CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
C HAPTER T HIRTY- F IVE
Yennes awoke with Baltisse’s voice echoing in the chambers of her mind. She told her what a fool she’d been. How heedless she was. How she knew nothing of this kingdom and how it worked.
Her head rolled back and connected with something unforgiving – a wall. She was surrounded by them.
What little light there was revealed stone, an iron grid, and little else. Her hands were shackled to the wall. She could not use them to push hair from her face. Something viscous ran down the back of her neck, a rivulet of blood from where she’d been struck.
Bright spots clouded her vision when she blinked, but she had enough wit left in her to summon the iskra. It wound its way willingly to her palms, as though it had been waiting for her to finally wake.
“ Bruvex, ” she whispered and the iron links around her wrists broke. Her numb arms dropped to the ground, and she winced as the blood rushed back to them. Next, she tried the iron gate, but the same enchantment made no mark whatsoever. Some invisible protection, perhaps. A magicked lock.
“Baltisse,” she whispered weakly. “Where are you?”
But Baltisse was back in her cove, doing as Yennes should have done, keeping her distance.
The only tell-tale sign of passing time was the candle that sat inside the sconce beyond the gate. She watched it burn down and guessed at the hours that passed. With each one, the slippery voices of the Chasm returned, louder than before. The torment she could not rid herself of. They whispered that they were a part of her now. Sewn into her skin. Married to the flesh.
And Yennes whimpered. She cried and prayed and pleaded with the Mother. Whatever strength she’d harboured in reserve was gone now. This world had taken every last piece. If humans were born to withstand a measure of trial, then she’d had the portion of three.
She let herself crumble and did not care for the sounds she emitted.
“My, my,” a voice said, jolting Yennes from near sleep. She looked to the gate, the candlelight now eclipsed by a figure. Alvira. “How pitiful you are. This place has a way of smothering the fire within a person, but I thought it might take a while longer to stamp out yours. ”
Yennes did not bother to lift her head, she simply closed her eyes, aware that whimpers still escaped her lips, but not much caring. She hoped the Queen was here to finally kill her, do what the Ledge and Glacia and the Chasm had failed to.
“Have you had enough now, iskra witch?”
Yennes nodded. Yes, she thought. I’ve had more than my share.
“Then I’ll offer again what you were too stupid to accept before. You will cure my wife, and I will let you live. Surely, it is not such a terrible trade?”
Yennes moaned. She did not wish to live.
“Oh, come now. I think you’ll find Terrsaw a grand place to start a new life. Think of it, witch. You could find a home. Lure a husband. Have a child–”
Yennes’ eyes snapped open.
“–you could leave the past where it ought to remain and start anew. Is that not why you escaped that hellish place? Surely it was not to die here on my floor.”
Yennes pulled her knees in tighter, until she resembled an infant. She let the Queen’s words circle inside her mind, caught in an endless loop. They became louder and louder, until she had to squeeze her eyes shut again.
“I’ll return this evening,” Alvira told her. “Once you’ve had time to think it over.”
“No!” Yennes called, her voice choked and cracked. She could not remember when she had last had anything to drink. “No. I… I need to get out…”
“Yes, it is rather a despairing place,” Alvira agreed, looking about the keep as though they were discussing the décor. “Smells terrible.”
“Let me out,” Yennes begged, voice rising. “Please.”
“And the Queen Consort?” Alvira asked, her hands suddenly gripping the rungs, knuckles white. “Let me be blunt, witch. If she dies, you die. Do we understand each other?”
Cressida was asleep when Yennes entered the bed chamber on shaking legs.
Grey-skinned and cheeks sunken, she seemed not long for this world. Her short, shallow breaths rattled on inhale, as though it could not quite reach her lungs. It was a sound Yennes was acquainted with. The sound of drowning. On the Ledge, most died young, but if the cold could not pry one from this realm quickly, then it would settle for stealth. Lung sickness took those who survived every other test of the Ledge, and the rattle of their last breaths always sounded the same.
Servants hovered around the Queen Consort’s bed, useless in their frivolous ministrations. No amount of cold compress or treacle could cure what had already set it. Alvira knew it. She looked upon her wife with glazed eyes, the lines around her mouth deepening with the effort it took to conceal emotion – but the anguish was clear. It was emanating from her in waves. “Get out,” she ordered the lady’s maids and they hastened to scramble away.
Yennes waited for the doors to close before speaking and as soon as the room was empty of any other, she took a trembling breath. “Do I have your word that I will be released, should I save her?”
Alvira answered hastily, impatiently, as though Yennes’ life was of little consequence. “You have it,” she said. “Hurry. Please.”
Cressida coughed and her body jolted with the force of it. Dark specks dotted her lips and chin and Yennes quailed. The Terrsaw Queen was right to worry.
Doubt quickly interceded as Yennes lowered the bed covers from Cressida’s chest. What if she was unable to do what had already been promised? Did she have strength enough to heal a person so close to death?
She pressed her unsteady hands to the woman’s chest, feeling the rapid movements as her body fought its last. Yennes closed her eyes and, in silent prayer, beckoned to the iskra.
Mercifully, it unravelled within her.
“Ishveet.”
She had practiced this spell with Baltisse, with her own cuts and abrasions, with the mending of tools and fabric. It was not difficult for the magic to find what was damaged. The iskra flowed through her palms easily. It seeped into the Queen Consort and entangled with her blood.
When Yennes opened her eyes, Cressida’s cheeks were less hollow, her eyelids less veined. Her cracked lips became fuller, pinker, and her breaths eased into a steady rhythm.
The Queen’s wife awakened, healed.
Yennes was pushed to the side as Alvira rushed forward, kneeling beside the bed and grasping Cressida’s hand in her own. “My darling,” she whispered, bringing the hand to her lips. “Mother, bless us.”
Cressida’s eyes roam the room, pausing on Yennes first, and then finding her wife. “Alvira,” she said. “What did you do?”
But Alvira stood and pressed her mouth to Cressida’s, thwarting the woman’s confusion.
Yennes smiled. Not at the Queens. Not them. But at her hands.
Cressida blushed slightly at the open display before company, then looked to the company in question. “Am I to assume you managed to smoke out that mage you threatened me with?” she asks wryly.
“Something of the sort,” Alvira answered. “Do you feel any pain?”
“None.”
Indeed, the more the seconds passed, the more colour returned to her complexion. She sat upright, groaning as she cricked her neck. “Saints, that feels divine.”
“I’m glad for your improvement, ma’am.”
“Your Majesty,” Cressida corrected.
“Your Majesty. Lung sickness took my mother up on the Ledge. It is a cruel way to die.”
Cressida’s eyes widened. “The Ledge,” she muttered, to herself perhaps, and then to Alvira. “Surely not?”
“It would seem our friend Yennes has somehow stumbled across Glacian magic,” Alvira confirmed. “Though I am yet to hear the full tale.”
“Yennes?” Cressida repeated, a note of recognition in her voice. “Survivor?”
Yennes nodded tiredly. “It is what they called me.”
“They?” Both monarchs seemed to lean closer.
“The Glacians,” Yennes murmured. “I… I lived with them for a time.”
The Queens gave her an incredulous look. “Lived?” Alvira asked. “What could you mean?”
“What is your real name, if not ‘Yennes’?” Cressida interceded, her eyes sweeping across Yennes entirely.
Yennes’ fingers curled inward to her palms. She had not uttered it aloud since she found herself within that Chasm. It felt false on her tongue, a version of herself long since left to rot.
“Farra,” she finally said, as though uttering someone else’s name.
“Well, Farra,” Alvira seated herself on the mattress beside her wife. “You ought to tell us the rest. You will not leave from here until you do.”