“He’s my son!”
“Yes, the apple didn’t fall far from the tree,” Bear snaps back.
The clash of these two tempers won’t end well.
But, instead of exploding, Elvar only rubs a tired hand over his face and blindfold. After a moment, he says, “Selwyn, send the wedding ring back to Kyra. You may have won it from the boy, but it doesn’t sit right with me that the ring Cassel gave Kyra should be away from her.”
“She gave it to me,” Bear mutters.
“I don’t doubt that. But if you can’t have it, I think she’d prefer it returned to her.”
Bear doesn’t reply. He looks sullen, young and ashamed. My heart goes out to him, this boy who risked everything and came here to protect his family. I don’t know what Lord Selwyn tempted him with, but I can guess: Elvar’s total surrender of the crown back to Alex and the end of the war. Nothing else could have tempted Bear here, nothing except the irresistible possibility that he might have been able to save his brother and sister before they killed each other.
And of course Lord Selwyn cheated. There was never any chance he would have let Bear win.
“Take him away,” Lord Selwyn says to the royal guards. Among them are Jemsy, Henry, and Juniper, who look unhappy about the whole thing. They know how I feel about Bear. They know how Max feels about Bear.
It’s time to speak up.
“Do you think Max would be happy about this?” I ask, my voice ringing through the Hall.
Heads jerk up to the balcony. Bear’s face brightens, while Lord Selwyn’s does exactly the opposite.
“Max would understand,” Lord Selwyn says.
“No, he wouldn’t.” I march down the spiral steps and join them in the main chamber of the Hall. “He loves Bear. Alex and Bear are more his brothers than they were ever mine.” Both Bear and Lord Selwyn react with shock to this, but I cock my head at the latter. “Didn’t you ever wonder why all those attempts on their lives kept failing?”
“Esmae, what are you talking about?” Guinne asks, her brow creased with anxiety. “Have you seen Max? Is he safe?”
“He’s alive,” I say and turn back to Lord Selwyn. “You see now, don’t you? Your own nephew kept them alive in spite of your best efforts to the contrary. So no, he wouldn’t have understood. He would never have let you trick Bear into giving up his freedom. But you know all about tricks, don’t you?”
“You’ll have to stop speaking in riddles if you want me to understand you,” he replies, eyes narrowed as he tries to anticipate what I’m about to do.
My heart doesn’t feel so cold anymore. I miss the cold. As the pain rushes back, my voice cracks. “I know what you did!”
“If you mean my attempt to kill your brothers, the king understands I did that for his sake.”
“Not that,” I spit and turn abruptly to Bear. “Call Kirrin.”
“What? Me?”
“Well, he won’t come if I call, will he?” I reply.
A shudder passes over the room, and then a cheerful voice behind me says, “You underestimate yourself, Esmae.”
I turn, and there he is, the blue boy god with his mischievous eyes. He gives me a small, sweet smile. It’s sincere. I’ve never doubted that Kirrin actually likes me. He just likes Alex more. His determination to bring about my end before I bring about my brother’s is not personal. I don’t trust him, but I don’t really blame him either. I’d probably do the same if I were him.
Unease ripples across the crowd, including Elvar and Guinne. A god’s presence makes this tricky, especially the presence of the god who has openly chosen the enemy’s side. Kirrin takes in the room, eyebrows raised. “Well, this is certainly interesting. Good day to you, King Elvar, Queen Guinne.” He turns back to me. “If you called me here to rescue Bear, Alex already asked and I’ll tell you what I told him. I can’t. My hands are tied.”
“No one’s asking you to risk your godhood,” I say, irritated. Both Amba and Kirrin fall back on this refrain whenever it’s convenient. “I just need you to speak. No one in this room will doubt your word.”
“And what is it you want me to say?”
My voice isn’t quite steady as I say, “Tell them what you found in the woodcutter’s cottage.”
Bear flinches. Kirrin frowns. “How do you know about that?”
“Tell them.”
“I don’t take well to mortals giving me commands,” Kirrin says, but he sounds more amused than offended.
“And I don’t take well to gods who go out of their way to plot my death,” I reply, “but here we are.”
“You are a thorn in my side,” he says but turns to Elvar and Guinne. “Alexi and Bear went to the woodcutter’s cottage to rescue a prisoner. One of their spies had spotted the prisoner briefly on a scouting trip and had rushed back to report what she’d seen, so we went to see for ourselves. We got past the guards, past the shield, and went inside. The prisoner was dead. Only just. I assume whoever imprisoned him found out we were coming and had him killed before we could rescue him.”
Elvar looks completely baffled. “But what does this have to do with any of us?”
“Who was he?” I ask, teeth cold and clenched. “Who was the prisoner, Kirrin?”
There’s an unbearable kindness in Kirrin’s face as he says, “Cassel.”
The effect of that name on the room is cataclysmic. Bear makes a sound that can only be a sob. The courtiers reel. Elvar staggers up from his chair. “What?”
“It was your brother. The former king of Kali.” Kirrin jerks his head at Bear and me. “Their father.”
Their father. I want the cold back. I want it to stop hurting.
“Impossible,” Guinne says, her voice trembling. “Cassel died almost twelve years ago. We mourned him. He had a king’s funeral. We all saw him!”
“There’s no way to know for sure what you saw,” Kirrin says. “Perhaps he was injected with a stasis serum and, once the funeral was over, his captor retrieved him? I cannot say. What I can tell you is that the man we found was unquestionably Cassel. He has been alive all these years, imprisoned in that cottage. He died a week ago.”
Tears flow freely down Elvar’s cheeks, soaking his blindfold. “It cannot be true,” he croaks.
“It’s true,” Bear says, his voice broken on a sob. “We couldn’t believe it when our spy came back claiming she had seen him, but we had to find out. We went to get him. We wanted our father back. And we hoped, if we got him back—” he stops, unable to continue.
“He would have been king,” Elvar finishes for him. “The war would have been over.”
“We wanted to come home. We wanted him back.” Bear looks at me, his eyes wet. “We hoped you’d forgive Alex. We would have been a family, all of us together for the first time.”
“But it was not to be,” says Kirrin quietly. “I am sorry. Truly. There was no saving him.”
Like two sides of a mirror, Elvar and Bear both weep, united by the only thing they have in common. The war would have ended. If there is one thing I know, it’s that Elvar loved his brother more than almost anything else in the world. He would have handed back the crown, begged my father’s forgiveness, and Kali would have been in one piece once more. And would I have forgiven Alex? Would I have been able to move on from what he did to Rama, to me? I don’t know, but there was a chance. Perhaps my father could have healed a rift no one else could. Perhaps. Is that why this hurts so much? There was a chance, but now we’ll never know.
I don’t cry. I wait. And the whole time, I never take my eyes off the man who did this.
“Who did it?” Elvar asks, his voice trembling with anger. “Who took him from us? Who murdered him when their secret was exposed?”
“We cannot be certain,” Kirrin says carefully, but he follows my gaze to Lord Selwyn.
Selwyn blanches. “That is a terrible accusation.”
“No one accused you,” Kirrin says calmly. “You’re oddly quick to defend yourself, Lord Selwyn.”
“That’s not true,” Guinne says, getting up, “Selwyn has much to answer for, but he would never have had Cassel killed.”
But Elvar’s voice booms across the Hall, as sudden as thunder. “You told me it was a good thing he was gone,” he growls at Selwyn, who takes a step back. “You told me I could finally come out of his shadow and prove myself.”
“I said that, yes, but I didn’t take him.” Selwyn’s panicking now. His lies aren’t working on the king he’s manipulated for years. “Elvar, please. You can’t truly believe I would do such a thing.”
“You wanted me to execute them!” Elvar points in Bear’s direction.“You told me to kill two children to stop them ever taking my throne away. And if it hadn’t been for Max, I would have let you persuade me. I would have let them die.” Elvar’s face is almost deathly white. “After that, why wouldn’t I believe you would do such a thing?”
“I swear to you, I did not. I swear it on my life, on Max’s life. I swear it on Guinne’s life!”
“Don’t you dare,” Elvar roars. “You will be executed for treason.”
I will never waste any grief on Lord Selwyn, not after everything he’s done, but this is too fast. Before I can open my mouth, Guinne reaches for Elvar, her normally sure, graceful movements replaced by panic. “Elvar, please. Please just listen. I know Cassel’s murder must be punished, but this is not the way to do it. Hold a trial, gather evidence, and then decide. The evidence will show Selwyn didn’t do it.” She sounds so sure. She has so much faith in him. She really doesn’t have any idea what he is.
“He won’t be given a chance to slither away,” Elvar says. “He will be executed. My word is final.”
All the blood drains out of Lord Selwyn’s face. He puts his hands on Elvar’s shoulders, clutching him. “Please,” he begs. “Please. I swear to you, Elvar, I never touched Cassel. Don’t do this.”
“My brother is dead,” Elvar says, tears on his face. Two royal guards approach to pull Selwyn off him, but Selwyn won’t let go. “My brother is dead.”
“Elvar, please—”
“Take a moment to think, please—”
“I didn’t, I swear—”
“Give him a chance—”
Selwyn and Guinne are both pleading, their voices crossing over the other’s in panic and desperation. I watch them, expecting to feel only hatred because of what he did to my father, but I’m surprised that instead I feel something else: doubt.
That look in his eyes.
I open my mouth—
—and Elvar reaches out to Selwyn, and snaps his neck.
An instant, and it’s over. Elvar was once a formidable warrior. Selwyn never stood a chance.
Courtiers cry out. Bear gasps. And as Selwyn crumples to the floor, Guinne goes with him, keening. “No, no, no, no, no,” she cries, and I can’t help thinking it’s almost exactly the way I knelt over Rama and cried no, no, no, no.
Shock holds me frozen for a split second, but then as chaos breaks out in the Hall and the rest of the royal guards rush in to make sure Elvar is safe, I move. I rush to Bear, abandoned by the guards who had been tasked with keeping him in line, and grab his wrist. “This is your only chance to get out,” I whisper. “Come on.”
Trained in war from the moment of his birth, he recovers faster than I do and immediately follows me back up the spiral steps to the balcony. I lead him out of the little door there to the servant’s corridor outside the Hall and we run from there to the nearest stairway up to the roof. There, tucked away among chimneys and hidden by the shadow of the spiky towers nearby, is Titania.
I push Bear toward her. “She’ll take you back to Winter.”
“Come with me,” he says.
“You know I can’t. Go!”
“Wait.” He grabs my hand, as if afraid that he’ll lose me for good if he lets go. “Is it true? Would Elvar have had us executed if Max hadn’t convinced him to exile us instead?”
“Yes.” I squeeze his hand, then gently pull away. “You need to go before they remember you’re supposed to be our prisoner. Kirrin can tell you all about Max.”
“He’s on the Empty Moon,” Bear blurts.
“What?”
“Max. He’s being held in Kirrin’s palace on the Empty Moon.” Bear flushes, no doubt feeling guilty for giving away Alexi’s secrets. “That place, it does things to you.”
“What do you mean, it does things? What things?”
“I don’t know. Kirrin says it depends on the person. Some people never want to leave. Some people forget who they are. Some people leave and never feel whole again. And that’s just the ones who survive the seas,” he adds, biting his lip. “Our mother lost her hand in those seas. She was lucky. Mortals aren’t supposed to stay there long. We can’t cope with so much celestial power.”
“Why would Kirrin do that to Max? He always seemed to care about him. Why would he risk something terrible happening to him there?”
Bear bites his lip, then mumbles, “Because they think you’ll get to him in time. They want you to know he’s there. They want you to go get him.”
“But that makes no sense,” I protest. “Why bother imprisoning him there just to get me to go there?”
“Kirrin said it was the only way to get you there, to use Max to lure you,” Bear says. He rubs the back of his neck. “You know I shouldn’t be telling you all this, but if Max really did save us, he doesn’t deserve this. I don’t know what will happen to him. He needs to get out of there before it’s too late. But you can’t go. It’s not safe. Only gods and celestial creatures have power there.”
Only gods and celestial—
“Amba,” I say, as the truth hits me. “They want me to go there because only a god will be able to get me into that palace. They want me so desperate that I call her for help. And when I do, when she comes, Kirrin will release Sorsha.”
Bear nods unhappily. “I’m sorry.”
They want you to come after me. That was the last thing Max said to me. He knows how Kirrin thinks. Did he guess this was why they came for him?
“Go,” I say to Bear, giving him a gentle push. “You need to get out of here.”
He gives me a quick, hard hug and then runs across the carved roof stone to the ship. Right before he reaches Titania’s open hatch, I see him falter. He looks over Erys, the spiky skyline, the forests, the dome of the university. Home. That’s what he’s thinking. It’s the home he wants so badly, and now he has to flee from it.
Then he vanishes inside the ship and is gone.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Titania
The boy is afraid of me. He sits awkwardly in one of the seats in my control room and toys with a band of knotted, colored cord that has been wrapped around his wrist. Occasionally, he looks up and darts nervous glances around him. After twenty minutes of this, I’ve had it.
“I don’t bite,” I sniff.
He startles. “Sorry. Um, I’m Bear.”
“I know.” And then, just for the fun of it, I put on a grim voice. “I know all about you, Abra Rey.”
He pales, an expression so priceless that I let out a peal of laughter. He’s stunned for a moment, and then a sheepish grin lights up his face. “Esmae always says you’re a handful,” he tells me. “I get it now.”
“You’re a handful,” I snipe.
“How old are you, six?”
“Thirteen, actually,” I say primly, “And also thousands of years old, depending on how you look at it.”
He smiles, but it’s a little wobbly. I’ve learned to recognize what a smile like that means on a human face. It means they’re only temporarily amused by what they hear because they are unhappy and they won’t be distracted from whatever it is that made them unhappy.
I hazard a guess. “You mourn your father.”
“It’s pretty brutal to lo
se a father twice,” he says, “Especially when you don’t remember the first time very well.”
I analyze the rhythm of his voice, the pitch of each inflection. “But that’s not what you’re unhappy about right now,” I deduce.
“How do you know that?”
“Data.”
He blinks, but accepts that without further questions. After a moment, he speaks, so quietly I’m not sure I would have been able to hear him if I had been human. “I don’t know how to save them both.”
“You can’t,” I tell him, “but if it helps, know that they both love you very much.”
He looks out of my glass windows, and I see the stars sparkle in his tears.
I know, I want to say. I’m afraid too.
I take him back to Winter. As I return to Kali, to that glittering jewel in the sky, I wonder what will become of that boy by the time this is all over.
It takes hours for the palace to calm down after Lord Selwyn’s execution. Or, rather, from the revelation that a beloved former king was held prisoner for years only to be murdered before he could be rescued. The war council is in uproar, the servants are in shock, and the royal family is in pieces. On one screen, I see the dot that represents Queen Guinne retreat alone to her suite. On another, I see the dot that represents Rickard travel painfully slowly from his own rooms to the conservatory, where King Elvar has gone to pray at the gods’ altar.
And I hear Esmae in the war room with the rest of the war council, telling them where Max is. I hear their reaction.
“The Empty Moon?” That’s the old queen Cassela. “Are you certain?”
“It makes sense.”
“Then he’s lost to us,” she says, her voice heavy with sadness.
I hear Esmae’s sharp intake of breath before she speaks. “What do you mean, he’s lost to us? Someone needs to go get him!”
“I would dearly love to have Max back, but you cannot seriously expect anyone to brave the Empty Moon! Need I remind you that your mother lost her hand there? She was lucky to leave with her life. And that was when Kirrin wasn’t working against us! How do you expect someone from our side to survive a rescue mission into the heart of a hostile god’s territory?”
House of Rage and Sorrow Page 12
