by Hannah West
Now it was as if a tight knot had loosened with a single tug. I recalled when I’d opened Mercer’s tunic to treat his wounds, the way his lips parted slightly in an admission of pleasure when Glisette had boldly traced his palm at the banquet. I scattered and reorganized these images in my thoughts until his bare skin was unmarred, sweaty with something other than fever, and that look was meant for me.
But Mercer met my eager gaze with grim consternation. I glowered at the fire again and said, “I say we wear concealing spells and break into the stables for a tool and horses. But I don’t think we should contact Pontaval. We shouldn’t put ourselves or others in danger for the sake of news.”
“But we need to know if—”
“If you want to materialize home, Glisette, no one will think less of you,” I snapped. “A quick forgetting spell and you’re back to noonday drinking and a love affair with your vanity mirror.”
She rose to her feet and threw her roasting stick in the fire. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you? Too bad for you, I’m not a coward. Too bad for you, I face the consequences of my actions instead of running away. You ran away from Arna after you destroyed the Water, then you ran away from my city after you cursed my brother and all his servants.”
“I ‘ran away’ to try to undo his evil. And the servants fled. Devorian was the only one there when I left.”
“I spared you the details, but no one has seen or heard from any of them, not his cook nor his doorman nor anyone who served him. That palace is full of whispers. Things move without being touched. I saw it for myself when we took Professor Strather to try to lift the curse.”
“She said it’s not a curse.”
“Well, it’s not exactly a delightful fairy charm, is it?” she cried. “And with all the tragedy you leave in your wake, suddenly you care about putting my sisters and our servants in danger?”
I clenched my fists. My injured hand seared with pain. “You’re the ones who asked me to confront Devorian. We’re both trying to fix this, but you won’t stop treating me like the villain. If either of us had known I was capable of turning him into a monster, you wouldn’t have invited me to Pontaval and I wouldn’t have come. But we must come to terms with where we are, or—”
“Or what, you’ll snap my neck in half?” she demanded coldly.
“Kadri, are you all right?” Mercer asked suddenly, staggering toward her.
My anger dissipated when I noticed Kadri’s glassy eyes and glistening brow. A shiver came over her, rattling her shoulders. Our clothes were damp from rain but the air was muggy, far from cold. A horrible realization loomed.
Mercer bent and touched the back of his hand to Kadri’s forehead. “She’s feverish. Could it be the mushrooms?”
“They’re just goldencups,” I answered. “I’ve eaten them a hundred times.”
“I caught the blight disease,” Kadri mumbled, dragging her eyes up to look at me. “I’m going to die.”
“No, you’re not,” Mercer insisted.
“Kadri,” I whispered, sinking to my knees beside her.
“Back up.” Mercer pressed his hand against my sternum and pushed me away. “We don’t know if you can catch it.”
He had been right: a mortal companion was a liability—a liability who had saved my life last night.
“Is there an elicrin Healer at the palace in Pontaval?” I asked Glisette.
She nodded vigorously. “Yes, one who would risk materializing if I asked him. He’s been caring for us since we were born.”
I knelt next to Mercer and swept Kadri’s hair away from her brow. “We’re going to get you help, Kadri.”
She blinked languidly and didn’t respond.
“That settles it,” I said bleakly, reaching for my pack.
Glisette levitated Kadri, leaving Mercer and me to carry the bulk of the luggage. He used a spell that made the heavy loads feel lighter. A sedate Calanthe lagged behind.
“You haven’t received any prophecies since we started our journey?” I asked him as we trailed along a river with waterfalls at every turn. The summer cottage wasn’t far, but I couldn’t bring myself to look at Kadri’s ashen face until we could see it in the distance.
“No, nothing important, really.” I didn’t miss Mercer’s attempt at nonchalance.
“You seem bothered.”
“I have plenty to be bothered about.” He clamped on to a tree to protect his injured leg while he maneuvered his way over a slope carpeted in lush purple wildflowers.
“I’m not suggesting you smile and act downright jolly,” I said, resituating the bedrolls on my shoulder. “But that eagerness you had to get this done and over with…it’s lessened. I can’t help but suspect you’ve learned something new you don’t want to tell us.”
Mercer glanced ahead at the others. “We should keep going,” he said. “I don’t want to slow them down when Kadri is in a bad way.”
“We’ll catch up,” I said, sliding the packs from my shoulders. “If there’s something that changes the outcome of this, I deserve to know. We all do, after what we’ve been through.”
I crossed my arms, forgetting about my wound just long enough to scrape it against my opposite elbow and emit a pathetic cry of pain. Calanthe turned to peer at me inquisitively from beneath bushy eyebrows that, oddly, reminded me of Professor Wyndwood from the academy. I almost laughed, but it would have come out sounding delirious, so I refrained.
“Let me see.” Mercer limped back to hook one hand behind my elbow, dragging me forward one gentle shuffle-step until my chest nearly pressed against his ribs. He lifted the bandage to examine my stitched wound. His sudden nearness made coherent thought disintegrate. “I’d say you still have several days before we need to remove them.”
“Several days? Just until the stitches come out?”
“Have you had to live with even a bruise before now?” he demanded. “Or does royal life protect you from all pain?”
I slid my hand out of his grasp and padded the bandage back over the wound. “It does, unless you despise the only elicrin Healer you know and never ask him for a favor.”
Mercer let out a long breath, his broad chest collapsing. “Forgive me. This injury is making me sore company.”
As he turned to follow the others, I caught his wrist. “Mercer—”
“Fine,” he said. “I’ll tell you.”
My heart cantered in response to his admission that there was something to tell, something kept from the rest of us.
“I’ve seen glimpses of this before, in my past life. I ignored them. There were more urgent visions I needed to heed. But the other night, after we found the bodies at the border bridge, this vision fleshed itself out. Maybe the blood provoked it, I don’t know. I don’t know why they come to me.”
“What was it?” I asked, wishing I possessed some sort of mechanical crank to force the words out of him at my pace instead of his. Was I going to die killing the Moth King? Would I not kill him at all?
“I saw you in a marble courtroom. There were broken bodies. Humans, not blights. There was blood pooled on the floor, and dripping from your dagger. You walked through the blood to the steps of a dais and sat on the throne. I heard whispers. The dead were your own people. Calgoranians. They would call you Queen of Widows thanks to the corpses left in your wake.”
“What?” I asked with a mirthless laugh. “Why would I ever…? How do you know they were people of Calgoran? Did they have it stamped on their foreheads?”
“I just knew. It’s what the vision wanted me to know. I’m sorry.”
“Do you realize how many people would have to die for me to take the throne?”
“Maybe it occurs far in the future, when those people are gone and you are still here, with no elicrin stone to surrender in order to die as a mortal. But it does happen.”
“Surely not every vision you’ve had comes true.”
“Is that what you want to believe while we’re deep in the forest with a trail of bodies al
ready behind us on our way to bring an ancient oppressor to justice—because I saw it happen?”
The harshness of his tone took me aback. He acted as if I’d already done this heinous thing.
“I could never kill with abandon,” I whispered desperately, searching his eyes. “I know my power brings that into question. But I’m not a murderer.”
His stiff expression softened. Underneath the callousness there was only pain, and it brought my own tender feelings to the surface.
“Am I immortal?” I asked.
“You hadn’t aged a day in that vision. I’ve had another vision in which I saw you watch someone else give up their elicrin stone, and you looked the same then as well.”
This long-awaited consolation struck me with awe. I was like the others, at least in this one way—like him. The shaft of loneliness embedded in my soul seemed to shrink.
For a moment I sensed an invisible, taut tether between us, a force pulling at our twitching fingertips, making our hands long for each other’s wounds. My touch could destroy, but it could also comfort and restore.
“I do the best I can with this gift,” he said, “but prophecies are as much a burden as a boon, and I’ve misinterpreted before. I don’t want to see dark visions come to pass. But when there’s something good…” His hands found their way to my shoulders. The warm weight of his thumbs on my collarbone made my heartbeat strike in the base of my throat. “…like you ridding this realm of the Moth King forever, I can charge ahead of everyone involved and act like a stubborn ass.”
“I want you to act like a stubborn ass again,” I said. “I want you to stop spurning me as if I’m a villain. The others can treat me like one, but not you. You brought me here.”
“You’re right,” he said, catching hold of a loose lock of my hair. The golden sunlight set its red tinges aflame as it slid like silk between his fingers.
Suddenly aware of his actions, he looked at his hand as though it had betrayed him and stepped back.
“From now on, I’ll tell you everything I see. I swear.”
He turned to catch up with the others.
HE summer cottage might have been modest by Lorenthi standards, built of plain gray stone and wood. But a misty, roaring waterfall swelled behind it and a nearby glass greenhouse burst with colors in the sunlight.
We picked our way over the wet growth and slick rocks until we could peer down at the cottage, perching alongside the river as it tipped and fell over the cliff with abandon.
Glisette carefully set Kadri on her feet and held her upright when she staggered on the spongy patch of green. “I’ll make sure there are no surprises awaiting us,” Glisette half-yelled over the din of the waterfall, gently touching the cut on her eye. She did this about once a minute when her hands were free, perhaps expecting the wound to have miraculously healed since the last time she checked. “There are only a few servants who live on the property. Avoiding them should be easy.”
“Be quick,” I said to her, batting my eyes against the cool spray. “We don’t want to be their death sentence like…” I didn’t finish, thinking of what our tarrying back in Tully had cost.
With a curt nod of understanding, Glisette slid her rear down a mossy slab of rock to reach a lower foothold and disappeared with the help of the concealing spell.
Kadri groaned as Mercer propped her up. A sore with a dark tinge had begun creeping along her neck. I swallowed hard, assured myself a Healer would be in our presence soon, and supported half her weight. Mercer emitted a barely suppressed grunt of discomfort as he wove under her other arm and gripped my shoulder, casting a concealing spell over us with a quiet utterance of “Seter inoden.” None of us smelled delightful, and the heat of Kadri’s fever blazed right through her clothes and made my tunic stick to my skin. If it hadn’t been for the spray of the waterfall across my face, my stomach might have heaved.
Calanthe emitted a pitiful whine and hunkered down in the grass at the end of her leash, begging me not to go. “See you in a minute, girl,” I said.
We batted away dewy leaves and stepped carefully over slithering weeds until we reached level ground. There, we followed a garden path flanking the cottage, hedged with aromatic blooms. I recalled that Glisette’s mother had possessed an elicrin gift for growing plants and used to tour the farms in Volarre once a year to give the crops a boost. The thought made me miss my own mother terribly, even though she wasn’t the most nurturing of souls.
We peered around the corner at the front of the cottage and saw dozens of windows with pale curtains flung open. Glisette waited in the doorway to wave us inside.
“I’ll stay out here with Kadri,” Mercer said. “No sense in exposing the servants to the blight disease.”
“Look for garlic in the vegetable garden,” I said, as though any such humble remedy had any hope of easing her suffering. “It’s cleansing.”
He nodded and released me, ending the concealing spell’s hold over me. “The servants are in their quarters eating,” Glisette whispered. “Come this way.”
The entryway boasted a rustic stamp of Lorenthi opulence, featuring antler chandeliers, grand stairs, and paintings of golden-haired beauties in crowns. I heard far-off chattering and the clinking of pots and pans. I hoped the servants couldn’t hear the groan of the door as Glisette closed it behind us.
We tiptoed up the stairs. Through a window overlooking the garden, I could see Kadri propped against the fence and Mercer on his knees, poking around for something to help her.
At the end of a hall carpeted with furs—how I yearned to dig clean toes into their luxurious folds—Glisette flung open two heavy oak doors and revealed a dark room bedecked with smooth black eyes in mounted heads. There were gorgeous bows, even prettier than Kadri’s, and arrows with bright fletching. An expansive mirror with a scrollwork frame spanned the far wall.
I hardly recognized myself within it. Scrapes and dirt smudges marked the face that looked back at me. My mossy-green eyes looked keen above flushed cheeks, but my auburn-tinged brown hair hung damp and stringy.
Glisette squared herself in front of the glass. “Mirror, show me Perennia’s antechamber.”
Our haggard reflections bloated, rippled, and faded. A new image splashed across the glass, the image of a sitting room with plush blue fabrics. A maid hummed while attacking the furnishings with a feather duster.
“Where’s my sister?” Glisette asked, startling the girl enough that she tripped backward.
“She—she might be in—in Princess Ambrosine’s rooms, Your Highness,” the maid stammered, catching herself on the back of a chair.
“Send the elicrin Healer to the summer cottage at once,” Glisette commanded.
“Yes, Your Highness.” The maid managed an ungainly curtsy as she fled the room.
“Mirror, show me Ambrosine.”
The image shifted. I wondered if materializing felt like this, dizzying and disorienting. Ambrosine’s face appeared in the glass. As her surroundings fell still, I gasped. Royalty lent itself to a certain exhibition of wealth, but everything in the eldest princess’s chamber went so far beyond the usual extravagance that I could do nothing but blink, dumbfounded by the garish sight. There was a trunk brimming with precious gems, furs sprawled across the floor, airy silk gowns with bejeweled trains spilling from the wardrobe.
Ambrosine herself wore a garment of thousands of diamonds strung together by colorless threads like some sort of delicate full-body armor. A mantle of white feathers with gold and silver tips graced her shoulders. Jewels twinkled in her hair and at her neck, looking so heavy that I marveled at how she remained upright.
“Glisette!” she cried, barely lifting a hand of greeting. The stones of her gown chimed as they kissed each other. “We’ve been so worried. Why are you at the summer cottage? You look positively ragged. And Valory…I hardly recognized you. You look beastly.” Her pale eyes glimmered.
“Don’t be smart, Ambrosine,” Glisette said. “What is all this?”
“Gifts from a suitor. What do you think of this diadem?”
“It’s a bit understated.”
“Is it really?” Ambrosine managed to lift her arm enough to follow the golden arches with her fingers.
“No! You look absurd.”
“Absurd?” Ambrosine demanded, waving a hand at the mirror. Her elicrin stone must have changed the surface before her back into a looking glass. She patted her blond curls and turned her chin at a proud slant, inspecting every pore and angle.
“Ambrosine!” Glisette snapped.
Ambrosine waved her hand over the mirror again. “Ugh. Can’t you two at least take baths? I can practically smell you from here.”
By some miracle, she gathered the ambitious train of her gown and turned away from us. “Oliva!” she called, and a maid emerged from the lavatory with a crystal perfume bottle. While she showered Ambrosine in fragrance, the princess clasped her hands and said, “Help me select one of these gowns for my sister.”
“Yes, Your Highness,” the woman said, eyeing the cascade of glittering riches.
“I know we often toy with potential suitors, Ambrosine, but we’ve never let the ruse go this far,” Glisette said. “The most we’ve ever gotten was a pretty necklace or a horse. You’re going to let Uncle think you’re willing to be traded off?”
“Nothing’s carved in stone,” Ambrosine said. “My suitor is coming to meet me in the flesh soon and I’ll have a chance to assess his character. If you catch a coach home now, you’ll be back in time for the welcoming ball. But don’t you dare look more ravishing than me.” She narrowed her eyes and screeched in shock before Glisette could deny the invitation. “What happened to your face?”
Glisette cupped a hand over the cut, which she’d been guarding with a swoop of greasy hair.
“Have you received news from Darmeska, Ambrosine?” I asked.
My question was swallowed by a squeal as Perennia appeared in the doorway and rushed to the glass, her glossy blond waves fluttering behind her. “Glisette! Are you all right? When are you coming home? I thought you’d died! We hadn’t heard from you since before the plague in Beyrian. And with the Realm Alliance saying it’s not safe to materialize, we’ve been so worried.”
