Chapter 9
Alora
The rain fell hard in the evening. It beat against the stone windows like fingers desperate to be let in.
Alora’s new heels pinched at her feet, nearly catching on the hem of her green gown as she paced her bedrooms. The gaudy thing the servants had dressed her was insufferably suffocating and tight. Gods, she didn’t want to go to dinner. She didn’t want this life at all.
Her restless steps traced the chamber’s edge, every turn sharpening the knot in her chest. The memory of Eldrik’s grin still burned on her skin where his fingers had dared to touch.
From the courtyard below came the shrieks of Hydras, their cries splitting the night.
She paused by the window. Calveron guards stood at attention at the gates, their white-gold armor catching the light like fire.
They had come beneath a banner of peace, but this was no alliance.
This was a conquest paraded in the open.
Her stomach twisted. The bars of her cage were closing in with every breath. She could feel Argyle slipping away, swallowed whole by the serpent’s maw.
Her pacing quickened, steps clicking across the marble. She turned sharply and her hip struck the bureau.
She winced at the jolt of pain, then heard a clatter struck the floor.
The crimson spindle bounded then spun away, catching the sunlight as it continued rolling before coming to rest against her bedpost. Alora bent to pick up the spindle, frowning.
Such an odd material for a sewing needle.
Almost without thought, she lightly tapped the sharp end, and at once the air shifted.
Her skin prickled. A low hum rose, faint as a sigh, threading through her ears. An indistinct whisper, steady and insistent, like an eerie lullaby she had never heard.
Alora quickly set it down on the desk.
The scar on her finger tingled again, pulsing strangely at the tip as though it longed to pierce itself on the needle’s point. Her hand lifted of its own accord, heart hammering, the hum growing stronger, coaxing—
A sudden knock snapped her out of it. “Princess?”
She startled, yanking her hand back against her chest. Theia’s voice followed, her footsteps quick across the outer chamber.
Alora scrambled, slamming the spindle into her desk drawer. The hum cut off at once, leaving her heart pounding.
The doorknob turned and Theia peaked past the door. “May I come in?”
Alora forced a smile, though her hand still trembled. “Yes, of course,” she said with an airy laugh, brushing her damp palms against her skirts.
Theia entered in a fine gown the color of the sky. “How are you feeling?” She searched her face worriedly. “You missed your breakfast this morning.”
“Yes, I’m fine.” Alora straightened and folded her hands at her waist, resisting the urge to rub her scar. “I wasn’t hungry, so I went out for a walk in the gardens.”
Theia’s brow furrowed. “The gardens?” she repeated uncertainly.
The same gardens that were now mere weeds and thorns.
Alora inwardly cringed.
Theia blinked then at the overcast sky outside to the storm, then at her mother’s journal on the bed. But she didn’t press the obvious lie. “Are you ready to greet tonight’s guests?”
“Intruders, you mean.” Alora crossed her arm as she glared at the courtyard below.
Theia went to her wardrobe and pulled out velvet-lined drawers glittering with jewels. “How about a necklace of emeralds to match your gown? Argyle’s colors.”
She’d rather spoon her eye out than sit at dinner with Eldrik.
Alora frowned as she watched her friend pick out earrings next. “Leave that, Theia. You’re a lady now, and in no position to tend to me like a maid. You should be in your own castle with ladies-in-waiting to tend to you.”
Theia paused, flushing as she bit her lip. “Right…”
She came to stand with Alora at the windows and her gaze lifted to high towers of Stormwatch’s Keep on the bay.
“Calveron seized my father’s stronghold when they invaded,” she murmured, her hands tightening in her skirts until her knuckles blanched.
“He was at sea leading the naval assault when land forces breached the gates. Caelum came for my mother and me. It’s a miracle we escaped.
Our guards…were not so fortunate.” Her gaze flicked down to the Hydras snapping their jaws below, then slid away quickly, as though the sight dragged her back to a frightful memory.
“We are grateful King Laurent has graciously given us the east wing for the time being.”
Alora’s jaw clenched. Graciously. As though it were kindness to strip a duke of his keep and tuck his family into borrowed rooms. Theia did not deserve such humiliation, nor her father such shame.
“This doesn’t feel real, does it?” Theia murmured. “Argyle is not the kingdom we once knew.”
Though Alora wouldn’t say she was raised here long enough to say the same.
“I am not going to dinner,” Alora said curtly. “Do tell my father I must decline his summons. I am unwell, and thus in no state to endure tea with his guests.”
“But the King—”
She shook her head, scowling at the foreign ships on the gray seas. “I will not play the docile broodmare for their amusement.”
But even as she said the words, they rang empty. What choice did she truly have?
“I wish…” Theia said softly. “I could take your place, and you could take mine. Then at least one of us might be happy.”
Alora met her gaze, confused by the guilt there.
Theia looked down, tears gathering on her lashes. “Caelum told me… that you spoke last night.”
Sighing, Alora pulled her into an embrace. “I hope you know that I am not cross with you, Theia.”
Theia’s trembling hands wrapped around her. “I’m sorry…” she said, her voice catching. “I know how much you loved him.”
Alora laughed wetly, patting her back. “It was a child’s idea of love. But you are my best friend, and that love is far more precious.”
Theia cried on her shoulder, reminding Alora how much her best friend wailed at the gates when she was sent away. Last night, she had demanded her father return Theia’s letters, and he did.
All three hundred of them.
“I suppose a part of me will always love him,” Alora admitted. “But our fates are no longer entwined.”
Saying it aloud snipped an invisible thread in her heart. At last, she could let go of her old affections.
“I know you don’t wish to marry, but you could not have made a better match.” She pulled back and smiled faintly at Theia’s tears. “Oh, stop. If you cry, so will I.”
Theia let her go, sniffling. “I hate that you have finally returned home only to be sent away again. That fae, he’s a terrible person, Alora. I am so terrified of what he will do to you.”
Alora used her sleeve to wipe Theia’s cheeks. “Don’t you worry about him.”
“What will you do?”
“I must find a way out of this.” Alora drew in a breath and folded her arms as she watched the rows of foreign solders gather in the courtyard.
“Does it not strike you as strange that Calveron would sail across the sea from Arthal to conquer a small kingdom? Out of all the kingdoms in the Land of Urn, why Argyle? We have no mines of gold, no salt flats or silk trade. No treasures worth the cost of battle. Our modest wealth comes from vineyards and timber. The United Crown would have been a far richer conquest. So why here? It bears no reason.”
Sighing, she glared at the ceiling as if the stones might yield an answer.
Theia’s eyes flicked to the door, lowering her voice as if the walls themselves listened.
“They came at the height of winter, when no wise king would wage war. King Thalion claimed he sought easy spoils, that his people relished battle, and we fit the mark. Their attack was brutal but short. Then a soldier arrived bearing a letter for terms of peace. No demands of land, no tribute. But your hand in marriage to his son Eldrik. In exchange, the war would end, and he would lift our curse. Your father agreed.”
Of course, he did, when defeat was imminent.
What was an estranged daughter but an easy forfeit?
The thought coiled bitterly in Alora’s mind. There had to be more to this than a simple marriage. If she could find that reason, perhaps she could unravel the snare closing around her.
“This sleep-like death that plagues Argyle, what do you know about it?”
“I call it the Sleeping Curse, and it began nearly twenty-five years ago.” Theia sighed.
“We know nothing about it. The cause or what factors the afflicted have in common. It seems to strike at random. We didn’t realize it was happening for a long time.
At first it was one villager in the east, then a farmer in the west. Then cases increased shortly after you left Argyle. Now it takes households.”
“Could Calveron have cursed us?”
“I had considered the possibility.” Her friend frowned thoughtfully. “But they do not strike me as the kind to devise such extensive plots. Their magic is ostentatious and swiftly violent. Nothing like the Sleeping Curse.”
Which was slow, creeping across the land like root rot.
Then what was the connection and how would King Thalion have the knowledge to break it? As fae, he could not make the claim if it were not true.
Alora looked out at the kingdom, wishing she could hate it, wishing she could be indifferent to their suffering. But she couldn’t, knowing her people would die if she didn’t help them. And she would, but not with marriage.
Alora took a deep breath. “Inform my father that I will join him shortly.”
Theia’s eyes widened slightly in surprise and she curtsied. “Of course, my lady.”
As her friend turned to go, Alora had another question. “Theia, why were the mirrors removed?”
There were none throughout the castle and now the one from Alora’s bureau was missing.
Theia paused, her expression flickering with unease. “It was an order from the King. When your late mother passed, he commanded all mirrors removed from the castle. The servants had forgotten the one in your chambers until this morning.”
“Why?” Alora asked faintly.
Theia hesitated. “It was said she would see things in them. Shapeless shadows and otherworldly eyes.”
A chill sank into Alora’s chest.
When Theia left, the chamber was heavier for her absence.
Alora sank onto the edge of her bed, staring at the empty stand on her bureau.
Had her mother contacted the hollow within the mountain?
She glanced at the journal where it lay half-open, as though beckoning.
Her fingers hesitated before she drew it onto her lap.
The pages crackled with age as she turned them, her mother’s delicate script winding across the vellum like ivy. Notes on herbs, on music, on the weaving of spells through song… until Alora’s eyes caught on a faded passage, smudged but legible.
The spindle is the key. Desire the lock.
Wrought by the hand that sleeps in the depths.
The mirror is the window.
Through it, he answers.
Alora’s heartbeat quickened. The candlelight dimmed around her, as though the words themselves summoned a hush. She traced the ink with a trembling fingertip.
Her mother had met him.
The God of Shadows.
Alora closed the journal with a snap, clutching it against her chest. What had her mother asked of him? Protection? Power? Salvation? The answer hardly mattered.
Salvia had bargained once, and so could she.
Shadows stirred faintly at the corners of the room, as if waiting.
And Alora could still hear a voice curling through her mind, low and luring.
If darkness called… would you answer?