Docked
TEORIN
The Threns will not behave if left to themselves and he cannot afford what that costs him tonight.
Not here. Not before he knows she is safe.
He had heard rumors that Yorali’s king had an interest in the golden-eyed princess.
He had gone to Colsar with that much, at least. Not only did he ignore him, but he went to the one place that was the least safe.
Fucker.
He makes his way to the castle alone, the Morraks circling above him in loose formation, their wings cutting the dark in slow arcs. The city is quieter than it should be for an arrival of this size. He notes that. Files it away.
He hopes Nox has not reached her. He knows her well enough to know that she likely plans to but opted to stop in Morrath first. For power. Morrath was good for that.
He hopes Colsar has not ruined Asharin. He hopes she was still herself, even with being a mother now.
Shitspawns, Nox had called them. Something inside him twisted, conflicted at the thought.
Relieved she had not lost her children. He had known how badly she wanted them, how much she loved them.
Had seen that look in her eyes, the way she had absently pressed her hand against her belly with care the moment the healer told her.
He had told himself no harm would come to her or the pregnancy.
Yet when they parted last he had no idea if he had allowed harm to come to either.
At any rate, he hoped Colsar had not ruined her.
Turned her into some weak-minded noble wife.
That he hadn't broken her heart. He thought of his last interaction with Colsar.
They had fought. He had lost control more quickly than he wanted.
Too quickly. But as he left Shalvar, the thought occured to him.
It wasn't that Colsar didn't simply smell like Asharin. He smelled like nothing at all.
And the way Colsar had stopped fighting him. That was not the Colsar he knew. He stopped when told, as though he had something to protect. Something worth protecting.
It had all been a lie, if he had to guess. They probably had both worn scent maskers. Asharin had probably been there the entire time. But by then the window of opportunity had passed.
He hopes she does not hate him. He knows that is not possible.
The palace comes into view and something in him goes cold before he can name why.
The deathmages at the front are the first thing.
They appear as though they have dropped where they fell, which means someone killed them here and did not stop to think about what came after.
Then the Avanki, weapons drawn, moving through every corridor and courtyard in a pattern that belongs to a search rather than a patrol.
Something has already happened.
He slips in through the side entrance and closes his eyes and reaches, the way his father taught him before his father became someone he did not want to learn anything from.
The palace speaks back in the particular language of blood and recent violence.
Sevrin's blood. Wrong. And another scent beside it, fainter, threaded through everything in the hall ahead in a way that makes the back of his throat close.
He finds the Great Hall.
He kicks the door open because he already knows whatever is on the other side will be something he is not ready for. And like most things he is not ready for, he will face it head on.
Colsar is on the floor.
Tears are running down his face without any apparent awareness that they are there, his hands shaking against Asharin's hair, his mouth moving. Asharin is in his arms, limp and pale, her lips carrying the blue of lips that have been that color for some time.
Teorin cannot speak.
Then he moves.
He crosses the room and grabs Colsar by the front of his coat because his hands need somewhere to go and his mind has not yet reached the part where he is capable of rational thought.
"What did you do," he says. His voice is lethal and quiet and entirely useless because he can already smell Sevrin's blood, can already see the deathmage against the far wall, can already smell the lightcraft in the air, can already understand that none of this was Colsar.
It does not make him let go.
"Who did it?" he asks. "Who the fuck did this?"
Colsar does not look at him. He looks at Asharin.
"I do not know how to raise children," he says, to her rather than to Teorin.
His voice is barely holding together. "Especially not a girl.
Who will plait her hair when she is old enough for it?
Who will teach her to read a room the way you do, to be tactful, to be a queen.
" He presses his face into her hair. "Who will sing to them when they cry?
Who will tell them stories the way you tell them stories?
Who will snuggle them at night the way you do, the way they already know to expect from you?
" His voice breaks and he drags it back.
"Who?" A pause. "Who? They love you so much.
They do not know it yet. But they do. They will. "
He lifts his head and the sound that comes out of him shakes the room, stones falling from the upper wall in a fine cascade of dust.
A man with silver hair steps forward. He places himself between Colsar and Teorin. Teorin remembers him from Shalvar. Clearly someone related to these Fyrekin ties his brother now possessed.
"I know you have differences with His Highness," the sentinel says. "Perhaps you are here to attack. But I would ask you, with respect, to consider that he is not alright. The death of his—"
"She is not dead, Arabar," Colsar roars.
His hands are trembling.
Teorin cannot speak. He looks at her face. At the closed eyes. At the blue at her lips and thinks about the last time he saw her as she entered Alarna, looking back at him with an expression he had catalogued and kept and has not been able to stop returning to since.
He wants to kill Colsar.
For not listening when Teorin tried to warn him. For being here and being alive and holding her while she is not. For being the one she chose, the one she always chose, the one she called her family when Teorin could not make himself be enough to be that.
He cannot bring himself to.
Because all he can think about is her. None of this matters without her. The ships, the Threns, the Morraks circling above the palace, the careful years of planning that have delivered him to this exact moment. None of it has any meaning in a world she is not in.
He draws a breath that does not come easily.
"We must try to save her," he says.
Colsar looks at him for the first time.
"I have tried everything." His voice breaks on it. "The Fyrekin say she cannot awaken." He looks back down at her. "Our children. My Asharin. My Asha Bear. The one person in this world created just for me."
No, dog. Just for me, Teorin thinks.
He does not say it.
He exhales. "There may be a way."
Arabar clears his throat. "Her Majesty has been gone for quite some time now. Her body has firmed. It is unlikely that—"
"There may still be a way," Teorin says. He does not look at Arabar.
"Speak," Colsar says. The word comes out like a command but Teorin can see the thing underneath it, the small desperate glimmer of something that has not yet given up.
"There is one place in the Thronelands where a human can be brought back to life. And there is one type of magic that can achieve it." He pauses. "Morrath."
The room is very quiet.
"The only humans that survive in Morrath are made to be deathmages that can never leave there," Colsar says.
"Yes. She may never leave."
"And she may still not awaken," Arabar interjects.
"But she is not just any human," Teorin continues.
"She gave birth to a feeder, did she not?” He can smell it even now, though the smell of her blood was slowly fading away, he could detect, faintly, the scent of a feeder.
Her blood has already changed. He pauses. "Morrath favors what the blood calls."
Colsar looks at him. "She has no blood that calls to her in Morrath."
Teorin watches his face slowly change. He can see, quietly, that Colsar has remembered something.
"She has probably mentioned as much to you," Teorin guesses.
Colsar says nothing, which is answer enough.
Teorin thinks of what he himself felt in the ground near the gate, that pull, that frequency that did not belong to anything there and yet was recognized by everything there.
"I have reason to believe she has blood relatives in Morrath," Teorin says. "Perhaps more than one."
"You lie so much," Colsar says. "Who could trust you?"
No one, Teorin thinks. Instead he says, "I do lie." Teorin holds his eyes. "But why lie about this? Why give the information at all?"
Colsar looks at Asharin. He is quiet for a long time. "Who will keep her safe if she awakens? I will go with her." His jaw tightens. "When she awakens, we will find a way to leave and get to the children--"
"Highness." Arabar steps forward. "If I may. You cannot abandon your country. Your children."
"She will hate you forever," Teorin says.
Both of them look at him. "If you enter Morrath and cannot leave as she cannot leave, and your children are left in this world without a parent, she will hate you for it, and if you are worth anything you will hate yourself.
You know she will." He pauses. "And your children deserve better.
It is bad enough they have you for a father," he adds, because he cannot entirely help himself.
Colsar says nothing.
"She may awaken," Teorin continues. "The healers in Morrath have power. And she holds feeder blood, I can smell it on her. If at least one child is a feeder, and that blood has passed to her through the birth—"
“It is not impossible,” Arabar says carefully.
Teorin nods. "This likely will not work. But there is a chance."
"You came here with ships and creatures," Colsar says. "I can hear them and smell them from here. And now I am supposed to trust you with my wife?"
Teorin looks at him for a long moment.
"Who better," he says, "than the man you know wants her more than anything?
" He laughs bitterly, although his eyes burn with tears he is determined not to show.
"Everyone else in this room has given up.
Everyone except two people." He holds Colsar's eyes.
"You and I, brother. I will do whatever it takes.
Kill whoever I must. To bring her back."
Colsar laughs. It is not a good sound. "If you go you cannot leave. You will be trapped."
Teorin smiles. "That is where you are wrong. Feeders can come and go as they please."
He watches understanding move across Colsar's face.
For a while, the room is quiet. Then, "what if I never see her again?" Colsar says.
"In any scenario you never see her again. In this one, perhaps there is a chance."
Arabar speaks quietly. "If nothing else, when your children are of age, perhaps they will give you their blessing to enter Morrath. Should she live."
Colsar closes his eyes. His hand moves through Asharin's hair in the slow, careful way of someone who is not thinking about what they are doing, only that they need to keep doing it.
He opens his eyes and looks at Teorin.
"She is everything to me," he says.
"I truly do not give a damn what she is to you.
" Teorin holds his gaze. "But know that I will keep her safe.
And for the sake of her children and what has happened here tonight, I will not take what is rightfully mine.
My ship will dock. My Morraks will refrain.
My men and cousins will not set foot in Veynar. For now."
Colsar looks at him. "I do not know where Sevrin is. But if he is missing, the throne belongs to our daughter Fiorakis. That was Asharin's wish. I will protect it with everything I have."
Teorin stares at him. Part of him wants to disagree, the other part knows Colsar speaks true and cannot reconcile any of it.
Not simply the idea of giving up the throne for an infant, but the idea of sitting on a throne without her by his side.
Then he speaks. "I will send word should she awaken. Or should I be unable to awaken her."
He stops. "It is not as simple as entering Morrath. We will need help."
"From whom?" Colsar's eyes are alert now, focused. The cold, predatorial rigidity that he is accustomed to seeing from him seems to have returned. For now, anyway.
Teorin closes his eyes and mutters a few words under his breath. Opens them. "We will need Yorali magic. Prince Tamal is with the Dowager. I just sent my Morraks to retrieve him."
"I was just there," Colsar says. "I did not see him."
"He is good at not being seen when he wishes. And he has grown close to your mother, as you will soon learn."
Colsar's eyes darken. "If he is aligned with my mother he will have no interest in helping."
Teorin smiles. "He will not have a choice."