21 Theodore
Theodore
I stared at the rippling pool for a long moment after Imogen had gone in. It was strange water, an ill shade of green when the light caught it, but when it stilled it was as smooth and black as a polished slab of obsidian.
I gritted my teeth, unable to pull my gaze from the surface, regretting that I hadn’t taken the dagger from Imogen’s waistband when I’d had the chance. With a certainty, she would use it on herself if the spell failed.
Agatha winced, then shivered violently as she lowered her legs into the water, which rose all the way up to her knees.
Lachlan knelt right beside her, attentive and pallid. “Agatha,” he said, “You’re certain—”
She shook her head like she was trying to focus. “Hush.”
Agatha’s tenacity was as impressive as any soldier’s, but I could sense it was the last of her energy that she burned through now. I had every expectation that the spell she was about to perform would use up whatever remained.
She kept the hand that held the bit of flesh and blood close to her chest. A long exhale. Then she closed her eyes. “Lach?”
Lachlan leaned in. “What is it?”
“I might be too weak. When I finish, pull me out of the water.”
He positioned himself so he would be able to drag her away from the edge of the pool. “I’m ready.”
But it seemed Agatha wasn’t. Her breaths ticked up. Her hand began to shake.
“Agatha?” I lowered myself to her side. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine.” She answered too quickly. Her eyes were still shut; her body still shook.
Lachlan reached for her. “Get out of the water, Agatha. This is too much. You can perform it out here on the floor.”
Agatha shook her head, just as I held out a hand to stop him. “Lach, no,” I said.
If the spell wasn’t performed as decided, and it failed, then Imogen would remain tied to Eusia.
But Lachlan had already begun to pull Agatha out.
He heaved her back, a hand under each arm, and when he did, she screamed so loudly that the whole chamber rang with the piercing sound.
She shook and curled up on the stones, the blood in her hand spilling down her arm.
As Lachlan tried to soothe her, I raced to remove my boots and take my dagger into my fist. I’d watched intently as Imogen had taught Agatha the steps of the spell. I lifted my shirt, ready to slice off a piece of my own flesh, when something caught in the corner of my vision.
Halla.
Her face was slack, her body loose. The bodice of her white gown gaped, and blood still trickled down the middle of her chest from the cut she’d given herself.
“Sit back down,” I snapped.
She shook her head. “I have always obeyed,” she said in a voice so small it sounded like it belonged to a child.
“I have always been so very good.” She took a step closer, forcing my back to the pool.
“I thought it would earn me their love. But all it has given me is a cold, lying king as my keeper.”
“It’s not me that you’re angry with, Halla.” I held up my dagger, urging her to stop. “It’s your mother. And Eusia.”
She shook her head. Her eyes were unsettlingly wide.
“What would you do to keep your power?” Her voice had dropped to a crazed hush.
“That is the question chasing itself through my head. My mother gave everything and was willing to give more—to give me—to keep hers. Eusia ripped apart her own body to grow her might. Your darling Imogen is following Eusia’s example to hold on to hers.
” Another step. “What would you do, Theodore Ariti, the good and noble God-king of Varya?”
I let my body go still, let my face go remote.
I wouldn’t show her how she unnerved me, but the question stuck in me like a dart.
I’d told Imogen I would do terrible things to keep her and my people safe, but I was not willing to commit atrocities for power alone.
For a crown, or for gold, or for acclaim.
At my silence, Halla came closer and gave a low, frustrated scream. “You cannot even fathom it, can you? Having no power. It has always been yours and it always will be.”
Imogen had once asked me the same question. Before I’d understood the depth of her mistreatment and helplessness. To see that rage and sorrow echoed in Halla made my stomach hollow. “Halla—”
She lifted her fisted hands and pushed them hard against my chest. The pool was at my back, but I held my stance.
I gripped her wrists tightly, but she went on.
“I understand now why my mother fought so for it, why Eusia did too. Why Imogen will take herself to the brink of death to best them both.” She jerked against my hold, teeth bared in a hiss of fury.
“You made me a promise. You signed that contract. Someday I will find a way to make you keep it.”
She’d said it with such prophetic venom that a chill rippled my skin.
With my hands still on her wrists, I pushed her backward, herding her toward the wall.
Her spine hit the stones, and her fight gave way.
She melted to the ground as I hurried back to the pool.
Lachlan had lifted a distraught Agatha into his arms and was carrying her toward the stairs when the surface of the pool undulated.
The water rippled and splashed as Imogen broke through.
Her dark hair was plastered to her cheeks, her shoulders. Fingers trembled as she reached for the edge and pulled herself out. She shone wet in the torchlight, moving with purpose and ease, but the look in her eyes… desolate. Bleak.
On an impulse, I stepped toward her, but stopped at the flinty way she pulled away from me.
She settled on her knees beside the pool, breaths racing from exertion. The water rolled down her blank face, over her lips, down her neck.
“Imogen?” She didn’t look up at me. She didn’t budge. “What happened?”
The torchlight juddered over the wet lines of her body. Her mouth hardly moved. “She…”
“She what?” I took her chin in my hand, and forced it up. My heart fell at the bleakness on her face. “Tell me.”
Lachlan had stopped at the base of the stairs, Agatha curled up and whimpering in his arms, waiting tensely to hear what she would say.
Imogen shook her head, but it was Halla, sitting against the rough wall behind me, who spoke. Her voice was a reverential whisper, cloying and haughty. “I told you she was not in the pool.”
The humid air in the room thinned. Imogen’s bloodshot eyes flicked toward Halla and narrowed with menace, but she said nothing at all.
She shook her face free of my hand and rose.
Sodden and bedraggled as she was, she managed to hold herself tall and straight as she started for the stairs.
She climbed past Agatha and Lachlan, not sparing them a glance, and left the four of us in the drawn and smoky silence of the chamber.
We found Imogen again out in the frayed garden at the back of the castle.
The storm had slowed, the thunder a distant rumble on the horizon.
Only a halfhearted rain fell now. The darkness was halfhearted too, and she sat tucked into the garden’s far corner, under what would have been a proud cypress but was now only a dried splay of ragged branches.
Imogen’s hands were wrapped tightly around the edge of the stone bench.
With fresh air and space, Agatha had calmed.
Lachlan had draped his shirt over her shoulders and led her over the flagstone path, toward Imogen, where she lowered herself to the bench beside her.
Right away, Imogen took her hand and held it tightly, but her still-haunted gaze wouldn’t lift from the pavers before her. It made me feel weak.
Agatha’s voice came hoarse. “I need to apologize…”
“None of this is your fault.”
“But if Eusia wasn’t in the pool… Then what did I see?”
Imogen’s brows dove. “It was a trick of the orb light,” she finally said.
“The only thing down there was a tangle of those veins.” Imogen ended the conversation with an abrupt kiss to the back of Agatha’s hand, as if that was that.
As if whatever awful thing that had happened in that pool had not crawled out with her like a parasite stuck to her skin.
Imogen was fiery and stubborn and incomprehensibly resilient.
She’d lived her whole life keeping secrets, but I’d come to know her tells.
What she’d just told Agatha was an outright lie.
Agatha gave Imogen a placated, dazed nod.
Exhaustion was pressing in on her. Her shoulders began to stoop, her head dipped.
Lachlan was already at her side. “We need to get you onto the ship to rest,” he said as he scooped her back up into his arms.
Agatha rested her head on his shoulder, melting into him. “I can walk.”
“Respectfully…” Lachlan started toward the garden gate. “You’re never walking anywhere ever again.”
Halla’s tattered gown and knotted hair glowed yellow in the dregs of the storm light.
She trailed after Lachlan and Agatha quietly, her head bent toward the earth.
The gray mist was rolling back in from the sea after being blown away by the storm, and it curled through the garden path, coiling around Imogen’s still-bare feet.
She began wringing out the water from her long hair.
I studied her as she did. The exquisite lines of the muscles in her arms, the round of the shoulder that held her thick tumble of waves so well.
Her lips were just parted; a drop of water hung from the end of her swooping nose.
My gaze moved over her body slowly, noting the softness and the strength, the edge of the pale scar that peeked over the top of her soaked trousers.
And though I couldn’t articulate why, the word that came to mind was boundless. Like the sea. Like the air. She moved the world around her. Her emotions ebbed and flowed with lucent power. Without even trying, she could alter the air in my chest.
Little wonder she fought like hell to be free.
I kept myself rooted beside the old hedgerow. “You lied.”
Slowly, she met my gaze and spent a long moment searching for her words. “You can tell.”
It wasn’t a question. She didn’t seem surprised.
“When I was younger,” she said, “Agatha used to tell me it was my eyes that gave me away. That I would blink too much.” She attempted a partial smile. “Do I still?”
I stepped closer. “No.”
The crease between her brows deepened. “What, then?”
“You stare too intently. You go too remote.”
She gave an empty, ironic laugh.
I went to her then. Stopped before her and lowered myself so we were eye to eye. “Tell me what happened.”
She recoiled. “If… if I do, if I acknowledge it—”
Her voice cracked and she squeezed her eyes shut. I took her warm hand in mine and drew my fingers over the back of it as she breathed. The mist grew thicker, filling in between us. Finally, she looked up around the garden in wistful silence.
“Theo?” she whispered. “Do you think you could make something grow here?”
I squeezed her hand at the question, not certain how to answer.
“I just thought that—” Tears were collecting on her bottom lashes. “You could clear that spell from my stomach—I thought maybe…”
I turned her hand over in mine, so her scarred palm faced the strange sky. “You know, if we were bound again, you could try it yourself.”
She tried to glare at me, sweet little lines creasing her nose and eyes as she did. There was no ferocity in the look, though, and my mouth curled into a smile.
“Shame on you for being relentless when I’m down.”
“Is that a yes?”
She shook her head, regretfully. “No.”
I’d not expected her to agree, but a carving pain still moved through my chest. I nodded my understanding and then pressed my hand to the earth at her feet. “I’ll try.”
My power dove through the soil. Through the blight and old roots. Just as it had been when I’d healed Imogen, a cold, draining sensation overtook me, as if a slow frost crept through my flesh. I bent with concentrated effort, swaying as my energy drained further.
Imogen reached for my shoulders to steady me. “Theo?”
My vision threatened to dim as a bright green sprout broke through the dry earth. It grew quickly, stem stretching, leaves broadening, and then a deep-purple bloom cracked open and unfurled. A wildflower.
I met her honeyed eyes. “The land is very sick.”
She nodded as the gentle rainfall gathered and rolled down her cheeks like tears.
I plucked the flower then brushed its soft petals down the angle of her face, over the raindrops, along the line of her jaw. Her dark lashes fluttered closed.
The quiet grew heartrending, and I needed to fill it, if only briefly. “Did you know that Anthemoessa’s wildflowers were a gift from Panos to Ligea when she took up her crown?”
Imogen flinched, then forced her face smooth. “I’m sure Agatha taught me that once.” Tears made her voice heavy. “It was Ligea in the pool.”
I sucked in a breath, furious with myself that I hadn’t guessed. “Imogen.”
“I’m all right—”
“You’re not.” I cradled her face. Rose up to bring her close. “Is she… alive?”
Imogen went still. “She was. Barely.”
Understanding hit me so squarely, I nearly lost my air.
“That pool and the veins in it kept Eusia and Ligea connected,” she said. “I expect the empress put Agatha in there to keep the whole thing alive—my mother included. But if Eusia was willing to sever herself from Ligea, she must feel very confident that she’ll get me.”
I pulled her closer, wrapping her in my arms.
Her chest heaved. “This is my fault—”
“Imogen, stop,” I said into her hair, fingers tightening around the nape of her neck.
“No.” She choked on a sob. “On that beach, the day I took the severing draught, I told Halla that I intended to kill Eusia. Halla must have told her mother. And the empress raced here so that she could whisk Eusia to safety. Halla has tried to convince me of her good intentions, she said she would help, and I—” Her tears cut her off.
“Shhhh.”
Imogen had come back to me with a small crack in her.
Her pain leaked through it in drops, but now that crack was a gaping hole.
Everything that she’d held back and shoved deep poured from her in a torrent of feeling.
I held her steady through the purge, doing my utmost to hide my worry.
If she knew how helpless I felt, she would surely feel the same.
Lachlan’s piercing whistle sounded through the air, calling for us.
Imogen pulled in a deep breath and dragged her arm across her sniffiing nose.
She straightened her spine. It both impressed and pained me to watch her gather up all her pain and gulp it back down.
She took on a sudden regality, her face uncharacteristically stark.
Only her swollen eyes gave her away. But austerity didn’t suit her.
“Now, where did you learn to do that?” I tucked the purple bloom behind her ear. “Not from me, I hope.”
“You’ve managed to endure.” Her eyes creased up—not quite a smile, but something sadder. “Perhaps I will too.”