Chapter 23 Thessia
Thessia
What remained of Queen Thessia’s noble questing party surrounded her in their carriage. She could not even find enthusiasm
to try to properly name the group. Not with Celine sulking beside her, not with Hugh up front driving in determined silence.
No, they were not quest-vengers or quest-panions. They were miserable.
Having donned disguises to travel inconspicuously, they journeyed into the rolling hills of the Vestriyan countryside in their
rented carriage. Not even the land’s dappled green or high ridges of olivera plants could distract them from their discontent.
Thessia found herself unable to muster small talk. How exactly did one engage in casual conversation with the man you’ve realized you love, with whom you shared one perfect night but could
now never be with ever again? Even the greatest of heart healers, potently powerful with gifts of emotional repair, would
not know what to do with them.
For his part, Hugh offered none of his easy, jovial companionship. He lapsed instead into speaking to their horse about every
minor detail of the scenery. “Have you ever seen hills this green?” he murmured to the chestnut creature. “Yes, of course
you have,” he chastened himself. “You’re a horse. You live here. It is I who looks with wonder on what your worldly eyes have
seen.”
The carriage, not outfitted with the comforts of a royal chariot, hit every dip in the winding road with punishing emphasis. Not used to, well, discomfort, Thessia grimaced when her soon-to-be ex-husband’s unapologetic driving caused her butt to knock painfully against the seat board.
Celine, usually equanimous, was uncommonly prickly, like the olivera spines on the hedges they rode past. Thessia suspected
her withdrawnness had something to do with River’s continued absence, despite Celine procuring the former assassin’s rescue.
Thessia could not explain why River hadn’t teleported to them yet, but considering Celine’s sour mood, she could only conclude
more heart troubles plagued their crew.
Perhaps Galwell was right, she ruminated ruefully. Perhaps they should not have permitted romance in their questing party.
Of course, it was not romance that kept Galwell himself from joining them. No one had heard from Vestriya’s most wanted man
since the Realm Chalice. When Thessia tried to contact Mona, suspecting Galwell’s difficult relationship with the law might
lead him to Vestriya’s crown princess of crime, Thessia was told she had left the city on personal matters.
She could only hope “personal matters” meant helping Galwell. Not only for his safety’s sake—she was starting to suspect Mona
personally mattered to Mythria’s hero.
The possibility of Galwell finding refuge with Mona cheered Thessia, reminding her that despite the fractured state of their
company, she was not alone.
It was something. A single note where she yearned for a symphony, yes. Nevertheless—it was something.
When Hugh started to slow the carriage, Thessia noticed the changes in the scenery. Gone were the green hills, the olivera
plants. The sunlight here was searing. The ground and the rock formations were rugged white stone.
Hugh rounded the corner past one such massive formation. The Pale Palace loomed ahead.
Thessia shivered. The structure was instantly unsettling. Yes, the formidable towers, sculpted spires, and hand-hewn columns
with spiraling ornamentation were impressive. But Thessia could not shake the fearsome feeling of emptiness pervading the
Palace. The marvelous walls were silent of kindness or cheer. Vacant of hope.
“I don’t like this,” Hugh said honestly.
While Thessia welcomed his candor in place of horse jokes, she fought to hold her courage where even her courageous husband—ex-husband?—could
not. “We’ll be okay,” she reassured them. “What can they really do to a royal?”
Hugh frowned, halting the horses. “Isn’t that what we’re quite literally here to find out? If something sinister is happening
with Ario, Vestriya’s new crown prince, why would you expect to be safe? We should find another way.”
“There is no other way,” Celine said, seemingly unmoved by their procession toward the hushed Pale Palace. “I’ve tried for
days to get access. I’ve talked to every scribe in the city, and none of them are even interested in investigating Ario’s
condition. It’s strange.”
“It’s a warning, is what it is,” Hugh told them.
His judgment sounded disturbingly convincing. Still—while Thessia could not change the misfortune of their position, she could
change tactics. “You’d have us abandon our ally?” she asked Hugh.
Now Hugh looked uncomfortable. He turned to face her, their eyes meeting for—the first time since they were bared to each
other.
“Of course not,” he returned evenly. “But, Thess . . . ia—”
Oof. She heard his effortful denial of her nickname.
“You’re nearly an enemy of the realm, and this sure fucking looks like a place to torture enemies.”
Panic flared in Hugh’s eyes. She understood its source well. Hugh had faced deep loss, the loss of someone he cared for. Someone he . . . loved.
Rogue hope followed that thought. Thessia wished she could hide the emotion in her keepsake box, out of sight.
Celine spoke up. Fortunate, given Thessia’s words were caught in her throat. “I can keep her safe if it comes to that.”
Her voice was low but seemed to echo loudly. When they’d returned to the villa after the Realm Chalice disaster, Celine had
revealed everything to Hugh and Thessia. Her devastating power. Her concealment of her magic.
Thessia had not judged the other woman for her secrecy. She understood perfectly not wanting to be defined by something one
could not control. What’s more, the queen trusted Celine, which was why she’d asked her to undertake the day’s dangerous quest.
“There,” Thessia murmured to Hugh, intending to comfort. “If you see fire, you can charge in. But otherwise, it would be . . .
better if no one saw us together.”
Better. Ghosts, she’d just negotiated her realm right up to the edge of war—she’d stood down the imposing rulers of Vestriya with
countless lives on the line without flinching. Yet commending her separation from the man who’d stolen her heart? Nearly impossible.
Hugh grumbled but did not protest further. He guided their horses up to the gates of the Pale Palace. When their carriage
stopped, no one greeted them. Thessia stepped out into the silence, then turned back to her seat, where her only traveling
companion who’d given her no cause for concern or consternation waited.
Benjamin the snail extended his eye stalks. He swirled them intently, which Thessia had learned meant he wanted something.
Of course, if the new crown prince was inside this fortress of solitude, Thessia would not deny him the chance to reunite with his precious pet. Upon Benjamin’s eloquent request, she extended her hand, letting the snail scoot purposefully into her dress pocket.
Every footstep deeper into the Pale Palace unnerved Thessia. Something—she could not quite explain what—made the sanctuary
the most unwelcoming place she’d ever found herself. This was saying something, for Queen Thessia had been kidnapped thrice
in her life.
Perhaps the white stone of which everything was sculpted unsettled her. The only color found in the palace were the grand
rooms’ fountains of . . . Thessia knew not what substance flowed in them—a gleaming, iridescent white that shimmered hues
of purple or blue when the cascading liquid met the surface.
Or perhaps the silence disquieted the queen. Other than their own footsteps, the only sound was of the rustling outside of
dust-colored, spider-limbed plants Thessia did not recognize.
Thessia and Celine were guests of the palace’s healers, who’d granted the visiting royal a tour as a result of Thessia’s invented
premise of considering expanding the Pale Palace into Mythria—an idea onto which the healers latched with hungry zeal. They
were being shown the grounds by the head healer, introduced as Master Marko, and his apprentice. Marko was once part of the
Collective of the Resurrected Ghosts—the zealots who believed the Ghosts, heroes of Mythria’s past, lived once more. In Marko’s
unsuccessful proselytizing in Vestriya, curiosity had led him to disgraced healers whose hand and head magics promised impossible
results. Eventually he gave up proselytizing and the Collective and changed vocations to develop his healing craft in the
Palace.
As they walked, he extolled in a whisper the iridescent “healing pools” and promised introductions to the magicians who could ease patients’ pain by immersing them in labyrinthine dream states.
Thessia feigned interest while Celine diligently jotted down notes for the scribesheet story she was pretending to write to
commemorate the palace’s impending Mythrian expansion. Meanwhile, down every corridor, past every open doorway, they searched
for Ario—without success.
Marko moved ahead of them with reptilian deliberateness, his eyes keen with unreadable focus. Despite his wisps of hair, the
smooth, sallow head of the septuagenarian rather resembled a skull.
This unsettled Thessia, too. She was rather tiring of the day’s many unsettlements. Indeed, she would probably have preferred
a straightforward kidnapping.
When he led them into the largest common square within the palace, where head magicians were conducting some sort of meditative
hypnosis on patients—who, dismayingly, did not include the prince—Thessia felt their complimentary tour concluding.
She would need to force the matter.
“And what of your progress with the crown prince?” she interjected.
As if she’d just dropped a glass jar of red spicy dollpepper sauce on their pristine pale floor, the healers’ faces fell.
Marko met her question evenly, his mouth a line. “The case is a challenging one, but he is in the best hands in Vestriya,”
he intoned.
Evasion. Dread rose in Thessia. It was a feeling she did not much like.