Chapter 14
Chapter
The following days dissolved into endless quarrels among the lords during the Gathering. Voices rose, tempers flared, and alliances took shape in plain sight. The coming Election hung in the air like an approaching storm.
Cassandra grew sharper with each session, her words precise and merciless.
The lords, meanwhile, haggled without shame over tariffs and taxes between their lands and the Dominium, as if coin mattered more than blood.
It was as though the Plague had already faded from their memories, replaced by the familiar hunger to line their own pockets.
Everyone welcomed the break in council proceedings with quiet relief.
On that free day, I retreated into my chambers and barred myself from the ceaseless clamor of the palace.
I collapsed into a chair with a book, but a knock tore me from my thoughts.
Mirabel vanished somewhere. I rose and opened the door.
A young huntsman stood in the doorway. I recognized him at once. The same one I had met during the hunt.
“Cedric,” he said, dipping his head. “My Lady.”
“Yes. I remember you,” I replied. “How can I help you?”
“Oh. You cannot.”
I raised a brow.
“I came for Mirabel,” he continued, shy and uncertain. “I promised her a walk.”
Oh interesting.
I realized, with a sting of guilt, how wrapped in my own troubles I had been. I had not even noticed that Mirabel had met someone. I silently scolded myself for the neglect.
“Please, come in,” I said. “I will get her.”
I found Mirabel in her chamber, every dress she owned strewn across the floor. Silk, linen, and wool lay in bright disorder. She had clearly tried them all.
“Mirabel,” I said gently. “Is everything all right? The hunter, Cedric, is here for you.”
Her eyes went wide. “Already? Is it already time?”
She began to pace, hands fluttering, her hair nearly as unruly as the clothes beneath her feet.
“Mirabel.” I caught her by the shoulders. “Breathe. You look beautiful no matter which dress you choose. Come. Let me help you.”
I fetched my turquoise hair clasp from my own chamber, brushed her hair smooth, and pinned it back in a simple twist that framed her face.
“There,” I said. “Go. But if he will make you cry. I will drown him in the square’s fountain.”
She laughed, flustered and hurried out. When Cedric saw her, his eyes lit like a gentle sunshine in the morning.
It was sweet, hearing their voices fade down the corridor. Mirabel laughed at something he said, light and unguarded.
Perhaps not everything in this Palace was rotten.
When they were gone, I settled back into my chair and returned to my book. I’d barely opened it to the right page when someone knocked again.
I sighed. Was today some sort of day for petitioners?
I swung the door open, irritated that I could not read in peace.
Aidenar. Stood on the threshold. Tall, composed, immaculate as ever. His presence filled the doorway, there was little space between us for breathing or escaping.
“How can I help you?” I asked at last, breaking the silence.
He cleared his throat, as if pulled from his thoughts. “I have business in the city. And I thought to take you somewhere while I am at it.”
“Is it a brothel?” I asked sweetly.
“No,” he replied at once. “It is too early. Brothels are closed at this hour. The girls have their break.”
I rolled my eyes. He laughed, openly this time.
“You started it,” he said. “Anyway, come. You have nothing better to do.”
Annoyingly, he was right.
We left the Palace with a light escort, careful not to draw too much attention.
It did little good. We tried blending into the city crowd, but every girl and woman we padded devoured Aidenar with his eyes.
He walked calmly, unhurried, like he owned everything here.
Unbothered. But I knew him well enough by now to recognize that he enjoyed the attention.
“So,” I said. “Where are you taking me?”
“I heard you have been lurking around the medical wing,” he replied.
I cut him a look. “Does everyone in this palace know everything? Is it possible to keep anything secret?”
He regarded me with something close to pity.
“No,” he said simply. “As I was saying. I know you seek a cure for your brother. I know a place. And a person. She is… unusual. But she may have some answers. I’m not promising anything.”
“Who is she?” I asked. “A medic, alchemist? A sage?”
“Something like that,” he said, and his expression turned strangely guarded.
We entered a district unlike any I had seen.
Herbalists, trinket sellers, purveyors of strange amulets and cheaper magic crowded the narrow streets.
Shady trades whispered from every doorway.
I had never been here before. I didn’t expect Aidenar to spend time in such neighborhoods.
The deeper we went, the more hostile the stares became. Most of them fixed on me.
A tall, bald man approached us, and I tensed, my hand drifting toward the knives at my belt. Instead of attacking, he grinned and clasped Aidenar’s hand. I caught the flash of palladium as something passed between them.
This part of the city was the White City’s shadow, everything the Palace pretended did not exist.
Aidenar turned into a narrow passage where two brutes with clubs stood guard, flanking a lean man with sharp black eyes.
“Well now,” the lean man said, eyeing me with interest. “A White Lord with a pretty girl. That’s new.”
My fingers closed around my knives.
Aidenar caught my wrist, gentle but firm.
“Omar,” he said calmly. “If you keep staring at her, I will tell your wife.”
Omar scoffed. “A man cannot even look anymore?” He grinned wider. “Good to see you, my Lord. I was beginning to think the Palace had swallowed you whole. The girls have been asking after you. They miss you terribly.”
I rolled my eyes.
Aidenar laughed. “They will have to wait a little longer. I have other matters today.”
He pressed a small pouch of coins into Omar’s hand. Omar returned it with a thin stack of documents. Aidenar padded him on the shoulder, and we passed through the gate into darker streets beyond.
As we left, Aidenar called back with a smile, “Kiss Beatrice for me.”
Omar barked a laugh. “She wishes!”
We walked on. I stared at Aidenar.
“What?” he asked at last.
“You keep interesting company,” I said.
He huffed a quiet laugh. “Oh. There’s a lot more going on outside the palace. You noticed yourself that walls have eyes and ears. Here, good information is often worth more than coins.”
I’d never seen this side of him. I’d assumed he cared only for balls, women, and pleasures. At the Gathering he never spoke. His mother always did. He only watched, silent and observed.
“This is it,” Aidenar said, pulling me from my thoughts.
We stood before a narrow door set into a crumbling stone building.
“I will wait outside,” he added.
“You are not coming in with me?” I asked.
“No. Whatever she says is meant for you.”
I stepped inside.
If I had thought the palace medics kept strange jars, this place surpassed them all.
Shelves bowed beneath the weight of grotesque curiosities.
Dead lizards fused to things that might once have been birds.
Amulets and talismans hung from every beam.
Bowls filled with pebbles and beads covered the table and shelves, sorted by no order I could discern.
From the inner room emerged an old woman with a storm of white hair.
She was barely half my height. I could not recall ever seeing someone so small.
Her skin was wrinkled like a raisin, and her eyes were pale as fog.
Her weird jewelry chimed softly, beads whispering against one another as she moved.
“Oh. Another one,” she croaked. “There are more of you now. Everything returns. Just like the old days.”
She tilted her head. “What brings you here, child of the sea?”
“My brother,” I said. “He is ill.”
I could not summon the strength to explain it all again. But she did not ask for more. She simply extended her hand.
I placed my palm in hers.
In a blink, pain flared. I hissed. She sliced my skin with a steel talon hidden beneath her thumb.
She released me and brought the claw to her mouth, licking the blood from it.
I looked at her with disgust.
“Your brother,” she murmured, humming under her breath. Her fingers moved across the beads of her necklaces and bracelets, touching them one by one, searching. She stopped at a small sapphire. She murmured to herself more.
“He paid your price,” she said at last. “And what did you do with it? Nothing! You let the darkness spill.”
She sounded more and more like my mother.
“You want to save a life?” She continued, pointing at me with a crooked finger. “You have tried before. But drowned your heart at the bottom of the sea with him.”
My eyes widened. How could she know?
“Do not fear,” she went on. “You are not cursed. Not the way you think. That heart of yours may yet save someone. It may yet be of use. Perhaps it is time to pull it from the depths. So, you can save him. If not you, then only death will end his suffering.”
I stood frozen, unable to speak. How could my heart save my brother? Had my love for him never been enough?
“You may go,” she said. “I have nothing more for you. The White Lord paid already.”
I stumbled back onto the street.
Aidenar sat perched on a crate with a cluster of street boys, around nine or ten years old, the ragged sort that haunted every shadowed quarter.
They played cards, games I recognized from a dozen ports.
The sort of games designed to liberate a guest from all the money.
Playing them was near enough to a voluntary theft.
With a theatrical curse, Aidenar slapped his cards onto the crate, left a generous pile of coins behind, and rose. The boys whooped and divided the spoils among themselves.
He noticed me and waved farewell to them before joining me.
Despite having just lost a fair sum, he looked relaxed. Almost content.
“You know they cheated you,” I said.
“I know,” he replied, smiling. “How did it go?”
I stared at the ground. “Not well.”