4. Four
four
A small chamber awaited her, the walls rough, dark glass.
Neira had been in here only a handful of times before: as a little girl clinging to her mother's skirt, and as a young teen, her hand in her father's. A few times by herself, secretly, although those secretive adventures had only fuelled her nightmares. It was as unsettling now as it had been then, but back then she had had her mother's hand to hold. Her father's protection against whatever it was that lived here.
She forced herself to speak the words, the pronunciation long unpractised and rough on her tongue. The words glowed in the air before her, just for a moment, before the darkness leached them away.
Back then, she had had her mother’s voice to soothe her. The only voice that awaited her now was cold, detached, cruelly amused. It whispered from the perfectly round mirror attached to the far wall, the glass beginning to gleam.
"It has been some time, Majesty." The words seemed to coil around her like a cat, demanding her attention. The light was just bright enough to highlight how roughly hewn the walls were, how sharp some of the edges.
Neira said nothing until she had walked, not hurried, the length of the room to stop before the mirror. The surface dimmed with her approach, her reflection in the rippling glass pale and wan. "It has."
"How have you been?"
The overly familiar tone grated on her. "Just fine. Will you answer me?"
"If you know the question – yes."
She took a deep breath, her hands curling into fists at her sides. "I need to speak with the Glacier Throne."
"That is not a question, Majesty."
Aggravating thing. The voice was mocking, each word hurled at her like a pebble. "Will you show me the Huldran king?"
"No."
Neira pinched the bridge of her nose, already flushed with irritation. "Why not?" She knew the answer – because it wasn't the right question to ask. It was not what the mirror wanted from her, and it was not what the mirror would give. "I know you can do it. I have seen you establish that connection for my father."
"You wear a crown, but you are not yet queen. Only a queen may demand an answer from me, Majesty. You know this. Your mother taught you, in this very room, under my very gaze. You showed such promise then." The entity seemed to smile, Neira's reflection distorted just enough to make it look like she was, too.
But Neira was not smiling.
She remembered. Remembered how the room had always been cold, the mirror always alive and alert. She had felt the mirror's pleasure as it had watched her stumble through the words to rouse it, time and time again. Had felt the barb of each whispered compliment barely hiding the mockery. Her mouth flattened in displeasure.
"But," the mirror relented, and Neira could almost feel a touch to her cheek, as if the intangible being that inhabited it had reached out for her. Her spine stiffened. Flinching now would do more harm than just the entity's derision, she was sure. "I like you. Ask me again, and ask the right question this time."
"Will I be queen?"
"Yes. You will be queen."
The rush of exhilaration, of righteous satisfaction – she should be queen one day; she was the eldest, the firstborn, and that had to account for something – was dampened by a sudden worry for the sombre-eyed young boy in the palace above her. She could almost feel his presence, clinging to her side, trying to hide in her skirt the way she had hid in her mother’s. "What about Ramin?"
"The boy will never be king." The mirror sounded almost sad at the wasted potential. "But he does not need to die – not by your hand, nor by the Grey King's, who is halfway to your door. I know your plan. It is a good one." Neira felt a something akin to pleasure emit from the creature. "Send him across the sea and he will live."
"But he won't be king of Brightmere."
"No. He will never see his homeland again."
"The Glacier Throne will take him in?"
"Yes."
Neira fell silent for a moment, trapping the tip of her thumbnail between her teeth. Ramin would never return. But if he stayed, his life would be sacrificed for the conqueror's reign; that much had been revealed in-between honeyed words. "My father has ridden out to face him. The Grey King."
"Yes."
"Will he return?"
The mirror seemed to smile again. In her mind's eye, Neira saw her mother's face. "That thread has not been woven yet. But you should prepare nonetheless."
Safir was pacing by the vault door when Neira hurried back with her fingers and cheeks cold as ice, her dark eyes wild.
"We must go." She barely stopped to place the crown back on its cushion.
"What happened?"
"Come." Neira curled her clammy fingers around her maid's wrist and pulled her along, through the vault door, along the corridors. They braced the bridge so quickly they startled something huge in the lake, and Safir whimpered by her side when water splashed behind them moments before the women disappeared into the shaded stairwell on the other side. Its shadow hunted them halfway up, scales scraping loudly against the narrow tunnel’s walls, but Neira didn't look back, didn't allow herself to slow. Only when they had returned to her chambers, when the door had been shut and firmly locked, did the princess turn to her maid.
"I need you to take Ramin to Huldra."
"What?"
Neira paced, running her hands through her hair. One of her hair combs lost its hold, bounced against the carpet, rolled half under the bed unnoticed. The anxiety she had kept inside in that tiny chamber burst out of her all at once, leaving her almost dizzy.
"We are being invaded. He is six years old, Safir. Even if the Grey King doesn't murder him immediately, I fear to watch what he will be raised into. Please."
"How am I supposed to take him to Huldra ?"
"You will take a guard and sail a boat down the river to Duskport, and take a ship from there."
"Duskport is where the Grey King reigns!"
"Yes, but he is currently waging war here . He can't be in two places at once. And even if he's there, he doesn't know what you look like! Ramin could be just another little boy. If we are to take him to safety, it must be now, and we must be fast. Quickly, pack some of your things."
"But–" Safir grabbed her by the arms. "Come with us. We'll all go. Huldra will take you in as much as they will take the prince."
"No." Neira shook her head, gently prising the maid's fingers from her sleeves. "No, Safir. I must stay here. I will hold the palace against the invasion if father doesn't return. We have more than enough to outlast a siege."
Queen. She'd be queen. This was the way she had to go – this was what her mother had wanted for her. There was no way Neira would let this opportunity slip through her fingers. Ambition gripped her; an ambition that she had laid to rest shortly after Ramin's birth, painfully so after her father had declared the boy his heir before Ramin had even taken his first steps or showed any proclivity of anything at all. What kind of king the boy would have grown into, what kind of person, none of that had mattered. Her father had disregarded all the oracles, all the soothsayers and wise men and women who had come to court, hopeful for a bit of the king's beneficence.
Most had told him what he had wanted to hear, regardless.
But Neira recalled one crone, a hunched, withered figure who had looked at her with a keen eye, where she had stood to the side. The crone had not spoken to her, merely shared that knowing gaze with her for a moment before telling the king that he was a fool to disregard what he already had achieved.
Neira had felt seen, then, a girl of barely twenty standing among men who had never regarded her as anything but a bounty to marry off eventually. It had been the last time someone had looked at her like that – like she mattered, like she had a destiny to fulfil.
It had mattered none, in the end. This was her only chance to grasp the life she was owed.
Safir was still standing in the doorway, staring at her.
"Neira," she whispered. "Please. Think about this. We have time – we can hatch another plan."
"Pack your things." She had to steel her heart against that pleading gaze. Loath as she was to lose Safir, this was important. Why did the woman not see that? "Don't make me tell you again."
To avoid her maid's eyes, Neira pushed past her and out into the hall – empty, thankfully – and opened Ramin's door without ceremony.
A bright cry rang out when the boy spotted her, rising from his perch at the low table littered with paper. "Neira!"
She fell to her knees and held out her hands, and when Ramin rushed in for a hug, Neira held the boy as close as she could. This was the first step of goodbye, but as she stroked her fingers through his fine, dark hair – so much like her own – and kissed the side of his head, her throat grew tight.
"Mother," she croaked, lifting her eyes to the hunched figure hovering by the table. "Pack Ramin's fine clothes, and bring his travel cloak. Please."
"Are we going somewhere?" Ramin's small hand was stroking her hair much like she was stroking his. Neira wanted to cry.
"Yes. We… we are going away for a little while. You know we are in danger, yes?"
Ramin pulled back to look at her, frowning. "We are?"
"Yes, my love. Father rode out to fight off the intruders on our land, remember?"
He nodded slowly. "But… we are safe here. That's what he said. He said he would be back in a fortnight, and that he would bring gifts. It hasn't been a fortnight yet."
"I know. He said that. But we haven't heard back from him since, and I would rather know you are safe. Do you understand?"
"Yes."
He didn't, not fully. Neira knew that. And he would cry when eventually he realised that Neira wasn't coming with them – that he and Safir would be going alone.
That he'd never return.
"You'll be a good boy and do as you're told?"
"Can we still play strings where we are going?"
Neira took a deep breath and kissed the boy's forehead, tears burning on her lashes. "Of course."