Chapter 3
Ididn’t bother running. There was no monstrous river here to whisk me away, and running on foot would be pointless against horses.
Instead, I watched them bear down on me, wondering why they’d come back.
Their horses stomped on fallen bodies as they surrounded me, and I cringed at the soft, wet sounds they made.
The circle around me parted, and an enormous white horse sliced through the crowd.
Its rider wore a vibrant blue cloak lined with white spotted furs, and heavy gold chains hung around his thin neck.
The same gold sat in a woven ring on short white-blonde hair.
His pomp and posture told me all I needed to know.
When the men dipped their heads, I was certain.
This man was a Princeps.
And the Princeps of Third Territory was Koerlyn. The heartless, terrible Koerlyn.
Fear finally seized my chest, and I struggled to hide my shallow breaths.
As if seeing right through my efforts, his smooth alabaster skin shifted, making way for a smile that was all cruelty. “Well, it appears the rumors are correct.” His tenor oozed vanity as he took his time pronouncing every syllable.
It was the voice of power and pretentiousness, not gritty work. It was the voice of someone who committed thoughtless atrocities on a whim by merely ordering others to do it. His smile widened as he let the mystery of his statement hang in the air.
He wanted me to ask what he meant. I wouldn’t, if only because my voice would shake like a child’s.
Finally, he relented. “I will admit, it was quite an inconvenience when I was informed of your possible presence in the area, and I had to turn back to this hideous village mere hours after we left.” His horse began to circle me.
I stood still as I processed his words. He had come here looking for me. A Princeps. Someone, maybe the tree men, had told him that I trespassed onto his land, and he couldn’t let that go unpunished.
“But it was well, well worth it,” he said, completing his circle and stopping before me. Pale blue eyes shined with excitement as they met mine. “Those violet and gold eyes are lovely, darling.”
Violet and gold eyes.
This was not about trespassing, then, but what that woman had done to me. He was here for the same reason those men tried to capture me. Dread replaced the fear. These eyes were not mine, but a temporary side effect of whatever had happened in those woods.
“They aren’t my eyes,” I heard myself whisper like an idiot.
Koerlyn threw his head back and laughed, the sound delicate and feminine, as the men remained quiet.
Abruptly, he stopped. The temperature plummeted. “Are you calling me a liar?” It was not a question, but a sharp weapon that told me speaking at all had been a horrible mistake.
Of course it was. He’s a Princeps. My throat filled with cotton.
I dipped my head, choosing my next words carefully.
One misstep, and I would experience something worse than death.
Skies, I was so far out of my depths. I’d only ever seen a Princeps once in my life, never mind learned the proper way to address one.
“No. I mean that, until yesterday, my eyes were brown. The purple did not originally belong to me,” I said.
Pain erupted on my shoulder, and my head snapped up as I recoiled. I found the whip in Koerlyn’s hand, its wicked tassels swaying. Frantically, I felt along the cloak that covered my stinging skin, finding tears in the fabric but no blood.
I met his eyes again, stunned by the frigidity I found.
“You forgot to use my title, darling. I let it slip the first time, but I could not stand such disrespect the second,” he explained, shrugging flippantly. “You will learn soon enough, considering all the time we are about to spend together.”
Please, no, I wanted to beg, but I didn’t want to meet his whip again. Logic told me pleading to the man who’d thoughtlessly slain an entire village of men, women, and children would accomplish nothing good. They were going to take me. There was nothing I could do.
And still, when two men dismounted from their horses and approached me, I stumbled backward. When they gripped my arms and back with bruising strength, I kicked and flailed with all I had.
Something hard crashed into my skull, and I was flung into darkness.
* * *
I sat against the wall of Koerlyn’s tent, shoulders numb, counting pebbles on the floor to distract myself from the awful wails that filled the air.
Four days ago, I’d cried my eyes dry at the sounds of death and torture. Now, I was numb to the noises. Listening would destroy me.
Just like Koerlyn destroyed countless people at every village we encountered on our journey to his city center.
“Don’t cry. They did this to themselves.
” Koerlyn had crooned the words to me on that first night when he found me shaking in a ball on the ground beside his bed, my hands still tied behind my back.
Adults, the old, the young—Koerlyn hadn’t discriminated in slaughter outside of the tent.
I couldn’t see how anyone, never mind a child, had deserved what he did to them.
Perhaps I’d voiced that part out loud because he’d added, “They wish to rebel. I hear whispers. I see it in their faces. It is necessary to remind them that to do so, to think so, is a grave mistake.”
Koerlyn’s punishments hadn’t extended to me.
Though my hands were almost always tied behind my back, the skin of my wrists rubbed raw from the rope, I was fed one measly meal each day, untied to relieve myself, and generally left alone.
I was even able to fix my braid now and then.
Different men carried me on their horse each day, but their hands didn’t excessively wander.
Aside from those words on the first night, Koerlyn had hardly acknowledged my existence, even though I slept paces from his bed on the ground.
I’d been lucky so far. Safe as I always was in my village, I knew of the kinds of violence that bad men inflicted on women.
Maybe Koerlyn was waiting until we reached his home.
There was some twisted comfort in the fact that he hadn’t taken me for my body—just my eyes, which were apparently a popular commodity among terrifying men.
I thought they’d change back to brown by now, but the two times I’d been marched past Koerlyn’s oversized mirror, their purple and gold hues were still vibrant.
My dirt-stained skin only amplified the color.
Still, I had no idea what they meant or why they mattered to the Princeps.
All I knew was that it had to do with that vanishing woman whose multi-colored eyes, black blood, and terrifying voice weren’t from… here.
But if she wasn’t from here, the only other place she could have come from was the Domus. While that in itself was unbelievable, I’d decided over the past four days that any other possibility was even more unbelievable. The Domus at least held enough mystery that it could make some sense.
What we knew of the Domus was simple. Years ago, when Merelda was middle-aged and there were hot sunny days, lively winters, and leaves and grass and fruit—actual fruit—in the woods, the Territories weren’t divided under different Princepes.
They were instead united under King Donon, who resided in Centralis, the city in the middle of the land.
People grew restless and unhappy, there was talk of rebellion, and then the swirling domed walls appeared overnight, closing Centralis off from the Territories.
Soon after, the land and sky changed. Trees became barren, animals died, the sun disappeared, and ashy brown and gray claimed the landscape.
Nothing came from the Domus, and those who’d been to its mysterious reflective barrier couldn’t go in.
It had been that way for over twenty-five years: Centralis, an isolated world within a world, and the six Territories, each fighting for control of the others or entering uneasy alliances.
New rumors about the Domus spread every few years, of course.
Each came with a different level of madness.
The first I remembered was that unnatural beings cursed King Donon, and the Domus was built to jail him in his home.
Those who were religious believed the gods had decided to make Centralis into their oasis, and then there were whispers that the earth had shifted and created a field in the air.
None of it was real.
There was, however, one theory that prevailed.
It’d been spoken by Princeps Theo himself.
King Donon was a coward who’d gotten nervous at the people’s unrest. He’d gotten something, some strange being, to erect the dome over Centralis, and ever since, those otherworldly walls had siphoned the life from our land and our skies.
Maybe it was the truth, but I didn’t believe anything that came from the mouths of corrupt leaders. Nor did I ever care much about the Domus. It was here to stay, and energy spent investigating its origins was energy wasted.
But what was certainly true was that no one had laid eyes on Centralis in a quarter of a century, and no one knew what occurred inside.
With so much mystery, it wasn’t impossible that the Domus turned people’s irises into violet and gold rings and their blood into black sludge.
It also wasn’t impossible that one of those people had found a way out and stumbled into those woods.
Unlikely. So, very unlikely. But not impossible. And if anything, the past few days had taught me that parts of reality I’d considered to be fact were not fact at all. Eyes could change color, and the life I was living in Second Territory was not as miserable as I’d thought.
No, true misery existed under Koerlyn’s reign.
A scream cut through the air, and I flinched.