by Emma Fenton
A man to her left whom she recognized as a northern lord—but whose name she could not recall—turned to her with a stupid grin. “My lady,” he said, slurring his words while he dropped his head in an imitation of a bow. “My condolences for your loss.”
Ria resisted the urge to gag at the man’s breath. “Thank you.” She tried to return to her meal in peace, but the man was apparently not finished.
“You won’t be separated from them long, I imagine,” he said with a burst of laughter. He was too drunk for tact, it seemed.
But why should he bother? He doesn’t think I’m a threat. He doesn’t think I’ll ever be queen.
Ria’s fingers hovered over her table knife as the absurd impulse to stab the man straight through his hand nearly overcame her. This is why I did not want to come to dinner, she thought. She clenched her fist under the table. I will not stab anyone tonight. I am not my sister.
Ria forced an amused smile in the man’s direction. A petty voice in the back of her mind whispered: If you defeat Jaya, you can strip him of his lands, his title, his wealth. Satisfaction at the thought of vengeance burned through her bright and quickly, and then it gave way to truth. She would have to win first. Ria pushed away what remained of her soup, appetite suddenly gone.
***
Ria had fifteen days before her fight with Jaya when she decided to confront the Council with her wish to abdicate the throne in lieu of fighting.
“No,” Vili said, cutting straight to the point. Ria glared at him.
“What do you mean, no?” She looked around at the other Council members. Nasir was bored, as was typical of him, and Paavo would not meet her eyes.
“There is no law that allows this. No one has ever abdicated in Helhath before,” Vili said. Ria was really starting to hate the sound of his voice.
“The purpose of the fight is for the throne,” Ria tried again, hoping that she could back them into a corner with logic. Perhaps if she presented her argument the right way, they wouldn’t be able to deny her. “I have no desire for the throne, therefore there is no need for the fight. I withdraw my claim.”
“Princesza,” Paavo started. Ria was beginning to associate his once-welcome nickname for her with bad news. “There cannot be two heirs. Withdrawing your claim does not change the fact that the throne is just as much yours by right as it is Jaya’s.”
She wanted to pull her hair out. “In other nations—”
“Helhath is not Anor,” Nasir interrupted. “How many times do I have to tell you this?”
“I don’t want the throne,” she all but screamed at them. If she wasn’t so angry, so desperate, she might have been ashamed by her lack of patience. “I don’t want to fight. Give me another option.”
“There is no other option,” Nasir said coldly. “We have tried to marry you off, but that has proved impossible.”
If no one will marry me, I’m worthless to them. I’m just something taking up too much space. Ria felt the fight drain out of her. As long as I’m alive, I’ll only be in the way.
Ria didn’t bother excusing herself. She didn’t say a word as she left the Council’s meeting room, the numbness washing over her in a cool wave. Mikhael had called her a spare heir. That made her little more than a bargaining chip for more power. But that was no good if no one would have her. Even if I could abdicate, I have nowhere to go, she realized. There was no one, save perhaps the Elder Scholar, who would be willing to help her, and now she was starting to wonder if having Master Ameer’s help was really such a good thing.
***
It was either very late or obscenely early, but with her impending death in the not-so-distant future—thirteen days, not that she was counting—Ria was finding it increasingly difficult to sleep. At times, her chambers felt too large, as if anybody could be hiding in the shadowed nooks and crannies, just waiting for her to let her guard down. It was illogical, Ria knew, to be so paranoid, so terrified of the dark. But Sofi was still staying out all night, and it was far easier for Ria to admit she was afraid than to admit she was lonely.
Since the Council rejected her abdication, she’d mostly kept to herself: taking her meals in her room and refusing to leave except for her daily trips to the library. Her dinner—a pile of potatoes and a whole fish—rested on her table, cold and untouched. The fish’s glassy-eyed stare seemed to follow her around the room, dead and mocking. This could be you, it seemed to say. Ria took a cloth napkin and draped it over the fish like a burial shroud. She was in no mood to eat, although it would have been satisfying in a morbid sort of way to consume the fish, to assert that she was still alive while the fish wasn’t.
In hindsight, her self-imposed isolation might have been making her a little mad.
The problem was that she didn’t want to see anyone. Being around the Council or Jaya would only make her angry and nervous in equal parts, both of which she was accomplishing just fine on her own. She couldn’t really talk to Sofi, either. Sofi was technically a little older than Ria, but she seemed younger sometimes. Sofi smiled more freely than anyone else Ria had ever known. Sofi was allowed to be in love with the butcher’s son, and one day, they would probably get married. There would be no marriage contract, no diplomacy issues to work out, no international scandal if it all fell through. Sofi would never be forced to fight to the death to secure her own safety.
Sofi could pity Ria, but she could not understand her.
She felt the unwelcome urge to seek out Mikhael, which Ria stamped down with a vicious fury. For so long he’d been her only source of comfort, but now just thinking about him brought a fresh wave of hurt, and anger, and desperation. He had not written her back, and while a part of her was still hoping that his response was merely delayed or that he was coming for her himself, the growing cynic in her knew the truth. Mikhael was not going to rescue her from this. He was never going to stick his neck out for her, was never going to help her for nothing in return.
Love, she thought with a disparaging scoff. Nothing more than a pretty lie. It had made her weak, malleable. She believed every soft nothing that Mikhael told her, every promise of devotion. She had let her feelings overwhelm her common sense, and he’d taken note and used it against her. She wondered if he had ever cared at all, or if it had been a game for him from the start. It didn’t matter, she supposed. Mikhael was gone and he’d made it abundantly clear that he wasn’t coming back.
Which left only one person whom Ria could turn to for help: the Elder Scholar.
Not that he was much of a comfort. Ria often found herself alone in the library, and even on those few instances when she managed to track down Master Ameer, he was as vague and unhelpful as always. He seemed determined to give nothing away. Ria was starting to wonder if he even had a plan, or if he was scrambling just as much as she was. Maybe I’ve been stupid to put so much faith in him, she thought.
She had to admit that she knew practically nothing about Master Ameer despite studying under him for three years. He always knew more than he was letting on, and he was apparently on familiar terms with characters of a questionable reputation if their meeting with Siraj was anything to go by. Ria wasn’t sure why she trusted the man at all given that he kept his secrets even closer than he kept his books. And yet, if the Elder Scholar really wanted Ria done away with the way everyone else seemed to, then he sure was going through an awful lot of unnecessary trouble to convince her otherwise.
Despite his endless vault of secrets, Master Ameer was the only person who was honest with her. He might not have always told her everything, but she didn’t think he’d ever explicitly lied to her. It shouldn’t be a high standard to meet, and yet here we are, Ria thought.
She stopped pacing—not that she remembered starting—and sagged onto her bed. Now that the Council had outright blocked her abdication and it seemed fairly certain that Mikhael would offer no aid, Ria needed a Plan C. Her search for a loophole in the law was thus far fruitless, and with only thirteen days left until the face-off
with Jaya, Ria was starting to feel the pressure. She’d hoped that her fear would encourage a stroke of genius, but unfortunately, it had served as a paralytic instead.
She wasn’t sure what there was left to do except run or fight, and neither option was appealing. Ria wanted to live, yes, but she had nowhere to run to. She had no money and no real connections outside of the palace. The only foreign dignitaries she had ever met personally were Anorian, and seeking sanctuary there was out of the question. Besides, as a woman with no marketable skillset, she’d be forced to marry if she wanted to secure a livable future for herself. Her experience with Mikhael was too fresh to even consider it.
That left fighting, another unpleasant option. Jaya was notably stronger, faster, and better with a sword than Ria had ever been, even at peak condition. She glanced down at her body, soft from years of inactivity. There was little she could do to change her muscle tone or strength in such a short span of time. There was no hope of catching up to Jaya; Ria would need years of training, and even then, her body wasn’t made in the same shape as Jaya’s. The older girl had a naturally athletic build. Ria just didn’t.
She stood and stretched her arms up to the ceiling, back cracking pleasantly as it arched. Any training would be better than none, she reasoned, no matter how futile it might seem. Perhaps her old sword-master would give her a refresher course on the basics. And maybe she would get lucky during the fight; all Ria needed was one moment, a single opening, and she could take Jaya down.
Of course, the same could be said for Jaya, and out of the two of us, I’m much more likely to be the first to mess up, she thought. Unbidden, a half-dozen different scenarios of swords flying towards her person flashed through her mind. She shook her head. Battle planning could wait until tomorrow, but for now she desperately needed to sleep. If only it were that easy. She was too tightly wound to sit still for more than a few minutes, let alone sleep.
It was too late to call for tea. She could almost imagine the steaming chamomile brew, how it would warm her hands, how the first sip would scald her tongue because she was impatient. But no, everyone else was already asleep, and Ria didn’t know how to make her own tea. She almost laughed. Nineteen years old and I’m considered capable of ruling over a country, but I cannot even make my own tea. It was a gap in her education that she’d never considered before. She knew the procedure for negotiating a cease-fire between warring nations, but if she was ever left to fend for herself, she wouldn’t even know where to begin. She’d never cooked before or caught anything while hunting. She had no idea how to sew, except for that one disastrous attempt at embroidery that had nearly cost Lady Kerine her left eye.
All you’ve ever been good at is reading, a snide voice in the back of her mind said. And lots of people can do that.
She almost snapped back at the voice that she was plenty good at…well, other things before she realized that she would only be arguing with herself. She really, really needed sleep. Maybe a walk around the palace will help ease my nerves, she thought. She didn’t normally go wandering around at this hour, but nobody was awake except for the perimeter guards, and she was starting to feel trapped in her own room. A change of scenery would be good for her, even if it was only temporary.
Ria, however, had forgotten how unsettling the palace could be at night. During the day, the white stone walls, floors, and ceilings made the palace look as airy as a cloud; it was no wonder they called it Whitecastle. But now, without the natural light of the windows to illuminate the hallways, it was strangely haunting. The torches in the hallway burned low, casting long shadows against every wall. The tall windows that lined the hallway seemingly looked out onto nothing. Though the waning moon was high in the sky, the earth below was darker than pitch, and Ria averted her eyes to avoid being sucked into the void. Only children are afraid of the dark, she scolded herself, although her eyes did not stray to the windows again.
There was a strange beauty to the emptiness of the castle despite her initial misgivings. She dragged her fingers over the smooth, almost-glossy walls, cold underneath her fingertips. The floors were the same, and she reveled in the silence of her bare feet. Her toes were going a bit numb—the stone always held onto the cold long after the air warmed—but she barely noticed. She felt like a spirit: soundless and invisible to the world. She wondered if this was what being dead was like. Would she still be aware of herself the way she was now? Or would she cease to exist at all?
No. Stop, she told herself, shoving down the tight panic that was building in her chest. She needed to think happy thoughts, something peaceful. Not dying.
It doesn’t matter what being dead is like, that snide voice from earlier said, ignoring her attempts to change topics. Dying is inevitable. Why worry about what it will feel like when you have absolutely no control over it?
“Shut up, shut up, shut up,” she muttered to herself, shaking her head as if that would rid her mind of unpleasant thoughts. She turned the corner and found herself in the hallway leading to the library, the end of it so poorly lit that it appeared to fade away into an endless black hole. An icy shiver coursed through her. Perhaps leaving her room had been a mistake after all.
She turned to go back the way she had come from but halted at the sound of footsteps drawing nearer. Her breath caught in her throat. It’s not a crime to be out of bed, she reminded herself. You’re fine. It’s probably just the guards making their rounds. You’re the princess. You’re not doing anything wrong.
Her reassurances were doing little to calm her nerves, especially as the footsteps grew louder and she could make out the faint sound of a muted conversation. There were two people, then. Two voices that, as they became clearer, were horrifyingly familiar to Ria. The voices from the library just mere weeks ago. The voices of people who had been willing to kill her just for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
It was then that Ria realized she hadn’t moved. She was still pressed to the wall, half in shadows, but still distinctly visible. They would see her the moment they turned the corner, and they would kill her. She was sure of it. But she had few options. The two voices were coming from the well-lit hallway to her right—the hallway that would take her back to the main part of the castle and the safety of her room. The library was only a few paces to her left, but these people had been searching for a book the last time, and Ria would bet everything she owned that they were still looking for it. She refused to be trapped in the library with them again.
Which meant there was only one option left: running towards the impenetrable darkness at the end of the hallway. Under any other circumstance, Ria would never even consider it. The darkness terrified her on a primal level. She knew, logically, that there could be nothing lurking down at the end of the hall, and yet that did nothing to stop the tremors of her hands. Childish memories again resurfaced, and she remembered one particularly terrifying story her nursemaid had told her:
The demon spirits don’t just live in shadows, princess. They are the shadows. They are every dark corner, every moonless night, every flicker in the candlelight. And they are quiet, patient things. Stray into their territory, and they will swallow you whole.
Ria shuddered at the memory. There are no demon spirits, she told herself firmly. And even if there were, she reasoned, she could either stay where she was and die, or run into the darkness and only maybe die. She’d take the latter.
She knew they were almost upon her when she smelled the singed air, felt energy prickle across her skin in the way that she had come to associate with magic. Her feet moved faster than her brain, and they carried her towards the dark. There’s nothing to be afraid of. She had walked this hallway many times during the day, and there was nothing but the library and an old-fashioned set of armor, neither of which were insidious in nature. Still, the air seemed to wrap around her as if the shadows were a cloak. As if they meant to swallow her. Childish fantasies.
Ria dared not look back, just kept pressing onwards into the dark. Her
eyes had yet to adjust, and even her own hand—which was pressed to the wall to feel her way down the hallway—was invisible to her, though it was close enough to her face that she could feel her breath fanning across it in rapid bursts. She prayed that those men could not see her either. They were not shouting or chasing her, so that was a good sign.
How long will I have to wait here before it’s safe for me to go back? Still pressing her hand to the wall out of an instinctive fear that if she let go, she would be lost forever, Ria turned back towards the well-lit portion of the hallway. There were two poorly illuminated shapes walking towards the library door. She could barely make out any features; one was tall and thin while the other was either short or severely hunched over. There was something about them that did not seem quite human, and Ria was almost glad she could not see their faces. Her mind raced ahead, imagining sharp teeth, and red eyes, and skin like cracked stone.
They were at the library door now, still far away, but far too close for Ria’s comfort. Close enough that she could hear fragments of their conversation.
“We don’t need it anymore,” one of the men—Ria thought it was the taller one—hissed irritably. Even at a distance, his voice slithered over her skin, and she felt the absurd urge to peel it off. “You said it yourself, things are going better than planned.”
Instinctively, Ria started to back away. Whatever they were talking about was not as interesting to her as her own safety. She wanted to get as far away from these men as quickly as possible.
The shorter one grumbled something that Ria did not quite catch, her own breathing too loud in her ears. How did they not hear her? She took another step backwards and then another.
