My name, whispered furtively, as delicate as the strands of a dream that fade away as a hand touches my shoulder. I sit up quickly, shrugging it off as I come awake.
“Don’t touch,” I say, the bite in my words one of the more honest intonations I can make.
“I’m sorry.” Vincent stands before me, hands up in the air as if to show he means no harm. My skin crawls where we made contact, a reaction that has nothing to do with him but gives offense nonetheless. I can see it in the flicker of hurt across his handsome face; I doubt many Stillean girls would react as I did to having his hands upon them.
“I apologize,” I say, and though I mean the words, they come out as hollow as any others.
I tuck a strand of hair behind my ear, and he looks away as I compose myself. The dust motes that had alighted upon me while I slept in the library now floating freely again, the dying light of the sun barely reaching us from the high windows. My guards slumber too, and Vincent frowns at the sight of them.
“I’m hardly about to drown myself while sleeping,” I tell him, drawing his attention back to me. “Please don’t punish them.”
“If that is your wish,” he says, but his words are as stiff as my own, his manners and my inability keeping us from saying anything important to each other. His eyes linger on me for a second, and his mouth quirks into a smile.
“You’ve got some ink just here.” He reaches for my face, then thinks better of it and points to his own forehead.
“Oh, tides,” I sigh, licking my fingers and running them across my skin to see them come away black. The manuscript I’d fallen asleep on is smudged, and there’s a plunge in my stomach at the sight of it.
“I’ve ruined it,” I say.
“Nonsense.” Vincent comes around behind me, careful to keep a distance. “It’s still legible.” He clears his throat, reading aloud. “The Indiri continue to dominate the practice field, even the female easily overpowering young Vincent in swordplay, memory of violence feeding her combative hands, while he can only defend himself with the first strokes the swordmaster teaches the noble children.”
Vincent fades off, his finger no longer trailing the words of the bitter Scribe.
“Lovely,” he says. “You couldn’t have found it in yourself to drool a little, ruin this page entirely?”
I laugh impulsively, and his own smile stretches, breaking the mask of manners he wears, perhaps making room for more than apologies between us.
“How do you find the castle?” he asks.
“Confining,” I answer, before I have time to wonder at the indelicacy of slighting the very walls that protect me from the sea.
“You must be safe at all times,” Vincent says, back once again straight and face formal. “I’m sure it brings some discomfort to you. For that I apologize.”
“Then Stille may never rest easy, for the sea calls.” I tell him. “What a task—to ensure the well-being of one who must die for the kingdom’s own survival.”
Vincent stiffens further, and my hand goes to my mouth.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I do not mean to sound ungrateful—”
He stops me with a dark glance, leaning into my space and dropping his voice though my guards still sleep. “Does it frighten you terribly?”
“Frighten . . . I . . .” There is no way to explain that my drowning is not a terror to me. I cannot find words for my resignation, and have never been asked my thoughts on the matter until now, until a boy who is destined for a throne broke through his noble demeanor to ask me something real.
Perhaps I don’t need to find the right words. Perhaps he already knows them.
“It does not frighten me,” I tell him, holding his gaze. “It shall come to pass, and any dread on my part is ill used in the interim. The sea waits for me . . . much as the throne waits for you.”
The court trappings fall away from him, each muscle relaxing and visible relief showing in his eyes as he reaches for the stool opposite me.
“Is it so obvious?”
“Not to those who see only what they expect to see,” I reassure him. “My Keepers taught me much of false emotion, and so I can spot it easily in another. Your desire is not for the throne.”
He nods. “It should have been my brother’s.”
“Purcell?” I ask, my mind skipping through the pages of the castle history that I’ve absorbed in my long afternoons.
“Yes,” Vincent says. “The Stoning felled him almost overnight, though he drew breath for a day or so after.”
I shiver at the thought. “What a world we live in, where your brother finds death in lying still, and I find mine in a dance.”
“We’re a sad lot, aren’t we?” Vincent says, laughing ruefully. “Why can we not behave as others our age, running wildly on the beach?”
“Or eagerly awaiting a trip to the high meadow?” I add, though he will not know my meaning.
“I suppose we weren’t meant for it, after all,” he sighs. “Though I do sometimes wish . . .”
“Wishing is for the spring lambs, and them our supper in the fall,” I say, repeating a Hyllenian saying.
Vincent pulls a face. “That is truly horrible.”
I shrug. “Which doesn’t make it any less true.”
He sits forward suddenly, “Khosa, would you like to leave the castle for a bit?”
My interest perks, but I can’t force the lightness into my tone the way he does. “What do you propose?”
“I volunteered to deliver a message, something any Stillean could do, but I must find some worth in my days. You too should have something other than pages beneath your fingers to fill your time.”
“The pages bring me all I need,” I tell him, though the very mention of fresh air makes my lungs feel as if they will burst.
“You would be in no danger,” Vincent goes on. “We would have guards alongside us—ones that are awake. Donil and Dara, as well.”
“Is that necessary?” I ask, too quickly.
“Are you frightened? I assure you, the Indiri are not monsters.”
“I . . .” I think of Donil and his watchful eyes, my skin warming to his and rising to meet it.
“I forget, they can be difficult to adjust to,” he says. “But if you agree to come with me, they’d best be along.”
“Come where?”
Vincent glances at my sleeping guards, dropping his voice still further. “What do you know of the Feneen?”
My eyes go to the blot on the page, unable to meet his. “They would come into Hyllen from time to time, for trade. My Keepers didn’t allow me out at those times, but I saw them through the window once.”
“Just the once?”
I nod. Once was all it took.
“Why do you ask?”
“We met a man in the woods, a Feneen,” he says. “He claims that Hyllen’s destruction is the beginning of a larger offensive, and that his people would stand with ours in exchange for a place among us afterward. I’m awaiting my grandfather’s decision, and will deliver it.”
I trail my finger along the edge of the book, the brittle flakes of paper feathering beneath my touch. “And you would take me with you,” I say, filling the blank space he left after his words. Though I have felt some connection not born of touch with this prince of Stille, I understand nobles better than he can imagine, having spent my entire life studying them. “Why are you doing this, truly?”
Vincent watches me carefully. “I would gain you some small semblance of freedom.”
“And?” I prompt him.
“The Feneen—Ank—says he knew your father.”
I stop moving, a sliver of paper wedged under my fingernail. The pain is bright and sharp, shooting past my finger into my arm, but my mouth is stopped.
A Feneen. My mind cannot even create words, but pictures flow with ease, fra
med by the window of our cottage in Hyllen, memories of a humped back, an extra limb dragging in the ground, guttural noises escaping from a malformed mouth wrongly placed in an awkward face. Then my Keeper’s arms around my waist and a much-deserved tongue-lashing that stung far less than the things I could not unsee.
My father one of them, whether ill in body or mind.
“It would explain much,” I finally say.
“Ank wishes to meet you,” Vincent says. “I thought to bring him to you in the castle, but the king was anxious to send him away. There was no chance—”
“I will come with you,” I say, pinching the sliver of paper between my fingers and pulling it away, leaving a white scratch beneath the nail that quickly fills in red.
“Will you be safe enough with guards?” Vincent asks. “If you should . . .” He trails off, my spinning, crazed dance undoubtedly on his mind.
“It is always with me,” I tell him. “It could leap at anytime, and I’d be none the wiser until the moment was upon me and the sea at my neck.”
“Perhaps it is best you remain,” Vincent sighs. “If the Given is lost before . . .” He stops again. It seems we are unable to speak to each other without bordering on unmentionable things.
“Before I am bred,” I say for him.
“You say it easily enough,” he laughs, his color rising.
“Saying and doing are two different things,” I confess. “I cannot . . .” My words halt, a lifetime of the Keepers’ teachings to hide my inadequacies still in place, though the teachers are now gone.
“I understand,” Vincent says. “Many noble families are uncomfortable with showing affection.”
“No.” I shake my head, unable to find words to describe the feeling of my skin coiling into itself, rolling back like the shedding of a snake in an attempt to avoid others. “It goes beyond not caring for it. I cannot bear a touch.”
“Oh . . .” His face collapses at my frank admittance, my oddness widening the space between us. “I guess that would complicate things,” he says, producing a shy smile along with his weak joke. “Although . . . it is good to know it is not . . .” He clears his throat. “Perhaps then it is not me you flinch at?”
“No, people are equally unbearable,” I say.
But he surprises me with a true and honest laugh, and a smile equally so. I feel an answering smile, one that may become more common to me, should I spend more time with Vincent.
“I will go with you,” I tell him. “The prey being stalked by the predator cannot spend its whole life skulking in fear. When the sea leaps is not my decision, but what I do in the interim is.”
“Very well,” he says. “For my part, I’ll be glad to have you along.”
“When do we leave?” I ask, and close the book before me.
CHAPTER 22
Dara
WHERE ARE YOUR THOUGHTS?”
Dara speaks Indiri, her words meant only for her brother, and not the guards who trot behind them.
Donil pulls his gaze from Khosa and her mount, riding alongside Vincent as the horses pick their way over the sandy beach. The moon is bright, and the sea so still that its light casts a broad path across the water, almost daring the more adventurous to try to walk upon it—exactly what they are there to prevent.
“Why bring her at all?” Donil answers his sister, jerking his head toward Khosa. “Having Khosa so close to the sea is ill-advised.”
“The Given,” Dara corrects him. “And cursed or not, she’d never reach the surf before I cut her down.”
“Which would hardly help, since they need her to bear a child.”
“I can stop her without killing her.”
“You won’t need to. Khosa tied a scarf around her waist; the other end is around Vincent’s saddle pommel.”
“So if she makes a leap for it, she won’t drown, but be trampled under his horse instead. Lovely plan.”
“Speak a language the rest of us understand,” says one of the guards, urging his horse between theirs. “I’m not keen on taking the Given and the third of the blood out with so few swords at their backs. Hearing your tongues make words I don’t know doesn’t settle my nerves any.”
“We are saying words you know, but we’re saying them in Indiri,” Donil says easily, flashing his smile.
“Them pearly teeth won’t look so nice in a rotting corpse,” the guard growls.
“We don’t rot,” Dara says.
“What’s that?” The second guard brings his horse forward slightly.
“The Indiri don’t rot,” Dara repeats, but doesn’t explain, her attention focused on Khosa and Vincent, whose heads are close together in conversation.
“Of earth we are made, and to earth we return,” Donil says. “When the Pietra slaughtered us at Dunkai, they burned their own dead, since they were too far inland to put them in boats for the Lusca. They returned to the pit where they threw the Indiri, and found it filled in—not with bodies, but with freshly turned earth.”
“And how would you know that?”
“We were watching,” Dara says, her eyes leaving Khosa to find her brother and the echoed memory of their frail newborn skin, pricked with thorns as they hid in the brush.
“I’ve heard about that,” the first guard says grudgingly. “Shared a drink with a man once, said there’s a stretch of land there on the Dunkai plains where nothing grows. Someone told him it’s on account of the Indiri underneath, their blood poisoning the dirt.”
“They are the dirt,” Dara corrects. “And if nothing grows, it is not the blood that is to blame. You can’t kill the people of the earth and expect their dirt to yield for your benefit.”
“Light ahead,” says Donil. “Seems Ank made a fire in the cave.”
The first guard moves into the lead, telling Vincent he should check to be sure the Feneen is alone before they go farther. The second guard keeps his horse beside Dara’s, too young to be able to hide his fascination with her skin.
“I rather like the idea of you making not a corpse,” he says. “Seems a waste.”
“Oh, I can make a corpse,” she says. “I’ve made many.” With that she spurs her horse forward, and her brother smiles again.
“Better luck next time,” he says to the guard.
CHAPTER 23
Khosa
THE CAVE IS DIM, THOUGH THE FIRE THAT THE FENEEN has started burns brightly. I turn my back to the cold light of the moon and follow Vincent into the cave, his hand tight on the end of the scarf that cinches my waist.
“Is that the Feneen?” I nod toward the back of the cave, where a man stands by a small fire, the flames sending orange ripples of light along the damp walls.
Vincent nods. “Let me speak with him first.” He hands the scarf over to someone behind me. I keep my eyes on the Feneen as he greets the prince with a familiarity that most Stillean royals would bristle at, but Vincent accepts in stride.
“Careful on these rocks. They’re slippery,” a voice at my elbow warns, and I feel a slight pressure on my arm. I recoil without thinking, recognizing Donil’s voice a moment too late.
“I’m sorry,” he says, pulling away as well. “I didn’t mean to give offense.”
“No, it . . .” I bluster as every bit of my skin sings to pull away from my own body to be closer to his. “It wasn’t entirely unpleasant,” I finish.
Donil laughs, the sound filling the cave. I cannot tear my eyes from the pulse of the sound in his throat, his Indiri skin rippling. “It’s not the warmest invitation I’ve ever had,” he says. “But I’ll accept the encouragement.”
Dara shoves her way in between us, spotting the end of my scarf now twisted around her brother’s knuckles. “I see you’ve got yet another girl on a leash.”
“Speaking of being entirely unpleasant,” Donil says.
“Come into the light,” Ank calls
to us. “The tide will return soon, and I’d rather make words over a dry fire.”
Vincent’s guards search the Feneen, but find no weapon. Vincent waves them away and they move to flank the entrance of the cave. Dara stays by the prince’s side, the crossed swords on her back casting an eerie shadow on the cave wall.
Vincent clears his throat. “I must inform you that my grandfather, King Gammal, declines the Feneen offer of aid in a war against the Pietra that has yet to exist.”
“I’m not surprised,” Ank says smoothly. “He’ll rue that decision when the war does come, and us siding with them.”
“Stille will chance it.”
“No,” Ank corrects. “Gammal will chance it. Your father will chance it. Stille and its people had no say.”
Dara shifts slightly, hand resting on a dagger at her side. Ank watches her move with amused eyes.
“I’d like to put my hands on you,” he says.
Vincent’s knife flashes from his side, more quickly than I would have expected. “Watch how you speak to her.”
Ank laughs, brushing aside Vincent’s blade. “For the purpose of my gift, to see how deep that ferocity really runs.”
“Pretty deep,” Dara says.
“Mmmm.” Ank’s eyes shift back to me. “We’ve not been introduced.”
I step forward. “I am Khosa. The next to be Given, daughter of Sona.”
“Was that her name?”
“Yes.” My voice is nearly lost in a crashing wave, and I wonder if Donil can feel the scarf shake in his hands as my body trembles. “Vincent said you knew my father?”
“The Given pick their mates, is this true?” Ank asks, ignoring my question.
“Yes. We’re given that freedom in exchange for our sacrifice.”
“Your mother chose well.”
I take another step toward the fire and the Feneen, the length of scarf between Donil and me growing taut. In it I can feel the tensed strength of his entire body, prepared to pull me back from danger if necessary, and the tremor that thought sends through my body has nothing to do with fear.
Given to the Sea Page 9
