Chapter 6
That night, in the darkness of a new moon, I jolted upright on my pallet, a cold sweat forming over my body.
I’d been thumbing through my stolen scriptures, mulling over my discussion with Eden and the revelations about Queen Winvrin, as I drifted into sleep, catching something on the last tendril of wakefulness.
Adoel Nicosia had all three magics under craftlock.
Adoel Nicosia knew Winvrin by her Sestan name.
Sten had called Renn gods-touched.
If Renn were related to Adoel Nicosia . . .
I grabbed the old book and moved closer to the window, flipping through the abused pages by the light of the stars until I found the old prophecy: When the kingdoms of men falter, the blood of the Allmaster shall rise up, garbed as an angel of fire, and balm its people as rain to the earth.
A man who mastered all facets of craftlock could easily be the Allmaster.
Angel of fire. The words made me think of that dim basement room. The way Renn had glowed.
It had to be him. Everything pointed to him. The scripture spoke of the Allmaster’s blood, and Nicosia had eliminated any possible heir he might have. All but one. Because Nicosia knew the scripture, too. Knew his children would be his downfall.
That had to be why the Sestan king was so hell-bent on destroying him. Why Winvrin had been so desperate to keep them apart. Maybe even why King Grejor had taken a Sestan under his wing and forged the papers to paint her Canseren.
Renn was Nicosia’s weakness.
And I had healed him.
There was a special kind of madness to boredom.
Even the shock of my revelation could not fuel me forever.
As the days gradually grew longer, so did my solitude.
I did not miss Nicosia’s visits. I’d take eternal isolation over one more day with him.
But the Sestan king and his armies had marched south, leaving me alone with Ursa and the Egroran.
The palace’s staff seemed to be skeletal, but most days they remembered to feed me and take away the pot I relieved myself in.
I did not see Eden; she was as much a prisoner as I was.
The palace had gone quiet; I didn’t even see staff below through the aperture around the trunk of the Egroran.
I spent my days circling the great tree clockwise, then counterclockwise, talking to Ursa as I did, first delineating what circumstantial evidence I had gathered, then anticipating a variety of futures where I might be able to use it, or where I might end up dead.
Too many resulted in the latter camp. Eventually our planning became tedious, and I resorted to recalling memories or talking about pointless things, recapping interactions I’d had with friends and strangers, sharing stories from our childhood. Anything to pass the time.
A week passed, and then another. Renn’s emotions began to change again.
Sleeplessness, anxiety, anticipation, and then surmounting courage mingled with fear.
Dread, guilt, aggression, focus. If he were not in a battle, I’d eat my shoe.
I shrunk within myself, mulling over the feelings, trying to envision what Renn must be doing, narrating occasionally to Ursa.
I was sitting in the tree, staring up into its few leaves that grew in this chamber, when a sharp pain exploded in my side.
Gasping, I nearly fell from its branches.
The pain was such I could scarcely breathe, and I gripped a barky knot, trying to right myself.
Felt the injury, expecting blood, but there was nothing there. No wound, no blood.
My heart sank into my feet as I gripped my middle and hissed through the agony. Renn. Gods, help him. He’d been hurt, badly. A blade, perhaps a spear. The agony radiated in such a way I couldn’t be sure.
I dropped from the branch, stumbling on my feet and collapsing to the floor. Ursa called after me, but I had no thought but for the aching heat in my side, and for the man I knew it belonged to.
He is your chosen, isn’t he? I asked Hem. Save him. Please, save him.
Tears ran down the side of my nose. The pain continued, spreading. “Help him,” I whispered, face pressed to the cool tile. “Gods, someone help him!”
I should have been there. I should never have left his side. I should have insisted he flee with me from Speth, or I should have joined him in the fray. Then neither of us would be in such stark predicaments.
What a fool I’d been.
Minutes passed, the pain so intense I grew delirious with it.
Was there no other healer? No doctor? “Someone help him!” I screamed. The sound echoed off the domed ceiling.
I slipped into my lumis, searching my merlons for a way to heal him, but of course the wound didn’t materialize here.
It would be there, wherever he was. In my mind’s eye I pictured him lying on a thawing battlefield, staring up at the sky as red soaked his clothes and the grass beneath him.
Whispering my name, and how I’d failed him in the end.
I threw myself bodily at the merlon of my heart, feeling it quiver.
Pressed the pads of my fingers into his golden light.
“Don’t die. Please don’t die.” I was only a projection of myself, an interpretation of magic, but I sobbed, tears raining onto the gray and translucent pieces of the merlon.
“Not after all of this, Renn. You’ve endured so much, endure this, too. You have to. You have to.”
The pain exploded, momentarily blinding me. I was viscerally aware of my physical self screaming.
“Bear it, Renn,” I whispered through tears. “Please, please. Someone help him. Someone save him.” I curled around the merlon, pressing my eyes into the golden light until it was all I could see. “Don’t leave me here. Don’t leave me.”
I stayed like that, whispering and praying, for hours.
Through the rise and fall of torment, through the piercing and tugging of a needle as someone stitched us shut, through the burning of a fever that racked my body—even removing my every article of clothing did nothing to alleviate the heat.
I prayed long into the night and into the next day, my sister’s voice mingling with mine.
Days later, when our fever finally broke and the injury in our sides became an agonizing but steady pulse, I cried again, grateful that he would survive. I was sure of it, and I sobbed with that certainty.
By the end of this, I would have washed all of Sesta with my tears.
Days later, when the door to the conservatory creaked open, I did not immediately turn toward it.
I was rereading Prophecies, fruitlessly searching for something that might help my understanding.
But as heavy footsteps approached, and I didn’t hear the touch of a tray on the cold marble floor, I glanced over, winter cold sending a shock through me.
On the other side of the Egroran, only three paces away, stood Physician Wald Whitestone.
I dropped the book as I rushed to my feet, backing away as far as the soulbinding would allow. This man had tried to kill me before. He had no reason not to try again—
“We do not have much time.” He held out empty hands.
I paused, eyeing him. He sounded exhausted. He looked exhausted, like he’d aged ten years in . . . How long since his supposed execution in Rove? Over three months, now.
“What do you want?” I asked, keeping my voice down but restraining none of its sharpness. “How are you even alive?”
He touched the tree for support and sat on the cold marble; his knees creaked as he did so. The passive stance took my guard down. He didn’t wear his red cincture.
“Winvrin,” he answered, affirming Eden’s guess. “We had always been close. She never forgave me . . . I suppose now she never will. But she gave me exile over death. For my long years of service.”
I gawked at him, at the betrayal of justice, until my mind caught up with my ears.
Wald Whitestone spoke with a Sestan accent.
I neared him until only two paces separated us. “You’re Sestan?”
He sighed. “I’ve little time for chatter, Miss Tallowax. I have come because the past haunts me. I never intended to return to Sesta; my loyalty will forever be to the Noblewights.”
I laughed. “To which ones? Half of them are dead. Princess Eden hasn’t even laid eyes on you.”
He flinched.
Gods, did he speak the truth? Hem make me a mindreader that I might know for sure.
He glanced at the tree and the slits between its trunk and the floor. Peered into them, perhaps to check if anyone might be nearby to overhear his traitorous words. “I’m glad you healed him,” he murmured.
I lowered myself to my knees to better study his face. “It was my job. Had your assassin succeeded, he would be dead.”
To my surprise, Whitestone chuckled.
Another might have taken offense to the sound, but I did not.
I knew Renn was different even before giving him half my heart.
A lumis as shattered as his . . . I’d been shocked to see him so alive upon our first meeting.
His death lines should have been numerous and stark, but they were few and, oddly, cloudy.
Just like Nicosia’s. As though the gods did not intend for him to die.
For either of them to die. At least, not easily.
“For by blood alone shall blood be undone,” Whitestone murmured.
“Prophecies,” I said.
He raised an eyebrow. “I’m surprised you know it.”
I wouldn’t have, had I not been given an exorbitant amount of free time and a worn set of scriptures to fill it. I tried not to let the comment rankle me. “Your point?”
“I’ve little time,” he repeated. The roundness of his vowels felt eerie. This wasn’t the Whitestone I knew. “Adoel is away, but he does not leave his palace unguarded.”
He slouched. He looked a shadow of what he’d once been. Where was the proud, callous, condescending man who’d tried to defame me before the king? Who’d stormed off in anger when I healed the soldier at the portcullis?
Still wary of him, I snapped, “Then speak.”
He nodded. “I know you will never leave this place, but the war is not for land—”