19. An Empty Yearning
An Empty Yearning
Seren squirms as Harmony slips behind his neck. Her fluffy tail is the softest thing Seren’s ever felt, and it tickles. Tiny paws brace against Seren’s shoulders, and he remembers arriving in Summer. The sudden peace. The delusion that he could belong here.
After their first trembling meeting, Seren had anticipated slowly coaxing his new pet. But all Harmony needed was healing and a few berries to regain the boldness inherent to squirrels. A quality that holds true in both Prima and Summer.
“Are you happy here?” Seren asks, holding up a finger.
She sniffs it, finds nothing to eat, and slinks into the swaying honeysuckles. Sweetness fills the night air. Lantern light reflects from curious moths and the barely-there shimmer surrounding the balcony.
“I don’t know if I am,” Seren confesses.
The shimmer is a protective ward. Absurd to think someone would…
shoot an arrow at Seren? A curse? A cursed arrow?
Seren is used to being nobody. Not lounging on his private balcony.
The floorboards are unnaturally clean and warm beneath his bare feet.
Even his toenails are strange. Iridescent, like soap bubbles.
Nevander’s shirt brushes his skin with every shift of breeze. Seren should give it back, especially since he can only wear it at night, when nobody can make assumptions. But of all his perfectly tailored new shirts, Nevander’s is the most comfortable.
A book sits on the bench beside Seren: The Life and Times of Our Great King Baralas, Long May He Reign. It’s about the man who took the throne after the First Queen vanished. Haelwen’s grandfather. Seren’s ancestor.
Flattering title aside, it appears more rumor and scandal than fact.
Seren has only reached the part where Baralas fails to wield Summer’s magic.
Implausible hijinks ensue until Lady Lysandra forges him a crown.
The ancient history feels too close. Too fragile.
That fabled crown sits broken the next room over.
Seren isn’t sure why he’s reading this. Everything he learns leads to new unknowns. He’ll never catch up.
Certainly not tonight. Too tired to read but too unsettled to sleep. Instead, he’s talking to his squirrel.
Edith would have scolded him, demanding to know who he was talking to. Now Seren understands her anger. She hated any evidence of his nature. That didn’t make it right to yell at him, but Seren understands.
At least he’d felt her emotions, so he could adjust his behavior.
“What do you think about Nevander?” Seren asks wistfully. “I wish there was a book that would teach me about him.”
A reply seeps into his mind. Not from Harmony, and not in words. A breath of concept, so subtle Seren might have imagined it. Except under Primrose’s tutelage, he’s become keenly aware of the difference between self and other.
Cheerful confusion. Something like, Why?
The honeysuckles are talking to him.
Seren’s too tired to explain everything. The way Nevander pays such close attention to him, yet Seren can’t glean anything in return. “Because he’s infuriating.”
This shirt is the worst of it. Nevander gave it to Seren at the moment Seren came closest to winning Nevander’s approval. Yet after passing Primrose’s trials, Nevander became even more distant.
The honeysuckles seem to laugh. They don’t understand, but they’re happy. They don’t understand anything, and the world is still good. Seren envies their contentment.
Harmony emerges from the honeysuckles. Her tail twitches, like she’s about to launch herself at Seren. Then she cocks her head and scurries inside.
“Fine, abandon me,” Seren says, amused.
Another concept brushes his mind, the clearest yet. Someone?
Still with the honeysuckles’ bubbly curiosity. But Seren frowns. “Who? Is someone here?”
More unhelpful cheer.
It must be Nevander. Or Mustardseed, who’s stationed outside tonight. Nobody ever bothers Seren this late, but maybe something bad has happened. Or the honeysuckles have a broad range of awareness, and they’re talking about someone in the gardens.
Seren can’t see anyone in the darkness below, even though his eyes are keener than they used to be. Hugging himself, he heads inside. A sheer curtain separates the balcony from his bedroom. Passing the ghostlike material, he jolts at a stranger’s figure.
But it’s only his own reflection in a silver mirror. Blue-haired, in a too-large shirt. Out of place. Everything else in the dimly lit room looks intact, from the canopied bed to the potted trees.
The honeysuckles were probably mistaken, but nervousness ripples down Seren’s spine. The familiar sensation of being watched. He can’t dismiss the feeling. Not when it was true back in Wymond.
A spiral staircase leads him down. The parlor is dimly lit and empty, which doesn’t mean much.
The wards on Seren’s private quarters should prevent invisible intruders, but he still doesn’t trust his own eyes.
He reaches into his carryhold. A dagger appears in his palm, cold from the pocket space.
Not that he has any practice wielding it.
Silence and shadows await him, broken only by the bashful light of the staircase lanterns.
“Hello?” Seren calls. No answer.
He rushes for the door and flings it open.
Mustardseed jumps at his post, hand flying to his chest in salute. “Is something the matter to cause such a clatter?”
Tension vanishes with the rhyme and the brightly lit hall. Seren exhales with relief. Sometimes paranoia isn’t true.
“I don’t know,” Seren says ruefully. “I was talking to the honeysuckles and they—hey!”
Harmony darts past his feet, over Mustardseed’s boots, to an open door.
“Get back here!” Seren scolds, to no avail.
That’s the door to Haelwen’s office. Seren’s office. Whoever’s it is, Seren doesn’t like the thought of a newly emboldened squirrel darting through it.
“Are there other exits from the office?” Seren asks.
Mustardseed shakes his head, locs sliding past his shoulder. “Only to the greenhouse tower, from which there are no exits either.”
Seren pauses in the doorway. “Was that really a rhyme?”
Mustardseed flashes a grin. “It’s close enough to suit the curse. Believe me, Highness, I’ve said worse.”
Seren doesn’t envy Mustardseed’s affliction. “Then you stay here, and fetch me if Harmony sneaks past me.”
Mustardseed salutes in response, which requires no rhyming, forced or otherwise.
Returning to the office alone feels strange. Like Seren is intruding on the memorabilia of Haelwen’s life. The myriad books. The empty memory box. The broken crown. No sign of Harmony or anything out of place. But the door to the greenhouse is cracked open, revealing a staircase leading up.
“Harmony,” Seren calls, and tries to project a sense of calm. Invitation.
No response. Seren sighs and ascends.
He’s been to the tower greenhouse once before, on an early tour of his quarters. In daylight, it’s a chaotic rainbow of greenery and flowers, no two plants alike. In starlight, the greenhouse turns eerie, a delicate weave of shadows.
Seren flinches.
A figure stands before the central pool. No guardian’s armor or servant’s garb. His cloak seems to melt into the darkness, and he doesn’t move at Seren’s approach. Seren doesn’t recognize the pale slice of profile.
The greenhouse tower isn’t as tightly warded as Seren’s private quarters, but nobody should be here without permission. A familiar chill trembles in the air. The figment of Winter? No, that’s not quite it.
Seren last felt this chill from the augray.
Harmony darts from the darkness and scurries up Seren’s body. He holds her to his chest, protectiveness surging. His other hand tightens around the dagger he doesn’t know how to wield.
He wishes Nevander were here.
“Who are you?” Seren demands, unraveling a thread of empathy. He can’t wield a knife, but he can determine whether this man is friend or foe.
The man turns, dark brows furrowing in a bone-white face. A scar glitters across his left cheekbone. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”
Seren recoils. Pain and hate and an empty yearning, shattered apart and sewn together. Seren’s barely touched the stranger’s mind, and the maelstrom is searing cold. Like nobody he’s felt before.
“You shouldn’t be here,” Seren says, backing away. Hanging vines brush his shoulders. Harmony wriggles from his grasp, into a planter by the wall of windows. Seren adjusts his grip on the knife. He can’t fight, but he has another plan.
The man stands still, only his gaze in pursuit. A slight smile does nothing to soften his bladelike features. “Whose shirt is that?”
“None of your business,” Seren snaps, and smashes his knife hilt backwards.
A shriek hums at the edge of hearing. The window is too sturdy to shatter. Just a spiderweb of fractures. But the wards surge against the assault.
The stranger laughs like broken glass, then vanishes.
Seren presses against the greenhouse wall, eyes straining for any glimmer of magic. The stranger could still be here, glamoured into invisibility. If Seren was powerful enough, he could see him.
Haelwen could see through most glamours. Seren is only a pale echo of her.
Lanterns flare to life as footsteps pound the stairs. Mustardseed arrives sword in hand, more serious than Seren’s ever seen him.
“The wards are strong. Is something wrong?”
More footsteps, and Nevander storms into the greenhouse. Pale green wings tuck behind him. Haste flushes his fine features. Only then does Seren sag in relief.
Nevander arrows to his side. “Are you hurt?”
“Someone was here,” Seren says, stumbling from the greenery. “He’s gone now. Did you see anyone leave?”
Mustardseed stations himself at the doorway. “Nobody came, and nobody left. Of any clues I am bereft.”
“Who was it?” Nevander asks, taking Seren’s hand. A wing curls around protectively, and gentle fingers loosen Seren’s grip on the knife.
Seren inhales. A soft, intoxicating musk clings to Nevander’s sleek feathers.