Chapter 5 #2
I wouldn’t. I did not want to watch this kind, innocent woman be hurt, but I knew speaking now would make all this suffering for naught.
It would spare Princess Eden for a moment, but doing so would damn Renn.
Nicosia would kill all three of us, instead of just the two of us.
Or he’d find a way to Ursa, or hurt others, maybe siblings he had, trying to mimic her added strength.
Only a fool would think the mad Sestan king would let us walk free after I gave him the secrets he so desperately sought.
So I dropped to my knees as though I were the one about to receive the beating, arms over my head.
In truth, it was to drown out the sounds of the king’s brutality.
Were it not for the king’s gods-forsaken war, he might have really murdered Princess Eden right in front of me.
As it was, there was some issue with the troops, some missive sent to Rodsfell, for a soldier with four silver lines on his collar came into the room, barely passing the two of us a glance.
Whatever the message, it pulled Nicosia’s attention entirely.
He left with one of the mastiffs, leaving me soulbound to his sacred tree, and Eden bound to the remaining dog.
Eden, like a broken marionette on the floor.
I moved as close to her as the soulbinding would allow. The mastiff growled in turn.
“Your Majesty,” I murmured, afraid raising my voice would call back the king. “Reach out to me. I can heal you if you touch me.”
Her only movement was the rapid rise and fall of her chest. Her breaths were too short. She had several broken ribs.
“Eden,” I said a little louder. “Eden, let me help you.” I worried she bled internally, where the skin didn’t show it. Even with Nicosia gone, she could still die. “Eden.”
A soft whimper passed her lips.
“He’s gone. He’s gone, for now. I need you to reach out to me.” I lay on the floor and stretched my arm toward her, leaving about two paces between us. Looking at the mastiff, I said, “Come here and bite me, you ugly monster.”
If I could get the dog to move, Eden would move, too.
The mastiff growled.
“Gods dammit, Eden!” I shouted. “Is this really where you want to die? In Rodsfell? By his hands? Move!”
“She’s too hurt,” Ursa started—
But Eden ticked. A quiver of a shoulder. She tried to lift her head, but it dropped again. “B-Broken,” she whispered.
“I know, I know. Just a little closer. Stretch your hand to me. Or a foot. I just need to touch you. I’ll make it go away.”
A sharp intake of breath gave away her tears. “No, you can’t.”
“Eden.”
She shifted, straining toward me. Tried to inch forward with her legs, then gasped and fell limp again.
I clicked my tongue at the dog. “Here, boy. Come here.” I made a crude gesture at it. “Fight! Attack! Sic!”
The mastiff glared at me.
A deep, guttural groan emanated from the princess as she dug an elbow into the white tile and pushed herself a little closer, a little closer. Reached out. I stretched, willing the soulbond to extend, but it wasn’t enough.
“Again, Eden,” I pleaded. “Try again.”
She began to cry.
“You’re stronger than he knows.” I kept my hand out, willing her toward it. “Show him how strong you are.”
She tried again, collapsed.
I set my jaw. “If Renn can do it, so can you. Eden, just a little farther!”
Crying out, she dug her elbow in and propelled herself just enough that our fingertips touched.
My consciousness glided into her lumis. It took me a moment to orient myself.
Princess Eden’s lumis was less visual and more auditory, a symphony of music playing out of harmony.
Each part flowed around me like smoke in colors of green and yellow.
I’d never dowsed on a lumis like hers before, but when I pulled on the magic, I began to make sense of it.
Found the most discordant notes and coaxed them higher and lower until harmony sang again.
So many of them—endless abrasions and bruises, bleeds and breaks.
Yet even this was not as overwhelming as Renn’s had been. This I could manage.
Once I’d corrected the major issues, I followed each individual melody, smoothing it out, adjusting its beat, tuning it with magic, before moving on to the next.
I was so focused I didn’t know how much time passed.
But when I fell back to reality, neither Nicosia nor his lackeys had returned.
Eden pushed herself up and began unpinning the nest of her hair.
That familiarity I felt with my siblings, that I’d felt between Nicosia and Renn, hadn’t been present in her lumis. Come to think of it, I hadn’t sensed anything in Prince Adrinn’s, either, and I’d dowsed on him thrice.
“Thank you.” Her fingers trembled as she worked.
“I’m so sorry, Eden.”
She shook her head, lips straining to keep the sobs at bay. It was one thing to tell me not to give in to Nicosia’s demands; it was another to experience the consequences.
We stayed like that for a quarter hour before she spoke.
“Where did he go?” She sounded like a mouse.
She’d been too hurt to notice the messenger. “Called away to war. I don’t know how long we have.”
She swallowed. Nodded. “Any amount of time is a gift. I . . . I haven’t spoken to anyone. He doesn’t . . . he doesn’t let me speak to anyone but him.”
Silence fell between us. The mastiff’s dark eyes remained locked on me. Thorny guilt laced with sorrow threaded through me—Renn, somewhere, sad again. Or perhaps sad for me, and what he felt transpiring here.
Throat tight, I said, “While we have the time . . . I’ll listen to you, Eden. Anything you want to say. I wish I could do more for you, but he’s bound me to this tree.” I gestured weakly to it. “But I can listen.”
A chuckle, or perhaps a short sob, clicked up her throat. “And what could I possibly say?”
It took me a moment to steel myself, to ensure my words would be even when I spoke. “It gets quieter. That voice inside you that’s always screaming, even when you sleep. In time, it gets quieter.”
She went very still.
“It feels like it never will,” I went on, staring at the wrinkles in my skirt, “but it does. You’ll be trapped in those moments for a long time, but the world moves on, and eventually you’ll start to move with it.
It won’t seem like it, at first. You’ll be standing in the middle of summer and still feel the cold. ”
I felt her eyes on me, so I met them. Offered . . . not a smile, but something that might assure her.
“It happened to you, too, didn’t it?” she asked.
I dipped my head. “Almost five years ago, now. But he left, after. I wasn’t trapped in it, like you are.”
She hugged herself. “I . . . can’t stand them touching me. Not just Adoel. All of them. The servants, even the kind ones. Their touch feels like lightning.”
“And nothing feels real,” I supplied. “Everything is a play, and you just recite your lines, do your part. And you keep looking out into the audience, pleading for someone, anyone, to come onstage to protect you, but no one knows, and they wouldn’t understand if they did, and the curtain never closes, forcing you to stay beneath the weight of their stares. ”
Tears fell down her cheeks. Pinching her lips together, she nodded.
“Eden.” I lowered my voice so even the dog wouldn’t hear me. “We are going to get out of this. Somehow, some way. One of us will find a weakness in him or in this damnable palace, or Renn will build an army and rescue us, or the gods themselves will rage against Sesta for the injustices done here.”
She didn’t seem to hear me. “He said something strange to me, the first time.”
The hairs on my neck stood on end. “Nicosia?”
She swallowed. “He said, If you ever see your brother again, tell him exactly what I did to you.”
Rage nearly choked me, but I tamped it down. “Then it is personal.”
She regarded me, eyes shining.
“Everything comes down to Renn. Nicosia comes in here nearly every damn day and . . . asks . . . me about Renn. How I cured him. He says he’s never met him, and yet also has. But why go mad over the baby, and not the eldest? Why Renn, and not Adrinn?”
New tears spilled over Eden’s cheeks. “Adrinn is dead.”
“I know.” I reached for her, but the soulbinding kept me back. But Eden grabbed my hand, our fingers linking for just a moment, before letting go, the mastiff growling the whole while.
“I know, I . . . I was there. I tried to heal him, but it was too late.” I swallowed against a sore lump sticking in my throat like a burr.
I hadn’t liked Prince Adrinn; he’d been a cad more often than not.
But Renn and Eden had loved him. He’d died protecting the castle. “He fought to the end. He died nobly.”
She drew in a shuddering breath and wiped her eyes on her sleeve. “Thank you,” she whispered.
“Eden . . .” I eyed the door. Now was not the right time, but I doubted we’d get another opportunity like this. I had to push forward, however fragile the princess was. “How soon after Queen Winvrin and your father married was Renn born?”
She sniffed. Adjusted her position on the floor. “I was so young, but not long. He was born early, one of the reasons he’s been so sick.” Hope flickered. “Did you really heal him? Completely?”
I nodded. “I did. At least, I think I did. I don’t know . . . Nicosia found me shortly after.”
Her expression darkened.
“Renn said he fell ill after his birth. Before his first birthday.”
She considered a moment. “I think that’s right, yes.”
I chewed the inside of my cheek, judging my next question. “Eden, I don’t mean to pressure you more, but—”
“We’ve so little time.” The large window caught her attention; I wondered if this was her first time here, or if she’d been given a tour, too. “Just ask.”
I exhaled slowly. “Are you entirely sure Renn is Grejor’s son?”
I surprised her. She startled like I’d pricked her with a needle. “What?”
“I’ve spent a lot of time in his lumis,” I went on. “And I’ve glimpsed Nicosia’s as well. They felt . . . similar to each other. Possibly . . . familial.”
Her brow furrowed. “No . . . no, he’s a Noblewight.”
“Of course.” I leaned back. “Of course. I didn’t mean to upset you.”
She laughed. It sounded cruel. “This is the least upsetting thing I’ve experienced these past weeks, Miss Tallowax.”
“Nym, please.”
She simply nodded.
I pushed my luck. As Eden had pointed out, I didn’t know when I’d get another chance. I had to learn anything she knew while I could. “Have you seen Whitestone?”
Her delicate brows furrowed. “Wald Whitestone? The physician?”
I nodded.
“I thought you knew . . . he was executed.”
I shook my head. “I saw him, here. When they brought me to your . . . wedding. I saw him, and I called out to him. He looked right at me, Eden.”
Her features slackened. “I . . . I don’t know how. He was executed. Privately, of course, given his station.”
Sensing a dead end, I switched to another subject. “Do you know who Alarna is?”
The princess’s breath caught. “How do you know that name?”
Her reaction, as though the name were familiar, bolstered me. “Nicosia used it, when . . .” I shuddered. “He let it slip.”
Lifting a shaking hand, Eden bit her first knuckle. Considered for a moment. “Adrinn.”
“Alarna is Adrinn?”
She shook her head. “No, he . . . he’d been suspicious of our stepmother for some time. Found something that didn’t settle well with him—he didn’t tell me exactly how. He thought she might have been a spy.”
Wait . . . Alarna was Queen Winvrin? Or had I heard wrong?
A chill ran through me as I remembered the eldest prince pinning me against my bedroom wall, knife to my throat, accusing me of the very same thing.
“He said she was Sestan.” Her voice had dwindled to nearly nothing. “That she’d been born Alarna . . . something. I can’t remember the surname. But she had Canseren papers. Perfect Canseren papers, signed by . . .”
She squirmed, obviously uncomfortable with the revelation, but I pressed. “Signed by who?”
She licked her lips. “Signed by my father.”
My shoulders slumped. “He knew?”
“I don’t know.” New tears brimmed on her eyelashes. “Gods help me, I don’t know. Adrinn could never prove anything, but Hem knew he tried.”
I thought of the snippet of argument between the queen and heir I’d overheard in King Grejor’s rooms. Thought of the wound Prince Adrinn had asked me to heal in secrecy. Was this what he’d been hiding? Sleuthing after the faithfulness of his stepmother?
But that meant Winvrin and Nicosia knew each other, beyond what would be expected of neighboring monarchs.
Nicosia knew her Sestan name. And the queen .
. . she’d been so put out, so afraid, when Nicosia arrived unexpectedly at Rove.
So afraid that she’d sent Renn down into the tunnel, where the Sestan king couldn’t reach him.
Do you not realize what he is?! she’d asked me in a moment of frustration, when Renn had relapsed.
Gods above, she knew. She had to have known. She’d been so desperate to find him a cure—
Gods-touched.
“She was friends with Whitestone,” she added, tracing the lines of her knuckles with a fingernail. “Winvrin. Perhaps she was tied to that, too.”
I scoffed. “But why? The queen and I certainly had our differences, but if I died, Renn’s progress would stop. She wouldn’t want me dead. She’d call down Zia’s own wrath if the assassination were successful—”
“He thinks she’s his mother.” A sudden cruelty deepened in Eden’s voice, and for a moment I didn’t know to whom she referred. “Zia, the goddess. She’s everywhere in this gods-forsaken place.”
Otso-Zia. But I dared not interrupt her.
“Adoel thinks he has some gods-touched conception. He has a personal shrine to her, a whole window next to one of himself. He has all three crafts, so maybe he is.” She scoffed, then shrunk in on herself. “He’s mad, Nym. He’s absolutely mad.”
That . . . was interesting. It explained the dedication to the oft-forgotten goddess. The violet cincture. And I’d seen the window. It was magnificent.
I wanted to ask more about it, what exactly Nicosia had said, or what Eden had overheard, but footsteps were coming toward the door.
Heavy armored ones, likely a guard and not the king himself, but still, our time together was about to end.
So I squirreled the new information away and rushed, “Eden, where is your room?”
Her focus had turned to the door, fear immobilizing her.
I swung my leg out, nudging her knee with my toe. “Where is your room?”
She shivered. “U-Upstairs. To the . . .” She took a beat to think. “. . . left. I mean, the west wing. I can see the sunset. Fifth floor. It’s the . . . third. No, fourth door from the stairs.”
“I need you to be ready,” I whispered. “We are going to get out of this. I don’t know how or when, but we will get out. Always be ready. I won’t have a way to communicate with you.”
She trembled as the door opened, but set her jaw and nodded.
I hoped I would not break my promise.