Chapter 27
Salt fish and boiled vegetables were delivered to her door the second she finished bathing.
Here, so close to the sea, fish could be caught and eaten the same day. To make it across the mountains to Flambriar, fish had to be frozen or dried to stop it going bad.
Queen Mara had been absent when Arla arrived back at the palace, her desk empty and the entourage of advisors and courtiers missing from the hall, too.
It looked even larger without so many people to fill it, the space like the maw of a great cat ready to swallow anything that wandered into its jaws.
Would the princess ever be able to wield such a bite, or would her people only see a pretty face and kind eyes and decide her too meek before her reign even began?
It didn’t matter. This was Malarye and Arla had no allegiance to it or its princess … yet.
She picked out the simplest gown she had packed – a plain thing that was the colour of green only found in lilies just before they bloomed.
She would have liked to wear something lovely and bejewelled, to show off the power that came with her position in Flambriar, but for a wedding? No, not even she could upstage a bride.
She had washed and combed her hair, glad there were no maids to do it for her. Glad, because she didn’t think she could stand to have anyone near her whilst her mind tried to make sense of the last twenty-four hours.
This kingdom clearly had knowledge beyond what lay in Hadalyn and Kastonia and definitely Flambriar.
No one had seemed shocked to see her arrive riding Thara, and the healer?
Mages had been coming here long before they had sought shelter in Flambriar.
But what was Malarye concealing that she didn’t yet know?
Hyacinth had mentioned the last dragonhart dying on his own sword and how the prophecy had been set in motion for a second time.
It lit a hope in her chest that maybe she could find answers here.
That maybe these people would help her if she could figure out what they wanted in return.
And then there was the case of the magic that had flowed in her own blood.
She’d felt it before. When she was fleeing Larkire Palace after rescuing Hark, she had felt the surge through the bond before it exploded through her hands.
And yesterday … when she was certain they were going to kill her and Thara, there had been that burst of power through the bond and she had used it to create a great wave that could not possibly have formed naturally…
This magic … it scared her almost as much as losing control did. Damn the fates and the gods and whoever else had prohibited Thara from speaking of what it all meant. She hadn’t asked to be the last dragonhart. She hadn’t asked for this blood in her veins. Why shouldn’t she demand the truth?
Gods, she missed Hark. He’d know exactly what to say and exactly what to do with his hands to distract her for long enough that nothing seemed so dark and lonely.
Her skin heated at the thought.
When she finally emerged from her rooms, the halls were still empty and only the distant rumble of voices informed her that someone had bothered to wait for her at all.
Her dress whispered at her ankles, the blade she’d strapped to her thigh catching slightly on the thin material.
She wore boots beneath the silk, laced tightly for the walk to the temples beyond the cliffs.
She wondered if the gods cared about marriages between people.
Did they bless those who entwine their lives together in the temples or did they hate that the buildings could be used for something other than worshipping them?
The thought was bitter in her mouth. She had gone from not believing at all, to believing so hard that she was dedicating her life to the service of the gods and their wishes.
And now she was beginning to despise them.
‘They listen, you know.’
‘Clearly so do you,’ Arla replied down the bond, the chortle of what could be mistaken for nothing other than laughter echoing back at her.
She needed to apologise to Thara. Her dragon was bound by the fates and the gods. Who knew what would happen to her if she tried to tell Arla the things she was supposed to keep hidden.
None of this was Thara’s fault. It wasn’t Arla’s, either.
Queen Mara and her court were gathered at the base of the cliff. They had only waited so long for their guest, it seemed. She bit back a smirk as she sauntered down the hill, her arms peppering with goosebumps as the wind nipped at her.
‘Good evening, Dragonhart. Is all well?’ the queen asked, her voice harder than her daughter’s but lovely all the same.
‘Of course. I was admiring the castle is all. I didn’t get to see it when I was here last.’
Arla thought the queen’s chest hitched slightly, but if she felt any discomfort, it ran away from her in smooth rivulets, barely there at all as she brightened that courtly smile.
‘It is not often our buildings are admired. They are built for safety and practicality. I don’t doubt you have seen palaces far grander.’
The courtiers were whispering to each other, though when Arla shifted her gaze over them, she didn’t feel the surge of irritation that often came when she knew others were talking about her. Because … it turned out they weren’t.
They clearly had far better things to discuss as they swapped scrolls of parchment and spoke of training and temples and trade as the procession began to make its way to a temple with tall bronze spires just beyond the training rings.
Queen Mara didn’t linger near Arla like she had expected – like any ruler she had ever met did when a foreign dignitary came to stay.
She walked instead with her own people, still working even on the way to a wedding.
Crea was thankfully missing, but so was the princess, whom Arla was beginning to suspect kept very much out of the way of her mother’s court, so she walked alone at the back of the procession, eyes scanning every inch of the kingdom before her.
The temple where the wedding was to be held was a magnificent structure.
Arla was certainly too wicked to stand before such a place.
It was a hulking, beautiful building of carved stone and bronze fixtures.
It reached with tall spires high enough that she was sure a person could pluck the stars from the top of them.
Stained glass windows filled with glorious torchlight sat delicately near the top of the temple, wrapping around the building like an embrace of rainbows and starlight.
Warmth seeped out from a huge archway with pillars taller than Thara to guard the doorway, and there was music, too, drifting out into the night.
Not far away, the sea crashed against the rocks on which the temple had been built, the scent of brine and salt and freedom weaving its way through the air.
This was a godly place. She could feel it in the way her heart quickened, in the way the air felt alive like it did when she was surrounded by magic in Flambriar.
It was a blessed place, built for the gods – and perhaps by them.
The golden brooch she’d pinned above her left breast felt impossibly hot to the touch.
Arla followed the court without missing a step, sucking in a breath so deep her lungs ached as she passed beneath the archway into the temple and felt the weight of a thousand worlds press on her chest.
The feeling disappeared as quickly as it came, but from the way Diath was looking at her from their position in the fourth pew on the left of the temple, she knew the healer had noticed Arla’s reaction.
Crea stood at the head of the temple before an altar of dazzling jewel-encrusted cups and daggers, her robes as white as alabaster, the pearls shimmering beneath the torchlight.
She looked … regal. Which, in Arla’s opinion, was a problem.
Because the princess who did in fact carry royal blood stood to the right of the priestess, her beauty breathtaking but entirely lacking the power she should exude.
Queen Mara had ushered in a wave of silence, the quiet following her down the aisle as she took a seat at the very front of the temple.
Hyacinth’s panicked stare told Arla everything she needed to know: that where she stood was usually the queen’s place.
Perhaps Mara was doing her best to push her daughter to take on more responsibility, to establish herself amongst the people and step into the role she had been born to.
Arla could relate but she felt for the princess too – out of her depth beside a priestess who carried the dignity of her role far better than she.
The court began to take their seats, filling the front rows of pews. Arla took a seat next to Diath, their kind smile a reassurance amongst practices with which she was not familiar. Already she couldn’t wait for it to be over.
She had attended only three weddings in her life: her parents’, when she was too small to understand any of it; the daughter of a lady her mother had been friends with, who had died during the storming of Grey Hill; and the third wedding was when she had only just been inducted into the royal guard and was training for King’s Assassin.
Hark had been at Castle Grey for less than a month at that point and they had bickered so loudly that Perry had been made to sit between them for the wedding of a nobleman from Grey Hill to a girl no older than Arla.
She’d protested so loudly against it on their return to the palace that Cyrus had stopped inviting the man for dinner whenever Arla was at the castle.
She felt like she was trespassing at this wedding, inside this astonishing temple filled with soft torchlight.