Chapter 45 #2
I back away slowly, trying to look like I was just admiring the fire. I consider telling Dashol I’m leaving, but I can’t bring myself to walk into the crowd, and I’m too eager to use the oraculi. The longer I wait, the greater the risk Alaris finds out and takes it from me.
This is my chance.
I spin on my heel and hurry across the grounds to the aviary, the hawks my only escort.
I feel the shape of what’s inside my pocket—a silky piece of fabric, folded around a ring.
Many of the rings in the chest were cracked, but when I slide the silk aside to touch it, there is an unmistakable hum of an active oraculi.
I shut the door and make my way to the pallet. The hawks shift on their high perches. My heart pounds. If he suspects me, any second, Alaris could appear.
“I need to rest a bit,” I say. I now believe they understand my words quite well. “Just a small headache.”
A few birds trill back, perhaps approving, although I might be imagining that. I untie my cloak and the moonstone dagger, setting both to one side, and pull the fur off half the pallet to fold it over me. I burrow into it, tugging the top all the way past my temple.
My fingers stumble over the silk, trying to free the ring under the fur.
I’m afraid of what happens next. Afraid of the swirling thoughts, and the nightmare I won’t be able to wake from until it ends in death.
When I’m in it, I don’t know there is another version of me, looking back, alive and whole.
All I know is pain and blood.
But my fear of being caught and stopped overrides any hesitation. I take the oraculi from the folds of silk and lift it to my eye.
Show me all the memories of past lives I’ve forgotten. But more gently this time, I plead, in case that helps. Slowly.
The oraculi shines brighter and brighter. The light swirls into sound and color.
And I fall into memory.
I wake at midnight to a room filled with roses, my heart going hard against my ribs.
I lie awake the rest of the night, assigning my nerves to every worry I can name.
My life changes now that I am old enough to be married off, and I cannot trust my father not to bind me to someone like Weslyn.
The thought of going to bed with a man like that turns my stomach.
But an actual engagement is probably years away…
I don’t know why my heart is still racing when the windows finally go gray with morning light.
I ignore invitations from lords until Somnus, when Seran insists I begin accepting. At Noctus, I steal an extra cup of wine and dance with a handsome, light-haired lord of Nyvos. Just for one fleeting moment, I pretend that I’m no one’s daughter.
The coldest day of the year approaches, but no one bothers changing out of their sandals and silks. It will be past us soon.
Winter parties are disrupted when an explosion destroys part of the Central Palace.
The blast kills at least twenty guards and courtiers, rubble and clouds of dust visible across the grounds for weeks afterward.
It’s explained as gas from an underground river of fire, getting too hot and reacting to my father’s power.
Winter bleeds into spring. Even though it’s the same heat, the same sunny days, something feels different. And it turns out, I’m right to think so: a maid arrives one morning with a dress and an order from my father to attend a banquet.
The dress is similarly cut to the one I wore on my twenty-first birthday, but even finer, the edges sewn with what looks like real gold.
At this event, I’m not allowed to stay tucked behind a column: my father places me at the high table beside him, so close I can smell the oils in his hair and hear the low murmur of his advisors leaning in to speak.
I have never sat this close to him at a formal event, and despite the heat, my arm hairs prickle. It’s a meal, but I can’t bring myself to eat more than a bite. This is not the courtship of my sisters, where he let lords seek him out for years, a decade even, vying for his favor.
Tonight, I am on display, and all the lords take notice. One after another approaches the high table to pay their respects to me and fawn at my father’s feet. I stumble through greetings and small talk, sweating under my father’s gaze.
Out of habit, I scan the crowd for my mother as I take a sip of wine. She is seated beside the empress pi mata, her plate untouched.
She is glaring at us.
My cup almost slips from my grasp at her expression. Her mouth is pressed into a line, her knuckles white.
I glance at my father, certain there must be a mistress draped across his lap, some public humiliation that explains the fury on her face. But his lap is empty, his attention on the lord in front of us.
Is she mad at me?
This should be what she wants. After a lifetime of disappointment and practical banishment, I am finally useful. Marriage is the one thing that makes me worth something to my parents. A good match should thrill her. My father placing me here should be a relief.
Does she think I’ll fail? Or is she mad she isn’t the one at the high table? Does she see the irony in me being seated beside the emperor, when I’m the reason she isn’t?
Doesn’t she know this is good for her, and I don’t have a choice?
The banquet ends without incident, and the next day, Seran relays that the emperor has received multiple offers from lords worth considering. He tells me to expect an announcement of my betrothal to come by Vernus, the spring equinox.
I try to guess which of the lords who approached the high table made an offer. I need to try to catch the eye of that lord from Nyvos again, before my father makes up his mind.
With my time in the Sunrise Palace running out, I take to the gardens more often.
Even though no more flowers bloom now than at any other time of year, there is still something about the garden that sings to me in spring.
I skip the rose bushes, a bit overtired of their smell and familiar shape, and wander deeper to the narcissus beds.
I lean down to touch the dew on a fragile petal.
Something catches in the corner of my eye.
I turn and startle to find a man right behind me. I only catch a flash of metal before a blade draws across my throat. Red sprays as I fall into the flowers, pain and shock whiting out any thoughts. I try to scream, try to gasp, but neither comes. The narcissus, my hands, the sky—they all drip red.
I can’t get any air. The garden is gone. The man is gone. The blade is gone. Something heavy is on top of me.
I thrash, kicking, clawing, fighting like a wild thing until I tear free. I hit straw-covered ground and scramble to my feet.
I leap for the door in front of me and swing out into cold night air. Inhuman screeches echo as I stagger, trying to orient myself. I’m not in the gardens. I have no idea where I am, but I know I need to run.
I race across an unfamiliar landscape, with none of the hedges or flowering bushes or cypress trees I expect to see. There is a door in a wall ahead. I bolt for it, raise the bar, and shove through.
Wings flap past me as I stumble out into woods. Birds shriek and swarm, their cries egging me on as I pump my legs. I run into the trees, away from the blade, away from the man who attacked me. My throat screams in pain, but the cut he made did not kill me.
Yet. Yet. Yet. A voice in my mind chants.
I don’t see the river before I skid over stones and fly into it.
Icy water steals my breath, a cold I’ve never felt before making me seize and gasp, water coming in with air. Unbearable pressure fills me.
I flail as the current spins me around. Light filters from above, fractured and far. I claw upward, lungs burning, mouth opening in a useless gasp.
But the river throws me down into a darkness so total I can’t tell which way is up. My dress drags at my legs, and water forces into my nose and throat. I lose control of my limbs as I’m whirled into blackness.