Chapter Twenty-Two #3
I collapsed onto my back, breathing hard, and as I stared up at the bruised sky, I whispered, “Do you remember the first time I called you Father? You held my hand and led me up to bed with Grace, the maid I loved who slipped me oranges from your kitchen. You must remember. You blushed whenever she was around. The sweat took her that one terrible summer. But that night, I kissed your cheek and said, ‘Good night, Father.’ It was a slip. I was so ashamed. I remember flinching. But you laughed and said, ‘Good night, Daughter.’ That night, I smiled as I wept. I giggled into my pillow, saying, ‘Father, Father. My own father.’ Why claim me if you were only going to throw me away? I was a child.”
I blinked up at the unmoving clouds. I floated and was carried out to sea, then returned to shore. “I was only a child,” I murmured to him.
As I lay on the sand, my arms spread wide, my body stinging and itching with salt, I whispered another name, hoping she might hear me.
It was as if she had been awaiting my call.
The sea parted, and three women emerged. They carried their heads.
I rose to my feet, nearly stumbled as gusts whipped through my hair. The three women set their heads back on their necks at odd angles. Gertrude’s ghost remained deeper in the surf, waves crashing through the window of her body, but Alice and Eleanor walked up to meet me by the dunes.
I turned to Eleanor. Her face was rounder, more childish than I remembered. She trembled in a chill she could not feel. “We found the blood cipher hidden in your Book of Hours,” I accused. “We nearly died.”
“And did you discover the secret?” Her voice was faint, nearly lost in the howling winds.
“You knew what exaltation did to Marguerite. Was Roland’s life so expendable to you?”
“We had no choice,” she said simply. She gestured to the other ghosts.
“All of us, offered up to serve the king’s whims. My own father and uncle offered me.
None of us loved truly or laughed freely.
Prospero was researching exaltation long before I was married to Richard.
He became more frantic about it toward the end.
He was close. That consumed him. I found him working late at night, and he took pity on me because he knew the king had already tired of me, and through me, him.
Together, we tried to provide the king with alternatives.
A longer lifespan, for one. We were trying to survive.
Do you blame us for that? Venus was not the only planet we were researching—Prospero believed every magician had the potential to be exalted, every planet capable of wondrous things.
But he never managed to find out what causes the change to occur. ”
“If he had, would you have offered Roland to the king?”
“Yes,” she said, without hesitation.
“There was a star chart hidden in the book as well. A Final Breath. It is only days away now. Whose death is it?”
“You know who it is.” The wind carried Eleanor’s words away, scattering them. “Prospero and I had years to prepare.”
But I didn’t know. I reached for a handful of sand and filtered it through my fist. Who was important enough? Whose death would loom so large in Prospero’s and Eleanor’s minds?
The relief arrived first, because it wasn’t Roland.
It was King Richard.
“The king now blames Roland for his failures, just as he once blamed Prospero,” I told Eleanor. “Roland has few friends at court. How do I save him?”
It was Alice Seton who answered. “My advice is this: The king cares not for how long he has been loyally served. He cares not for promises or flattery or pleading. He is incapable of sifting through truth and lies. He cannot be told truths—he must be shown them.”
Gertrude’s eyes bored into mine. “You loved my son.”
The other two women blinked in shock.
“Yes,” I told Gertrude, taking a step toward her. “I loved him so much. He was—” I broke off and took a deep breath. “All my goodness was his.”
“All of mine as well.”
“When he died—”
“Died? What a passive word that is. Hal was murdered,” said Gertrude.
She was even stonier in death than she had been in life.
“I questioned Prospero after the inquest. He said he believed Hal killed himself rather than live a false life with a woman he didn’t love.
That was a lie. I know my son. Hal wanted to be king, to create a better Alvion for us all.
He had waited years for his father to see him as a man, and Richard finally did.
Richard was so proud of the son I gave him.
His boy, his dynasty. I did my duty, only for someone to rip it away. ”
“Time is running short,” Eleanor cut in.
I glanced down, frantic. The waves lapped against the dunes now. My slippers were under water, my feet red and numb.
“What will you do?” asked Alice. She studied me in a curious, catlike way. Waiting for my response as if it dangled between us and she was readying to pounce.
Gertrude lifted her head and repositioned it on her neck. “She will avenge my son.”
The wind whipped the whitecaps into a frenzy. The three women waded into the sea, unmoved by the cold. “Wait!”
But they were gone as quick as they came.
“Wait!” I shouted again. I ran into the water, chasing after them, but only curtains of seaweed floated there.
“I’ve been waiting,” murmured a voice.
A voice like this very tide, always drawing away. Another secret I could have told Roland: I was terrified to fall asleep, because sometimes when I woke from a long nap in the gardens, I forgot Hal was dead. For a few blissful moments, he was alive for me again, until I remembered.
His ghost walked along the undertow. His hair was shorn—he must have cut it before his death—but he still had his stubble. He watched me stumble toward him, laughing and crying, but he was so removed, so cold. It was not truly him, only a pale imitation.
I moved closer. He looked solid to touch, but my hand passed through him. Another step and my body overlapped with his transparent one.
“You didn’t call for me,” he whispered.
“Because I cannot bear this.”
Slowly he shook his head. “You can bear anything.”
The ocean now swayed against my shins, the only timekeeper in the otherrealm. “Are you safe? Tell me, what is it like where you are?”
“Only Saturns can tell the living about death.”
“Are you not a prince down there?”
A moment of hesitation, before he evaded my question entirely. “Are you safe? Are you happy?”
“I don’t know.”
“Bianca,” he said. “Listen. I know you, and you believe loss is proof you should not love. Do you know how long it took me to unfurl your tight little fist? An age.” He rolled his eyes to make me laugh, but I couldn’t.
He eyed my hand until I knew what he wanted; I opened it, so he could see my palm.
“Stay like that. Promise me.” He ducked, meeting my gaze. “Promise. Do not close yourself.”
He knew there was a sharp glint in me. I’d tried to pull the knife out, but it had been lodged too deep from the very beginning. My father’s disdain. My mother, bleeding out. His death had pushed it deeper still.
“Show me how you died,” I said. “Once I understand, perhaps I’ll finally be able to breathe again. Someone stole you from me, stole you from all of us. From your own future as it was written.”
He stared at me, his eyes the color of the mist surrounding us. “Can you enter my mind when I’m like this?”
I nodded. “Yes. I can sense it, just as before.”
He smiled sadly. “Good.”
And so I began my walk along the path that ended in his death.
I was in Alvion again. Alvion, as it once was. Hal knelt before his father on the dais. Prospero stood behind the king, watching as Richard kissed his son’s right cheek, then the left.
A signet ring was lowered onto his finger. “You must say the oath in a holy place,” the king instructed. “The most sacred place you can think of. I chose the beach where your mother first stepped onto the shores of Alvion. Then it will be done.”
“The meadow in the woods. Beyond the stream.”
The holiest place, for Hal, was where we had first kissed.
The king smiled down at him—his son. Anticipation and pride swelled in them both.
Hal strode through the audience chamber, councilors bowing as he passed.
Prospero, Charles Guildford, Fulke Roet.
All of my suspects knew precisely where Hal planned to be.
All of them had heard him say it from the dais.
Hal wound through the halls, nodding to the guards who clicked their heels and raised their swords, saying hello to each of them by name.
At the stables, his horse was being shoed, so he took another.
“Don’t worry, John,” he called to the stable hand.
“Just take him out later for me, won’t you? You know how restless he gets.”
He rode to the edge of the wood, then tied the mare up to a branch and traveled the rest of the way on foot.
The council had said he had to be alone for the oath, as it had been done since Oberon swore himself to King Armel, and so he strode into the wilds.
He leapt over streams and his boots squelched from recent rains.
In the middle of the meadow, he unsheathed his sword and laid it on his knee. In the distance, he heard panting, the shifting of undergrowth, the crack of twigs. A hoof? A boot?
He removed a vial from his pocket. Oil, to shine his sword. There was something else in his hand, too. A small tin. Inside was a portrait of a girl with white hair. He laid this in the grass, so he might look at it.
He recited the same oath I myself had spoken only days ago: to honor and serve his father.
“For Alvion, I take up my sword.” He did.
“For love of King, I become his armor.” He brushed his lips over his ring.
“For his Magician, I give my future. For his issue, I take my axe and clear a path. For Alvion, for love of King, for his Magician, for his issue, I bind myself.”