“She’s not displeased at the arrangement, if that’s what you’re worried about,” Mother says.
“I’d rather she were, in fact, pleased,” I say, bending to pick up a pommel with no blade attached to it.
“She’s pleased enough to be alive. More may grow in time.”
Khosa will be my wife, the girl who would’ve been taken from me by the sea now delivered into my arms because of it. I pitch the pommel away from me, and it sinks to the depths, mired with more things than anyone knows down in the darkness.
A cry breaks down the beach, a child running toward me, who bursts through the arms of my guards and wordlessly grabs my hand, dragging me to the castle. We break into the garden and the girl points wordlessly, eyes shining.
Dara lies unconscious, the arms of a dying tree wrapped around her in a lifesaving embrace.
CHAPTER 79
Witt
FIRES LIGHT THE WILDERNESS, AND WITT COMES TO THEM one by one, gathering what remains of his army until they are enough to form ranks. Hadduk’s men rally, their vicious war cries splitting the night when their commander walks in from the darkness, pulling seaweed from his hair. The Feneen follow the sound and find them, their people more numerous now than the Pietra.
Ank sleeps, his smooth face resting on lined hands, Nilana leaning against a tree beside him. Witt feeds their fire, rejecting her words when she says he needs to eat.
“What good is a Lithos dying of hunger?” she chides him.
“What good is a Lithos whose army is drowned, yet he lives?”
Nilana’s eyes find his and hold them, even though he wants nothing more than to look back into the mesmerizing flames of the fire and not the demanding ones in her eyes.
“The wave can hardly be laid at your feet,” she says.
“No, indeed, it only wetted my toes,” Witt says bitterly.
He dropped from the tree the moment the water receded to find the beach swept clean of his men. Flashes of armor against moonlight in the distance proved that some had heard the order to run in time, and Witt had followed them, to find they were only a handful.
“I led them there to die,” he says. “Pravin—” The Mason’s name in his mouth is too heavy a word, his tongue folding under it.
“I am sorry,” Nilana says. “He seemed a good man.”
“He was,” Witt says, angrily wiping tears from his cheeks before anyone can see them fall.
“And you seem one as well,” Nilana says softly.
“I am the Lithos. We do not have the luxury of being good men or bad, only the Lithos.”
“Ah.” Her voice is a whisper for the two of them alone. “But I see before me a Lithos who doesn’t have the heart to be a Lithos.”
“A Lithos doesn’t have a heart at all.”
“Then perhaps that is what I meant.”
A wind gusts around them, flaring the fire and sending Nilana’s hair into her face, catching in her long eyelashes. She blows on the strands, but they stay. Witt leans forward, tucking the errant curl behind her ear.
“You’ll need a new Mason,” she says.
“Hadduk,” Witt says. “He can shave these softer edges from me, in a time when they must go.”
“Perhaps,” Nilana says, her voice pitched low. “Or perhaps a softer hand is exactly what you need.”
“Nilana,” Witt sighs. “I know what you propose. That fire burned out long ago.”
The Feneen woman smiles, her beauty brilliant in the firelight. “An ember is all I need.”
CHAPTER 80
Dara
NOT GOING TO SAY GOOD-BYE?”
Dara rests her head against her horse, a heavy sigh escaping against its coat. “I thought the wedding preparations would have everyone too busy to notice the quiet exit of an unwanted Indiri girl.”
“Not her twin,” Donil says, joining her in the horse’s stall. “And why do you call yourself unwanted?”
“Because I am, brother,” Dara says. “I damned myself when I drew the Given out to the sea before she bore a child, and now she will be queen . . .”
“Khosa will see no harm done to you,” Donil insists. “A cooler head rests on her shoulders than on yours, sister. Revenge is not her way.”
“It is not revenge that prickles my skin, merely the fact that she is queen.”
“And Vincent her king,” Donil finishes.
“You can bear things I cannot,” Dara says, eyes on the ground. “Drive a spike through my leg, and I’ll laugh at the pain; shoot an arrow in my eye, and I’ll use the good eye to track you down and pull out your own. But break my heart, and I am of no use to anyone.”
“You are of great use, Dara,” Donil argues. “There is no fighter such as you, and the ferocity of your will knows no bounds.”
“Yes,” she agrees, and swings into the saddle. “And I go to vent it elsewhere. You saw him, too.”
Donil nods, the memory of the Lithos of the Pietra standing on a Stillean beach, his face the last sight their Indiri mother saw. “I understand,” he says. “But the very thing that sends you away anchors me here.”
“I know, brother. And you must stay where your heart is. Mine knows only death, and I go to visit it upon another.”
Donil rests his head on his sister’s knee for a moment and mutters an Indiri blessing for safe travels against the rough fabric of her cape before she spurs her horse and is gone.
CHAPTER 81
Vincent
TODAY I MARRY.
Khosa is resplendent in white, the bodice of her gown crafted like the sea, waves reaching toward her face but falling short. She is no longer the Given, a sacrifice to ensure long life for our kingdom. They are calling her the Redeemed, a savior to guide us in our rebirth.
The ceremony is performed quickly, Donil gray and guarded alongside my mother and the Curator. The crown is heavy on my head, the scepter a deadweight in one hand, Khosa’s touch on my other even less lifelike. Words are spoken by the Curator, repeated by me and then Khosa. The crown that made me realize my heart had turned to her moves from Mother’s head to hers, and we are married.
The Elders take us to the balcony, drawing back the heavy curtains so that all of Stille can see us. We are ushered to the edge, announced as the king and queen, a joyful noise that deafens me greeting the statement. I stand, useless as ever, between my mother, who made me king, and the queen who saved my kingdom.
I slip my fingers in between Khosa’s, giving her hand a squeeze.
My wife turns her head to vomit discreetly into a cup.
CHAPTER 82
Khosa
I AM DOOMED TO LIVE.
I am the Redeemed. The girl who called the ocean down on the heads of an invading army. Yet I remain the Given, a girl whose feet still dance toward the sea, a yawning ache deep inside me matched only by a desperate want for one who is not my husband.
I am the queen of Stille; a queen who cannot touch her spouse to create an heir. A queen who despises the blood flowing in her subjects because it so recently demanded her own.
I am drawn to the water, yet I now know that is not what calls me. It is inside Donil, and I go to it. It was in Dara for a moment, after she drained life from the earth, and I felt it. I do not dance into the sea mindlessly, for it is not what I yearn for, but something beyond.
I have become the queen of a dying land.
It is not the water that I am given to, but life.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I’ve had a fantasy story in me for the past twenty years, and though it had percolated long, it was definitely the most difficult one to put onto paper. A huge thanks to my editor, Ari Lewin, for helping mold the beast and gamely rolling with any and all inappropriate things I managed to say over the phone.
As always, thanks is due to my agent, Adriann Ranta, who nodded and said, “Why not?” when I suggested my
fourth genre jump in as many years. Critique partners are a necessary part of my process, and I need to thank my regulars, R. C. Lewis, MarcyKate Connolly, Demitria Lunetta, and Kate Karyus Quinn, for all being perfectly amenable to weighty attachments on emails. The same is true for amazing fantasy author Cinda Williams Chima, to whom I owe a huge debt of gratitude!
Inspiration can strike at any time and ideas rear their heads in odd situations. Thanks to fellow Ohio author Emery Lord for listening patiently at a book festival when I turned to her and said, “Hey, listen to this thought I just had . . .” and then ate all her cookies.
Lastly, thank you to my family and friends, who know my facial expressions well enough to know when I’m working, even if I only seem to be staring into space.
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Given to the Sea Page 30
