CHAPTER FORTY
C HAPTER F ORTY
Within the Terrsaw palace, the Queens sat aghast, astonished by the woman at the end of the bed.
A woman with frost covered hands and wary eyes.
A woman who spoke as though her own voice frightened her.
“You… you journeyed through the Chasm?” Alvira uttered, though it was clear to her that the tale was true. How else to explain the Glacian magic she held in her palms?
“I did.”
“And you bore a child. With one of them ?”
Yennes blanched at the accusation in her tone. “Yes. Which brings me to the favour you promised,” she said, attempting to stand taller, to broaden her shoulders. “I have cured her,” she said, gaze flicking to Cressida. “Let me leave from here.”
“And where will you go?”
Yennes did not answer immediately. There was calculation in her eyes. “If you can offer me no hope to retrieve my son, then I… I will make my peace with it. Start anew.” The lie burned her throat on its way out. She recalled with perfect clarity the Glacian King’s taunts to punish Thaddius’ son as he’d cut the wings from his back. There was no peace to be found now. None.
“Ah,” Alvira answered. “Yes. Well, such a request comes with a few conditions of course.”
Colour leached from Yennes’ face. The smell of the dungeons below returned to her. Her hands twisted together.
“An iskra witch walking amongst good folk? It would be rather rash of me to let you leave from here and do as you will.”
“I only mean to return to my lodgings,” Yennes said.
“I shall need to know where you will stay,” Alvira continued. “And should I call on you, you will obey the summons.”
“Call on me?” Yennes asked, her eyes narrowing. “What–”
“So that you may continue to serve the palace, of course.” Alvira smiled. “It is quite a prize, Yennes. Have you any idea what my people would do to you should they learn the truth? That you fucked a Glacian? That you bore its child? I ought to send you to the pyre now.” Alvira watched with an air of satisfaction as Yennes reared away. “I assure you, it is quite an allowance to let you live at all.”
Yennes’ eyes welled. The last of her resolve drawn away from its husk.
“So,” Alvira said. “Where will you go from here, iskra witch?”
Yennes stood on the bank of the river, holding a ring in her hand with a black stone at its centre. The tighter she held it, the more she felt the tug of her limbs, the one that led her through the Mecca, through the fields and forests and to the water’s edge. Without Baltisse’s ring, she would have wandered haplessly through the kingdom, unaware of how far she’d travelled.
She wondered if Alvira had snuck into the keep and bowled out her insides as she’d slept. It would explain the emptiness she felt now.
“Yennes?” a voice called, and she looked up to see someone familiar on the other side of the river. A woman with long, golden hair and beautiful clothes. There one moment, gone the next.
She reappeared beside Yennes, a small chain necklace woven tightly around her fingers. Yennes’ ring grew hot in her hand.
“Yennes,” Baltisse breathed, looking her over shrewdly, and then into her eyes, delving into her mind.
Yennes could only imagine what she saw.
The mage sighed heavily, sadly. But she did not insult Yennes with pity. It was understanding she exuded now. Tiredness. Anger. “Fucking crowns,” she muttered, taking Yennes’ hand.
“You tried to warn me.”
But the mage shook her head. “I cannot curb your course,” she said simply, though Yennes did not know what she meant. “It is not for me to decide what you will do.”
“You must teach me to fold,” she pronounced, tears dripping from her chin. When had she begun to cry?
“So that you can go to Glacia and find your boy? What did you say his name was?”
“Ryon,” Yennes whispered, swaying to one side.
Baltisse held her upright. “I meant what I said before, Yennes. You do not need to cling to what was left up there. Unburden yourself.”
“I cannot simply–”
“You can ,” Baltisse pressed. “Because that boy? He belongs amongst his kind.”
“Vasteel… he said he would hurt him.”
“And how will you stop him, Yennes? What power could you wield that would thwart him? Thwart them all? And even if you could, what will you do with your son, when the Queen comes to call on you and learns that you brought him here? She is just as dangerous as them, Yennes. I suspect you know that now.”
Yennes teetered until she found her forehead pressed to the mage’s shoulder. Her body shuddered with the force of the past and present colliding.
“What is done, is done,” Baltisse told her, though her voice leaked with regret. Sorrow. “There is little we can change. We just live, Farra. That is how we defy our enemies, how we honour those we love. We live.”