Awake
Darkway Palace
The first thing I do when I fully wake is look for him.
Colsar is not here.
The room comes into focus slowly. Dark walls, unfamiliar light, the smell of something medicinal and something ancient that I cannot name. I push myself upright and my arms shake with the effort and I look at every corner of the room and Colsar is not in any of them.
Teorin is.
He is standing near the window. When he sees my eyes open he goes very still.
"Where is Colsar?" My voice comes out wrong. Too thin. "What happened to him? Where is he?"
Something crosses Teorin's face that I do not know how to read.
"He is in Veynar," he says. "He is alive."
I stare at him. "Then why are you here and not him?"
He is quiet for a while. He still looks, I realize, terrible. Pale, dark circles, his collar loose and his hair uncombed in a way I have never seen. He looks like someone who has not slept properly in days.
"Do you remember what happened?" he says.
I try.
Dinner. The Great Hall. Candles. The clock reading six thirty-one. A harpist playing in the corner. I remember the music.
"I remember dinner," I say. "A harpist."
He nods slowly. He pulls the chair closer to the bed and sits in it and looks at me and I can see him deciding how to say whatever he is about to say.
He tells me.
All of it. The poison. Colsar finding me. The healer. The Fyrekin council. Tamal. The word he keeps not quite saying but circling around until I say it for him.
"I died."
"Technically."
"And now I am in Morrath."
"Yes."
"And I cannot go back."
He is quiet.
"And my husband and children are on the other side of something I cannot cross."
"For now—"
"And you brought me here." My voice is very calm. I am aware of that. I am aware that the calm is not real and will not stay like this for long. "You brought me to this place and now I am trapped here and Colsar does not know if I am alive and my children—"
I stop.
"Then why not just let me die in peace?" The words come out flat. "If this is the alternative. Just kill me. Let me go."
"That," says a voice from the doorway, "will not be necessary. As there may be a solution."
I turn.
A woman stands in the entrance. Dark teal hair, teal eyes, beautiful but dangerous looking.
I look at Teorin for an explanation but he says nothing.
"Who are you?" I finally say.
She looks at me. Then she changes.
The teal bleeds out of her hair. Her eyes shift. Her whole face turns into something softer and more familiar and I stare at her and feel the room bend slightly because I am either dreaming or losing my mind.
"Maridale?"
She smiles. The warm one. The real one. "Hello, my lady."
I look at her for a long time. "I'm dreaming."
"You are not."
"Then I'm losing my mind."
"Also no." She comes and sits at the edge of the bed. "Though I understand why it feels that way."
"Who are you?" I say. "Who are you really? Why did you pretend to be my maid when you are clearly something else? Or are you something else, now pretending to be my former maid?”
"My name is Maridale. Maridale Vaelor."
I stare at her. Then understanding pressed in.
"Eravic's sister," I said quietly.
She nodded. "I did not pretend," she says.
Her voice goes quieter. "I know how that sounds.
But I did not pretend." She sighs. "Something happened to me.
I needed a change. Eravic offered to let me travel with him but I did not want that either.
I wanted a fresh start somewhere I had never been before, without privilege or bound loyalties.
I just wanted to be myself. So I went to Veynar. "
I remember what Eravic had told me. “Why weren't you veiled there?"
She sighed. “I do not need to be veiled. Not truly.”
I stared at her.
“Eravic and I have the same parents,” she explained. “I was born before him.”
I stared at her blankly. Everyone knew Lord Vaelor had been married to a Sarenal queen who had abandoned him. There were songs about it sung in taverns all over the thronelands.
Eravic had told me his sister was veiled. But even Aunt Petunis had said it when she was teaching me court politics. The only viable Vaelor heir was Eravic. The younger sister was illegitimate.
“My mother got pregnant with me before marriage,” she said quietly. “Then married my father, and they had Eravic.” She sighed. “Normally he would just have needed to sign legitimacy papers, but my…condition made him ashamed.”
She laughed bitterly. “He wouldn’t sign them, and recommended I live life veiled, so that people would not get confused by the two halves of me.”
I remained quiet, trying to process all of it. My head was still pounding from whatever horrific dream I had experienced in King Orsin’s palace.
Meanwhile, Maridale was here telling me she was two people stuck in one body and her father and mother married after her mother gave birth to her and he had declared her illegitimate.
“So I was raised veiled,” she finished.
I frowned. Lord Vaelor was part of Alarna’s court. He had always seemed so pleasant.
Her voice interrupted my thoughts. “And they are not entirely wrong. I am a Vaelor, I cannot lie and value honor like my brother.” She paused.
“But Dali does not have Vaelor abilities or limitations. My Vaelor half is bound by those rules. Dali is my Saren side, a Siren from Sarenal, and they certainly harbor no such restrictions against lying.”
Across the room I hear Teorin shift. I look at him and he is watching her the way you look at someone you think you might remember and are trying to place.
"What is the green version of you?" I say.
She explains what a Saren is. What they can do. What she can do. I listen and the room stays blurry at the edges and I let it.
Then she says, "Eravic is here."
I go still.
"He is waiting for you to be well enough to see him. He cannot enter Morrath fully. It is true that there is nowhere a Vaelor cannot sail but Morrath limits even them. He can reach the shoreline. That is where he is. And he is certain there is a treatment to whatever was used on you. He has healers from all over the Thronelands on his ship, and one of the very best just arrived yesterday.”
I laugh. It comes out wrong. "I was just told I cannot leave this place. That no one I care about may enter."
She raises an eyebrow, the corner of her mouth moving. "You care about my brother?"
Teorin looks annoyed. He does not speak.
"He has never lied to me," I say. I look at Teorin when I say it.
"He is a Vaelor," Maridale says. "The shoreline is as far as he can reach. But he can reach it. And he will help you."
"Why do I need treatment,” I say. "If I am already dead?"
"You will be more yourself. More—"
"I don't want to be more myself." My voice breaks on it. "I want my husband. I want my children. I want to go home and if I cannot have that then I would rather be dead in peace than alive in this shithole of lies and creatures."
My eyes fill before I can stop them.
Maridale moves to me without asking and puts her arms around me and I do not want to cry in front of Teorin and I cannot help it.
I press my face into her shoulder and sob in a way I have not let myself sob since I woke up in this room, since I understood what Teorin was telling me, since I realized the ward between here and everyone I love is made of something I cannot push through with light or will or wanting.
I hear Teorin get up. I hear him leave.
The door closes.
Maridale holds me until it passes. When I pull back she looks at me carefully and says nothing for a moment.
Then she says, "You are right about one thing. This place is dangerous."
Her voice drops. "But there may be a way to get you out. Do not lose hope."
She looks at me. "You can trust me."
And the way she says it, the way her eyes hold mine for just a second longer than necessary, tells me exactly what she is also saying underneath it.
You can trust me. You cannot trust Dali.
I nod. I wipe my face.
"Rest," she says. "Calm yourself these next few days." She squeezes my hand once. "And then we will find my brother. And we will learn Morrath together."