Chapter 11
My brother may be the chosen heir—his charisma and military skillset, lethal—but Father made it clear to me. Dagen is the face of Zarr, and I am the bloody, deceptive hand keeping him on the throne, because Father and I both know Dagen has too much of Mother in him.
A knock slams against my door, jerking me from sleep. I instinctively look for Preysee to answer it, but she won’t be tending to me for another hour, which is mildly inconvenient. I was really hoping she would know of something to remove the black stain on my fingers, now that the poison has finally cleared my system. My body still feels gutted and weak from all the retching.
After going through the fever, chills, and body convulsions, I concluded the diary was laced with boxelder vane. Very deadly, but judging by the date in the diary, sixteen years is enough time to dull its effects enough to not kill me. The poison was definitely meant to deter me from reading the blasted thing, but Lo doesn’t know how I work. I’m spitefully invested now.
Spitefully invested with a new set of reading gloves.
The knock bangs again, demanding and rude. Luckily Liha is inside my shield, so a pink puff of smoke has me dressed in a comfortable red dress and my hair pulled back.
Thank you, Liha. Since she was away from me when I found the diary, I decided not to mention it. She’s not a book person and I’m quite angry that I was outsmarted by one, so it’s a pride thing.
I yank the door open to a pair of slicing-green eyes burning down at me. Sorren.
“We’re training.”
He turns and stalks away, calling over his shoulder, “Get changed into something other than a gods-damned dress.”
“Someone is obviously not a morning person,” I say to Liha.
“Hmm. His soul strands are strange.”
“Soul strands?”
I call on Liha’s power to change into my fighting leathers as I walk: gold leathers with black studs, and matching gloves to hide my inky fingers. I’ve decided to let Liha assume I spilled ink in my studies instead of explaining how my curiosity was punished by an inanimate object.
“Every being has a soul that radiates energy. I call them strands. Others might call them energies or auras. They look like trails of color emanating from the person. My soul is pink. That’s why your caster smoke is pink.”
“You’ve never told me that.” I tilt my head, itching to take notes, since she’s never in the mood to talk about such things. “What color are my soul strands?”
She pauses as if contemplating whether or not to answer. “Yours are very pretty. Gold, lined with white . . . And black swirls.”
I frown at the last part. Those are the colors I keep shooing away from me. “Is that how you hear a mortal’s desires? Their soul strands?”
“I”ve told you. I’m not talented with desires. The desires have to be very strong for me to decode them, but I am always able to hear their noise. Sorren’s are eerily silent. Not hard to understand, not protected, just silent.”
“What do you mean protected?”
“I don’t mean anything by it.”
I narrow my eyes in her direction, knowing the difference in her tones and right now she’s using her very convenient, I-don’t-know-what-you’re-talking-about tone that tells me she knows exactly what I’m talking about.
“Liha—”
“Your first level-six duel is in six days,” Sorren says ahead, “and it will determine whether or not you make it into the King’s Duel.” He pushes through the doors to the training room. “If you make it into the tournament, the preliminaries are in four weeks. Since you are pathetic with a longsword, the king has ordered me to train you for it.” He jabs my arm. “So, you’ll be working on muscle growth.”
“I have muscle,” I snap. “And besides, muscle growth takes more than six days. Even a month—”
“Did I say muscle growth? I meant discipline.”
My eyes narrow on him. “I have that too.”
“Is that what you call your explosive, unplanned rages?”
I grit my teeth, ready to launch at him, but he turns his back to me and saunters over to a rack holding a long metal bar, motioning for me to come.
“In order to grow muscle—I mean, discipline—you’ll be pushed until failure.”
As I grudgingly face the bar, he adjusts the height until it’s level with my collarbone.
“Get under it.”
“What?”
“No more flips and showy dagger tricks. Get under.”
I look at the bar, then him, without moving.
He puffs a breath, as if I’m the most annoying thing on the planet. “Like this.”
He ducks his head, steps under the bar, and rests it on the back of his shoulders, before surging up and away from the rack, his body a slab of muscle and intimidation.
“You will squat, lunge, rest, repeat.”
He demonstrates, then re-racks the bar and backs away.
I’m not complaining, because I’d rather lift weights with my muscles than with power, but I’m curious as to why my father isn’t forcing vessel training on me.
“Why not vessel training?”
His face darkens. “Because your father has a soft spot for you. Get under the bar.”
I stare into his eyes which reveal nothing but shadows.
I narrow my eyes. “Where is my father, anyway?”
The darkness in the room flickers. “Get. Under. The. Bar.”
I clench my fists. “Fine.”
Liha swirls around me as I get under the bar, and heave it up, its length testing my balance on both sides.
“How much does this thing weigh?” I gasp.
“One-fifty. Now squat.”
“One-fifty is more than I weigh. That’s not normal—”
“You are not normal. Now, squat.”
My knees shake as I sink down.
“Lower.”
“It’ll crush me.”
He points to the metal bars on either side of my legs, running perpendicular to the bar across my shoulders. “It’s called a safety bar, and I intend on using it.”
I’m too burdened to glare at him, so I go as low as I can, determined not to use the safety bar.
“Now, back up.”
My legs quiver, pushing my body up with the bar, and I’m barely able to get up. He adds ten pounds on both sides. Then instructs me to do it again.
I drop into the squat, a whimper escaping me as my thighs give everything to propel me up. Slowly, shakily, I rise, and let out a breath when I reach the top.
He pushes me until my legs physically cannot hold me or the bar. I’m about to fall beneath the weight when he takes the bar in his hands from behind me, assisting enough for me to shakily rise to my full height.
“Again.”
He continues to spot me from behind, only helping when my muscles seize. When Liha tries to assist with magic, I don’t have the capacity to stop the smoke from unfurling.
He stomps on my foot. “No magic. Squat again.”
“I can’t.”
He slowly walks around to face me. “Pathetic.”
My temper rises as I glare at him, sweat rolling down my forehead.
“I will wipe the floor with you one day.”
He tilts his head with the closest thing to a real smile I’ve ever seen on him and scoffs. “Not if you trained every day for the next twelve years. Princess.”
He drops his hands on top of the bar, adding weight to it. “You are soft.”
I yell from the added resistance, my knees about to buckle. “I’m not soft,” I grind out. The gold-and-black spirit flutters in the distance.
He gets in my face, his hands still pressing down on my shoulders. “You’re soft and afraid.”
My knees crumble and I hit the ground, the safety guard catching the bar inches from my body. Stars dance across the ceiling as he bends over me.
“Time for arms.”
“I hate you.”
“No, you don’t.” His lips pull back from his teeth, the expression too dark for a smile. “But give it time.”
He takes me through every muscle group until I can’t hold myself upright. Until breathing is a workout in and of itself. Finally, he points to the rack where the weights go, and I wobble over to place them in their spot.
When I turn to find him holding a sword out to me, he has the nerve to say, “The next hour will be sparring.”
Liha makes a squeak as I numbly take the sword. “You can’t be serious.”
He swings before I’m ready, slicing his blade into my arm. I swipe the sword into nothing but air, screaming from frustration.
“How do you expect to lead an army,” he says, slicing his sword across my chest when my evasion is too slow, “when you can’t even control your emotions?”
My knees wobble as I try and fail to keep up with him.
“How will you do what needs to be done when your father gets worse if you’re so damn afraid of your own power?”
He jabs his sword for my chest again with more speed.
I bend backward, but it turns into a stumble, and I fall, hitting the hard, unforgiving mat. His blade follows me down until its tip pricks the leather over my chest.
“You’re explosive and undisciplined.”
He presses down harder, the sword’s sharp point breaking through my leathers and puncturing skin. “And you’re dead.”
He withdraws his blade and turns his back to me as he walks away. The room seems to have its own pulse as I stagger up and loose a swing. He turns in a blinding motion and swipes my legs out from under me. I land flat on my back, his blade finding my chest once more.
“Dead. Again. Just like you will be if you don’t face your fear of power.”
Just to spite him, I don’t stand when he lets up.
Darkness swirls around us as he presses his boot against my neck, slowly applying more pressure until I cough.
“Fucking dead.”
I yank my sword, slicing into his calf. Blood spurts onto my leathers, but he doesn’t flinch, and it doesn’t stop him from killing me at least fifteen more times before he takes my sword from me.
“Rest. Eat. Sleep. I’ll see you in a few days.” He hangs the swords on their racks. “Practice while I’m away.”
I try to fold my arms, but even that is too much for these noodles attached at my sides. “Got somewhere more important to be?”
He walks away from me. “I always have somewhere more important to be.”
When he leaves the doorway, the room is lighter, as if he took all the shadows with him.
Yisabell is in my room when I return, lying upside down on my armchair.
She smiles up at me and speaks in her native tongue. “Finally! I’ve been waiting for you all morning.”
I smile at her. “What are you doing?”
Her white hair, unique to the Awoms, tickles the ground as she giggles, and it’s not the first time I’ve wondered how my father and I also share that rare, snowy shade.
“Father helped me finish up my chores for the rave next week so I could come visit you.”
I can’t help my own giggle and the wince that comes with it. “I meant, what are you doing upside down?”
Her eyes light up. “Being silly. I don’t get to be silly very often.” Liha giggles. “I think she wants you to be silly too.”
I take my bloody gloves off, hobble to the armchair across from her, and manage to finagle my legs and body around until I’m upside down facing her, too tired to care about the drying blood smeared across my leathers.
“I don’t get to be silly either,” I say, fanning my hands on either side of my face, my arms feeling like dead weight.
Her eyes widen. “You are still wearing the ring I gave you.”
I smile. “I told you. I’ll always wear it.”
She sits up. “I thought you were just saying that to be nice. It would be okay if you were.”
I remain upside down, too drained to move. “It’s special to me.”
White brows furrow above her ice-blue eyes. “Why? It is not worth anything.”
“That is not true. It is”—I don’t know the translation for the word, so I say it in my own language—“symbolic.”
Her nose scrunches. “What is symbolic?”
“It’s when something carries a deeper meaning.”
Instead of trying to sit up, I slide to the floor in a heap of useless limbs. She laughs, which makes me smile.
“How much longer is your break?” I ask, managing to prop myself against the legs of the chair.
She frowns. “I have to go to the kitchens to help prepare lunch soon.”
How is it lunch already? My stomach growls, completely empty.
“Can you visit later?”
She shakes her head. “My group has to begin prepping the kitchens for the Winter Rave tonight, and after that, we’ve been ordered to ready the castle for your betrothed.”
My betrothed. Father hasn’t told me who yet, but I know the announcement is coming.
My face must show exactly how I feel about that because Yisabell cocks her head. “You are not excited?”
“Would you be excited?”
She looks up into the air of my room as if studying something in it. “Maybe.”
“Why?”
She smiles. “The Awoms believe in pathways, and I am always curious to see why my path crosses with another’s. There’s always a reason, you know.”
“What if it is a bad path to cross?”
“There’s good inside every bad.” She looks at me, her young eyes flickering with ageless wisdom. “Like you. You are my good inside the bad.” Her smile wobbles a bit as she brushes her slave garb. “I’m really glad to have you.”
“I’m glad too,” I say, feeling selfish for it, thinking of how her life was broken and ripped apart in order for her to be here in my room.
She groans and slides out of her chair onto the floor like I did. “I have to go.”
She helps me up from the floor and gives me a tight hug, holding it a second longer. I’ve never told her that she’s the only person that hugs me. I’ve never told her how she’s the good in my bad too.
“When I am queen, you will be free,” I whisper, tears pricking my eyes.
She squeezes harder before letting go, her eyes bright with tears. “And you’ll let me try chocolate?”
“Obviously.” I laugh. “We’ll both try chocolate.”
When she’s gone my room feels empty. After I clean myself up, I fill the void with books, rereading through the lineage books Thaddeus assigned to me.