Chapter 5
In my lumis, I soothed another crack on one of my merlons.
It reappeared often—a pain in my spine and neck I couldn’t relieve otherwise.
Nicosia had pinned me to the Egroran, having shortened the soulbinding until it was no longer than a babe’s little finger.
I stood against that tree, feet barely able to touch the tile limning the aperture, and could not move from it, even to turn around.
My head had to tilt to one side to make space for one of its great boughs.
Renn’s distress through the bond had become so steadily constant it had begun to feel like another part of me. As though it had always been there. Like peace was a thing of fairy tales.
I tried not to think about the tree and the pain, which was why I lingered behind the basalt dome with Ursa. I didn’t know what I’d do without her consistent, subtle presence. Surely Nicosia would have broken me by now, were I truly alone.
Alone. I looked over at the gold threading around my heart.
“Who do you think she is?” I asked, pushing at my ethereal cuticles. “Alarna?”
It was a Sestan name, one Nicosia had let slip in his frustration. I didn’t know if it meant anything, but I ate up any crumb the cruel king gave me.
“Another prisoner, maybe,” the green blocks replied. “Another wife?”
I shook my head, unsure. It seemed like a dead end.
My eyes slid from Ursa’s blocks to the golden, vining tendrils. They glowed with a light all their own, separate from me and my magic.
Gods-touched, Sten had murmured.
I blinked away tears. I couldn’t quite remember what Renn had looked like in that basement, after I woke from my craft-induced exhaustion. I kept picturing him in his Noblewight livery, but he’d been wearing something else, hadn’t he?
Why couldn’t I remember him?
“We’ve already accomplished so much.” Ursa’s bodiless voice emanated from the three green pieces of her in my lumis. “This won’t be the end.”
Accomplished so much. Like keeping our family together after such loss.
Like mending broken hearts. Like surviving rape.
Like healing Renn. Ursa and the bees had inspired me, then.
I’d broken down the months of hard work I’d made in his lumis and reshaped it to look like my own, so it might take the donation of my heart, the way mine had taken pieces of my twin sister.
Ursa and I had matched perfectly, physically.
Renn and I had matched, temporarily, in our lumie.
A cold feeling washed over me so suddenly, I thought for a moment it had come from the conservatory, or from Renn. But no, the horror of it was my own. It crept across my scalp and between each bump of my spine, across to my fingernails and into the soles of my feet.
“Ursa,” I whispered. “That’s what it is.”
“What?”
“Why Nicosia’s lumis felt so familiar. Like I’d seen it before. Like he was a sibling.”
“What, Nym?”
I swallowed. “It didn’t feel like a Tallowax. It felt like Renn’s.”
I didn’t understand it, and Ursa had no insights, either.
When Nicosia returned two days later, I watched him closely. The way he moved, the angles of his face, the darkness in his eyes. Did I see traces of Renn there, or was it only my imagination? And yet how would such a thing be possible?
I didn’t know. And I didn’t have enough information to parse it out. Yet their wispy death lines were similar, too.
“I have lived twice as long as you.” Nicosia paced on the other side of the tree like a caged animal.
“I have trained harder and longer. I have studied and mastered every element of craftlock. I’ve had teachers, mentors, libraries, where you have had nothing.
So tell me, Nym Tallowax.” He stopped a pace in front of me, his gaze narrowing on my face.
“Why is it one magical blow from you does more damage in my lumis than two of mine in yours?”
Ursa remained silent, and so did I.
Nicosia’s left eye twitched at my stubbornness. But I would not give him Ursa, and I would not give him Renn.
Some small, buried part of me took pleasure in his mounting frustration. The rest of me feared him.
He sighed. “I tire of this, Nym.” He reached for my neck, as though he would dowse, then paused, thinking better of it.
Instead, he slipped off his belt. I took some solace in knowing he wouldn’t hurt me as Ford had—he couldn’t do that without touching me. But he could still hurt me, and he would.
Guilt threaded from the other side of my link with Renn. Guilt, fear, and horror.
I’m so sorry, Renn. If I could spare him from this, I would. If I could take the beatings twice and keep him from the pain, I would, and gladly.
However, the first blow didn’t come. Nicosia wrung the long strip of leather in his hands, glaring at me, posture tight. Then he did something perhaps more terrible than striking me.
He smiled.
“I think I know how to get through to you, Nym. It will delight me to do it, but I’ll stay my hand if you tell me.”
I pressed my lips together, hard enough to make my cheeks hurt.
The vein on his forehead pulsed. “Very well.”
He left, off to find some other form of torture that might finally break me.
The army was mobilizing.
I could hear it through the walls of the conservatory, the glass.
Knew it from Nicosia’s absences, though he sent a soldier to carry out my interrogation in his stead, once.
Everything seemed too loud and rushed. Surely Cansere had pulled its military to strike, thus inciting this frenzy.
Or, perhaps, Nicosia had lost his patience and sought to ransack the entirety of my homeland.
I worried for Brien, my closest living sibling in age.
He’d been drafted to the Canseren army the same week I’d been conscripted to Rove Castle.
No letters from him, no word, as far as I knew.
I had no idea whether my brother even lived, or if he’d been killed in a skirmish before Sesta ever attacked Rove.
I might never know. But if he did live, would he be facing these mobilizing dragons?
I would ask Nicosia about the war when he came again. Whether or not he’d answer was another question. He owed me nothing. Then again, he might enjoy gloating.
And yet, on the fortieth day since Nicosia took me from Speth, he rendered me speechless.
This time, he brought Princess Eden with him, flanked by two enormous mastiffs.
I hadn’t seen her since her hoax of a wedding.
The princess had always been thin. Lithe, like a dancer.
But now she looked gaunt, her eyes and cheeks sunken, a shadow of herself.
Her hair, pinned up in Sestan fashion, had loosened from its bindings.
Like she had fought him. Or he had hurt her, again.
“Your loyalty is most impressive.” Nicosia fumed like an overheated kettle.
He threw his wife to the floor. The princess’s hands were bound, so she was unable to catch herself.
I winced as she struck the tile, then remembered myself and schooled my face.
“So if I can’t extract answers from your flesh, perhaps I can extract them from hers. ”
I ground my teeth together. This was pointless. Princess Eden knew nothing. She never participated in my dowsing sessions—
Oh.
My limbs lost their strength, and yet somehow I still stood.
If Nicosia could not hurt me physically, he would hurt me emotionally. Use my loyalty to the Canseren crown against me.
“Don’t,” the princess pleaded. Not to him, but to me. She looked at me, desperate, until Nicosia’s boot pressed between her shoulder blades and forced her face to the floor. The dogs watched almost lifelessly. Their masters had trained the very souls out of them.
She knew Renn was alive and whole. Nicosia must have already asked Princess Eden what she knew, which was, of course, nothing. The princess had been taken before I fled Rove. Before I’d given Renn my heart.
That felt like a lifetime ago.
Nicosia pulled out his truncheon. He stayed near the door, where my presently eight-foot leash would not be able to reach. “She can’t heal, like you,” he gloated. “She won’t last long. Will you risk it, Nym?”
Rage reddened my vision.
“I’ll make a deal with you,” he offered, toying with the truncheon.
“You tell me just one thing I want to know, and I’ll spare her.
How you healed Renn Noblewight, or where your power comes from.
Your choice. But”—he pointed the truncheon at me, eyes narrowing—“do not lie to me, Nym. I know when you’re lying.
Tell me it was hard work, or you were born with it, and I’ll rip her head off. Do you understand?”
“Are you serious?” I half shouted the words, my voice rough. “Do you have any conscience at all? She is your wife. Kill her, and your claim to Cansere is moot!”
The damnable villain smiled.
The air became too warm, too thick. “She’s to be the mother of your children. She could be carrying your heir right now—”
He laughed. I hid my hands behind my back so he wouldn’t see how tightly I clenched my fists.
“Do you think I want an heir, stupid girl?” the king asked through his mirth. “Why do you think none walk these halls, as you yourself so adeptly pointed out?”
The heat of rage gave way to the shock of ice. Surely he hadn’t . . . but that would be infanticide. Unless he merely killed their mothers before they could give birth.
Then why does his lumis feel so much like Renn’s?
The thought was so immediate I almost mistook it for Ursa.
He readied the truncheon and looked at me, expectantly.
“Don’t,” Princess Eden sobbed to the marble tile.