those.”
She beams at me as if I hold the sun in the sky.
I swallow, a sudden tightness in my throat. I slide the metal snake onto my pinky. “I’ll never take it off.”
I long to give Yisabell a gift in return, but bondslaves are not allowed personal items. I vow, as I have silently vowed before, to free her and her people when I take the throne.
“Would you like me to tell you a story?”
She nods, her eyes as wide as her smile.
“You know I was not always heir to the Zarr throne,” I say. “When I was younger than you, I lived with my mother in the Zo palace while my father was the Zarr infantry general.”
She tilts her head with undiluted interest, her pale, white freckles scrunching around her smile.
“The whole palace was gorgeous, but my favorite room was the library. They call it the Beacon of Zo because every surface—every spine of every book—is bathed in light. The ceiling rains down in thousands of lights strung at all lengths. And when it’s dark, it looks like a night’s sky blinking in the distance. Not foggy and clouded like our night sky, but like the ones I’ve read to you about—the ones in other realms with stars and galaxies.”
Her eyes glaze. “Is that where you learned to speak my tongue? The Zo library?”
I nod, my throat tightening, “A friend of mine taught me there.”
My heart gives a jerking, bleeding tug when I think of Tian, but for Yisabell’s sake, I’m able to keep my grief from showing. I tap her nose as I hold back the sting behind my eyes.
“My story is about that friend, an Awom boy who was a little older than you are now. He told me legends of the first mother spider who was shunned from the world with nowhere to raise her children; how she created a home for them spun of silk.”
Her brows furrow. “I know that story already.”
I lean in closer, “But I didn’t tell you how he told me the story. He traded his meals with some castle servants in exchange for a worn-out tablecloth. Deep in the library, he built a fort with it, draping it over a table. I snuck biscuits from the kitchens, and we ate them in the fort while he told me all about the mother spider.”
I call for Liha’s magic to fill my palm. She obliges, and pink smoke swirls from my hand, taking the shape of a great spider.
Yisabell giggles, her eyes so incredibly bright, as the smoke-spider skitters around her, then on top of her worn dress. She laughs and the sound is loud and beautiful, like harps during the summer solstice.
A pounding comes from my door and Brunar, the leader of my guard, bellows, “Is the bondslave finished?”
My stomach drops.
Yisabell’s laugh cuts off, her head snapping back and forth, looking for the waste bin.
I point. “In my bathing chamber. Go grab it. I”ll distract him.”
If Brunar tells my father about Yisabell she’d be punished at best. Or end up like Tian at worst. I tighten my robe and go out into the corridor, closing my chamber door behind me.
My fleet of seven armed guards stand in formation near my chamber door, and they stiffen at my presence. The unworldly chill and dark swirling air tells me that the spirit from earlier is still here, lurking. I’m used to passing spirits, but my palms go clammy at the amount of power radiating from him, as if the floor itself cracks at his presence.
Power like my father’s.
I withdraw the dagger at my thigh and snap it up to Brunar’s neck. “Watch your voice, Brunar, because if I hear it after I return to my chambers—”
I press the dagger deeper into the stubble on his neck, testing the point of bloodshed. “I’ll make sure no one hears it again. Understand?”
He avoids my eyes.
I would never kill him, but Brunar doesn’t know that.
His eyes remain pointedly on the floor. “Yes, Princess.”
“Good. Now make yourself useful, and take the bondslave back to her room, where she belongs.”
Yisabell is one of the bravest twelve-year-olds I’ve ever met, and even though she can see perfectly in the dark, being alone in the dark halls of this castle scares her.
Two of Brunar’s guards break formation to escort Yisabell, one on each side. They each take an arm, yanking it rougher than necessary, making her drop the bag of waste. Anger boils inside me, but I can’t say anything without endangering her. She rushes to clean it up before they lead her away.
The cold deepens behind me, and I swear, ice cracks from somewhere as the dark spirit growls, “You cruel little beast.”
I shove my fear down like everything else and turn to look over my shoulder at the dead end of the hall, above my guards’ heads where the dark spirit hovers. Raising my dagger up, I point its blade at where his frigid essence mists the air.
“Say that again. I dare you.”
The mist stiffens as if surprised but doesn’t make another sound as I slip back into my rooms, trying and failing to check my temper.
As usual, Liha leaves for the night to eavesdrop on the gossipy conversations of the maids. The moment she’s gone, and no one is around to see, I kick the nearest thing to me: My reading chair.
When it only skids across the stone floor, instead of a more satisfying catapult across the room, I take it by the backrest and throw it over with a frustrated scream, letting my never-ending rage out.
A guard pounds on my door. “Everything alright, Princess?”
My nails bite the inside of my palms as I count to three before saying, “I’m fine.”
I slump down beside the upturned chair, embarrassed that I am no better at controlling my temper than my father. After deep-breathing exercises, I go to stand, but a black rectangle shape lodged into the chair’s underbelly catches my eye. A little black diary hiding up in the chair’s underbelly. I tug it out and turn it over in my hand to find no name or marking on it. I bend the soft leather back and fan the pages with my thumb. Dust wafts from the book as I flip through pages of elegant handwriting. Curious, I turn to the first page, and shamelessly dive in.
The power of manipulation really boils down to the understanding of three things: A person’s strength, weakness, and motive. If you know any one of them, you have a serious weapon, because any seasoned manipulator knows: They all intertwine.
Strengths are weaknesses.
Weaknesses are strengths.
And motives drive every word and action.
Take this diary of mine.
As far as motives go, it’s a place to unload my secrets—a strength because it contains documented evidence for me to piece together and analyze—but it’s also my greatest vulnerability should someone find it.
That’s why it’s laced with poison and permanent, transferable ink.
So, if I see you walking around my castle with inked hands, I’ll kill you before the poison does.
I drop the wretched book, kicking it away from me, but it’s too late. My fingers are saturated in black ink. The room begins to spin, the poison already absorbing through my skin and turning me sick, fast.