The Ruined Queen's War

1. Lilias

Lilias

THE HOWLING FIELDS

Ican almost believe this is the Howling Fields, where the dead wander until they lose all memories of their time in the living world.

From my place on the bed, propped up on a mountain of pillows, I face a window that opens to the glassy surface of a lake reflecting snow-covered mountain peaks.

The buzz of insects fills the room, drifting in from the world outside, and tight buds that will swell to flowers dance languidly on the vines that wreathe the window frame.

There’s even a white curtain that sways in the breeze.

If this is the Howling Fields, well, there are worse places to be.

But I know better. I lean back on the pillows and close my eyes.

I’m not dead. This isn’t the afterlife.

And I’ll never see my father again.

The door opens with a creak. I turn my head, blinking as the room swims into focus.

An older woman enters the room with a tray in her hands.

There’s a steaming mug on the tray, next to a plate filled with bacon and biscuits.

The woman’s gray hair is pulled back in a loose bun, and she’s wearing a white apron.

She seems vaguely familiar, like someone I met in a dream.

“Oh, you poor dear,” the woman says.

She sets the tray down on a dresser and comes to the bed, a white handkerchief in her hand. She presses it against my cheeks, and only then do I realize I’m crying.

“It’s so hard,” she murmurs, shaking her head. “Losing a pregnancy.”

I frown as I take the handkerchief from her and wipe my eyes. Memories come back to me in flashes, sharp as the shattered pieces of a broken vase. Blayne standing over me, saying if I didn’t drink the potion, he would force it down my throat.

And blood. Looking down in horror at the blood that stained my skirts, forever ruining that beautiful yellow dress. Zarek cutting strips from my skirt, bringing me water so I could wash, until I didn’t even have the energy to do that.

The woman’s hand closes over mine. Her fingers are hard, the hands of someone who’s worked outside, and her touch is warm.

“It’s not the last one,” she says, with a soft smile. “You’ll have more babies. I promise you.”

I try to return her smile, but my eyes sting and my lips refuse to curl into the smile I know is proper. I want to tell her the truth, that I was never pregnant, that I bled for days because of Blayne and his damned potion. But then I’d need to explain everything else.

“Thank you,” I whisper.

She nods. I don’t realize how hungry I am until I start eating, and the woman fusses around the room while I finish the meal.

When she turns back to me, I finally find the courage to ask the question that’s been drifting through my mind ever since I woke up to stare at the lake outside of the window.

“Where’s Zarek?” I ask.

“Oh, he’s in the garden, I expect,” she replies. “There’s little enough reason to leave, this time of year.”

I frown. Another broken shard of memory rises through the murky fog of the past few days. A man on horseback, sweeping his hand at the valley behind him. And then introducing himself as Prince Zarek.

I try to smile politely.

“I mean,” I say, “where is the man who arrived with me?”

The woman’s face shifts, and suddenly, there’s a guarded wariness in her expression that wasn’t there before.

“He’s fine,” she replies, which doesn’t exactly answer my question. “I told him you’ve been asking for him.”

I have? I almost ask her when I said something like that, but then it comes back to me in a rush, like wine spilling over parchment.

I was in this room, on this bed. The window was dark, and the woman put a lantern on the table.

She washed my face and hands, and then the rest of my body.

My legs, streaked with blood. My stomach, still tender and sore.

When I cried, she wiped my tears and told me to rest, that things would look brighter in the morning.

And when she finished, she said she would bring my husband to me.

As I fell into a dark, dreamless sleep, I remembered Blayne and the parchment he waved in front of me. And I wondered which husband she might bring.

“I—” I begin, then close my mouth. “Thank you.”

The smile she gives me looks like her heart is breaking, although I can’t imagine why. She pats my hand again, tells me to rest and regain my strength, and then leaves, carrying the empty tray with her.

I turn back to the window. Wind ruffles the glassy surface of the lake, breaking the reflection of the mountain peaks into shards of white and gray.

I think about Zarek, sitting in the shadows, telling me our marriage could be annulled.

And then I remember Blayne and the way his lip curled as he told me he wouldn’t raise the snake’s spawn.

And then something else comes to me, something so bizarre it must have been a dream.

Zarek, sitting next to me in the forest with pine boughs swaying behind him. The sun setting, sending shafts of golden light through the trees, turning every speck of dust into a shining, dancing gem. His eyes were closed, and his head was tilted back.

And he was singing.

The fading light played across his face, and the wind tugged at his hair. He looked pale and exhausted; still, he was singing. They sounded like prayers, the soft melodies that spilled from his lips, although they weren’t any prayers I recognized.

I snort, then shake my head against the pillow as the room dissolves in a fresh flood of tears. That much, at least, must have been a dream. I don’t even know if the man I called Zarek is still here, wherever here is.

And, whatever else he might have done to keep me alive while he brought me here, I cannot imagine the snake of Vsenrog praying.