Chapter Three Ayleth
Chapter Three
Ayleth
The Western Mine is about a half day’s journey from the palace.
I depart at first light, Riven rolling by outside the carriage window.
Snow has begun to fall, the flakes sticking to the glass.
The forest’s trees are gray and barren, their branches like skeletal hands tearing into the sky.
It’s only autumn, early in the year for such cold, but we haven’t experienced proper seasons since the Veil fell.
I suspect that the interminable gray is yet another symptom of Malum’s return.
Most of the time, the perpetual winter-like state of the realm doesn’t bother me.
Occasionally, though, I miss the verdant green of the forest surrounding Stonehaven.
The brush of a spring breeze against my skin while I tend the garden.
The heavy floral scent of lilies and roses.
Will there ever be another summer? Or is this another part of the price I paid for my own power?
Shadows drift around me in the carriage.
Would you take it back? I can almost hear them murmur.
No. Not for anything.
“Why did Roland want you to visit?” Joan asks from her place across from me. Her dog, Fitz, is beside her, though only his tiny, fawn-colored ears and black eyes are visible above his nest of blankets.
“Your guess is as good as mine,” I reply with a shrug. “His note only stated that there was something I needed to see.”
The carriage jostles over a rut and Fitz huffs at the disturbance.
“That’s rather vague,” Joan comments. “But he’s not one for exaggeration.”
Or friendliness. “Whatever it is, I just hope it doesn’t affect the Dwarves’ weapons shipment. The sooner we move against Rycinthia, the better.”
Joan frowns as she rearranges Fitz’s blankets. “You’re certain that’s the right course?”
“What other course is there?”
“I’m not sure,” she replies. “But isn’t this hard for you? Fighting Rycinthia is one thing, but the witches are your family.”
Family. Do I even know what that word means anymore?
“They might have been my family once. But they’re not now.”
Especially not one of them.
“I just don’t understand,” Joan goes on. “Why are the covens insisting on this war? Surely we all want to get rid of Malum.”
Not all of us. I pick at a loose thread on my blanket.
Like everyone else in the realm, Joan views Malum as a curse, not as the power that saved me.
That dark force swells behind my sternum, the shadows creeping close.
I want no part of a world without them. But Joan wouldn’t understand that.
And so I allow her to believe that I attempted to reach out to the covens.
That they rejected my offers of peace and instigated the current war. It’s close enough to the truth.
“I’ve stopped trying to guess what they want,” I say.
Joan pauses. “You really haven’t heard from anyone? Not even…”
She trails off, but I can guess who she means: Jacquetta.
I stiffen. Because I have heard from the other witch. Just once, about three months after my coronation. I woke in the dead of night to a raven at my window, one carrying Jacquetta’s single question:
How could you?
Though I’m loath to admit it, the words had haunted me for weeks, rattling around inside my mind like thorns.
But soon enough, any shame I felt hardened to anger.
Jacquetta obviously knew where I was. She couldn’t be bothered to journey to the palace and speak those words to me herself.
In fact, from what I’ve glimpsed in my mirror, she—like Mother—joined with the Heirs.
Even after all that talk of tearing down the covens’ hierarchy.
In the end, she turned out to be one of them.
She doesn’t matter, the shadows insist, curling around me. Forget her.
I would give anything to be able to do just that.
“No,” I tell Joan. “Not a word.”
“I’m sorry,” she says, sympathetically squeezing my hand. “You deserve better.”
I grant her a small smile in return, smothering the twinge of guilt at having lied to her for so long—about Jacquetta and countless other matters.
But the deception is in the details, I reason.
Not in the heart of the matter. I do deserve better.
And the witches, Jacquetta included, deserve what’s coming to them. Joan will understand that eventually.
And if she does not? that voice asks.
I roll my shoulders against it.
“Speaking of family.” Joan withdraws a letter from her satchel and passes it to me. “I received this from the princess.”
Blodwyn. A slight jolt runs through me, as it always does at the mention of the princess. She’s been staying with her aunt, Princess Margaret, the Duchess of Darryn, a realm to the east.
“It sounds like she’s well,” I comment, scanning the princess’s neat script. “Lots of archery and riding.”
“That’s good to hear,” Joan says. “The poor thing was so ill when she left.”
Which is why Blodwyn was sent away from court in the first place.
Shortly after I took the throne, the princess battled fever and complained of visions: strange shapes stalking her through her chambers and terrible nightmares.
For a while, part of me worried that I—or at least Malum—caused her condition.
I’m not sure how. Mortals can’t detect my shadows.
And I knew Shade wouldn’t harm her without my command.
Still, I can’t entirely dismiss the feeling that I was responsible.
She is not your concern, that voice reminds me.
In any case, Blodwyn recovered after a few months away from the palace.
She remained with her aunt, though, and sends me regular letters about how happy she is at the estate, where she enjoys far more freedom than she did here.
With the war continuing, it doesn’t seem like the princess will be returning anytime soon, which is likely better for both of us.
The carriage slows, interrupting my thoughts.
I look out the window to find that we’ve reached a village.
If it can be called that. The small houses, huts might be a better word, are in shambles, as are the pathetic remnants of what I assume used to be a market.
At the clatter of the carriage, several people wander out to line the road, their clothes hanging off their frames.
One is a child, a young girl, her cheeks gaunt and her eyes huge when they meet mine.
“How awful.” Joan unwraps the parcel of food at her side and starts tossing pieces of bread and cheese out the window.
“Careful,” I warn, holding her back.
“Ayleth,” she scolds, pulling out of my grasp, “they’re starving.”
And that’s their own doing. Over the years, I’ve discovered that Malum isn’t as malevolent a force as the covens taught me to believe.
Instead of attacking Riven at random, Malum seems to select its victims. At first, I couldn’t decipher the pattern.
But then Follower uprisings were beset by Nevenwolves.
Villages that held to the Order were struck with plague, blight, or other catastrophes.
I soon began to realize that such occurrences weren’t coincidences.
My shadows were rooting out areas of disloyalty.
Claiming the realm. Soon enough, everything will be ours.
“But we barely have enough guards with us as it is.”
“They’re not going to hurt us,” Joan insists. “And I’ve been telling you for ages that we need to send aid to places like this.”
Joan has always possessed a softer heart than mine.
During the first year or so of my reign, she brought me countless proposals to help the poor.
I ignored them, instead encouraging her to continue her studies to become a healer.
The distraction worked—until now. Joan removes a leather pouch from her waist, digs out a few coins, and throws them toward the villagers, who scrabble to collect the gilded pieces.
“We can send food when we get back to the palace,” I tell her. “Just—”
The rest dies on my lips as we pass the remains of a Sanctum.
Before the White King’s edict, the massive stone building would have housed a coven.
Now the former sanctuary is reduced to a charred husk, the towers all but demolished and the roof caved in.
But my attention is fixed to a moss-riddled wall, where a message is scrawled in angry crimson letters:
Long Live the True Queen.
“What on earth is that?” Joan asks, horrified. Even Fitz growls, his ears flattening.
“Nothing,” I say, as much to myself as to Joan. “Parnell warned me of another Follower uprising. They’ve apparently rallied around some imposter who they’re convinced is Meira.”
Fools. There’s only one true queen in Riven. The one who rose from the darkness, just as the prophecy claimed.
And if it was wrong? that voice needles.
I move to yank the curtain closed and spot the young girl again. She keeps watching me until the carriage passes, her blue eyes piercing and intense in a way that makes the hairs on the back of my neck shiver.
A crow calls outside, its cry resonating over the forest.
One for sorrow.
—
We spend the rest of the ride in relative silence, broken only by Fitz’s snores and the clatter of the carriage wheels.
When the Dwarvian village finally rolls into view, I’ve managed to bury the image of the Sanctum and the girl.
Which is good, seeing as Roland wastes no time in greeting us.
At least, I think it’s meant to be a greeting.
“About time you got here,” the surly Dwarf grouses as he flings open the carriage door.
Like his demeanor, Roland’s appearance is much the same as when I caught him following me in the palace library.
Tufts of his wispy white hair stick out from underneath his red cap.
His brown skin is wrinkled with his many years.
And his multicolored eyes, the color of crushed gemstones, gleam in the sunlight.
The only difference in Roland is the pin on his jacket—a gilded pair of pickaxes ringed in a crown, signifying his position as Head of the Guilds.
I appointed him shortly after I seized control of the council, needing all the allies I could get. The Dwarves have yet to disappoint me.
“I came as soon as I could,” I say, descending from the carriage. “If you wanted me here faster you should allow me use of the tunnels.”
Roland starts to answer back, but Fitz barks, leaping to the ground and zooming around the Dwarf’s ankles.
“By the Mines!” Roland curses as he nearly trips over the dog. “Watch your—”
“Rollie!” Another Dwarf joins us, a woman. She appears to be a bit younger than Roland, with fewer lines creasing her white skin and hardly any silver in her blond hair, which falls in an intricate braid over her shoulder. “Won’t you introduce me to the queen?”
Rollie? I mouth to Joan. She just shakes her head, as perplexed as I am.
“Oh aye. This is, ah, Mistress W—the queen. And the marquess,” he adds, gesturing to Joan. “And this is Tilda. My, well…”
“Sweetheart,” Tilda supplies, her smile widening.
My jaw nearly drops. Roland has a sweetheart? I cannot imagine anyone tolerating his bristly presence for longer than absolutely necessary. Tilda, though, seems besotted as she loops her arm around Roland’s. The Head of the Guilds shades the color of a ripe strawberry.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Tilda,” Joan says kindly.
“I—yes,” I manage, still gaping between the two Dwarves. “A pleasure.”
“And you, Majesty,” Tilda replies, bobbing a curtsy. “I really must thank you for the chance you’ve given our Roland. We’re all very proud of him. And he speaks so highly of you.”
“Does he?” I arch an eyebrow.
Aside from the instance in which he rescued me from the palace dungeons, the Head of the Guilds has made no secret of the fact that he considers me a great annoyance in his life.
“Aye, well.” Roland scrubs the back of his neck. “Enough of that now, Tilda. Don’t be bothering the queen. We have business.”
“It’s no bother,” I insist. “In fact, I would love to hear more about what Roland says.”
“That’s not—”
“You must come for dinner, then,” Tilda says, brightening. “Roland and I keep a cottage in the forest farther out. It would be our pleasure to host you.”
“I’m sure the queen has no time for that,” Roland attempts.
“Oh, it would be my honor,” I say. Fitz barks, as if to second this opinion.
Roland scowls at me. “Right, then. Dinner it is.”
“I’d best get ready.” Tilda peels herself away and hurries off.
Another group of Dwarves, who are all talking excitedly and glancing in my direction, intercepts her. I share another look with Joan, both of us hardly able to contain our amusement.
“She’s very pretty,” Joan comments.
“Rollie,” I add.
“That’s enough out of you two.” Roland jabs his finger between us. “Did you come here to see the Mine or to meddle?”
“Meddle,” we reply in unison, earning another furious glare.
I expect him to fire off another retort. But Roland just waves us off with a grumble and storms away, leaving Joan and me to dissolve in a fit of giggles.
“We shouldn’t be so mean,” Joan says, still laughing. “I’m happy for him.”
“Yes, well, I just hope she”—I nod in Tilda’s direction—“understands what she’s getting herself into.”
Roland pauses halfway toward the square.
“You coming?” he calls back at me. “Or did you need a parade?”
Joan laughs again. “Have fun.”
“I’ll do my best,” I say dryly, then pick up my skirts and follow the Dwarf.