Castle of Lies

by Kiersi Burkhart

  “Glorious.” He grins. “Like I imagine Melidia would taste, if I had the chance. My father would’ve started a new trade route for this.” Then his smile falters, and I want to grab it out of the air and hand it back to him. But I cannot undo how we have damaged his world.

  “I did good?” I ask.

  Parsifal looks at me from the side of his eye, and some of the smile returns. “You did good.” I let out an exultant breath and smile back. His brown eyes are glittering.

  “I can’t believe it doesn’t taste like literal shit,” Thelia says, taking another sip. “Really surprised.” Her laugh is high, light, wild—a laugh she’s been using since her second glass of wine, like something inside her has unbound, unwound, and stretched out on the floor for the first time in ages.

  My stomach is swirling around and I do not know if it is the wine or the laugh. This liquid is nectar, composed of layers upon layers, each one extending tentacles of flavor through my nose and mouth and head. “No wonder humans enjoy drinking this,” I say, marveling at the way my lips wrap around human words. “It is, what you say, fucking great?”

  This time even Parsifal laughs so hard he spills some of his wine. “Oh, demons!” He bends over and starts desperately licking the droplets up off the floor, which sends me into fits of laughter.

  Thelia grimaces. “Disgusting, Percy.”

  “Percy?” I ask, rolling the word around in my mouth.

  Parsifal shoots her a nasty look. “You taught them the nickname! Why would you do that?”

  “Sorry,” Thelia says between giggles. “Now your secret’s out. Percy.”

  Parsifal collapses back to the floor. “I hate that name.”

  I scoot forward and pat Parsifal’s back. “If do not like it, I not call you it.” He is not laughing anymore. I draw my hand away, afraid my touch bothered him.

  “You know,” Parsifal says to me, tilting his head, “you’re good, Sapphire.”

  Thelia also stops laughing. She doesn’t look happy with what he’s said. The last thing I want is my two humans fighting on account of whether or not I am good. I grow more certain every moment that I am not.

  “I apologize.” I put down the wine glass. “Shouldn’t be . . . do-o-oing this.”

  “Why?” Thelia’s lips tighten in a line. “You’re too good for us?”

  “Not this, like you say. The other. The—” I can’t think of the words. It has all fled out my head and left red mush. “Something that is bad for you. That is me.”

  Parsifal shoots Thelia a glare, then moves toward me. He returns my wine glass to my hand. “Have another drink.”

  Though he is peculiar, his beautiful face opens for me. I can see all the way to his heart—creased and hard, but strong. Seeing him so exposed I feel like an invader, so I throw back the wine and hold out the glass like a supplicant. More wine will drive all these dark thoughts out of me. “Come,” I say. “There is more. Don’t be cowards.”

  Parsifal laughs and opens the next bottle. The conversation steers away to the other elves. “Who’s that guy I saw you with the first time?” Parsifal asks. “Big Silver Guy.”

  “Commander Valya. He . . .” I realize too late that I am hiding my face with my wine glass.

  “Oh Melidia,” Thelia says, covering her mouth. “You have a crush.”

  I squeeze in the abstract shape of a rear end. “Bathed together many times. I not look away.”

  Thelia howls. “You’re twisted!”

  We descend into the third bottle, and in a blink it vanishes. I am invincible. I talk about life back in the glass spires of Viteos and everything I say is met with laughter. We discuss the ideal shape of a behind at length. We are closer together than ever in front of the fire, knees touching.

  “I know you sad about hair,” I tell Thelia, finding my hand already lightly brushing her head as I say it. At first she retracts, and I freeze in place, but after a moment she leans into my palm. “You are stunning like this.”

  She glances up at me, suspicious. “You think I’m attractive? A human?”

  “Yes. I like that I can see more of you now.”

  “But you’re the beautiful one.”

  “Not . . . strange?” I have heard the humans talk about us. I know our skin appears like metal, but we are still flesh—merely not as porous. Not as delicate. I have heard them call our hair and eyes wrong, but it is just how we are made: we reflect the gift Magic has given each of us. My parents made me with sky and afternoons, and so that is how I am.

  Thelia reaches up and brushes a lock of hair away from my face. I feel naked. Parsifal is watching us, but his face has closed up and I cannot see what he’s thinking any longer. Something in me hurts.

  I pull my hand back, but Thelia leans toward me, her face inches from mine. She is so close I feel her breath. She is also strange, and it is wonderful.

  “Maybe the strangeness is why I like looking at you,” she says, and her face enraptures me, every line, every shape. She is a warrior full of fire and power.

  She closes her eyes and her face drifts closer. Her lips touch mine. Something inside me explodes.

  Thelia is soft. My hands find her bare arms as her lips mold to mine. She is all around me. I taste her, I smell her—unique and wondrous like this landscape, with its rippling green hills and neverending blue sky.

  Thelia’s lips leave mine and instantly I want her back. When I open my eyes, she looks as surprised as I feel. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Parsifal staring at us, his gaze flat. Something unpleasant lurks behind it.

  “Parsifal,” I say as he stands up and turns his back. He was sitting only inches from us when Thelia’s lips found mine. We did it without thinking at all.

  I am the shit and piss overflowing in the poop garden.

  “The wine’s done anyway,” Parsifal says, picking up his empty glass. “Thanks for bringing this, Sapphire. I’m going to bed.” He walks into his suite and closes the door without another word.

  Thelia stares down at her hands. I push away the remainder of my glass of wine. I am in too deep. These two lovely humans—eventually they will be taken away for cleaning, and then they will be gone. I will never see them again, and this moment will become like a lost dream.

  I stand up. Thelia reaches for my arm but I yank it away. “Sapphire.”

  “I sorry,” I say. “I did not intend to hurt—to get in between—”

  “You didn’t. We’re not—”

  I cannot listen. I will not be absolved. The rushing inside of me is so loud I cannot hear myself think. I kissed a human. If Ellze were to find out . . .

  My career. My friends. My family. Gone.

  I shut the door and seal it.

  Chapter 14

  Sapphire

  “Mahove,” Ellze says brightly when I wake up the next morning on the floor of the room we share with Zylion. My guts ache. “Got a little too free with your humans last night?”

  “Please, be quiet.” My head weighs five times as much as usual. The air is dense, stifling.

  “You are there all the time,” Ellze says as I stand up slowly.

  “It is my job.”

  “Not your all day, every day job.”

  I shove him out of the way as I head to the window, pull it open, and eject the contents of my stomach down the side of the stone castle walls. Tasting that dark red poison was a foolish idea.

  When it is all out of me, I slump to the floor, wiping my face.

  “It is the Magic, you know.” Ellze crouches next to me. “They are so slick with it, you cannot help but be drawn to them. Their pores are filled with Magic, their hair, their mouths. It calls to you. That is our nature.”

  Their mouths. My eyes flick to his gold face. Does he know something? But Ellze spouts on. “You cannot be blamed for finding them so appealing. With the Magic dripping off them like sugar . . .”

  “That must be it,” I find myself saying, if only to end this conversation. Ellze’s voice grates like an inces
sant tapping on my shoulder.

  “Now that you know,” he says, “keep your distance. Perform your duties only. Other things require your attention.”

  I lie back down on the bedroll. He is not the one in command, but he behaves as if he were. “My responsibility is keeping the royals alive,” I say.

  Ellze pulls me to my feet. Everything swims, but I remain upright. “Since the King is so close to the end, the Commander interrogated him once more and in his haze, he let slip that a Prince is still free, with the missing army. Now the Commander wants you to bring the Princess to him. Be grateful I did not tell him you were feeling unwell.”

  The dungeon—my least favorite place in this whole horrid castle. Its condition has only worsened. Commander Valya does not believe expending resources here will benefit us in the long term.

  The air down here is filled with noise. Roaring and howling, punctuated by the Princess’s screams.

  I rush into the dark and find all the prisoners who used to lie on the floor—starving or dead—are now on their feet. Shaking the bars. Screeching in a way not even close to human.

  “Please!” Corene wails. “Melidia, wherever you are, save me from this place!” She’s backed up against the wall. The prisoners in adjacent cells reach through the bars toward her, spitting blood through gaps in their gums where teeth used to be.

  “Finally!” the Princess sobs as I reach her cell door. She rushes to me, dodging an arm coming through the bars to grab at her. “Let me out at once.”

  Once I have tied rope around her wrists, she runs ahead so fast that I have to jerk her back. The prisoners squall and shake as we pass. Their eyes are empty, faces oozing where their mouths opened too wide and the bloodless skin tore like paper.

  “They are dead,” I murmur.

  “You think?” The Princess charges up the stairs.

  I slam the dungeon door and drag her to the Commander’s chambers in the temple, my mind cycling back through everything I witnessed. The prisoners were coated in Magic like everyone else. We left them there, forgot about them, and the worst happened.

  It is the first thing out of my mouth when the Commander opens his door to me. “Commander. The dead have risen.”

  His silver eyes look duller than I remember. Flat, like marbles, with shadows underneath that I have never seen before. He focuses on me and his lips twist down. Glancing around, he says, “Where is Ellze? If some dead are alive again, there will be others.” He pushes past me, not even noticing I have the Princess.

  I do not know what to do with her now, but I am tired of her incessant begging to see her father.

  Inside the King’s room, Corene lunges at his bed. “Dad!”

  The King groans and lifts one arm. She clasps his hand as he gazes upon her, his strained, sagging face morphing into a smile.

  “Sweet daughter.” He reaches forward and strokes her red hair. “What have they done to you?”

  She glances back at me. “I’ve . . . been all right.”

  “Have you heard news?” The King’s eyes are closing. “About Bayled? Or Nul se Lan?”

  The Princess slowly shakes her head. “None.”

  “You must get out of here.” The King looks at me. Until this moment his mind has been elsewhere, disassociated from his body. Now his blue eyes are alert and piercing and I sense he has finally seen me. “This is going to go wrong. It’ll all go wrong and I don’t want you here when it does, daughter.”

  I should quiet him—the last thing I need is for the Princess to panic. But what could be worth more panic than being trapped in a cage with the vicious dead?

  “I don’t know what to do, Dad,” Corene says, her voice breaking with tears.

  “Find Forgren.” The King’s eyes widen for just a moment, the whites streaked with red. “He knows.” With that, he falls back asleep. His rumbling, congested snores fill up the room.

  Corene kneels by the side of his bed and lays her head on his lap. It would be a sorrowful scene if I cared for either of them.

  A war horn tears through the air. I leave the Princess at her father’s side long enough to poke my head out the door. “Was that . . . ?” I ask the soldiers there.

  “The rest of the force,” one says, nodding. “They have arrived.”

  Thelia

  Sapphire doesn’t return that night to sleep on the floor. We’ve ceased to be useful, so they’ve abandoned us. Just like everyone else in my life.

  Parsifal keeps his door closed. I knew he was attracted to me—he’s never hidden that, and I’ve never felt guilty using it. But I didn’t know he he harbored something more than lust for me. I’ve misunderstood.

  Since I have nothing better to do, I start rearranging the room. I have to remember my injuries as I move, but I work up a little sweat after all this time in dungeons with no exercise.

  I’m taking out the dresser drawers and setting them on the floor when the door opens. The cart wheels in. I didn’t realize how hungry I’d gotten, and I rush over.

  It’s empty.

  “Percy!” I shout. The cart backs away, pressing itself up against the door. Parsifal pokes his head out of his room. “Look.” I point at the empty cart where it’s cowering like a frightened dog.

  “It looks positively ashamed.” Parsifal trots in and peers down at it. “I always thought the food just . . . happened. Maybe Sapphire makes it?”

  “And they decided to stop today?”

  He narrows his eyes. “Maybe you shouldn’t have kissed them without asking.”

  I snort. “They were all for it.”

  “Well, you did something to get us punished like this.”

  I whirl on him. “Maybe you did something by bringing wine in the first place. Maybe getting Sapphire so thoroughly brimmed over that they couldn’t walk is a crime in their culture.”

  The cart slides back out of the room and the door closes behind it. Without replying, Parsifal returns to his room in a huff.

  Afternoon comes and goes. I wish I had something to break, someone to fight. Starving—what a way to go out. If this is how I feel after only a day, what’s next? I shake my head. I can’t think about Corene suffering, hiding in the crushing dark, or it’ll be too much for the widening cracks in my soul to stand. A few candlestick-hours later, Parsifal pokes his head through my door again. “Food yet?”

  I throw a pillow at him but completely miss. “What do you think?”

  “Still?” For the first time, worry settles over him. “Maybe they forgot.”

  “Maybe they’re angry.” But that’s not like Sapphire. Or is it? I don’t know them at all. I’ve never seen them upset before. Did I twist things up that badly with a kiss?

  BWOOOOOOHHH! The blow of a war horn shakes the very walls of the castle.

  I rush to the window. Down below, the gates of Four Halls are opening.

  On the other side stands a horde. “Parsifal!” I duck down under the windowsill, just my eyes peering out. “Look.”

  He kneels next to me as the shining silver helmets of the troops pour through the gate. A parade of animals in saddles follows: a lion, a one-headed bear, rows of elephants.

  “What’s wrong with that bear?” Parsifal whispers.

  “It’s a mutant.”

  Then come much bigger creatures—no, monsters—I’ve never seen before. As big as four elephants, they have great square heads like lizards and bare brown flesh.

  I sink to my knees as the elven host pours into the courtyard. It’s so much more overwhelming than I could’ve ever imagined. I feel the size of an ant in the face of that horde. There’s no defeating it. No force of humans could ever hope to win.

  Which means Bayled and Nul se Lan are dead.

  Cold regret slithers through me. My hopes of being Queen die with Bayled.

  I shouldn’t lie to myself, though. It’s about more than my dreams. We were children together. So many of my moments with Corene and Parsifal were also Bayled moments. Horseback rides behind Four Halls. Swimmi
ng at the lake. Sweet, honorable, gullible Bayled . . . what an absolute waste. He didn’t deserve that drunk old King sending him off to die for nothing. Now the Kingdom is over, and there’ll be nothing left to rule when those monsters are finished with us. The lords will surrender, and Parsifal and I will go to the room where everyone else goes eventually, and suffer some horrible fate—if Sapphire doesn’t let us starve first.

  Gray, sunken faces with beady eyes, enormous ears, and sharpened teeth. My head swims. The faces flicker in my mind’s eye—and then fade into Sapphire’s face. Beautiful. Kind. Quiet. Perfect.

  Without their help, we’re definitely going to die.

  My chest is collapsing. Everything hurts. “Thelia,” I hear Parsifal say. “Breathe. You need to breathe.” But I can’t. My lungs convulse so hard with sobs that air can’t get in or out. He reaches for the goblet by my bed, but it’s empty. I curl up in a ball on the floor.

  Parsifal leans over me. “Take deep breaths. Look at me.” I open my eyes again. Parsifal, trying so hard to smile. Here for me, yet again, when the world has shifted upside-down.

  He holds me until I’m able to breathe again, and I close my eyes against the sound of our heartbeats.

  Parsifal

  We can’t keep out the sound. Not even the Magic seal around our window muffles the thousands of voices, nor the thunderous grumbling of the great monsters. Thelia’s still shaking, but she’s breathing. We sit on her bed, leaned up against the pillows.

  Daylight fades into night. Thelia’s eyes close and she slides lower on the bed until her head comes to rest on my chest. Flames kindle under my clothes where she’s touching me. I settle my hands in her soft, short hair, which feels like rabbit fur. I start running my fingers through it.

  “Your nails feel good,” she whispers. “Don’t stop.”

  I’m so hungry, and even more tired, but I won’t ever stop.

  The cart returns in the morning, still empty. It wheels around the middle of the room and Thelia scrambles out of bed, still awkward with her bandages, but not enough to restrain her. “Why?” she roars. The cart backs up against the door.