Castle of Lies

by Kiersi Burkhart

  “Tell me what I should do, then.” I close my eyes and take a long breath. “Everything I’ve tried has failed, and I’m lost. I have nowhere else to go from here.”

  Thelia’s eyes spark. “Maybe you should say something about me to her. Rub it in her face. You’re so concerned, right, about my episode the other day?”

  She’ll even use her own pain, her own deepest fears, as a tool. I shake my head, disappointed in myself for believing any of her underhanded games could help me. “This is pointless. I have to go.” There are more pressing matters I need to handle at the moment anyway.

  “Bayled.” Thelia pushes dark hair back behind her ear, and my eyes drift to the pink scar down the side of her face. “There’s still hope.”

  Maybe she wouldn’t hate that scar so much if her mother hadn’t despised it. Delia depended on marrying her daughter off to someone wealthy to pull the Finegardens out of debt—and restore her life to the glamour she felt she deserved.

  No surprise that Thelia’s a user, when that woman brought her up.

  “I’m sorry, but this can’t take more of my attention,” I say. “Too much else is at stake.” I brush past her before she can say more.

  I need to speak to the King. This tedious, piddling mess with Thelia has reminded me just how much hangs in the balance—far more than Corene’s wedding.

  We will come up against Melidia’s most ancient enemy. I’ve never been sure what to make of the Temple, figuring it was mostly a stone tomb full of zealots. But maybe we should listen to the priestesses—if we raise a full army now, act fast and decisively as she suggested, we may have a chance.

  I have to at least try to convince him.

  The door to the King’s private study is slightly ajar. He doesn’t respond to my knock, so I let myself in.

  A goblet tips back and forth in his hand. His head lolls to one side, drool dribbling down the side of his mouth, when he notices me. “Bayled,” he says with a sigh. “I’m glad it’s you. I couldn’t bear to see Corene.”

  “Why, Your Majesty?”

  He tries to sit up, but he can’t find balance. I rescue the goblet of wine before it falls. “I’m sending her away,” he moans, burying his face in his arms. “I already lost her mother . . .”

  Poor Queen Laine—I was always fond of her. She adopted me without hesitation after my parents died, even though I was a foreigner. Everything in Four Halls is different since she passed, especially the King.

  He reaches for his goblet again, and I let him have it. “Now Corene will be gone and I’ll be alone.”

  I take the seat next to him. He immediately leans against me. “I’ll still be here, Your Majesty.”

  “You don’t have to call me that when no one’s around.” He laughs into his wine and spills it down his chest. I jump to get him a napkin, but he wipes off the liquid with his palm. “You’ve always been too good to this clumsy old drunk. I can’t trust anyone around here but you. The nobles are only out for themselves, the priestesses spout poison, and that rotten old wizard—I don’t even know where he’s from.”

  Forgren did appear a bit suddenly. His predecessor died in his sleep. Shadowed and frail, Forgren presented himself at Four Halls a week later, aware we had an opening.

  The King’s glassy eyes clear for a moment, and he leans toward me. “You know you have nothing to worry about, don’t you?”

  I’m not sure what to say. “What would I worry about?”

  “Even if I have to make Nul se Lan my official heir, he’ll never leave the Klissen. You’ll be the ruler of the Holy Kingdom in everything but name.”

  So he is going to name the Southerner as his heir. I’ve known it, in my heart, since the moment Nul se Lan appeared at the banquet table. I don’t feel any pain. Just . . . relief. He can have the damned Kingdom. I’ll never have to wear the crown, do the job, or take the blame. “I understand.” I should tell him what I came here to say. Push him to summon the entire army, to start thinking about evacuation. To take this threat seriously.

  He speaks before I get the chance. “There’s going to be a war, Bayled. Don’t think I don’t know. Part of being King is that you have to stay calm and keep up the people’s morale. They don’t think—they feel. Sending men to war is unpopular. Sending loved ones off to die makes people harder to rule. But dispatching a small militia? The people are behind that. It’s easy.”

  So he isn’t playing this game to keep the Kingdom safe. He’s playing to keep the people quiet and ignorant.

  “Let them believe it’ll be fine until it’s over.” He leans against the table and closes his eyes. I worry that, right at this moment, he’s finally done himself in.

  “Your Majesty?” I say, touching his shoulder. “Let’s get you to bed.”

  “Leave me here,” the King says, turning his head away so he’s talking into the wood table. His next few words disappear into it. I try one more time, but he pushes me away and mumbles again, “Go. Leave me alone.”

  This time I back away. Parsifal was right. The old drunk isn’t fit to rule anymore, and there’s nothing I can do about it.

  Thelia

  I had the dream again. The one I haven’t had since before Mother left.

  They came with their gray, sallow faces, their beady black eyes, their sharpened teeth. They gathered around, laughing with high, screeching voices as they tore into Parsifal’s fragile flesh. He dangled from their bony arms, blood streaming down. I screamed his name.

  I woke gasping. A terrible start to banquet day.

  Washing and brushing and putting up my hair takes all my willpower. Sitting at my vanity, I stare into my own brown eyes as I draw dark lines like a barrier around them, holding me in. I reach for my lip stain, but like a gust of wind has swept through my room, it falls off the edge of the vanity and rolls away.

  I don’t bother picking it up.

  No clay powder today—not worth it. I run my finger along the raised edge of the pink scar that connects my eye to my chin. It stands out whether I try to hide it or not, so what’s the point? I can dress up in all the finery and makeup I want, but I cannot erase this mark.

  It was an accident. That’s what Morgaun told our parents later, and I didn’t contradict him.

  Every day Mother and I went out for our morning exercises, then fencing practice, and a break for tutoring. At night, when no one could see us, came the kroga instruction. Morgaun seethed at how she focused on me. And he decided to do something about it.

  He asked me to go on a ride. In the stable, he went for my legs first. If I couldn’t walk, he figured, I’d never steal Mother’s attention from him again. Even then I was stronger and faster, and when he slashed at me, I shoved him hard—so hard he fell back. But on the way, his dagger cut into the side of my face.

  Mother never looked me in the eyes again. She said no lord, prince, or king would ever want a wife with a scar.

  After that, she stopped pretending. She gave up being my mother and my father’s wife. A few moons later, she met a visiting knight and ran off with him to his home in the Sea Kingdoms without ever saying good-bye.

  The scar doesn’t actually change my face too much. My nose with its high bridge, my dark-lashed eyes, my thick, pinkish-brown lips all remain.

  I’m still me. I’m still beautiful. I don’t know why she couldn’t see that.

  No, I do know why. Mother needed an excuse to escape Daddy. To escape Morgaun. To escape me.

  Parsifal

  I show up to Four Halls early for banquet, hoping to find Thelia before the party starts. I want to know if she’s made any progress with her plan.

  Smoothing down the ruffles stitched into the front of my shirt, I start up the stairs to the West Hall. The high walkway that will take me to South Hall is preferable to crossing the crowded courtyard. It’s also where the King tends to house guests.

  I spin around the banister at the top of the stairs and take a left to the walkway—when something heavy and metallic lands on the
stone floor with a clang!

  The sound came from down the hall. I take a few steps toward it to investigate, and a lone silver candlestick rolls around the corner—taking an abrupt left toward me. It continues rolling down the rug, coming to a stop right in front of my shoes.

  I stoop to pick up the candlestick. It’s cold and heavy, as expected. Clutching it, I head to where it came from to return it.

  Voices float down the hall. They’re loud and tense—and speaking in the Klissen’s mother tongue. The speakers sound agitated.

  I shouldn’t get involved. Just put down the candlestick and go. I have enough to worry about right now, except . . . demons, they’re really arguing.

  I lean around the corner and see three people standing hunched over, gesturing with fury at each other. I jerk back.

  Nul’s personal entourage, as rocky as their hills. I’ve seen the three of them stalking around before, always flanking him. I swallow and lean forward again to take another look.

  There’s the one that looks part troll. One has red braids so tight they pull the skin of her forehead back. She looks as if she’s never smiled in her life. The skinny small one opens the lid of a trunk and gestures at it. It’s filled with burlap sacks, rope, and a pile of glinting steel weapons.

  I take off back downstairs, realize I’m still clutching the candlestick, and abandon it on a table. Behind the kitchen, I find Derk covered in flour out by the stone bread oven.

  He tilts his head. “Surprised to see you here.” Some of that irresistible faun-brown hair topples in front of his green eyes and I have to clamp my hands together so I don’t try to touch him.

  “Can you help me with something?”

  “Is that something pastries? Because then, yes.”

  “Pastries are tangentially involved. Mostly, you’ll have to fade in the background and pay attention.”

  His eyes shrink to slits. “What is it?”

  I can’t believe I’m asking one of my lovers to get involved in politics, but here I am. This feels bigger than me. “Arrange to bring some fresh bread to Nul se Lan’s quarters in the West Hall.”

  “I can do that.” A mischievous smile crosses Derk’s face, and he brushes his hand across my chest.

  I step back. “When you get there, look around. Listen.”

  “But they don’t speak—”

  “There’s a lot you can pick up from gestures, facial expressions. Tone. They’ll be careless around a servant, and you don’t understand their language.”

  Derk nods. “I’ve never trusted them anyway.” He opens the oven door, slides in his great wooden paddle, and fishes out a few loaves of crusty bread. “I’ll tell you what I see.”

  Chapter 5

  Thelia

  The seats at the banquet table have changed again. Nul se Lan now sits at the King’s left, with Corene beside him. Bayled’s returned to the King’s right side, but his mouth goes flat as Corene and her betrothed share a private laugh, foreheads close together. There’s supposed to be an announcement following the banquet tonight, but I’m having trouble focusing on anything besides my horrid dream.

  “Don’t look too deep into it,” Parsifal says when I mention it. “It’s just fresh after all the bad news.”

  But this one felt so real, like when I was a girl. Wet droplets of Parsifal’s blood still cling to my face; the terror fills up my limbs until they refuse to obey. “It can’t be just a coincidence,” I say.

  Parsifal waves off the conversation like a bad smell. “Tell me this, Theels. How’s Bayled responding to your advances?”

  I sigh. Whenever Mother would get carried away in a training session and leave me black and blue, Parsifal always planned some mischief to steer my thoughts away—putting a beetle in the Queen’s slippers, or trying get that groom who was mean to the horses dismissed.

  “He isn’t,” I say. At this rate, I’ll never wrest Bayled away from Corene. He’ll spend his life on a chaise, arm slung across his eyes, moaning about the woman who left him behind.

  Across the table, Daddy snaps at Morgaun. “You can’t have every single thing you want. We’re not made of gold.” I was horrified when I saw my brother was here, but thankfully the two of them are too busy arguing to pay me any mind.

  Morgaun sneers. “I could be on the way to having a rich wife if you’d let me come to last week’s banquet.” So that’s why he wasn’t here. Daddy knew it was a big night and kept him home.

  I wouldn’t wish Morgaun on any woman. I’d probably find her strangled within a week of the wedding.

  Parsifal’s parents sit across from us—his dad, Antonin, though short in stature, is a behemoth of a man. He wears an extra-tall collar bubbling over with lacy white fabric and the bright yellow coat with the wide sleeves he so loves. Then there’s Percy’s mom in her usual timid gray wool, nursing hot soup.

  I’m surprised she made it. She rarely leaves the Bellisare estate. “How are you, Aunt Mirisa?” I ask, leaning forward because she has the voice of a cricket.

  “Fine, Thelia.” Another spoonful of soup. “This soup is too salty, though.”

  I nod solemnly. “I’ll let the kitchen know for next time.”

  Mirisa shrugs her bony shoulders. “Don’t make them fuss on my account.”

  Antonin beams at me. “That’s just like you, Thelia. Asking after everyone’s health. You’re such a nice girl.”

  Parsifal rolls his eyes. The Bellisares’ bottomless kindness toward my mother and me has always annoyed him. Mother was Aunt Mirisa’s project. When Mirisa’s parents adopted Delia—the scraggly, tainted remains of a destroyed people—they all did their best to tame her. Since Mother left, Mirisa and Antonin’s attention toward me has only grown. Poor abandoned girl, they must think, just like her mother.

  “Your Majesty!” Every head at the banquet table turns as a hunched figure, draped in a black cloak, barges into the banquet hall. Two guards cross spears to block his entry. “I must speak with you, Your Majesty.”

  What would bring the standoffish court wizard into a packed banquet hall? Only something terrible.

  The King waves Forgren in. The spears lift and the court wizard scurries down the length of the table, then addresses the King in hushed tones. The forks and knives have stopped moving as we all try to listen in. As soon as they’re done conversing, Forgren whisks out of the banquet hall like a shadow.

  The King lifts his goblet once again. No one breathes as he takes a long gulp of his wine. Finally he says, “Please file out to the courtyard for the announcement. Something the whole kingdom must hear.”

  The night air is cool and refreshing as banquet guests file out into the courtyard. We don’t often gather for public announcements, but the courtiers’ platform is already waiting for us. Parsifal and I find two seats far from his family and mine, hoping to be spared their drama.

  People stream in from the city, filling the lowest tier of the courtyard. The noise grows as Four Halls fills up, until Parsifal and I have to shout to hear each other. The usual sound of animals squawking and oinking is mysteriously absent. Every pen stands empty.

  Servants venture out to light torches all across the castle walls, weaving a glimmer of flames around the courtyard. The darkest point lies at the center of the swarm, where the common people stand and wait for something to happen.

  Up on the high balcony that’s rimmed with wedding tassels, the King emerges from behind a curtain. The crowd erupts. They do seem to love him, even red-faced and mushy as he’s become. What a waste of good subjects. I’d be a strong, decisive Queen. My people could trust me to guide them, to lead them, to protect them in a way that cowardly old man can’t. They’d cry my name, call me the most beautiful Queen to ever live. My scar, a symbol of my trials, would only make me more beloved.

  “My friends,” the King says. “This thing we call life—it is something we all share. A journey that all of us are on together.”

  I roll my eyes so hard they could fall out and leave the courty
ard.

  “I’ve always done my best to earn your affection and loyalty. I don’t know if I always succeed. I try to be fair and protect this wonderful kingdom we’ve all built together.” People shout and applaud. They’re so easy, eating up any bit of gobble if it comes from their royalty, even if it’s just a few pretty words strung together. “I’m pleased to announce that the exquisite southern country of the Klissen will become part of the Holy Kingdom—and soon I will be passing on the title of King.”

  It seems as if the entire castle is holding its breath. I can’t believe this is working.

  “My heir will be . . . the brave, handsome Nul se Lan, soon-to-be husband of my beloved Princess Corene.” The King steps aside, and my soul cracks in half. Parsifal laughs next to me, but I can’t imagine what he finds so funny. Bayled was my only path for the throne. If he’s no longer the heir, it’s over.

  The crowd screams as Corene and Nul se Lan stride onto the balcony. Corene’s strawberry hair is fire in the torchlight, perfect ringlets tumbling down her chest—but her face looks drawn and ashy. Her smile is attached to her but not a part of her, like a porcelain solstice festival mask has been pasted on top of her skin.

  When Corene and Nul se Lan reach the railing, they clasp hands and raise them high overhead. The crowd shrieks and cheers. After minutes of soaking up the crowd’s adulation, the two retreat to the dim archway.

  The King returns to the balcony and holds up his hands again for quiet. The people stop clapping and exchange perplexed glances. A torch over the King’s head flickers. “But the wedding will have to wait.”

  Murmurs ripple across the crowd.

  “My subjects, my friends.” Friends. As if. “Elves have invaded our lands,” he says. “They have taken Andalore, the Klissen’s capital. They have butchered our new countrymen. And they have murdered their beloved Chief.”