Threats of Sky and Sea

by Jennifer Ellision

  I’d thought my rooms were grand, but they’re a hovel when compared with Aleta’s. Strands of gems dangle from her ceiling in lazy spirals. The walls are painted with swirls of gold that hold a telltale shimmer in their depths. Real gold paint? I don’t dismiss the notion. The paint in my rooms had been only gold plating, and they’d missed that shimmer.

  Aleta seems to have forgotten me as she disappears behind a heavy set of double doors and closes them firmly behind her.

  “Um…” I knock hesitantly. “Your Highness?”

  “Your room is at the opposite end of the suite.” Aleta’s voice comes, muffled. I’d missed the set of doors she mentions, but I see them now and follow Aleta’s directions.

  Unlike the opulence of the rest of the suite, this room is meant for a servant—a lady’s maid, most likely. A small twin bed takes up the majority of the cramped quarters. A singular tiny window allows only a tiny slat of the moon’s light to enter.

  I back away, unable to fathom sleeping there. It’s not the small space or bed that I protest—they still beat my old pallet—but unless I’m able to obtain a lantern or a torch, I’ll be making my camp on Aleta’s sitting room floor. The dark never gave me cause to fear until Elementals had come creeping out of the night and hands, friendly or otherwise, had clapped themselves over me as I slept. A light would be a small comfort.

  I had hoped to talk with Aleta, to understand more about her knowledge of Da’s past, but Aleta’s door remains closed. I sigh and flump down onto the settee.

  How can I impress upon Da the urgency with which I need this information about his past, his last mission? I’m afraid to come right out and tell him, lest I be overheard. My thoughts fly again to Kat’s cunning comment.

  But it may soon come to that. His cooperation is the key to our freedom.

  After several minutes, it dawns on me that I haven’t heard so much as a stirring from Aleta’s bedroom. I strain my ears.

  “Your Highness?” I call. “Are you all right?”

  No answer. She can’t possibly be asleep yet. I deliberate with myself for a moment, then push the doors open.

  The room is empty.

  A creak wakes me from my position on Aleta’s bed, where I’d slept fitfully after pacing the room and debating the merits of calling for the guard.

  What if she’d been kidnapped by enemy forces? The princess could be in serious trouble, in which case, calling for the guard and alerting the palace would be the right decision. Then again…her window was sealed firmly shut, so if she’d been spirited away, that wasn’t the escape route. If she’d simply managed to evade her guards for the evening again, she’s not in trouble, but she would be if I alerted them.

  I told myself that if she hadn’t returned by morning, I’d find someone. Still uneasy with my decision, I was unable to rest my mind enough to sleep.

  I wore a tread pacing the plush rug that lined Aleta’s floor, and then, when my feet refused to cooperate with me any longer, I’d sat down on Aleta’s bed. Out of habit, I touched my nightdress pocket where Da’s medallion rested. Just to remind myself that it was still there.

  At some point, I’d drifted off, and I woke at the sounds of a thump, hurriedly wiping traces of sleep from my eyes.

  Aleta stands before me, hands on hips, indignant. “What,” the princess demands, “are you doing in my quarters?”

  “I should lower my voice if I were you, Your Highness,” I whisper. So glad I’d wasted my time with anxiety for her. “Think of your guards. Where have you been?”

  “That’s none of your concern,” Aleta says breezily. She lights a torch and retrieves a poker from the fireplace to shift the kindling. The fire’s nearly out. I blink as my eyes adjust to the change in lighting.

  “Maybe not,” I say, annoyed. “But did it occur to you that I might be so concerned over your disappearance that I’d alert a guard?”

  Aleta whirls, clutching the poker to her chest. Her eyes are wide with fear so blatant that I feel bad for worrying her needlessly.

  But that’s before Aleta’s nightclothes begins to smoke.

  “Aleta!” I rush over to her and snatch the poker, dropping it instantly. It’s red-hot and my puckered hands are further seared, blinding me with pain for an instant.

  But before it can set the room on fire, I kick the poker into the fireplace. It can be retrieved later, in the morning when the fire has burnt itself out. The maids will find it and put it down to someone else’s clumsy fingers—not this occurrence, which grows stranger by the minute.

  Aleta pats down the flames on her chest absentmindedly. Her attention is solely focused on me.

  “You didn’t,” she begs. She seizes my hands, dropping them when I yelp. “Please tell me you didn’t.”

  Aleta’s hands had been as hot as if she’d held them in a pot of boiling water. I can’t focus on her question. “Didn’t what?” I ask faintly.

  “Alert the guard. You didn’t, did you?” This is a side of Aleta I never expected to see: vulnerable and terrified. The princess usually stands so cold and aloof, like nothing has a hope of touching her, not even the king who’s little more than her warden.

  “I didn’t,” I say softly. Aleta puts a hand to her heart as the fear dissolves from her eyes. She leans against one of the columns of her bed for support. “But…Aleta. How did you do that?”

  She’s a Torcher. There’s no other explanation possible. But that should be impossible. Like me, she hasn’t yet reached her seventeenth year. The ball celebrating her birth is still several weeks away.

  Trepidation leaps back into her eyes as she looks from the poker sitting innocently among the flickering flames to me.

  “I don’t know,” she says, resigned. “It began to happen several months ago. I didn’t have nearly as many incidents as most Adepts when they first Reveal, but Larsden—he’s not truly a tutor, you know; little better than a madman, really—assumed that was owed to the unique circumstances surrounding my gift.”

  Now I understand where Larsden and the king have gained the assumption that Reveals no longer necessitate the previously requisite seventeen years.

  “No one knows,” Aleta says. “That is, no one excepting myself, Larsden, and the king. And now you, I suppose. They wish to keep it quiet, and I have no reason to wish it otherwise.”

  “I won’t say anything,” I say and mean it. I can’t say what Larsden and the king’s motivations are, but if I were in Aleta’s shoes, I wouldn’t wish to be watched any closer than she already is. I wonder why she hasn’t told Caden and Tregle.

  “I thank you for it.” Aleta, relaxed now, stretches her arms above her head and yawns exaggeratedly. “However, I am quite exhausted. If you wouldn’t mind?” She inclines her head toward the bedroom’s door.

  “Of course,” I say hastily, making for an exit. I hesitate, remembering my thin slat of a window. “May I borrow a torch?”

  “Certainly.” Aleta waves her hand at the torch, and the flames leap to meet her. I jerk back.

  It’s only after I shut myself in with my cot and dancing torch that I realize Aleta never told me where she’d been.

  Twenty-Six

  When I was very small, no more than five summers, I ran away from home.

  I can’t remember why now. Probably Da had scolded me for something, and to my mind, the argument had been simple: I was right, Da was wrong, and if he didn’t see that, I wouldn’t stay with him.

  What I do remember is trudging out of the house, determinedly throwing my knapsack over my shoulder. There’d be no sneaking for me. If Da saw me leave, so much the better and served him right.

  I’d been outraged. He hadn’t seemed concerned at all that I was on my way out. Just stood there, wiping down the bar, an amused quirk tugging at his mouth.

  The door had slammed behind me as I left.

  I’d been fine until darkness hit. My anger at Da kept me big and tall in the daylight, but after the sun fell behind the horizon, I shrank. The forest grew
. Spindly branches transformed into shadowy witches’ talons, reaching for me, determined to cook me and have me for their next meal. I thought of my bedtime stories, of the land that comes alive against trespassers.

  True summer only lasts about a month in Abeline, but that night was warm. I’d shivered nonetheless. Huddled in the gaps between the tree roots, I’d tried to sleep, to wait out the long hours that stretched between darkness and light.

  The normal forest sounds had turned sinister. The innocent birdcalls turned to hunting hawks. The movement of the grass was probably due to the same wind that rustled through my hair, but to my mind, it was a snake, venomous and evil, winding its way toward me. The thoughts kept my eyes open. Wide open.

  Gradually, terror had loosened its grip, and sleep took a firm hold. When I’d awoke, I was back at The Bridge and Duchess, bundled in blankets on my sleeping pallet.

  I’m still not sure if Da followed me the entire time or somehow tracked me later. We didn’t talk about it much—not at all, come to think about it. When I’d gone downstairs that morning, opened my mouth to speak, to ask questions, Da beat me to it.

  “Don’t you have chores that need doing, Breena Rose?”

  I haven’t wanted to run since. Until now.

  The thing is, I can’t see how that will help anything. Da will still be locked away, I still won’t have my answers, and—worse—the king might get closer to the war he wants with Nereidium.

  I leave the dungeon after another visit with Da, more frustrated than ever before. It’s my sixth visit in a month, and they’re still fruitless as ever. Oh, sure, Da’s uttered the odd statement:

  “Your hair’s gotten longer.”

  “There’s a spot on your collar.”

  “Don’t suppose you could smuggle some roast pheasant in? That’s one of the few things they get right here.”

  But ultimately, I’ve gotten nothing from him, and I’m beginning to lose the ability to care.

  I’m tired. Every day, I slip away from our rooms with Aleta for clandestine meetings with Caden and Tregle in the middle of the night; evade more lessons with Tutor Larsden; match wits with the king; and, sometimes, try to find a glimmer of my da in the prisoner behind the cell bars. It’s exhausting. And it’s taking a toll on me.

  I fall into step behind the guard sent to escort me, and we make our way up a flight of stairs. I falter as we hit unfamiliar territory. There are portraits of nobles I’ve never seen before lining the hallway. A thick-set man stares me down from behind his frame. And I don’t remember that oil painting of the weeping Makers. This isn’t the way back to my rooms. It would seem that even long exposure to the castle halls doesn’t guarantee you manage to learn them. The guard’s led me the wrong way. I turn, intending to march my way back to Aleta’s chambers, but stop short. Two guards I don’t recognize bar my way. Tension threads through me.

  As best as I can, I channel Aleta, nose in the air, and stride up to them. “Let me pass.”

  “I’m afraid they’re under orders not to, Lady Breena.”

  The voice creeps from the hallway. Kat, I think, as a shiver climbs my spine like a ladder.

  “Whose orders?” I demand.

  Kat languidly runs a finger over a curl, watching me. Has she been here waiting for me this whole time?

  Larsden steps forward from Kat’s side. “His Majesty’s, of course.”

  By the ether, my arm’s only just healed. I’m finally able to stop applying the salve, and the skin bears only faint scarring. It barely pains me at all anymore, and I’ve been successfully dodging Larsden for weeks now to avoid a repeat performance.

  “This again?” I try to sound impatient, dismissive. “I proved that I’m not a Torcher the last time we met, Larsden.”

  “True enough,” he agrees. “But I’m unconvinced as to your other talents.”

  Kat’s presence. That’s why she’s here.

  I take a backward step, holding a hand out to keep them away. “No matter what my da is, I’m not a Rider either. You saw that well enough, Lady Kat, upon our first meeting. It’s as Princess Aleta said, right, Larsden? The element would have recognized me?”

  Kat’s lips curve. “I don’t recall that incident,” she says. “You’ll have to refresh my memory.”

  A gust of wind slams into me, knocking me against a wall. My back vibrates with the impact against stone. A hairbreadth of a moment later and Kat meets me there, impossibly quick, hand at my throat as my breath is stolen from my body.

  She snaps her fingers with her other hand. “Well, this is a familiar sight! You were right, Lady Breena. I remember now.”

  Suddenly, I’m filled with something besides exhaustion. I’m angry. And anger I can use. I make a fist. My vision is going and so is my energy now, but I have enough left for this.

  Thumb outside my fist. All of my weight behind the hit. Just like Da taught me. I lash out, landing a square punch on Kat’s eye. The hit reverberates through me as I make contact.

  Kat shrieks, letting go. Air whooshes back into me, but I can’t pause to steady myself.

  “You wretched little—” Kat clutches at her eye with both hands. She lets out another angry shriek, sounding like a bird of prey.

  The guards look stunned and level their weapons at me. That’s fine. I turn quickly and run in the opposite direction where none of them bar my way. This castle is large and meandering enough. It will spit me out somewhere familiar if I take another route.

  I race toward a staircase, but Larsden catches me, seizing my upper arms. A swift jerk of my knee to his groin, and he releases me instantly, sinking like a stone.

  I’ll pay for the hits later, I’m sure of it, I think as I fly downstairs and melt into a crowd of other noblewoman, wheezing and short of breath. But I’m no longer interested in appearing obedient.

  Twenty-Seven

  The evening of Aleta’s birthday banquet is an excuse for the gossips of the court to watch the girl who holds herself so aloof from them. And for those who don’t know one of her best-kept secrets, it’s a chance to keep an eager eye on her to see if the Nereid princess will have her Reveal.

  My ladies have returned to attending me after I escaped my guard so overtly, but they’re cautious with me now, like they can sense how I’ve closed myself off from them. They fill my ears with their meaningless rumors, hoping to ingratiate themselves back into my good graces. Chief among them is the speculation that, owing to her country’s tendency toward Water Elementals, Aleta will be a Thrower, the first to grace Egria in sixteen years.

  If only they knew. The princess is her country’s opposing force: fire. Could it be owed to the fact that she’s been in Egria since she was a babe? I doubt we’ll ever really know. The science of the elements isn’t something I can hope to understand when I have bigger things on my mind.

  The ladies dress me in a heavy, green silk brocade. I put a hand to my stomach. I’ve felt uneasy ever since waking up, like my insides are sloshing about. There’s nothing in particular I can attribute it to, but I just can’t shake the feeling.

  When Aleta and I leave our suite for the ballroom, accompanied by a veritable posse of attendants, my discomfort only increases. I’ve managed to adjust to the royal dinners of veiled threats and icy pauses, but I feel far from prepared for this. The “banquet” is a banquet in name only, Aleta told me a few days ago. Certainly dinner will be served, but it is, for all intents and purposes, a birthday ball.

  “Why don’t they just call it a ball then?” I’d asked, stumped.

  “I suppose they believe a banquet sounds more dignified.”

  It sounds quieter and I long for it to be, but strains of music reach my ears already. Stately drums pound evenly, keeping time with the meandering strings and horns. It won’t be the music and dancing I’m familiar with. I’m likely to make a fool of myself tonight, drawing more attention to my upbringing than there already is. Most of the king’s court will be inside. It’s a chance to make good on my declaration t
o defy the king, but I don’t know if I have the stomach for it tonight. The nausea makes my breath shaky.

  The nobility already swirl around the room, flitting from partner to partner like butterflies to blossoms, past the large window that consumes the far wall. The ocean’s whitecaps are silvery in the pale moonlight. The waves look rough tonight. Violent.

  I’m surprised when Aleta and I are able to sidle into the room without much notice.

  “They don’t announce you?” I ask.

  “Only at state dinners.” She sweeps her skirt aside to gracefully descend into a chair.

  “Ladies.”

  As if flown in on a Rider’s wind, Caden appears at my elbow. He drops a perfunctory kiss on his betrothed’s extended hand and then takes mine. My heart pounds. Is it my imagination or do his lips linger a moment longer on my knuckles?

  Aleta murmurs a greeting and picks at the food on her plate, some mangled sort of meat drowned in a brown sugar glaze. It’s likely delicious, but my insides lurch at the thought of taking a bite.

  “Your Highness.” I manage the hello, sounding strangled. I eye my meal with trepidation. I’ll never keep it down.

  “Are you well, Lady Breena?” Caden’s gray eyes are alight with concern.

  “Fine,” I assure him. I’m anything but. “I feel a bit queasy, that’s all.”

  A warm palm covers my forehead. My skin is clammy against Caden’s fingers, and I fight back the sudden heat that wants to rise in my cheeks.

  “You do look a bit flushed,” he says. He motions over a server. “Sparkling wine for the lady, please.” Turning back to me, he explains, “The bubbles will calm your stomach.”

  “Oh, no.” I rush to correct him. “Honestly, Caden—Your Highness, I’m not one for wine. I think it’ll make things worse.”

  “Trust me. Just one glass and a bit of sweetbreads. It will settle you.”