Perilous Beauty
S econds extended into an eternity while Karigan waited for Estora to speak. A chickadee bobbed on a slender branch of a winterberry bush just outside the window. She focused on the bird and braced herself for what was to come.
“There has been much between us,” Estora said at last. “I count you as a friend though I know at times it may not have seemed that way. My being queen complicates all my friendships.”
Karigan knew it to be a vast understatement. “I understand.” She wondered how lonely it must be for Estora never knowing how genuine a friendship was, or if it was just someone looking for advantage and favors. Their friendship had been complicated in other ways.
“I suspect that despite my encouragement, you and Zachary have not spent time together.”
Here it was. She’d been expecting Estora to broach this topic, but expecting it did not alleviate any of the discomfort. She opened her mouth to speak, but Estora shook her head.
“I meant what I said that day and will not change my mind. If you are staying apart because of some ill-conceived notion of honor, it is an obstacle you have fashioned for yourselves of which I have had no part. Do you understand?”
“Yes, my lady,” Karigan softly replied, still not able to look her in the eye. Whatever Estora said, Zachary was still her husband. It was a difficult line to cross.
“With the threat of Blackveil becoming more imminent,” Estora said, “Zachary will need you more than ever. He truly loves you, Karigan. That is a rare and wonderful gift. Do not miss this chance because of whatever boundaries you fear to cross. Do you hear what I am telling you?”
Karigan nodded.
Estora’s long appraisal made Karigan shift with unease.
“I am not convinced you do,” Estora said.
“I—”
“You were the last to see my love, F’ryan, alive.
You wear the brooch he wore, ride the horse he rode.
This binds us together, you and me. There have been times when I wished I could have been there in your stead when he passed, to be with him in the end, but I was not.
I could not be, but by whatever fate that was woven by the gods, you were the one who was.
” Estora looked through the window into the courtyard, daylight gliding across her features, her gaze far away.
Karigan had many feelings about that eventful day when she met a dying Green Rider along the road on her journey home after having run away from school.
Her chance encounter with F’ryan Coblebay had changed the course of her life forever.
At the time she had not known his name, or that he was beloved by the woman who was to become Sacoridia’s queen.
“You lost one you loved as well,” Estora said.
Her statement caught Karigan off guard. Cade . . .
Cade, the man she had loved in Sacoridia’s dark future.
Even as the empire of that future fell, she’d tried to bring him back with her to her own time, but the forces that returned her home had torn them apart.
Waves of grief and memory crashed into her, the sudden memories vivid enough to fill her senses with his particular scent, the taste of his mouth on hers, the heat of his skin against her skin as they made love.
She recalled his gentle touch and how he soothed her when she feared she would lose him, only to lose him in truth.
It was a strange thing, memory. She recalled her experiences in the future only by reading notes she had scrawled upon her return or looking at drawings made by the ghost of Rider Yates Cardell of the people she had met, but even with these aids, memory faded and the accounts and pictures were more like pages out of a novel, not actual events.
As the Eletians explained, it was difficult to recall future events when they had not yet come to pass.
Even memories of Cade faded except in unexpected moments when prompted in some way as now, and they came back like jagged edges of glass tearing her up inside.
Still, it was getting harder to remember.
In her reawakened anguish at losing Cade, the daylight in the solar died and it was as if she was falling, falling into an abyss vast and black and empty. She just wanted to keep falling rather than go on.
Estora’s hand on her wrist brought her back, and she blinked at the light and the tears streaming down her cheeks. Estora sat quietly as Karigan sought to compose herself.
“I’m so sorry, Karigan,” she said. “You know intimately, as do I, how such loss feels. The pain may recede for a time, but it never fully goes away, and it can return in a rush at the most unexpected moments. Sometimes I will encounter someone who looks a bit like F’ryan or sounds like him.
Or I am presented with food that was his favorite, or hear a song we both enjoyed.
There are many reminders that spur the pain anew. ”
“Yes,” Karigan said.
“When you’ve a true heart mate, as I believe you and Zachary are to one another, the loss.
..” She paused as if unable to continue, but she took a deep breath and said, “You will not want to go on. There is a thinness to my soul without F’ryan.
I knew well before the news was brought to me that he had been killed. I just knew. I could feel his absence.
“I had his love for but a short amount of time, but it is better than not having had it at all. The gods blessed me by bringing him into my life, just as they have brought Zachary into yours, and you into his. Do not forsake this opportunity. Your being together will fill both your hearts and make hard times easier to bear. If you stay apart, you will both break, and should there be loss of one or the other of you, all the regret in the world will not mend what can no longer be.”
Estora’s words passed through Karigan like a swift current and she could not hold on to any one of them. Grief and guilt consumed her, the guilt of having left Cade behind in the future, the guilt of allowing his memory to fade, and maybe even the guilt of loving another.
“You are my truest friend,” Estora said, “and not just because you wear the brooch F’ryan wore. I trust you as I trust no other. I wish you could trust me as I trust you.”
Karigan emerged from her reveries blinking rapidly.
“I hope you take to heart all I’ve said,” Estora told her.
“Yes, you are my friend. I trust you, too.” But so caught in a fugue of memory and emotions had Karigan been, she wondered how much of what Estora had said she missed.
“Good, for I will not be speaking of it again.”
Karigan glanced down at her cup of chocolate as speechless as the day when Estora had placed her hand into Zachary’s and told the two of them they had her blessing to be together so long as it did not become a topic of public knowledge.
For her part, Karigan had indeed put up a barrier.
Estora’s permission felt too new, too awkward, and the idea of it retained the tang of “mistress.” Karigan was not about to play the role of mistress much as she longed to be with Zachary.
She took a final sip of her chocolate, but it had turned cold and syrupy.
“As for the harvest ball,” Estora said in a lighter voice as if she hadn’t just encouraged Karigan to have an affair with her husband, “now that you’ve had some time to think it over, have I succeeded in swaying you to change your mind? Will you attend the ball?”
Karigan fidgeted. “If you think it is that important...”
Estora gave a lilting laugh. “My dear Karigan, it isn’t as if I’m asking you to walk into Blackveil. The refreshments will be very good, and the orchestra exceptional. You would not have to stay long, for even a brief appearance will do much to assuage the curiosity of the court.”
Blackveil, Karigan thought, would almost be preferable.
Members of the court could see her around the castle if they wanted, but not all of them, she supposed, would recognize her, and it wasn’t often she was present in the areas they frequented.
They certainly didn’t visit Rider stables when she was cleaning stalls.
She gave Estora a faltering smile. “I will attempt it.”
Estora laughed again and shook her head. “Such enthusiasm. I look forward to seeing you there.” She rose then, and Karigan hastily followed suit. “I am overdue to meet with my ladies for embroidery and music, but I enjoyed our visit.”
“Thank you for the chocolate.” Karigan could still taste the sweetness of it on her lips.
“Of course.”
She followed Estora along the narrow path between the plants brushing against greenery and branches, when she accidentally walked into the lower limbs of a sapling.
Her eyepatch obscured her peripheral vision on her right side, and sometimes she still bumped into door frames and objects, or misjudged the depth of steps.
As she attempted to disentangle herself from the branches, one scraped her face and snagged her eyepatch off, uncovering her mirror eye.
“Ow!” While her eye often ached, it throbbed with stabbing pain when exposed.
Estora turned around, and before Karigan could recover and clap her hand over her eye, they locked gazes.
This was a hazard, for Karigan wore the patch to conceal no ordinary wound.
Her eye was a mirror. It had been impaled by a shard from a looking mask, an arcane object that gave those who gazed into it visions.
The visions were of the past or future or present, and sometimes other insights.
Karigan, too, sometimes saw visions when her eye was revealed—the weaving of the world, the weft and warp of fate, and the stars of the heavens.
This time, she saw nothing at first, just felt the pain, but the lack of vision soon gave away to an alternate image of Estora standing before her, the queen in her armor.
Karigan had seen Estora in her armor when they’d gone to parley with General Birch after Second Empire had lain siege to Sacor City.
Her armor shone in silver and filigreed gold, with stylized rose blossoms in enameled reds, the leaves and thorny stems in green.
Upon seeing their queen thus, the citizens of Sacor City who had stood along the Winding Way had taken up the cry, “The Rose Queen! The Rose Queen!”
In the vision, Estora looked off into the distance, her arms outstretched in an attitude of command.
The roses on her arms bloomed to life and grew.
The stems wound around her arms and legs.
The blossoms proliferated in strength and beauty and Karigan could almost smell their intoxicating scent.
Rose stalks shot up from the ground at Estora’s feet.
Leaves unfurled and flowers opened, all the while the Rose Queen’s gaze remained fixed on a scene beyond Karigan’s ken.
It seemed to take all of Karigan’s strength to raise her hand to cover her eye. When finally she succeeded, she gasped and staggered backward. Estora did the same.
“I’m—I’m sorry,” Karigan said. She groped after her eyepatch and tugged it off the branch. She quickly placed it over her eye.
Estora shook her head as though to clear it and they both stood there dazed.
“Did—did you see anything?” Karigan asked.
Estora took a deep breath. “Acorns and...”
“Acorns?”
“No, nothing...Nothing new.”
She had gazed into Karigan’s mirror eye once before, but what she had seen she never revealed. Karigan wondered about “acorns” and her claim of not seeing anything “new.”
Without warning, Estora threw her arms around Karigan and hugged her fiercely. Karigan stiffened in surprise.
“I am sorry,” Estora said, “for all you have been through these past years, including what happened to your poor eye. I am sorry you have suffered so much.”
What on Earth had she seen? Karigan cautiously hugged her in return.
Estora was slight, almost delicate in her arms, and was pleasantly scented with lavender, but Karigan recalled the vision of the Rose Queen in her armor commanding roses to sprout from the earth.
She recognized how the duality of blossom and thorn might represent a warning.
The gods, after all, had endowed Estora with such rare beauty and grace that the minstrels sang of it across the realm and beyond, and her royal status meant she was also endowed with such power that she held the fate of her subjects, including that of Karigan, in her hands.
Karigan, who had once been lectured by the well-meaning countess of Oxbridge about the danger of kings, wondered about the danger of queens.
At the moment, Estora’s warm embrace and remorse for Karigan’s lot felt genuine, but what if Karigan and Zachary, having received Estora’s blessing to act on their feelings for one another, did so?
Would Estora change her mind? After all, the reality of her husband and Karigan actually going forward with a relationship would certainly be more impactful than the mere idea of it, leading to, at the very least, hurt feelings and jealousy, and envy at the worst. It was a queen’s prerogative to change her mind, which made it a dangerous proposition.
As much as Karigan believed Estora meant what she said and would remain reasonable, it was always possible a change of heart would not go well for her.
It was all the more reason to retain that barrier between herself and Zachary.
She shuddered a little when they drew apart.
Fortunately, Estora did not seem to pick up on it.
They left the solar and bade one another farewell, Estora going her way in thoughtful silence, and Karigan going hers.
She walked slowly, feeling unbalanced by the experience and her mirror eye throbbing.
She tried to absorb it all, the admonition to attend the ball, and the words about Zachary, but it was the vision of the Rose Queen and her perilous beauty that she couldn’t get out of her head.