Chapter 2 #2
We took another, darker, shorter set of stairs up, then stepped into a large domed conservatory at the back of the palace.
It had a view of the north side of the city, faraway mountains, and pine forests.
Quite the view—two-thirds of its walls were made of glass, making me truly marvel for the second time.
Perhaps more prominent, however, was the enormous tree rising from its floor, the tiles cut into an uneven polygon around its trunk, forming a narrow aperture, its thick boughs reaching up, and in many places through the ceiling.
The girth of its trunk spoke of its age.
Surely the tree was as old as the palace itself, if not older.
It would take four of me to wrap my arms around it.
“This is the Egroran.” He gently touched my neck, and I felt the moment his magic took hold of me, soulbinding me to it.
I pulled away, unable to hide my scowl, but the king did not look at me but at the tree, one hand splayed to its rough bark.
“This tree was planted upon the founding of our nation, or so the lore says. Though this country has changed names, shifted from kingdom to empire and back again, and traded ruling families, the tree still stands, and so do we.”
“Is that why you attack Cansere?” I asked. “To restore your old empire?”
He chuckled. “It is not an empire of land I seek, Miss Tallowax, but that is a tale for another day. I’ll have some things brought up for you; this will be your space, for now.”
“My prison,” I corrected.
“You should be able to walk the whole of the room,” he offered, as though the lengthening of my leash should please me. At least I didn’t have an ugly dog glaring at me. “Enjoy the view. We will talk again soon. Alas, I’m a very busy man, and I’ve been away some time. Until we meet again.”
He nodded at me, still smiling, and left the room.
I heard the subtle click of its door and waited for a lock, but none came.
This conservatory hadn’t been built to be a prison.
Alone, I tested the soulbinding, and yes, I was able to touch the walls of the room but pulled up a few feet short of the door.
A lock, bars, chains, none of it mattered so long as the king’s magic held me here.
Still, I circled the conservatory, searching for .
. . I didn’t know what. There were no other doors, no exits or entrances, no decoration.
The beauty came from the tree and the great window alone.
I pressed my hand against the glass, fog climbing up from the warmth of my fingers, and looked out to the horizon beyond the mountains.
The opposite direction of my home. I missed it dearly.
I missed my family, though they would see themselves through the winter in one piece. Renn had made sure of it.
“Is it selfish of me,” I whispered, “to miss him more than the rest of it?” I’d only just found him, just touched him, just thought I might have him, before King Nicosia tore us apart.
Finally allowed myself to give in to my feelings, only to have them shattered all over again, though I supposed the manner of breaking was different, this time. Politics instead of betrayal.
“No,” Ursa offered, soft and reassuring. “Lissel and the children have each other. Brien has the army. You have . . .”
She didn’t finish the sentence, but I knew what she’d intended. You have nothing. A tear came to my cheek.
“I have you, Ursa,” I whispered.
“And I will be here for you, always,” she promised. “But I am not all here, Nym. I can’t be. But he can. Somehow, you’ll find a way. Love always triumphs.”
It did not—I knew from repeat experience that love was never enough—but Ursa sounded so hopeful and resolute, it felt wrong to debate her.
I heard a soft cry, so soft I barely perceived it. I thought, at first, it was Ursa who wept, but I couldn’t recall a single time she’d done so since merging with me. Holding my breath, I listened. Nothing, and then a sniff.
It came from the tree.
Hesitant, I slipped off my shoes and toed to the tree, trying to remain quiet. Pressed my hand to its bark as Nicosia had. Heard another sniff.
My eyes were drawn down to the tiles of the floor, cut to hug the trunk, but the shape made small gaps around it. On my hands and knees, I pressed my face to the largest, about an inch wide, and peered downward.
The room below was white, perhaps another conservatory. I spied a woman sitting against the tree, trying very hard to weep gently.
I recognized the color of her dress. “Princess?” I whispered. She did not hear me, so I risked speaking louder. “Princess?”
She stiffened, looked around, then up. Her blue gaze met mine, widened. Then she drew a hand across her neck. Death? Cutting—
She wasn’t alone.
I held my breath again, hoping I hadn’t been heard. I waited for a soldier to walk over, to discover me, but none did. I waited a long time for the princess to say something, but it seemed she could not.
Eventually, I withdrew from the aperture, cold and lightheaded. Returned to the massive window and stared out into the mountainous forest, so far from home.
My chest hurt. I receded into myself, picturing Renn’s face just before he kissed me, the pure adoration in his eyes, free of judgment and condescension.
Eyes that saw the way Ursa’s had—a beautiful, fair world where good won and evil lost, where if two people wanted a happy ending badly enough, they could seize it from the stars themselves.
Pressing my forehead to the glass, I wept, muffling myself with my arm, not wishing to draw the attention of anyone with ears to hear me.
I found another spot in the conservatory where the binding pulled tight—the southwest corner, just past where the window ended.
The tether pulled me up short. When I held my arms out in front of me, my palms hovered about four inches from the wall.
Here, I tested the magic. There was no guard to strike me nor mastiff to bark at me, just me and the tree. So I reached my hands forward and strained.
It felt strange. It wasn’t a physical thing holding me back, not like a wall or a rope. My very spirit froze, unmoving, and my body ceded to it. I grunted, I reached, I perspired, but I could not budge myself so much as a hair closer.
I searched my lumis. I’d searched it before, again and again, trying to find a link to my soul the way I could find one to my mind.
But craftlock won on this point: The spirit and the body were entirely separate, and I could do nothing to mitigate King Nicosia’s spell on me.
So I strengthened my walls and my heart, then tried again to reach the wall.
I leaned into it, pushed. Jumped, crawled, ran.
But every time I froze in the exact same spot, sweat pouring down my back in my struggle, clenching my teeth so hard they neared cracking.
“Even your stubbornness can’t change it,” Ursa admonished.
I was about to retort when a sudden, keening sadness swept through me, bursting from my heart and flowing into my arms and legs like driven snow. I gasped and collapsed to my knees, holding my breast as though it were a wound I could staunch. Renn.
I dared not say his name aloud, despite the semblance of solitude. One mistake could cost everything. If deciphering Renn’s lumis was so critical to King Nicosia, then it was critical to everyone, and I was the only thing standing between him and it.
New tears sprang to my eyes, and I didn’t understand why.
But the grief must have been substantial for me to feel it so strongly here.
What happened, Renn? Had he learned of Sten’s death?
Perhaps his guard had been injured in Speth and only just succumbed to his wounds, and I wasn’t there to help him.
The thought wove my own sorrow through the link.
Lying on the hard floor on my side, I curled my knees to my chest and hugged myself tightly, imagining I was holding him. Tried desperately to send that comfort through those golden threads to his heart. I’m sorry. I’m here. You are strong, Renn. You’ll overcome this. We both will.
How badly I wanted to believe it.
I crawled to the little pallet the servants had brought to me and lay upon it, breathing through the sadness like one might breathe through child labor. Turning my thin pillow, I held it tightly against my chest, trying to imagine it was the Canseren king in my arms and his heartbeat I listened to.
I had a hunch we both cried ourselves to sleep that night.
“Nym?”
The voice stirred me early in the morning, dawn light drawing across the conservatory’s glass.
I stared up at the tree-pierced ceiling a long moment before I came to myself.
Hope blossomed like new spring flowers as I rolled over to the aperture around the Egroran’s trunk, closed one eye, and peered down.
Princess Eden stood below, peering back up at me.
“Are you alone?” She spoke so softly I could barely hear her.
“I am. Are you?”
She nodded. “Only for a moment. We don’t have long. The king says he’s preparing a room for me.”
I wasn’t sure what that meant.
“Why are you here?” she asked. “What’s happened to—?”
“Renn is alive,” I pushed through the crack. “I’ve seen him myself. He’s alive and whole. Truly whole.”
It was hard to see through such a little crack, in dim light, so far, but I thought relief washed over her. She leaned against the tree. “Thank the gods.”
“But Adrinn . . .” My throat started to close. “. . . the others—”
“I know. He told me that much.” It was the coldest I’d ever heard her voice. “He said nothing of Renn, so I’d hoped—”
But we had no time for niceties. “Did you see a way to escape? Did he bind you to the tree?”
“A soldier did. I think the king can only bind one soul at a time. I’ve . . . never been soulbound before.”
“On the ship?”