22. Hayesland
Hayesland
“This year’s trials unsettled them.” Father’s voice carries as we step inside his private study. The room is cold despite the fire. “Too few survived, and it gave the people something to fixate on. Unrest is building.”
He sits as he gestures his hand dismissively, like grief is a stain that didn’t lift properly.
“It needed correction.”
“So you expanded the trials?” I say.
“Yes. It has worked to quell the unrest.”
How simply he weighs them and how easily he lets them fall.
“You made the course harder.”
“Harder is relative,” he says. “What matters is that we won’t have too many newly awakened.”
The rage resurfaces, the same as it always does, deep and patient.
“But this is Rye’s year to enter the trials.”
He studies me for a beat, then turns back to the desk.
“He’ll adapt.”
That’s it, no hesitation, no acknowledgment of what that means. The rage sharpens, and for a moment, I imagine my hand at his throat.
I swallow the feeling down where it belongs. Not yet.
“This year isn’t about glory,” he continues. “It’s about control.”
Rye is just another variable in his equation. He lets that settle, then moves on.
“The Davrik alliance needs to be formalized before spring. Belinda is accomplished, and her family controls half the grain trade. You will give the engagement serious consideration.”
I nod, my jaw tight.
“The northern villages are already struggling,” I say carefully. “The Davriks keep raising prices despite that.”
“And what would you have me do, Hayesland?” he asks, feigning curiosity. “Seize the Davriks’ grain stores?”
“The people outnumber—”
“The people have no magic,” he snaps, cutting me off. Then he draws a slow breath in through his nose, reining himself back. “I am protecting the people from what the nobles would do if I lost their loyalty.”
“You think Lord Davrik hoards grain now?” he continues. “Imagine him unbound.”
Here it is, his same self-serving logic dressed up as sacrifice.
“The rebellion is growing,” I try
“They’re just peasants and idealists who mistake power for cruelty,” he snaps. “They don’t see the alternatives I hold at bay. I have kept this realm stable for longer than anyone remembers. Through threats they cannot fathom.”
He calls it stability, but it wasn’t to protect anyone. He sealed us behind the fog wall centuries ago, during peace, not war. It went up to serve him. Captivity, nothing more.
“The trials showed you our history,” he continues. “You saw what existed before. The wars between the realms, the chaos, the destruction that comes when power is unchecked, and when borders aren’t maintained.”
“I did.”
“Then you understand why stability requires sacrifice. The prophecy only confirms it.” He studies my face.
“Two born together,” I say carefully. “Twins who could—”
“Destroy everything,” he cuts me off. “Every border I’ve built, undone by an accident of birth.”
The border he built that benefits him the most. The throne he claimed from the queen he drove from her own kingdom, with his first son he never talks about.
His hand goes to his pocket and takes out the pearl and turns it slowly between his fingers. His gaze falls to the portrait on the bookcase next to the dried sea holly. For a moment, he’s somewhere else entirely. Then his fist closes around the pearl, and he’s back.
“I do not enjoy the hunts,” he says. “But a king does what must be done. The twins we can’t find trouble me less than the ones who vanish entirely. Someone is moving them. Through the wall, if Voss’s intelligence is correct.”
He kills children for his need for control and calls it duty. The anger surges again, hotter this time, and harder to push down. I’ve seen what he does to people who push back, no one is spared, not even me. Every time it costs more, pieces of myself I don’t know how to put back.
“You’ll understand when you wear the crown,” he says. “Right now, you still believe there’s a version of this where no one suffers. But there isn’t.”
A knock on the door pulls our attention.
“Enter.”
Voss steps in. “Your Majesty. Your evening appointment awaits.”
Father’s eyes flick toward the door that leads to his private suites. His expression shifts, his usual cruelty replaced with a rawness. Like control isn’t enough, like he needs reassurance that what he’s bound there is still his.
“We’re done here, Hayesland.”
I leave, left wondering who waits behind the door no one else is allowed to open.
I walk without choosing a direction. The anger doesn’t burn out; it swells, too large and too heavy to hold. The ballroom is empty with moonlight spilling across the floor, pale and unforgiving. The silence should help, but it doesn’t. My father’s voice follows me.
A king simply chooses who suffers least.
I push through the terrace doors, and cold air bites my skin, but I don’t stop walking.
The gardens are frost-covered and still with roses blooming.
His magic, everywhere. Nothing escapes his control, not the land, not me, not our people.
I brace my hands against a stone archway and breathe, but the pounding doesn’t ease.
Soon, Rye will be awakened, and we can take him on then.
“You’re going to freeze, Hayes.”
I turn and find Gemma a few steps away, half in shadow. Her gaze drops to my sleeves.
“I left in a hurry.”
“Clearly,” she says. “I’d offer you mine, but I don’t think it would get past one of your arms.”
Despite everything, I almost smile.
She studies me. Whatever she sees makes her nod, like she’s settled something for herself.
“Come with me,” she says, already walking.
I follow, and she leads me to the kitchens. They’re quiet at this hour, with the low glow of embers in the main hearth lighting the room. She opens the icebox in the corner and makes a small, satisfied sound under her breath.
She lifts out a tray covered with cloth and sets it on the counter, peeling it back to reveal a neat row of unbaked pastries, edges crimped into careful little half-moons.
She looks far too pleased with herself.
“Apple turnovers,” she says. “The baker preps them for the morning rush, but she won’t miss a few.”
The conspiratorial look she gives me pulls a smile from my face despite myself.
She opens the oven door, checks the heat of the banked coals, adds a few pieces of wood, then adjusts something I can’t see.
“You’ve done this before,” I say.
“Once or twice,” she confesses with a hint of a smirk. “A girl’s got to eat.”
A comfortable silence settles in.
“I’ve never had a turnover before,” I confess.
The shock on her face is so genuine.
“How?”
“I eat what’s served, and they’ve never served me those before.”
She stares. “For tides’ sake. That’s the saddest thing I’ve ever heard.” She shakes her head. “Well, it’s going to be your new favorite food.”
I almost laugh.
“What about you?” I ask. “What’s your favorite food?”
She thinks for a moment.
“Besides these?” She gestures at the turnovers.
“My mother used to make this stew with root vegetables and herbs from the garden. Every full moon, she’d splurge on meat and make a big pot.
She would say the full moon was a night for us to celebrate all together.
” Her voice softens. “We would all dance together after dinner.”
There’s an openness she doesn’t usually let surface.
“Used to?” I ask quietly.
“She’s not around anymore.” Pain flickers across her face, there and gone.
“I’m sorry.”
“It is what it is,” she says.
After a moment, I ask, “What were you doing in the gardens?”
“Couldn’t sleep,” she says too quickly.
“Me neither.”
“What’s keeping you up?” she asks.
I hesitate. “Rye’s trials.”
“He’ll survive. No way the king’s son doesn’t make it out.”
“It’s not only that; it’s what he’ll see.” I feel my voice drop. “The trials change you.”
I look up and find her gaze locked on me.
“Rye hasn’t awakened yet,” I continue. “He doesn’t know what I know, what I’ve learned about our father’s past.”
She lets the silence stretch.
“He’s reckless,” I say finally, protectiveness flaring hot in my chest. “And Father—” I search for words that won’t unravel everything. “I can’t risk it.”
“That’s why you hold back,” she says, with recognition in her tone.
“That’s why I hold back,” I agree, hating myself for it. “While the people starve.”
She’s looking at me differently now. Not with pity, but with understanding.
Neither of us speaks for a while. The kitchen fills slowly with the smell of apples and cinnamon. She checks the oven, and her whole face changes.
“Perfect,” she says, pulling the tray out and setting it between us. “Careful. They’re hot.”
I pick one up, tossing it between my hands. She does the same, and we bite in at the same time.
The pastry flakes against my lips, buttery and warm, the filling sweet and tart with apples soft enough to melt on my tongue and cinnamon lingering at the back of my throat. I close my eyes.
“Well?” she asks.
“I think I have a favorite food now.”
She lets out a bright and surprised laugh, and the sound settles something in me I didn’t realize was knotted.
“Told you,” she says, grinning. “They’re the best thing in the castle.”
We finish one, then another, talking between bites about nothing important. At some point, I notice the echo of my father’s voice isn’t as loud anymore. When the tray is empty, the comfortable silence returns.
“Thank you, Gemma.”
“Don’t mention it,” she says while stretching. “And now, if the night baker catches me raiding her prep, I’ll just blame the crown prince.”
I laugh harder than I have in a long time, and she joins in easily. When our laughter finally fades, she stands.
“I should go,” she says, slipping away like a bird lifting from a branch. But at the door, she stops and turns back.
“Gem,” she says quietly.
“What?”
“That’s what you can call me…if you want.” She shrugs, like it doesn’t matter. But her voice tells me it does. “Goodnight, Hayes.”
“Goodnight, Gem.”
She’s gone before I can think of anything else to say.