Chapter 3 Loose Strings
Loose Strings
Lucian
I
open the door to Lilac’s room. She stands in the corner, arms outstretched, casting shadows across the walls.
“Hey Lucy,” she mutters, dropping her arms. She doesn’t usually practice her power like this. “What’s up?”
“I’m addressing the people of Folkara about Azaire.” The words barely make it past my chest. Yet there’s no one else I could talk to about this. No one would understand. I wish my sister didn’t.
My hand moves of its own accord, reaching for the flask in my coat pocket. I stop myself. Drinking isn’t going to solve this. I wish it would. I wish for a lot of things these days.
Lilac nods. “I know.”
“You know?” I ask.
“They spoke about it,” she mutters, “at a meeting. Queen Melody thinks it’s for the best.”
The queen of Folkara is arranging this, and my parents—the rulers of Ilyria—are going along with it?
“And Leiana?”
Lilac’s voice drops. “She wants to know where you stand… When your rebellion ends.”
I’m quiet for a moment, looking everywhere but at my sister. She knew and didn’t warn me. Is this what our future looks like as queen and king of separate nations? Do we become uneasy allies or something worse?
“My apologies, Lucy—”
“I can’t”—I take a breath—“stand in front of a room of people and reprimand the Nepenthes for being oppressed.”
Lilac walks across the large room and grabs one of my hands. “I know.”
When I reach for my flask, nothing stops me this time.
Lilac has been through a lot; we’ve had a similar lot in life. Yet this—my best friend dead, and being forced to defile his name and kind—she doesn’t know. Anything else, she could understand. Anything but this.
The liquor flows down my throat. I want something stronger, something that would burn like the vesi used to when I was younger and less adapted to its taste.
“Were you going to warn me?” I ask, clutching the flask.
“Mother—” She cuts herself off, wincing. Perhaps that is the distance between us. She’s my sister. Does she still believe I am her brother? “Leiana told me not to.”
And Lilac listened, knowing what Leiana does.
I stiffen, taking a step away from her.
“She’s helping me,” Lilac blurts.
For a moment, I forget how to breathe. Leiana is helping her? The same woman who abused me my entire life—the same woman who’s killed thousands.
I tip the flask to my mouth again.
“With my magic,” Lilac adds. “She’s helping me control it.”
“Control it?” I laugh. “Leiana has never been the archetype of control, Li.”
“She’s dealt with it all her life—”
“She’s killed all her life.”
Lilac didn’t see it. She wasn’t there every time a prisoner begged for mercy and Leiana killed them without flinching. I lived it. She connected me to one of the prisoners she killed—that terrible death. I have died by her hands.
I can only hope that when Azaire passed, he didn’t feel that, or anything like it. I hope I gave him peace.
I want to try to give Lilac the same. Leiana is the last person who should be teaching her.
“I’ll help you,” I say.
“You don’t understand this magic.” Lilac sucks in a deep breath. “It claws at me, Lucy. It’s not just that I can use this magic; my body begs me to. Leiana is teaching me to temper that instinct and only take enough when I need it.”
I try to disguise the disgust in my eyes, and Lilac’s frown deepens, the lines of her face creasing further. She’s taking people’s life force at Leiana’s command, and she didn’t tell me.
Lilac’s voice rises as she continues, “Don’t believe in Leiana, believe in me.”
I don’t know if I do—or can—yet I fear I have no other option.
“All right.” I nod once, my jaw clenched tight, a pressure building at my temples. “I’ll believe in you.”
?
The dais waits for me—a stage for the audience to watch from.
I grab my flask. I’m here to address the Folk about their despondency toward me.
The alcohol goes to my brain, and so does Lilac; Leiana is earning her trust. The same woman who wants me here—to speak ill of my dead best friend—to prove a point.
I drink to prove mine, sipping until I’m called to the stage.
Tucking the flask into my pocket, I step forward as the room sways to my left. Daisy—Queen Melody’s advisor, facilitating this meeting—sits at center stage, raising an eyebrow. She must be flirting with me. I smile and walk toward her.
My knee slams into the seat. I bite back a hiss.
“Welcome, Prince Lucian.” She places a hand on my knee, pushing me into the chair.
I crash down across from Daisy and grin. Her eyes widen, short blonde hair framing her surprised expression. She takes a deep breath, her nose wrinkling, then clears her throat.
“Prince Lucian,” Daisy says curtly, “you are here to discuss the serious accusations against you.”
“Accusations?” I repeat. A laugh rises in my throat, bubbling in my chest like the alcohol.
“Oh, darling, you’re mistaken!” I turn toward the audience, my grin growing.
I lock eyes with a pretty lady in the back and wink.
“Accusation implies there’s a question.” I face Daisy, raising an eyebrow. “I meant what I said.”
Azaire is the best of us. I couldn’t possibly rescind that claim.
The crowd gasps, and I laugh a little more. It’s so easy to get a rise out of people. All I have to do is perform. The image of Leiana fuming in my mind brings an equal measure of stress and satisfaction.
Daisy’s pink lips twist into a frown. Again, she tries to direct the conversation. “In that case, what goals led you to align with someone you previously opposed?”
A laugh pushes past my throat. “I never opposed the Nepenthes!” I exclaim, turning to the audience.
“I was taught to.” I point at the pretty lady.
“Just like you. Then I met Azaire when I was eight. He quickly became my best friend. My brother. Since then, I’ve never stood in opposition to the Nepenthes. ”
Daisy turns toward the crowd. “We’ll take questions from the audience now.” Her voice is tight, trying to hide the fear in her tone and failing. I don’t know what they’ll do to her after this—if they will blame her for my rebellion.
Multiple Folk with quill and paper raise their hands. Daisy points to one of them, and a man stands. “You are to take the crown of Folkara yet have stated that you believe our enemies to be better than us—”
“Azaire is better than you. Ha.” I pretend to look around. “Who said that?”
Daisy swats my knee. I lean into her with a smirk, rocking back and forth. “You like my joke, Dais?”
“Listen,” she hisses between clenched teeth.
Turning forward, I squint at the man as the room spins with all the movement in the crowd. Or is it my movement?
“Did you mean was?” the man says.
“I beg your pardon?”
“You claim Azaire is better. But he perished young, I might add. He was neither an adept soldier nor did the gods find any reason to—”
I rise to my feet, my hands falling to my sides. Shadows stir around the room, and the man pales. It satisfies me.
Daisy grabs my hand. The shadows still. “You cannot attack the people,” she hisses.
“Leiana does it all the time,” I say.
It’s as if Azaire is with me now, asking, do you wish to become Leiana?
I release my shadows, and the man brings a hand to his chest. He sits quietly, but another rises to take his place.
“The prince is clearly mad,” he says. “Siding with a Nepenthe and being willing to hurt a Folk for it? Prince Lucian,” he bows his head, “how can you claim the throne while showing such signs of lunacy?”
I nearly laugh. To them, having a best friend and mourning his death is lunacy.
“Have you never grieved someone?” I ask, my voice small.
The Folk shakes his head. “Not a Nepenthe.”
I clear my throat and nod. I don’t want any part in this.
“Then perhaps I cannot take your throne,” I say. “For our fundamentals are simply too different to bridge.”
The room erupts into chaos, people standing, raising their hands, and shouting questions. They look to one another for answers when they should be looking at me. Then I spot Leiana in the back, trying to reconcile with her people. What more can she do to me? Azaire is dead. Lilac is breaking.
When Leiana meets my gaze, shaking her head, I smile at her.
“How will you rebuild the trust of the people?” a Folk in the back shouts.
“Is it possible the Eunoia are now aligned with the Nepenthes and controlling his emotions?” another babbles.
“Do you recognize how this risks de-legitimizing your future policies?”
“Enough!” My voice rings through the room, nearly sounding like Labyrinth. Then, I wonder if perhaps Labyrinth sounds like my father. If in some odd way, this is how I’m carrying him—with alcohol and a raised voice.
To my surprise, the room quiets, every gaze turning to me. I am their king. They may not like it, nor do they want it, yet they expect me to rule them.
And I don’t want to. The last thing I want is to be stuck in the role I’ve been forced into all my life—a political pawn, a practiced power.
I look over the people who hate Azaire for the color of his eyes or the snakes on his head.
They view themselves as my people and are already mad at me because I dared to deny their status quo.
Aren’t they smarter than the propaganda?
Aren’t they the ones who write it? How can they believe all the terrible things about the Nepenthes?
About Azaire, who died because he listened to me?
Aren’t I the terrible one?
I hate them, I decide. They didn’t simply create the status quo—they drank it. Hatred runs through their veins, and bigotry is stitched into their souls. This is no way to preserve what little of Azaire remains within me.
“I rescind my claim to the Folkara throne.”
The room remains silent. I feel freedom move through my veins. It feels like alcohol—bubbling and rising to my chest.
“I rescind my claim to the throne!” I shout. Has it always been this easy? I’m free. The first thing I do with that freedom is pull the flask from my coat and drink.