by Jayden Woods
*
“Wake up. Kyne. Kyne! Wake—!”
“Aah!”
The prince thrashed suddenly from his blankets, purple hair askew, chromatic eyes bulging. He stared upon his sister as if upon a monster.
“Kyne? It’s all right. It’s just me. Are you well?”
“Oh ... oh ...” Kyne rubbed his eyes violently. His breath came in heaving gasps. “I’m ... I’m ... I’m fine.”
“What were you dreaming about?”
“I saw ... I saw them ...”
“Who? What? Kyne, what did you see?”
Very slowly, his breath calmed. His eyelids drooped. His shoulders slumped and his voice fell. “Nothing. Nothing at all. What do you want?”
His response surprised her. Never before had Kyne hid his emotions from her. She offered the one shoulder in the kingdom he could cry on. She understood. She knew his pain. So why did he suddenly hide his feelings?
“I, uh ...” She struggled to gather her own composure. “I wondered if you knew what happened to Father’s key. The key to the dungeons.”
Kyne tensed again, so suddenly that he seemed to flinch.
“Kyne? Kyne, what’s going on with you?”
“I ... I ... I don’t know where the key is. Maybe it’s gone forever. And that’s probably best. No one will go in that dungeon. Ever again!”
Fayr’s fingernails dug into the bedsheets. She didn’t even care that she pinched Kyne’s legs as a result. She remembered how furious she became when she realized their father would have shown his children how to make safra at the same time, despite their age difference. What if Kyne already knew something she didn’t? “What are you not telling me?”
Kyne could not look her in the eye. He gritted his teeth, clenched his fists, trembled with torment. “Nothing. I know nothing. Nothing!”
She resisted the urge to slap him across the face. Instead she hissed, “Don’t play games with me. You know something. Did Father say something to you, before he ...” A surge of emotion choked her momentarily. “Did you see something?”
“LEAVE ME ALONE!”
The pain in his voice shattered the last of her resolve. She withdrew from his bed, her body weak and exhausted. She clutched her own arms, feeling a chill, and shuffled from the room.
Once more she found herself in the hallway with Gornum, despising the glum smile on his face.
“Dylla can stay,” she mumbled at last. “They can all stay, or go home, or do whatever they want to do.”
“That’s wonderful.” He turned to go.
“Gornum! I want you to fetch me the Royal Secretary. Right now.”
“Now? Why?”
Because she couldn’t endure feeling so helpless anymore. She needed to do something, anything, to gain some sort of foothold for the future. And she needed to stop thinking about the Wolven, the only one who had ever caressed her that way, the only one who had ever made her heart pound so fiercely. “I want to send out a summons to all the lords of all Three Nations. I am in search of a suitor, and I intend to marry him by the night of the winter solstice.”
6
Suitor
