He looked up toward the voice with eyes that were nearly blinded by hunger. Meat. That was all the figure was at first as it moved closer.
Naples clenched a fist, trying not to reach for her. He had needed the Abyssi in order to heal Henna, but he would not let it have him again.
Ginger knelt beside him. “Are you all right?”
“Give me some space?” he managed to gasp.
She scuttled backward. With her farther away, it was easier to breathe and to remember that he was human.
“She would be tasty,” the demon said. “Not for your normal feeding method, though.”
“And then Celadon would fucking kill me,” Naples grumbled. “Get out of here. Go have your fun without me for a while. I’ll meet you later.” The Abyssi obeyed, and Naples pushed himself up. His legs wobbled, but that was just fatigue; food would fix that. Now that he was capable of looking at Ginger and thinking like a human being, he lifted his gaze. “Sorry. That took a lot out of me.”
His voice was breathy. He could feel his racing heart not just in his chest but across his skin and even in his eyes.
“She looks better,” Ginger said hesitantly. “Pale, though.”
“She is better. But she lost a lot of blood. She will be weak awhile,” Naples said, “but she’ll be all right. And I think I managed to disconnect the wild power that hurt her in the first place.”
Ginger’s eyes widened. “That’s wonderful!” Naples stumbled and she caught his arm, which nearly made him laugh—he had to have at least six inches on her, and here she was practically holding him up. “Are you all right?”
“Tired,” he admitted. He looked at Henna and satisfaction suffused him. She would sleep a while longer, but once she woke and they got some food into her, she would be fine.
He was mostly walking on his own power by the time they reached the hallway.
“How long was I working?” Naples asked.
“A little over an hour maybe,” Ginger answered. “Someone looked in once. The cuts on her skin had started to disappear by then, and I didn’t want them to distract you, so I told them you were working and shooed them out.”
“Good thinking. Thank you. You stayed the whole time?”
Ginger nodded. “Like you said, I couldn’t see anything except when the marks started to disappear, but it was still interesting. And after that other person tried to barge in I thought it would be good for you to have someone watching over you.”
He heard her stomach grumble and remembered that the testing probably would have used much of her energy, just as working on Henna had taken his.
“Do you want to head down to the kitchen with me to get something to eat?” he suggested.
“Is it okay to leave her?” Ginger asked, frowning at Henna’s still-unconscious form.
“We’ll pass my mother’s room along the way. I’ll let her know Henna is healed but resting, and she’ll make sure someone is assigned to watch her.” More likely, Maddy would go sit by Henna’s side, perhaps even sleep in the bedside chair with Clay snuggled on her chest for the night.
“All right,” Ginger said. Then, “Wait. No. I should probably get home.”
“You should eat something before you go,” he urged her. “You don’t have the training yet to realize how much power you burned during the testing. Putting out power without taking anything back in is asking for trouble, and a bad habit to get into.” Truth, every word. What he didn’t mention was that he also wanted to have some time to talk to her before she returned to Celadon’s clutches. “Come on. Let’s raid the kitchen.”
She smiled shyly, and for the first time it occurred to him that she was almost his age, and a girl, and to anyone who didn’t know him, his protectiveness could easily be misconstrued as flirting.
Of course, what he had in mind was more like outright seduction—not for sex, but for her life. She deserved to be in the Order whether she knew it or not, and even if she didn’t want to join them, Naples was horrified by the idea of her taking the brand. If a little flirtation could help coax her away from a lifetime of Quin brainwashing, it was worth it.
Chapter 41
Henna
Henna opened her eyes to see dawning sun through the window of one of the healer’s rooms.
She seemed to remember passing out, certain she would never know anything but the realms beyond again, so opening her eyes was a pleasant surprise. She turned her head and found Maddy next to her with Clay clambering up her body from her lap.
“Enna!” the toddler exclaimed, diving from his mother to Henna. “Enna all better? No boo-boo? No more abibi?”
His earnest concern and outpouring of words brought tears to her eyes. She braced herself to catch him, anticipating pain that never came. Remembering phantom claws ripping though her skin, Henna gingerly lifted her shirt and touched her stomach. Clay echoed her movement, patting her whole, unmarked, unburnt, uncut skin.
No more abibi, Clay had said. It was the first time she remembered hearing that word from him since the day Terre Verte had died.
Had she dreamed about an Abyssi?
“Naples did it,” Maddy said, anticipating Henna’s next question. “Even with all his strength, I didn’t think he could.”
Henna sat up. Though she was weak, for the first time in weeks she was not in any pain. Steadying the toddler against her chest and moving didn’t make her body ache, which meant the burns and cuts that had marred her back were also better.
“And you’re not the only one who’s up,” Maddy added. She stepped aside and there behind her, sitting in a bedside chair, was . . .
“Verte.” The word came out as a whisper as Henna sprang out of bed. Her legs failed to support her. Verte moved to catch her, and Maddy moved to catch them both, with all of them reaching to make sure Clay didn’t fall; soon the four of them were on the floor, laughing. Clay let out a squeal of delight, thinking it all a great game.
“We’re quite a set, aren’t we?” Maddy asked, but she was smiling. “None of us strong enough to fight a kitten.”
That didn’t matter. Butt still on the floor, Henna grasped Verte’s hand, which was cool and trembled slightly as it squeezed hers weakly. “You’re alive.”
He was still pale, but it was the pallor of sun-deprivation and fatigue now, not the flat grayness of death.
“So it seems,” he replied. He sounded dazed and his expression was unfocused, but that was understandable given what he had gone through. Henna felt a bit overwhelmed herself, and her brush with death had been far briefer than his.
Maddy managed to stand first, and offered a hand to Clay, who nearly pulled her back over when he tugged himself up. “Both of you, if you can walk, you can come down to the kitchen with me. If you can’t walk, I’ll bring something up. Either way, moving around and eating are what you need.”
Henna and Verte helped each other stand. “I can walk,” Henna asserted. She wanted to walk. She had been so sure she would never walk again.
Verte nodded quietly.
“This way,” Maddy suggested. She moved slowly, allowing Clay to set an ambling pace as he walked with his hand in hers, leading them through back halls. “Indathrone is holding one of her meetings. I don’t think we should get in the way.”
“Indathrone?” Verte asked. “The farm girl?”
Sheer relief and gratitude had put Henna in a good enough mood that she almost grinned, imagining what most people in the assembly would think if they heard their beloved Dahlia referred to as “the farm girl.” Then her elation struck a wall, and reality cascaded down on her. How would Verte feel, to see such a woman running his country in his absence? How would the people feel, to see him returned after all this time?
All desire to smile gone, Henna considered everything they were going to need to tell Verte, starting with the demise of his parents and the devastation that had struck his country in his absence, and concluding with Dahlia’s rise to power and the complicit role the Order in general, and Henna in particular, ha
d played.
“We’ll explain once you’re sitting down,” Maddy said.
There seemed to be a thousand miles between Henna’s sickroom and the kitchen. By the time they reached it, she was winded and breathing heavily, and Verte’s movements had become slow and lethargic. He paused as they passed through the hallway, near enough to hear bickering voices from the grand hall.
Clay settled into the corner to play with a set of painted wooden stacking cups as they spoke, occasionally interrupting their conversation as he clacked one against another with an unpredictable percussive rhythm.
“What is the meeting about?” Verte asked.
Henna and Maddy exchanged a glance. “There is a lot we need to tell you,” Henna admitted, “but you should eat first and regain some of your strength.”
“How long was I gone?”
Henna hesitated, torn between wanting to keep him calm long enough to see him get some sustenance into his body and the surety that she needed to be honest with him.
“Six weeks,” she admitted. “And a lot has happened. But you need to—”
“That is the third time you’ve put me off.” He wobbled once, caught himself on the wall, and turned toward the front hall. “I’m going to see what’s happened in my city.”
“Verte—”
He pulled away from her and strode down the hall with steps that gradually gained confidence as he neared the grand entry chamber, as if he drew strength from his determination. Henna followed closely, but short of putting hands on him and wrestling him back, she couldn’t stop him. By the time they reached the great hall, Henna’s heart was pounding so hard she could hardly hear the debating assembly.
She could hear the first whisper of, Terre.
“Terre?” someone repeated. And then another, and another, until it became a wave of sound. At the head of the high table, Dahlia’s face blanched. She looked at the assembly—and they looked not to the prince for guidance, but to her.
At last, after too long, Dahlia stood and dipped into an awkward curtsey at the edge of the raised platform. Gobe, seated next to her, stood when Dahlia stood but lingered protectively by his beloved leader, glaring at Verte. Celadon and Jade, who had been with her at the table, both seemed frozen in place.
Dahlia stepped down and crossed through the crowd to stand in front of Terre Verte. Her lips were pinched and her hands were clasped tightly in front of her.
Celadon, Jade, and Gobe followed a few paces behind and flanked her as she reached the prince. Respectful, or protective?
“Terre,” Dahlia greeted, with another deep curtsey.
Henna saw several people in the crowd make abortive moves to follow her example, then hesitate as they realized the three men hadn’t. The ambivalence with which they all looked at Terre Verte was unmasked.
“Terre,” Jade said at last, acknowledging Kavet’s monarch with a nod of his head. Celadon’s eyes were wide with shock, and Gobe’s narrowed with dislike; neither spoke.
The crowd started murmuring again, a buzz that rose in volume as Dahlia and Verte stared at each other across the few feet of charged air. After too many moments when Verte only stared at her, Dahlia rose to her feet and lifted her head, expression mostly deferential—except her eyes, which flashed with unspoken irritation at his failure to acknowledge her.
“Truly, extraordinary things have occurred in my absence,” Verte said, looking at the Silmari, the leader of the Quinacridone, and the Order of A’hknet youth in turn before his attention returned to Dahlia. Henna could hardly hear him over the crowd.
Dahlia lifted an impatient hand, a gesture Henna had seen her make countless times before, and silence fell again. “Terre, perhaps we could meet in private for a few minutes?” Dahlia suggested. “And Gobe, could you—”
“No.” Verte interrupted her, which brought a rumble of disapproval from the crowd. “Finish your meeting. I am obviously not needed.”
Dahlia went, if possible, paler. Celadon reached for her as if to stabilize her, but she waved him back.
“Terre—”
“Carry on,” Verte said, firmly, before turning. With stiff movements, he strode through the crowd, which parted before him like a school of fish before a shark.
Dahlia and Henna exchanged a desperate look, and then Henna dashed after her prince.
Her love.
The monarch of a country that had, in his absence, quite obviously held a silent revolution.
He kept walking, out the front door and across the cobbled market square, as if oblivious to the stares and whispers that followed him. By the time Henna caught up to him in the royal gardens, her muscles burned and her head ached. Naples had healed her wounds, but her body was too weak to go racing about the city.
“Terre . . . Verte . . . please,” she gasped. “I can’t keep chasing you. And I need to explain.”
Verte’s strength gave out and he collapsed to his knees in front of the blackened, thorny stalks that were the only remains of the snow roses.
“Six weeks,” he whispered, on his knees with his shoulders hunched and his hands pressed against the fallow dirt. “Six weeks, and the Quinacridone are meeting in the Cobalt Hall? Six weeks, and I walk into that place, and a Quin country farmer stands in front of me and holds up a hand for silence before she summons me into a private meeting? What in the Abyss has happened to my country?” he demanded. “Where are my parents? How can they condone—”
His expression fell, undoubtedly in response to Henna’s own.
“Tell me,” he said. “Tell me everything that has happened.”
So she did. She started at the beginning, with seeing him fall. The Terra summoning the Abyssi to defend him. The palace being sealed off. The storm. Naples’ fight with the door. The weeks of hardship, of turmoil, of suppressing riots. The meetings. The shipyard.
Dahlia’s rise to power.
Henna did not dash away the tears that ran down her cheeks as she told him of the wild power, of the affliction upon the members of the Order of Napthol. Of Helio’s death. Of her own fears. Of seeing Naples on the floor, his body barely more than meat left over after the claws had savaged him.
Verte did not cry. Instead, his expression turned cold and blank. When she tried to stop, though, and urge him to return to the Cobalt Hall to rest, he commanded her to continue.
She explained how Celadon had helped them break into the palace at last, and how they had discovered his parents’ deaths, and then, against all expectations, found him.
And she told him of sitting beside him to scry, to try to find some answers to all these horrible things. As she described those last few moments before her wounds had appeared, she had to press her hands against the graveled ground to keep her body and breath steady. Only as she spoke did she remember the argument she thought she had overheard. Had it been a nightmare, or had it been real?
Were the Numini and Abyssi really fighting each other, using sorcerers’ bodies as their battleground? She didn’t describe that part because she didn’t think she could put it into words yet.
She did tell him how she had opened her eyes to find blood all around. She told him of falling, of being sure she would never get up again.
Verte stared at the dead roses almost the entire time. When Henna fell silent, wishing he would say something—selfishly wishing he would comfort her, when she knew it should be the other way around—he stood instead.
“Please don’t make me chase you again,” she pleaded.
“I’m not going far.”
His footsteps took him behind the palace, past the edge of the gardens to the Terre mausoleum. He knelt in front of that crypt, reverently this time.
“There is a grave in there,” he said, “that belonged to a prince, years ago, who was lost at sea. The coffin is empty except for silk and jewels.”
“Verte—”
He shook his head. “My mother, my father. Where are they?”
Henna blinked. She didn’t know the answer. “I was aw
ay when the palace was opened. I assume your father’s body was brought to the mortuary for internment. The service hasn’t been held yet.” Dear Numen, had it even made it onto the agenda? Surely someone had remembered to arrange a memorial?
Dove would have remembered. If not her, Sepia, or . . . someone would have at least tended to death rites for the king of Kavet. Wouldn’t they?
“We never found your mother’s body, but Dove confirmed her death,” Henna added, keeping her moment of panic to herself, to discreetly follow up on as soon as Verte wasn’t looking. She wouldn’t let him see how cruelly his family had been neglected. Forgotten, even by her.
“You said she summoned an Abyssi,” Verte murmured, sounding distant. “The beasts of the Abyss can devour a human faster than you can draw breath, and leave no trace behind.” He shared the grisly fact without apparent emotion.
A chill breeze whipped around them, making Henna shiver. She looked up and saw that the sky was heavy with dark clouds.
“Maybe we should go back inside?” she suggested.
Verte looked up at her with an empty expression. “Inside where? Inside the Cobalt Hall, where the Quinacridone seems to rule now? Or inside the palace, which has been given as a home to foreigners and the dispossessed?”
“We will make this right,” Henna promised. “But for now, what is important is that you get your strength back. Kavet still needs you. Please, come back to the Cobalt Hall with me.”
“I’ll stay here a little longer first.”
“Verte—”
“Damn it, Henna!” he cried. “I was willing to give my life for Kavet. That’s what I was raised to do, and it’s what I did. But I never thought my father would give his life to take away those wounds, never expected to have Celadon Cremnitz of all people drag me back into this realm. Never expected to crawl my way back to consciousness and look up only to realize I am not wanted here. So let me lie here and be at peace a little while. Alone.”
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
“Please, Henna.”
“May I sit with you?” she asked.
Of the Divine Page 34
