Chapter 6 #2
“The war is for Renn.” If we were going to do this quickly, then there was no point in repeating what we already knew.
His forehead crinkled; perhaps he was surprised I’d pieced together so much. He finally noticed the book. “You’ve spent some time in Prophecies.”
“Who is wasting our time now?” I countered.
The physician seemed to age further before my eyes. “He has always hated Renn, Adoel. I wasn’t sure why, until I heard the reports of a man lit from within at the front, tearing through soldiers like an axe through trees.”
A chill snaked down my spine. Oh, Renn.
“I never knew the details of why she came to Cansere, her alliance with King Grejor, but I think I do, now.” He let out a shaky breath, and so did I at the subtle confirmations of my inferences.
So quiet I could barely hear him, Whitestone said, “It’s my fault the prince became so ill. My fault he shattered.”
The confession hit me like vertigo; I pressed a palm to the Egroran to stay upright. “Wh-What? You broke his lumis?” But that would mean Whitestone was a healer—
The man shook his head. “No. But I let Adoel do it.”
Did you know him? I’d asked.
Only briefly, Nicosia had answered.
“Tell me,” I demanded. “If you’ve come this far, tell me.” I scanned his face. Thought of Winvrin and of Prince Adrinn. “You were a spy, weren’t you?”
He nodded. “He sent me shortly after Grejor’s marriage.”
“Because of Alarna.”
I surprised him with the queen’s Sestan name.
He did not compliment me on my findings, nor question me.
“Yes. I assumed a Canseren name and came to the castle, as she did. She believed it for the same reasons as herself—for sanctuary and protection. I did not understand why, but Adoel was obsessed with the queen and her babe. I . . . I enjoyed my work there. The culture, the people. I did not want to . . . but I feared Adoel. When he told me he wanted access to the castle, I gave it to him. The route of the guards, the layout of the rooms—”
No wonder the Sestan army infiltrated Rove Castle so swiftly. They’d had its blueprints for twenty years.
“—where the baby slept. But his assassins could never get close enough. Too many people, too many fortifications.”
Assassins. Gooseflesh pebbled up my arms. In memory I saw the scar over Renn’s ribs as his tailor measured him for his birthday celebration. Assassin, he’d said.
“Adoel determined to do it himself. Because of the scripture.”
I gripped handfuls of my hair in frustration. “Which scripture?”
He gave me a withering look. “For by blood alone shall blood be undone.”
The confirmation of Renn’s lineage opened chrysalises in my gut. Hearing it on another’s tongue made my stomach flutter.
I waited for more. He gave me nothing, so I picked apart the quotation myself.
Renn’s death lines . . . Even when he relapsed, his death lines were so cloudy . . .
I met the physician’s eyes, ignoring the cold sensation winding down my center. “You think Adoel is the only one who can kill Renn?” Is Renn the only one who can kill Nicosia?
The man opened his hands and shrugged. “That is, at least, one way to interpret the scripture. The way he interpreted it, back then.” His patronizing countenance slipped back into shame.
He waited two breaths before continuing.
“I told him everything. His assassins failed, so he came himself. But I . . . I couldn’t live with that choice.
I alerted one of the guards that they should check on the babe.
Adoel . . . He wasn’t prepared for a war back then.
He couldn’t leave any external sign of foul play, so he destroyed Renn from within his lumis.
Craftlock was illegal in Cansere—no one would know.
But I think . . . I think I warned them in time.
He had to flee before he finished. So Renn survived. ”
“He survived because he’s gods-touched,” I snapped, reeling. “Anyone else with that much damage would have perished. You didn’t save him.”
Whitestone’s eyes watered; he blinked.
“Did Winvrin know?” I leaned forward, my hands fists in my skirt. “Did Grejor?”
“I didn’t tell a soul,” he whispered. Cleared his throat.
“They never saw Adoel. I’m sure he killed anyone who did.
But . . . it was my fault. I tried so hard to heal His Highness—His Majesty, now, yes—but his injuries were magically made.
I told Winvrin she should try craftlock. That’s why she started the draft.”
My skull felt ready to burst with confusion and frustration. “Then why did you try to have me killed?”
He grimaced. Didn’t meet my stare. “I’d worked my way up to head physician. It was one of the most prestigious placements at the castle.”
“And I hurt your feelings?” I asked, too loudly. Surely if anyone lingered in the space beneath this room, they’d hear me through the aperture. “You let that monster destroy a prince, a prophesied savior, and you couldn’t handle some gods-damned competition?”
The physician hardened, showing a glimpse of his old, prideful self. His gaze fell to the gap around the tree’s trunk.
I shook my head, ignoring the added confusion dripping through my bond to Renn—he likely wondered where the sudden bundle of emotions on my end was coming from. “Why are you telling me this? It’s over. Renn is healed. Winvrin is dead. What could I possibly do for you?”
Whitestone turned away at the mention of the queen.
Ran his calloused fingertips over the bark of the tree.
Several seconds passed before he spoke. “I was loyal to the Noblewights. I still am. I broke away from Adoel after that incident, and I was too entrenched in the capital for him to come after me. I’ve been kept on a short leash since my return. ”
That was hardly an answer, but I waited, clenching my hands tight enough my nails dug into my palms.
Slowly, as if the weight of the Egroran pushed him toward the floor, Whitestone looked at me. “I want your forgiveness.”
I reeled back like he’d struck me. “What?”
“She is dead, as you know.” Emotion choked his words. “She did not grant me forgiveness when I begged in that cell, and now I cannot beg again until I pass to the other side. You repaired what I broke. You know the truth, now. So I ask . . . forgiveness.”
I stared at him, as though I, too, were made of marble. As though I, too, were a tree. I stared and stared, my mind blank and yet overfull, my heart racing, my limbs cold.
I knew what Ursa would have done. She had always been good and tenderhearted, faithful and loving. But though I carried pieces of her with me, I was not Ursa.
“No.”
He flinched again.
I rose to my feet. “His illness, his suffering, and this war are your doing? Then swim across the gods-damned strait and ask his forgiveness yourself.”
He reached toward me. “Please . . .”
“You tried to kill him!” I barked. “You tried to kill me! And you’ve come crawling back to the master you proclaim to hate, for what? To save your own skin?”
He set his jaw. “I was banished.”
“Not to Rodsfell, you weren’t.” I stormed away. The soulbinding tugged, and I twisted on my heel and returned. “You want forgiveness? Take the princess and get her away from here. Break my soulbinding and let me go.”
The sorry lump of a man merely shook his head. “I can do neither.”
A single, sharp laugh tore up my throat. “And yet you led an enemy king through Rove Castle and let him shatter the lumis of an infant.”
Gripping the tree, Whitestone rose to his feet. He did not meet my eyes. “I should not have come.”
“There are many things you should not have done,” I snapped. “And it is too late. Twenty years too late, for him.”
He walked away.
“If you are truly penitent,” I called after him, my constricting throat growing sore, “then help me. Help Eden. Get us out of here. I will . . . I will tell Renn your good deeds. I will speak well of you. I will forgive you. But please, just help us.”
He paused at the door. Turned his head, not quite looking over his shoulder. “You don’t understand, Miss Tallowax. I cannot.”
Whitestone left. And when I tried to chase after him, the soulbinding brought me to my knees.
The winter seemed longer in Sesta. Snow still fell, chilling the conservatory, but on occasion I spied a daring crocus piercing through the cold soil below. Otherwise, the beauty of the view had long lost its hold on me, the mountains mundane, the forests unremarkable.
Fortunate, then, that I spent so little time looking at it.
Instead, I sat in my lumis, trying to find a way to keep my promise to Eden.
It had become clear that I would find no allies here, so any chance of escape fell on my and Eden’s shoulders.
And, since I could not communicate with her, I could make no assumptions about her own plans.
Therefore the possibility of rescue lay solely with Ursa and me.
I’d discovered new things by experimenting with magic before, as seen in Renn’s recovery and my half-heart.
Surely with my sister’s added strength, I could devise a way to overpower Nicosia.
To kill him—or at least hurt him—through his lumis swiftly enough that he might not stop me from fleeing.
My soulbinding would have to sever if he perished.
I tried pulling in magic in different ways, getting somewhat bizarre in my efforts, but magic was summoned as it always had been; I could only form it into different things, tools to mend and tools to break.
I built up some blocks with magic and tested different tools on them, but a giant magicked sword and a giant magicked hammer seemed to have the same effect; one did not damage any faster than the other.
Feeling weak, I went to the crenels and merlons of myself and pushed a little extra magic into my heart, studying the translucent pieces of craftlock keeping it together.
Went to one of Ursa’s green blocks and studied it, too.
Slowly summoned magic into my palms and began shaping it as I had that night in Sten’s basement when I’d re-formed Renn.
I felt my sister’s curious presence around me as I worked.
She did not interrupt. However our connection worked, she did not grow bored of waiting, as I did.
Then again, in life, she’d been the more patient of our set.
By the end of the day, I’d formed from magic one of the three pieces of lumis Ursa had donated to me, though I had nowhere to put it. Were I not so weary of crying, frustrated tears surely would have come. “If I’d only known this then,” I whispered, cradling the translucent piece like a newborn.
“Dwelling on regret does little to bolster the present.”
“Thanks, Mother.” It was a saying she’d often recited.
Thinking of her made me think of Ursa, not as she was now, but as I remembered her, a sixteen-year-old girl full of life.
She’d shared my face then, but I supposed she wouldn’t anymore.
I had aged, and she had not. Even through our connection, she was still an adolescent, never given the opportunity to grow old.
How sad, that so many complained of aging when so many more were denied its gift.
I set the piece aside and returned to the present.
A servant had come while I was dowsing and left half a loaf of bread and a wrinkled carrot near the door, just out of reach of my current leash.
I sighed. I’d have to wait until the next came and ask them to push it a little closer. No dinner tonight.
Day, night, day, night. They blurred together.
I paced often, antsy in my solitude when I tired of magic, but to magic I always defaulted, until one day, three months after Nicosia captured me outside Speth, something fundamental clicked in my mind.
Something that made my body heavy as lead, my heart dry as chapped leather, my soul flimsy as steam.
The effect proved strong enough that I felt Renn’s concern through the bond, and Ursa prodded at me until I whispered my thought.
The enthusiastic manner in which Ursa responded crippled me further.
“Absolutely not,” I hissed into the darkness, straightening my pallet and thumping my body onto it.
“Surely the pain would be bearable, with enough preparation.”
“It’s not the prospect of pain that hurts,” I snapped back.
“But it might work. Sleep on it.”
“No!” The word echoed through the conservatory. I choked on a painful knot in my throat. The space between my lungs burned and twisted. “No, Ursa. No.”
“Nym.” I could imagine her sitting beside me, taking one of my hands in both of her own, her dark curls falling over one shoulder. “You’ve accomplished so much already. You’ve grown up. Far surpassed me in every way. You don’t need me anymore.”
Tears blurred my vision. “I will always need you.”
“No, you won’t, and you don’t. You haven’t needed me since you found him. Or haven’t you realized?”
For the hundredth time, I cried myself to sleep, my face pressed into my pillow. And yet, for all the practice this place had given me in sorrow, these tears felt more bitter than all the rest.
They felt like goodbye.