by Callie Bates
I pull in a breath. “That doesn’t matter now,” I say, “not to them. They say they’ve found a replacement ruler, that he’s on his way to Eren.” I pause, choke out the words. “He’s coming to take my throne. To claim it’s rightfully his.”
Elanna makes an impatient noise. Who could possibly do that?
I swallow hard. “Euan Dromahair. My natural father.”
There’s a moment of silence as they both stare at me.
But he has no right! Elanna exclaims at last. And he has no support—no means—
Jahan interrupts her with a gasp. His eyes have widened. Sophy, he says urgently. What do people say about his supporters?
“That they’re powerful and influential—all the usual things.” I roll my eyes despite my tears, thinking of Rambaud. “Why?”
In the mirror, El has turned to Jahan, her lips parting. As if she’s had the same realization he has.
Augustus and Phaedra Saranon, Jahan says. He clears his throat. Leontius’s younger siblings—they wanted his throne. I have no proof. But Sophy, I would wager they are Euan’s supporters, and they’re headed to your shores, with him.
I’m staring. “The Saranons? But why would they come here?”
Probably because they have nowhere else to go, El says grimly, and for some reason they’ve allied with Euan Dromahair.
They’re opportunists, Jahan says. They see Eren’s weak, and they want to take advantage.
El looks at me. We’re coming, Sophy. We’ll be back in a few days. Just hold out a bit longer, if you can.
I draw in a breath, and nod. “I will.”
Their images fade from the mirror, and I turn, shaken. Shaking. So my father is coming here with the Saranon siblings. Perhaps they are united in a hatred of magic, though I don’t know why my father would fear it—he was obviously willing to support Elanna as a figurehead in our rebellion. No, there must be more to it. My head feels thick, stupid. I can’t see it.
Unless maybe he never intended to ally with us at all.
Alistar is sitting up in bed. “Sophy,” he says gently.
He holds out his arms, and I clamber over the bed, into them, pressing my face into his warmth. His lips brush my forehead, my hair. Then his hands slide up my robe. He lowers his lips to my neck, and heat flares in me.
“I—I need to think,” I say. “I need to plan…”
“You need to rest.” His teeth nip my ear. “Let me comfort you, Sophy Dunbarron.”
His fingers find the sash of my robe. I help him slip it loose. My chemise slides over my shoulders, and he pushes it down, kissing the hollows of my collarbone. I bury my hands in his hair. My eyes have fallen shut. Warmth is humming through me, an urgent desire. Yet at the same time I want to take this slow. So slow. I want to make it last as long as possible.
My chemise is around my waist now, and Alistar leans down, putting his ear to my stomach. There’s a delicate movement in my womb, like a tiny bubble bursting, brief and gone.
“I felt it!” he exclaims. “Like a butterfly.”
I laugh. “I am not going to give birth to an insect.”
But then Alistar rears up, and there’s no humor in his eyes, only an ardent wonder. My breath catches. How could I ever have denied him the chance to be a father?
“I love it already,” he says.
“Her,” I correct him. I’m smiling.
“A girl,” he says wonderingly.
“She hasn’t even been born yet,” I say, for the look on his face is softening my tired heart. “How can you love her already?” As if I don’t, too.
“I just know I do.” Tenderly, he kisses me. I let myself sink into him, the warmth of his body, the hum of resonance that is so uniquely his. The thread of my own song rises to meet it. He’s kissing me, and my breath and body are quickening, and as our bodies come together it seems that our songs do, too, melding into a unity that carries us both to that moment of profound release.
Afterward, I hold him against me. My heart aches too gently for words. I simply kiss him, slowly, sleepily, until we both fall into dreams, his hand still cupping my stomach.
* * *
—
I WAKE SOME time later, disoriented. The day has mellowed into afternoon, and a heavy bar of gold light lies across the bed. Somewhere, someone is singing. It’s a melody I know in my bones—a warm cradle of sound that mothers me and pulls at the aches in my heart at the same time. I sit up, careful not to jostle Alistar. He wraps his arms around a pillow, still breathing slow, sleeping breaths. The baby kicks, once, twice, and I feel a foolish smile warming my face. For a moment, I’m caught looking at him, wondering whether our child will have his nose, his dark, thick hair or my ruddy-gold.
Then the song drifts nearer, and I look up again. It must be Teofila, though it sounds a bit deeper than she usually does. I slip carefully out of bed—no need to wake Alistar—and shrug into my dressing gown. I slept only a few hours, but feel vigorous and alert. I pad out into the hallway to find Teofila.
Only it’s not Teofila. It’s a woman in a long blue gown, walking away from me down the hall. Her thick blond hair is caught back in a braid that sways as she moves, and her gown is the deep blue of summer dusk.
The castle sits quiet around us, strangely so, in the middle of the afternoon. But fear doesn’t spike through me. There’s another tone rippling behind the woman, harmonizing with the song she’s singing—or perhaps, I think, confused, she is the song. The melody weaves through the dust motes clinging to the air behind her, so vibrant it seems tangible. I reach out my fingers, and touch a pulse of pure sound.
The woman glances over her shoulder, and I see I’m right. She isn’t singing. The song is simply emanating from her.
“Come,” she says softly.
I hesitate. I grew up in a land where seeing a ghost is as common as sighting a crow, yet I have never been one of those people who stumbles upon one. I’ve never had an ancestor step through the veil and summon me. I saw the ancestors Elanna called up, of course, when we claimed Barrody and Laon in our rebellion. But none have ever woken me from dreams. None have ever wanted nothing but me.
There’s a circlet on her brow, I realize, as she stands there waiting for me to make up my mind. The gold winks in the sweet, sleepy afternoon light.
“Who are you?” I whisper.
She simply smiles. When she begins to move away, I follow her and the twining music through the silent castle corridors and down the tall, wide-hewn stairs. Ahead, a door swings open without a touch. The gardens are flooded with the same thick, golden light; it shines between the stones high on top of the ridged hill. My heart sinks. She must be taking me up there, to the stone circle. Like Elanna.
But instead we skirt the base of the hill, until we approach a tiny glen I never knew existed, tucked between the fold of this hill and the next. We seem miles from Barrody and as I step among the ancient trees, I think this is what Caeris must have looked like a thousand years ago or more. The trees cluster around, enormous, gnarled, and a carpet of moss softens my footsteps. The light drifts through, so dense it seems to catch on the branches like gold.
My guide leads us past the trees, to a tumble of rocks furred over in verdant moss. Several vertical stones have been placed at the bottom of the rocks, where a small pool of dark water glints.
The woman steps to a flat stone on one side of the spring and turns to look at me. Softly, she begins to hum.
A river of gold seems to open inside me. I blink, and the world is clearer than it has ever been. I’m stretching out into my body, sensing every pore breathing in my skin, feeling the weight of the baby in my womb, the pulse of my blood, the breeze on my face. The woman begins to sing, now, a wordless golden song that twines around and through me, and I feel the weight of my own bones, the strength of my feet pressing against the earth.
<
br /> This, I understand now, is what Demetra meant when she said she felt I’d brought her soul more fully into her body.
“Sound,” the ancient queen says softly, “makes up the fabric of the world. You are song.”
Understanding travels into me, slow, curious. If I am song, then maybe what I sense is the true essence of people. When I sense others around me, when I hear their emotions humming from them—maybe I’m feeling who they really are—the fabric of their beings. Their souls. Maybe, when I knocked the men unconscious in Montclair, I actually snapped the souls out of their bodies for the briefest moment. The idea makes me blanch.
Around us, a deeper song has begun to weave itself between the trunks of the trees, and I look around in sudden realization. “Golden pines,” I whisper. The magical trees that used to grow throughout Caeris; legend has it that their sap sings. Yet it’s more than that. It’s the trees themselves singing. It’s me. It’s her.
It’s the world around us, interwoven, humming all at once.
The ancient queen nods. “You are beginning to see,” she says. “Open your eyes, Sophy Dunbarron.”
I look at her. There is something particular, yet elusive, in her face, as if I am dreaming at the same time I’m seeing her. She is both a breathing woman, and nothing more than a collection of shimmering, humming motes of light.
“Queen Aline,” I whisper. Not the legendary Wildegarde, but the monarch she served.
I look at her—
And she’s gone.
I’m curled on my side in the mossy rocks, my cheek pressed against my fist. My mouth tastes of sleep and golden light. When I sit up, something hollow clatters against the stones. I reach for it blindly.
It’s a flute. A flute made of bone—white and fine, with six holes for my fingers. I put it to my lips and play a tentative note. It hovers mothlike over the water, speeding through the air. The flute itself is humming—not merely with the echo of the music, but with a deep, potent vibration. Magic.
Sound. If everything in the world is made of sound, then one sound can change everything. Put a man to sleep. Inspire a woman to dance. Bring comfort to an aching heart, and joy to one already happy. It can transform any emotion, any person.
I find myself whispering the words aloud—the ancient poem about Wildegarde. About Aline.
The queen spoke a word and the world heard it. When she whispered a truth, the people felt it in their hearts. When she sang, every living thing caught the rhythm of her song. She sang the heat of the sun into a sword, and the shining of the moon into a cup.
I rise from the ground, clutching the bone flute. There’s no sign of her now. The light is once again ordinary; an afternoon like any other. Yet the trees and the spring whisper with the memory of her presence.
I tuck the flute into the pocket of my robe. At last, I think, I am beginning to understand what I am meant to do.
CHAPTER TWENTY
From the edge of the glen, I see a woman walking through the castle garden. She’s coming along the same path I took: Demetra. I can’t believe she’s up already—and let her children out of her sight.
“I heard something,” she says as we draw closer together. “A song.” I look at her, and her lips part in understanding. “Someone came to you?”
“Yes.” I glance back toward the glen, then pull the bone flute from my pocket. It pulses in my hand like a living thing. Demetra looks at it, her eyebrows rising. “Do you know if it’s possible to—to put magic into an object?” I ask, stumbling around a question I don’t quite know how to ask.
Demetra’s lips twitch. “Like a magic sword?”
“A lot of Caerisian kings supposedly had those,” I say, and we both snicker. Sobering, I say, “There was a queen of Caeris, back in the time of legends, named Aline. She had a magical cup, and a magical harp, and a magical cloak…”
Demetra takes the bone flute from me, running her fingers over the holes. When she looks up, she’s not laughing anymore. “It feels like there’s magic in it.”
I swallow. “I think there is.”
“It feels like…” She purses her lips and gestures above us to the stone circle crowning the hill. “It’s like a tiny piece of the circle’s great power, caught in here.”
Slowly, I say, “If the circles—and springs, and places like that—if they are the sources of magic, perhaps sorcerers tried to capture that power into an object, for when they left the place.”
“So they could still have a source of power!” Demetra snaps her fingers. “So they wouldn’t have to draw upon their own life force.”
I blink. “Is that what you had to do in Ida?”
“Yes.” She gestures around us. “But here, there is magic to be had near any of these circles. I can use sorcery without draining myself, the way I did at home.”
“There must be something like our circles and springs in Paladis.”
“I suppose there is, but the use of it has been lost, the way yours was until the Caveadear woke the land. Perhaps Tullea and Jahan and your Elanna found it, in Paladis.” She hands the bone flute back to me with a little shiver. “There’s something powerful in that, Sophy. It feels…larger than it ought to.”
“I’m not sure what to do with it, exactly.”
She looks amused. “Well, I would think you’d play it.”
I grin, and just then a shout raises over the palace. A ululating cry. “That’s Ingram Knoll!” I exclaim. He’s here earlier than expected—they must have traveled by way of the folds in the land.
Leaving Demetra, I hurry along the graveled path that takes me to the front of the castle. A party of mountain lords are dismounting from their horses, their brilliant cloaks flapping bright, along with a small band of Alistar’s Hounds of Urseach, their hair spiked as if they’re ready for battle. They all shout when they see me. “The queen! Queen Sophy!”
“Hello, everyone!” I can’t seem to stop smiling; it is so good to see their faces, to hear the familiar burr of their Caerisian accents. I pass through the party, clasping hands and patting arms, barely self-conscious even though I’m only wearing a dressing robe. Finally I glimpse Ingram Knoll himself over by the palace steps, in intense discussion with Hugh.
The warden of the mountains swings around when he sees me and actually lifts me up in a bear hug, kissing me resoundingly on either cheek. “Congratulations, Sophy darling! I hear you’re bearing a future Dunbarron.”
A chorus of congratulations rises from the men behind me.
It’s so completely opposite of how the Ereni ministers reacted—not to mention the Ereni themselves. And they call me by my name, not Your Majesty. Hugh is smiling, too, in a way he never let himself in Laon. Gratitude overwhelms me; I can feel a smile warming my own face.
“Thank you for coming so quickly,” I say to Ingram Knoll. I glance at Hugh. “Hugh’s probably told you what’s happened.”
Ingram Knoll’s face darkens. “That he has. It’s a cruel trick the Ereni played on you, and no surprise our kingdoms forged different identities these last thousand years.”
Only the mountain lords would view this conflict in the context of centuries. I start to laugh, despite everything. “I don’t know,” I say to him, “the mountain lords have played some even cleverer tricks in the past.”
His expression lightens; he winks at me. “That’s a secret between us, now. Don’t go letting those Ereni know.”
“I shall not whisper a word south of the border,” I say virtuously.
“That’s another matter,” Hugh interjects, in a serious voice. “Alistar was wise to bring it up this morning. The border watchtowers need to be manned once again—”
“Or woman-ed,” I point out.
He flashes me a smile of acknowledgment. “We’ll have to raise a force of men and women. I doubt we have enough forces at our disposal now to cover
the entire length of the border. It’s possible Rambaud isn’t interested in taking Caeris, but I presume it’s a particular goal of your father’s.”
“Euan Dromahair.” Ingram Knoll’s lip curls in clear disgust. “The man should have come back himself if he wanted Caeris, instead of sending that boy Finn to die for him.”
“He may be willing to work with us,” I say, “but I would feel better with a firm guard between him and us.”
“We’ll see to it,” Ingram Knoll promises me. He reaches into his pocket and produces a rather crumpled note. “From Count Hilarion, in Tinan. We’ve been in touch. Forgive me for opening it—I wanted to be certain it wasn’t information I needed to act on.”
I take the note. Four lines scrawl across it, in Hilarion’s elegant handwriting:
Now that the old eagle has died and the young eagle has claimed his throne, the lion questions where he has made his lair. I see him wondering whether the she-bear might be a safer ally than the magpie, for all the magpie is his friend. The young eagle is, it appears, both a friend to sorcery and the raven whom we know well, and the lion sees the changing tide. If the she-bear sought an alliance with the lion, she might receive an audience.
“He’s always afraid it will be intercepted,” Ingram Knoll says with a sigh. “Though in truth, I think he just enjoys his little code.”
I snort a laugh. “Let me see if I understand this. The old eagle must be Alakaseus, and the young Leontius, if he’s a friend to sorcery and the raven—who I suppose is Jahan. So Leontius has taken the throne, then?”
“It appears so. If Hilarion could be bothered to explain himself…”
“The lion must be Alfred of Tinan. So I am the she-bear and…is Rambaud the magpie?” I squint at the paper. “Hilarion thinks I should try to ally with Alfred, now that Leontius has come to power.”
Hugh, who has been listening, leans forward now. “Alfred’s no fool. If Leontius has claimed power, and he is a friend to sorcery…”
