Chapter 17
The room was dark save for the light of the moon; we tried not to use candles unless strictly necessary, spreading our resources as thin as possible, for we didn’t know how long we would need them.
Eden combed her short hair in the dark; I dowsed into myself, cracked the black stone around my heart merlon, and poured magic into my magic-made implants until they glimmered, bright and healthy.
Coaxing the stone back more, I touched the gold threads there.
He was at peace. Sleeping, likely. I crouched beside the netting of gold.
“Come back,” I whispered. “Be wise, be careful.
“I’ve been thinking about the library. How you let me in when your mother forbade it.
How you pressed books into my hands so casually, not realizing how precious they were to me.
I miss that library. I miss sitting there with you, even if I was only dowsing, occasionally glancing over your shoulder at the words in your hands.
They weren’t easy times, but they were simpler.
Safer. I want to go back there with you, Renn.
I want to share stories with you. I want to beat you at danerin. ”
I smiled to myself. They were memories I would cherish, always. Memories I should write down, when I had the time and the resources, before they frayed in my mind. Memories that would hurt less to revisit, years from now. Decades, perhaps, if time soothed them at all.
I rose from my lumis, returning to Eden’s dark room. She still had not lain down for the night, but sat upright, staring ahead at shadowed stone.
“Are you well?” I asked.
She nodded.
A few seconds passed. “Does she bother you, the soulbinder? The mindreader? Their magic is . . . different than healing.”
“No. No, I thought I would hate them,” she confessed, “but each name I take, I imagine how they might hurt Adoel. I imagine what horrible things they might do to him, magic or otherwise.”
She said it so serenely. My skin pebbled beneath my shift.
“I understand her. Princess Azra,” she added.
“The ban on healers lifted when I was so young, and so many came to the castle, I never thought to fear them. But after Sesta . . . I understand why one would. I will kiss the feet of every crafter who crosses my path if it means revenge,” she went on, absently touching her short hair.
“I want to make sure he can never take anything away from another person again.” She glanced at me.
“I think you’re the only person I could say that to, Nym.
Adrinn I could have, once. If he were still with us.
His heart would burn with hatred, too, though he was always too brash with his anger.
” She inhaled deeply. “What Nicosia has—” Her throat constricted around the words.
My heart felt like a stone in my chest. I sat up, understanding where she meant to lead the conversation. “Cansere won’t recognize your marriage, Eden. Renn certainly won’t.”
She shook her head. “It isn’t just the marriage. It’s everything. Nicosia doesn’t want a political claim to the land, but a religious one. He wants worshippers. He wants victory. This is all a game to him. If he wants to win, he can deal with Antsan himself.”
The remark shouldn’t have hurt me, yet I flinched at the reminder anyway.
I proceeded cautiously. “Do you think he’ll try to leverage the marriage?”
“Renn would refute it, as you said.” She pulled blankets over her legs. “From what I’ve seen, especially with the sacking of Rove, what we need is more troops. I don’t understand why Renn putters around with this alliance. He needs to sign it and be done.”
My next heartbeat felt more like a full-knuckled punch to my chest. I remembered the night before Sesta attacked. I’d just returned from Fount to find Renn sick. I’d healed him and gotten him into bed. It was the first time I thought the possibility of us might work.
Sten had warned me, even then, that it would not. I’d known about the talking between Kings Grejor and Vitsoph. It had been an easy thing to forget, bound to that tree. Focusing on surviving the next hour, the next day, and the next, and the next . . .
In that moment, it was as though the golden thread linking Renn and I pulled tight enough to cut into me, slicing my flesh deeper than any blade. I felt Eden’s eyes on me, and despite the darkness, I schooled my face.
“He never expected to rule,” I whispered into the darkness. “Between being the third born and so ill . . . it’s very new to him.”
Eden made a noise of agreement before lying down, so I did, too, clutching fistfuls of blanket to me, staring at the low stone ceiling. Praying silently that that pain wouldn’t writhe its way through my barrier and wake Renn.
“Nym.”
“Hm?”
She rolled to face me. “What is he to you? My brother.”
Shock like a heralding trumpet shook my core. I swallowed. “He is my king, as he is to all of us.”
“You might be subtle,” she murmured, “but he is not.”
I stared at the ceiling, sure my pulse shook the mattress we shared.
“Before,” she continued, “I admit, it would have bothered me. Back in Rove, when the war was just a rumor from the border. If I’d known then, I would have found it disgraceful. I might even have confronted you. I certainly would have confronted him.”
Oh, that this bed would open its mouth and swallow me whole.
“We need this alliance with Antsan. You know that as much as I do. And yet I can’t bring myself to care about any of it.
That world, it was never real. Court and nobles and parties .
. . All of it was a facade, wasn’t it? Foolish, self-centered people weaving foolish, self-centered stories for themselves, blind to the world as it truly is.
Did you see it that way, Nym, when you first came to us?
When you answered the draft and my stepmother pinned you to my recluse of a brother?
Did you see it then, before it came crumbling down all around us? ”
I released my grip on the blankets. “Yes,” I murmured. “Yes, I did.”
She joined me in watching the ceiling. “I thought so.”
Seconds ticked by. A minute, two, before I found the courage to speak again. “I love him, Eden. I’m so . . . so very sorry, but I love him.”
Either she’d fallen asleep or had determined the declaration did not require a response.
I helped Beatty with breakfast, peeling potatoes and watering down porridge to make it stretch.
We had two dozen crafters at Derren Castle, another dozen staff members, and a retinue of soldiers left behind to guard the fortress in the king’s absence.
The small kitchen was packed with women, sweating and working, but we’d learned to move around each other with efficiency, and soon I carried the first load of porridge and bread out in a thickly woven basket, for we had no trays at our disposal.
The hall boasted a few tables, but most of the men took their meals in the bailey, sitting on rocks, blankets, jackets, or the bare ground.
I went to the farthest of them first, the earliest risers, and passed out their meals before quickly heading back to the kitchen to get more.
However, as I swept by the portcullis, I heard something that made the hairs on the back of my neck rise on end.
I wasn’t sure if the speaker meant for me to hear or if he’d thought I’d left the reach of his voice.
But in the early-morning hour, the castle not yet fully roused, I heard him well enough.
Only two words, but it only took two, and the timing and situation was such that they could reference none but me.
He was an Antsan soldier, a man about Brien’s age, usually manning the walls or guarding the west tower, where Princess Azra now resided. He spoke to the castle pantler.
“King’s whore,” he’d jeered, husky and low.
My pace slowed for three steps before I pushed energy into my legs and hurried on my way.
Indignance thickened my skin to iron, and I told myself the sinking in my stomach was hunger.
I loaded up bowls and porringers and distributed them fast enough to make my face flush.
When I gave meals to the small group of female crafters, one asked me, “Is it really safe for us here, Miss Tallowax?”
The tremble in her voice softened my hide. “It is,” I promised. “I know the king well. He does not fear us. Where there is no fear, there is safety.”
I pulled from her a small smile, which I did my best to return, but my mind was spinning from the earlier slander.
And I had a cold, heavy feeling I knew who had initiated it.
Merchants arrived in the late morning, bringing with them much-needed supplies.
I directed the lead merchants to Eden, as I knew nothing about means of payment, and then directed available staff, including some soldiers, to help me unload the wagons.
There was not much in the way of medical supplies, but with the number of healers now at our disposal, I did not think it necessary.
But there was food—dried beans, cheese, and wheat berries, namely, as well as linens, oil, whetstones, and leather.
I thanked each merchant personally, even their hired help, not only for the supplies themselves, but for the unity of it all.
It gave me hope that Sesta had not torn us apart completely. Not yet.
However, as I hefted bags of beans into a storage room, that sense of unity quickly came unraveled as the noise of a small crowd wafted through the keep’s halls like the stench of bad meat.
Knowing Eden was dealing with paying the merchants, I left the supplies and hurried out into the bailey, toward the barracks.