Stain

by A. G. Howard

  “Yet, fate assured they found one another, in spite of all the bumps and byroads.”

  “I’m so relieved. Elsewise, we wouldn’t have this opportunity to fix our mistakes.”

  Crony’s threaded pulse kicked an extra beat. “Our mistakes?”

  “I’ve been blind for so long, as blind as you are today. Three eyes, yet none of them could see what my son had become, and the destruction he meant to unleash upon the world. You did what I couldn’t do, even though you lied and broke my heart in doing it.”

  Crony’s own heart shriveled at the hurt in Dyadia’s voice. “That be me wrong to right. And I will. Can ye forgive me, when I be gone?”

  Dyadia placed a hand over Crony’s. “I forgive you now. We both know yours was the biggest sacrifice. I understand why you gave the princess what you refused my son. For she was worthy of it.”

  “More than that. There be two kingdoms dependin’ on her livin’, not her dyin’.”

  “Yes,” Dyadia whispered.

  Crony reached up blindly with her free hand and Dyadia bowed close so she could touch her cheek. “Me beloved one . . . I couldn’t save yer Lachrymosa then, but I can bring him back to ye now—to cast his light upon yer windowsills in the eve.” She sipped a painful breath. “It been a burden to bear, the waitin’. . . I be glad it’s almost here.”

  “It was wrong of me, to place the malediction on your head. All these years, unable to close your eyes because of my anger.”

  Crony’s heart smiled again at the kind words. “Nay, I had to be lookin’ anyways . . . so I mightn’t miss the opportunity, so I mightn’t o’erpass the recipient of me resurrective. I knew what I had to be given up to straighten what I turned askew. Keepin’ me eyes open made me vigilant. I can rest now, soon enough.”

  “Yes. I suppose we both can.” Dyadia forced a soft laugh, though sadness blunted the edges.

  “Tell me, what ye think of me wee one for yer kingdom’s boy?”

  Dyadia tugged gently at the few strands of brittle hairs left dangling from Crony’s scalp. “She’s everything his queen should be. Clever, adventurous, indomitable. Bold in her passions, yet tender and kind. She balances his brutality, but only when necessary. She has a way with him . . . our king. He respects her, treasures her, defers to her as if she were an extension of himself. There is no question they will bring prosperity and peace to both kingdoms. There is no question they’re the only ones who could.” Upon saying that, Dyadia caught a breath. She sat up with a start and squeezed Crony’s hand. “Thana has arrived in the arboretum. She’s searching for a place to perch to offer a good view.”

  “The arboretum? What of the false sunlight? Lyra’s skin be so tender.”

  “No longer. Taking Vesper’s sunlit curse upon herself and defeating it made her stronger. She’s no more sensitive-skinned now than any other Nerezethite. By curing him, she cured herself.”

  Crony chortled between gasps. “Just goes to show . . . the trade-off don’t always have to be a bad thing.” She didn’t need to see to know that Dyadia nodded in agreement.

  “Give me your hand, here.” Dyadia guided Crony’s singed fingers to the socket on her forehead. At the moment of contact, Crony could see everything Thana and her sorceress could—sharp and vivid within her mind.

  Spaces in a latticework revealed a grand expanse of meadows, fields, ponds, and lakes outside, gilded with the soft glow of thousands of fireflies adrift on a breeze. A throng of wedding guests and witnesses stretched from the footbridge leading to the iron door’s entrance, to a grove of wildflowers beneath an elm upon a hill in the distance. There waited a lone red fox, seated on his haunches. Crony laughed inside herself, unsurprised he’d worn that form. Luce couldn’t get caught being sentimental, after all.

  The portending crow had landed within the shrine upon a luminary, blocking the starry imprints of light from reaching the ceiling. No one seemed to notice or care. Everyone’s attention stayed fixed upon their newly crowned king and queen as they entered through the latticework archway, holding hands, giving one another glances filled with desire and anticipation.

  They were beautiful: light and dark, side by side, scarred yet lovely, representative of the two heavenly entities that once shared the skies but were torn apart.

  They were both draped in long, elaborate fur-lined silver robes that gathered at the waist. The king’s fur cuffs stopped midway down his hands. A bejeweled belt peered out from his robe—binding a blue jacquard tunic embellished with braids and steel buttons. The tunic’s shade complemented the sodalite-encrusted broadsword strapped at his waist, its tip nearly reaching the toes of his long black boots. It was a family piece, handed down from monarch to monarch in the House of Astraeus. Crony remembered seeing it at convocations, strapped to King Velimer’s waist centuries earlier.

  And then there was Stain in a beaded gown the blue of a spring sky, with billows of glistening web and sparkling white spiders cascading along the skirt and bell sleeves like diamond-studded lace. Living salamanders twined around her feet, their slick skin glimmering like precious gemstones. Her silver hair, thick and lustrous, swept across one shoulder and down to her waist in a long braid interwoven with amethysts and flowers. Her skin was aglow with moonlight and happiness. She looked like a princess at last. Princess Lyra.

  But no, she was a queen, wearing her mother’s diamond crown. That gentle, refined woman whom she never knew, that same mother Crony did her best to stand in for in her own rough, surly way. Her scorched innards clenched tight on the thought.

  “We did it, wee one,” she whispered, then strangled on a half sob. She pulled back from Dyadia’s touch, jerking them both from the scene.

  “Cronatia?” Her companion gripped her fingers. “The blink of dawn and dusk is at hand; why do you pause?”

  “Be that indeed the best time, to make a moment legendary ’nough that no one be doubting its credence?”

  “What did you have in mind?”

  “The kiss. Aye, when they kiss.”

  “To make it belong to the king and queen alone,” Dyadia said, her mind in synch with Crony’s as it once was all those years ago. “Perfect.” She leaned in again, about to press Crony’s fingers back into place.

  Crony hesitated. “Vow to me. The realms can ne’er know the truth of it. That no king and queen alive have the power to affect the sun and moon. That it lie in me alone, through yer son’s moon-callin’ spell. That the prophecy was ne’er about a marriage reuniting the skies, but about a pure and true love reuniting kingdoms.”

  Dyadia sighed. “Of all the things magic can mend, yet it can’t break through narrow-mindedness.”

  “It be taken everyone’s hands to knock down walls and rebuild foundations.”

  “Well, then these two will be the cornerstones. The example.”

  “Aye. So let’s give ’em a fairy-tale endin’ to stand upon. A pedestal, of sorts. One they know nothin’ of. And the people will ne’er again doubt the strength behind solidarity. Be we in agreement?”

  “Yes. I vow it.” Dyadia caught Crony’s hand once more. “I will see you in the heavens, Madame Cronatia Wisteria.”

  “Each and ev’ry night.”

  Dyadia turned Crony’s palm and pressed soft lips to what was left of the charred flesh. She then guided Crony’s fingers to revive the scene. The royal couple appeared again, standing in front of a dais covered in white silk and brimming with periwinkle flowers and ivy that cascaded down the sides. Deep lavender panacea petals, sprinkled atop turquoise moss, covered the floor and stretched all the way out the arched entrance, across a footbridge, and to the iron door.

  On the other end of the dais, facing the bride and groom, stood two holy men—Eldorian and Nerezethite—each wearing vestments adorned by their kingdoms’ prospective sigils.

  The vows had already been spoken, for their left wrists were bound with ceremonial ribbons and thorns, to show the unification of their realms. The panacea rose ring—that Crony had seen within
the bag in the dirt room—already sat upon the queen’s hand. As for Lyra’s part, she had her nose wrinkled while wrestling a metallic-black band into place upon her king’s finger. They began laughing at the struggle, and the love and hope upon their faces gave Crony the strength to call upon the mage’s dark spell, letting it fill her thoughts, letting it chill her blood.

  Lachrymosa’s voice and face were tied within it, for he’d become one with the moon, and when Crony had intercepted that bond, taking his breath and the spell, the moon had fallen, depleted and unable to stand on its own against the sun. Thus, it had stayed hidden beneath the earth where it would be safe. Now Crony would use the spell to bring the moon back to Eldoria where she waited. She would become one with it—release her spirit alongside Lachrymosa’s within—to renew the moon’s strength, yet contain its power. Together, they would help it find its place once more alongside the sun.

  All she needed was the kiss . . .

  As if on cue, the king cupped his queen’s chin, mimed the words “Lady Wife,” then joined their lips in a sweet, passionate embrace as everyone cheered around them.

  Waiting one beat to admire the beauty of their bliss, Crony called up the moon and took her last breath.

  The royal chroniclers would one day record it, filling scrolls with the miraculous event, pages upon pages of descriptions: How, when the raven-eyed king and his silver-haired queen shared their first kiss as husband and wife, the world began to shake and tremble. Nerezethites outside of the arboretum gave accounts of trees, once bowed from the blizzard’s downfall, shaking off clumps of snow and ice and stretching upward as if reaching for the moon as it slid into the reopened seam of the earth—as it magically converted to smoke and clouds, then siphoned through the crack. And just as the moon pulled Nerezeth’s province above ground—the populace, the forest, the castle, the arboretum, the Rigamort and its brumal stags, the hoarfrost goblins—the Ashen Ravine fell into the crack, sliding the opposite direction via its own bubble of magic, encapsulating and combining all the wicked and twisted residues of magic as it went: the thorns, the badlands of the Grim, the shrouds and cadaver brambles, the quag puddles and endless ash. These took form again within the belly of the earth in a new shape—dark and dangerous—before the rip in the earth closed with a magical seal, locking the evil far, far beneath the ground.

  A reversal, the scrolls would say. For thereafter, Nerezeth’s forestland was seated alongside Eldoria’s mountains and hills and valleys, both surrounded by the oceans, as it had been from the very beginning.

  When the dust settled, the sun, moon, and stars shared the sky for one day, with an enchanted rainbow barrier holding their light separate. The sun, warm and beaming over Nerezeth’s forests, lured out the tender-skinned people from their homes and the infirmaries. Protected by the shade, they stood within the softened rays and felt true sunlight for the first time as snow and ice dripped and melted around them. Above Eldoria, the moon and stars held vigil, their glow too tender to feed the honeysuckle. White flakes fell from the sky. Within hours, the fragrant, vine-infested plague had disintegrated beneath blankets of snow that melted away to a nutrient-rich mud. The townspeople cheered, running to-and-fro with buckets, gathering it to use for compost in their neglected gardens and fields.

  The next day, the sun broke at dawn over both kingdoms simultaneously, then set at dusk, and the moon ruled the night. Balance had returned to the skies at the hands of a star-boy and a songbird girl, just as the prophecy foretold. Both kingdoms came together to rejoice and rally around their rulers with pledges of honor and fealty.

  That very first evening, Queen Lyra and King Vesper sat among advisors and council members within the great hall.

  They hadn’t had a moment to themselves since the event—Lyra making arrangements with Prime Minister Albous to send Eldoria’s military and council back to the ivory palace to assure all was well and at peace, and to inform the people that their king and queen would take the two-week journey there to hold open court and meet all their subjects very soon; and Vesper, sending his own military forces to round up the thieves, murderers, and marauders running amuck through the forested province now that the ravine no longer housed them. However, Lyra had given him a list of those she thought worthy of pardon for their part in freeing Crony from Griselda’s imprisonment, and upon consideration, the king found positions for them in his castle conducive to their peculiar and particular talents.

  Lyra and her king had just issued a decree to bring down the walls of the arboretum and free all the wildlife when she saw Queen Nova, Luce, and Dyadia standing outside the hall’s doorway. She nudged her king, who looked up from signing the parchment.

  Perhaps they have news on Crony, she said silently between them. The last time she saw Luce and Dyadia together was only from a distance—when the sun, moon, and stars stretched across the heavens like a mystical trinity. The two had been deep in conversation, but had slipped away before Lyra could break free from her responsibilities to question them.

  Now, with her king in tow, she wove through the crowded candlelit room, tipping her crowned head to people who knelt as they passed.

  Together, they stepped out into the corridor where Queen Nova had already cleared the way for them to have privacy.

  Both Luce and Dyadia bowed at their arrival. Vesper nodded and looked down at his mother.

  Queen Nova rested her palms on her son’s and new daughter-in-law’s shoulders. “You both appear weary. I’ve heard rumors you’ve yet to retire to your chambers together.”

  Vesper grimaced and rubbed the stubble upon his jaw that had darkened considerably over the past few hours. “We’ve been taking turns resting. Every time we attempt to leave together, someone needs one of us to stay.”

  Queen Nova frowned. “You are the king.” She turned to Lyra. “And you the queen. But you are also human. Two days hence from the marriage, and you’ve yet to share your wedding bed? It is time you let your prime ministers and advisors earn their titles. I’ll make myself available for any questions or obstacles until you’re well rested and well fed. Go now to your suite. I had a late supper sent up along with some honey mead. I don’t want to see you again until the morrow . . . well after dawn.” Brooking no argument, she ducked gracefully into the great hall and disappeared among the milling servants and council members.

  Vesper met Lyra’s gaze. She knew that glint within his dark eyes: challenging her to do something daring. Had he a tail, he’d be swishing it, defying her to walk away from such a grand adventure. Her entire body lit up with awareness as he wrapped an arm around her waist, low enough to brush her hip with his fingers.

  “What say you, my lady wife? Shall we retire to our chambers for some well-deserved, long-awaited . . . sleep?”

  He didn’t seem the least bit nervous, but she was enough for both of them. She nodded in silent agreement, all the while wondering if the flush to her skin was apparent to Luce and Dyadia.

  Luce cleared his throat and waved an arm toward the guarded staircase in the distance. “Let us escort you there. My last duty before I retire my position as Queen Lyra’s proverbial chastity belt.”

  Lyra coughed a shocked laugh as they strode toward the stairs.

  “Does this mean,” Vesper asked, drawing Lyra closer so his lean muscles rippled against her side with every step, “that you’ll no longer bark at us should we deem to have private lovelorn declarations when in your presence?”

  Luce scoffed. “My time as chaperone has reached an end. Your mother is a formidable lady. She has royal grandchildren on the mind, and I’m not fool enough to stand in the way of crowned heirs.”

  “Nor am I,” Vesper answered, his voice deep and gruff with conviction.

  Lyra smiled, her nerves slowly melting into something sweet and hungry.

  “Highness.” Dyadia caught Lyra’s attention, moving in beside her. “I have your voice’s essence.” She handed over a thick ceramic jar with a sealed waxed linen top tied in place
with twine. “When you’re ready, simply drink the contents.” She turned her feline eyes toward Vesper. The third eye sat closed within its socket. “I thought perhaps you would like to share the restoration between you, privately, as you’ve been waiting for her song longer than any of us.”

  Vesper smiled down at Lyra. “Waiting to hear it from her lips, yes.”

  They’d reached the stairs that led to Vesper’s turret chamber, now serving as the king and queen suite. The line of guards keeping vigil at the stairway stepped aside, prepared to return to formation upon their queen’s and king’s ascension.

  “So we part ways then, for now.” Luce took a step back.

  Wait, Lyra signed. I’ve seen the looks passing between you two. You’ve obviously seen Crony, to have received the transference potion’s recipe for my voice. Why didn’t she return with you? What aren’t you telling me? Vesper’s hold on her tightened, as if he sensed ill news as much as her. Her eyes stung when Luce and Dyadia tried to maintain their stoic expressions but failed miserably.

  I’m not weak, so stop treating me like I am. Her hands spelled out the words, though they trembled as if to disprove her claim. I can stand strong. But you must tell me, or I’ll forever wonder. I’ll forever seek her in every shadow, in every turn of the moon, in every break of dawn.

  Dyadia spoke. “That is precisely where you should seek her.”

  Luce tossed her a stern frown, but she lifted a hand as if to assure him.

  “Crony loved the moon. The night was a comfort to her. Night and all its creatures. You brought that back, gave her the crickets’ songs and the night-flower’s scent. But you see, she had waited so long for its return, that when the moon passed by, she dared not let it slip away again. It was too beautiful for her to resist. She wrapped herself within your magic that was piecing our world back into place, and let it carry her away. Immortals, we grow weary at times with the normalcy of life, and ache to find new challenges. So that’s what she did, rose to the heavens to be among others of our kind, seeking new dreamscapes. But she wanted you to know how much she loves you, and that she’s looking down on you always.”