Unspoken

by Celia Mcmahon

  I pushed myself to my feet and sniffed. “Everything.”

  When I reached my mother’s chambers, Lulu’s eyes were still haunting me. There was so much blame and hatred in them, as if I'd taken everything from her. I didn’t understand it. The last words she’d said echoed in my head. Then maybe you’re just as selfish as he was.

  “Do you think this is a game?” my mother shrieked. She slammed the door shut, blocking out Pedoma, who had valiantly escorted me there. Her was voice sharp, and it bore down on me like a clash of pure Mirosian steel.

  “I cannot even fathom what was going through your head!” she continued. She pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes. Be careful, Mother, I thought, or you’ll ruin your makeup.

  I swallowed. “What do you mean?”

  I knew the answer.

  Word had spread about the fight between Lulu and me. The only question was, how much had Lulu told her?

  “Do you believe I am a fool, Isabelle?” my mother asked, pacing her chambers in her trademark red wardrobe. She, in her oversized gown, looked like a bull ready to charge. “There are things that I may miss, but I have people to fill in the blanks. That is what they do. And what I do is make sure that my daughter is in line.”

  “I understand,” I said. “Spies, of course.”

  My mother spun on heels, quicker than a rabbit. “I told you. If you must take up a lover, do it discreetly, so as not to embarrass this entire kingdom. The King of the Peeks will not look kindly on his son’s wife consorting with lower castes, Isabelle. This will stop now.”

  I let loose a harsh breath from my nose. Again, with the Peeks’ king. I could not care less what that man thought of me. Little did he know I wouldn’t be anyone’s wife, especially Ashe’s. But gods, my mother would do anything…

  A shiver ran through my body, but I kept my posture tall. No amount of wishing and praying could get me out of this now. My mother knew about Fray and probably wouldn’t listen to the whole truth of it. There wasn’t any going back. Lies were useless.

  My mother drew in a calming breath. “Your father has worked too long and too hard to see the throne crumble due to inadequate bloodlines.” She said each word as if reading it from a manual. “Prince Ashe is here for you, and I cannot remember the last time I saw you two together. I told you. Daydream, take a boy to your bed, but get yourself together at the end of the day, Isabelle.”

  “Like you do?”

  She nodded. “Like I do.”

  “He’s gone anyhow,” I whispered. The words came without my consent, and they sounded truer when I heard them myself. He was not coming back. Lulu may have been right all along. It was over. But not completely.

  An arched eyebrow. “What?”

  I spoke up. “He’s gone, Mother.”

  “Did he get what he wanted from you?”

  I looked away, thinking about the bag stuffed under my bed. “I don’t know.”

  My mother gave a long, heavy exhale and brushed her hands together. “This can all disappear, and I can make it so,” she said, looking off to something I couldn’t see. “This thing will pass. Sometimes as women, we mistake lust for love, and we fall for things that are pretty, but sting like a thorn on a rose. Do you understand?”

  I nodded, understanding her more than I thought I would.

  Pyrus’ words echoed in my head. The funny thing about love is that it gets inside of you and takes over your heart and mind and before you know it, your life is no longer yours, and you are left with nothing but the ashes.

  “I am not ashes,” I whispered.

  “I will marry whomever I please, and you cannot stop me.”

  My mother pulled out of her daze. “Can’t I?”

  The queen crossed the floor in two swooping steps and slapped me across my cheek, knocking the next words from my lips.

  I staggered but caught myself against the doorframe. My skin turned fire hot as tears streamed down my cheek.

  “I will have no more of this rebellion.” My mother rubbed her hand on her gown as if I had left slime upon it. “This ball is nothing but show. You will choose the Peeks’ Prince, and you will marry him and bear us wonderful children. You will be a queen to your people. A good queen. A right queen. But right now, you will obey me. Is that understood?”

  I trembled from toes to fingers and steadied my voice. “Do you love father?” I asked. “After what he did?”

  “Love can hurt in many ways. That’s the way of it.”

  “Love shouldn’t hurt.”

  My mother’s face softened briefly. “Oh, Isabelle, you know nothing.

  It’s not about love. Not in this world.” She looked at me with the ghost of my brother in her eyes. “Not for you. I would rather you dead than be with one of them.”

  One of them.

  “Is that what you thought of Henry?” I thought of the dream, of what Henry had shown me. How much of it was true and how much was merely my imagination?

  “Your father did what he had to. Trust him in all things, Isabelle.”

  “You knew what he’d done…” The words tripped over each other. “How could you live with such a thing?” No matter how badly I wanted to know the truth, some small part of me wanted to believe that my father had acted on his own. That she would never have condoned such a thing to happen to her own son, no matter what he’d done. But the truth was a heavy, dark, damning thing.

  A sudden heat crawled through my belly. She had known, and it was breaking me apart.

  My mother frowned. “Let this be a lesson to you, Isabelle.”

  A lesson? I stared down at my fingers as they cupped the emerald on my necklace. The shock and sadness crashed through me, destroying me. “How could you?”

  My mother strode to her desk, silent as the dead. She didn’t need to say anything. This would change nothing in my family’s world; this made everything so much clearer. The guilt of leaving them to the killer Gwylis no longer bit at me. Let her fight them off. I would not be here to see it happen.

  There was a knock on her chamber doors. A single guard entered, bowing his head and standing stiffly to the right of the door. Another came, and then another. They wore shining, black, boiled leather with the golden bear of Mirosa on their chests. They all wore looks that only a lifetime of training could give. The blood in my veins turned to ice.

  These weren’t palace guards. They were the King’s Guard.

  And they were lining up, surrounding me like a fortress.

  I manage a panicked breath.

  My head became light. I placed one hand on my mother’s desk to steady myself. He came and stopped on the threshold dressed in piled furs, a grotesque scar traversing cheek to forehead.

  My father. The King of Mirosa.

  Chapter 30

  Three years. It’d been three years since I’d last seen my father. The day he left was as forgettable as dinner was the night before. I considered him a part of my life as much as I considered a tick an evening-wear accessory. But he still scared me.

  “Daughter.” He strode toward me, so large a man that he took up most of the space in the room, and the places he didn’t inhabit were thick as oatmeal, as if the all the air had been drawn out.

  “Father,” I breathed, forcing myself to bend slightly. It took all my strength not to fall forward.

  My father, the king, looked me over. When he had left, I had just been arriving into womanhood. I was taller now, fuller in the places where his eyes rested. The place where my heart threatened to tear from my very skin.

  “Beautiful,” he said, pulling me into his arms. He smelled as thick as the air that followed him. Mixed with body odor came the distinct smell of animals. Wolf. Hare. Fox. Elk. Nausea burned in my stomach. Why was he back now? What could have warranted this?

  At last, we pulled apart. My father took hold of both of my wrists and tightened until it hurt. “I’m told that you’ve been quite the trouble,” he said, mocking amusement in his voice.

  I couldn’
t say anything. My tongue was leaden.

  “Well,” he said, shrugging off his furs. They fell to the ground in a heap. My mother called for a servant to retrieve them. She also requested ale. Lots and lots of it.

  “You look surprised,” my father said. “You don’t suppose I’d miss your ball, do you?” When I didn’t reply, he added, “I wouldn’t dream of it. Besides, I’d like to see the face of the dirty servant who took my daughter’s virtue.”

  I remained standing in the center of the room as a servant entered and placed a tray of cups and ale upon the desk. The king downed one cup. Two. Three before wiping the excess from his beard and kissing my mother on her cheek. He dropped down into the armchair across the room and crossed his legs, another full cup in his hand.

  “Smile,” he stated plainly. I looked at my mother, who nodded to me. I tried. I did. But I couldn’t get myself to raise even the idea of one, and suddenly I was screaming in my mind. “Smile,” he said again, rising to his feet. He grabbed my shoulders with both hands and shook me so hard that my teeth rattled. “Smile like a good daughter and a good princess. Yes?”

  No. He tightened his hold so there was little means of escape. “Yes.”

  I looked deep into his eyes, my eyes, into the same darkness as Abiyaya’s premonitions. “I hate you,” I told him in a whisper, and then louder. “I hate you.”

  “You do not,” he replied, laughing as if I were the stupidest girl alive. “Because I can will anyone into anything. You love me because I say you do.” A wicked gloom darkened his eyes. “But my love is conditional.”

  “Upon what?”

  “Whether you obey me.” He looked to my mother. “I have heard the boy has fled. I will have him killed if he returns. I could find him now and kill him, but I am tired. Does that appease you, daughter? It is my gift to you.”

  I swallowed hard. The floor had opened up, and I was plummeting.

  “Which son do you favor?” asked my father, facing me. “Which do you love?”

  “What do you know of love? You’re nothing but a drunkard and a liar.”

  He pressed back a smile. “I know more than my whore of a daughter.”

  Sour bile rose into my throat, and I swallowed it down. It laid heavy in my belly, weighing down my entire body and filling it with white heat, as if I’d swallowed a star.

  “You think you know it all, don’t you?” he continued. “Life is not fair and never will be. I know you, daughter. I know you’ve looked down on your people with the same eyes as I have.” He looked at me with righteous pity. “Do you know what the Gwylis did to your grandfather? They tore out his heart and hung him on a tree for all to see. And they wouldn’t give him up for a proper funeral. He deserved an honorable death. For all I know, he is still hanging there to this day.” A hint of sadness passed over him, and for a second he almost seemed human. “As much as you think they have hearts as you and I do, I will tell you that they do not. They cannot feel. They cannot love. They do not care. I regret not what I did, and I’d do a million times over to protect my kingdom.”

  “She favors Prince Ashe.” My mother’s voice was gentle like a breeze, giving me no time to take in my father’s words.

  My father’s head cocked. “You do?” he asked, raising his eyebrows and grinning ear to ear. “How wonderful.” He drew me close and brushed his lips to my ear. “You are my dear girl. My strong, willful girl. I do promise you the world. I will give it to you. It will be yours for the taking. One day, you will be the queen of it.”

  I shut my eyes. My father liked to be in control, but I could not afford that to happen now.

  “One day I will rule, and I will make sure your grave is filled with sand.” I opened my eyes and spotted my mother looking back at me, horrified.

  My father laughed, his breath hot where he pressed his mouth against my ear. “Until then,” he said softly. I felt a tug at my scalp, and suddenly he was holding an inch of hair in his left hand cut by the dagger in his right. He stepped away from me, tossing it into the air where it fell at my feet. Black threads floated down like feathers and then, a brilliant smile. “I’ve killed things less threatening. This is the only the beginning.”

  I wavered between collapse and strength. My father. The king. The look of triumph in his eyes told me that I had lost.

  Chapter 31

  My vision shifted in and out of focus.

  Watching my reflection in the washroom mirror, I wiped tears from the cheek where a great welt was forming. A moment later, Pedoma entered. Upon seeing my state, she fetched a cold washcloth and led me to my bed.

  “What am I supposed to do?” I said. I drew a harsh breath out of my nose. Every hope I had had been squashed the moment my father appeared before me. I knew then, that he was my weakness. With him here, I felt so small, my entire world dismantled “I don’t wish to marry Ashe. I don’t wish to marry at all!”

  Pedoma put an arm around my shoulders, pulling me close against the onslaught of tears. “You do what your heart tells you to do.”

  “The heart isn’t so reliable.”

  “Even though that is true, it is more reliable than the words of some people.”

  Dread curled within my gut at thoughts of the upcoming ball.

  If Fray came back, my father would kill him.

  “I have made a grave mistake,” I breathed. I swallowed and wiped away the tears. “I have hurt my family. Henry always did what he was told. He would listen if my parents told him to marry someone.”

  “He was going to,” Pedoma replied.

  I pulled away. “What?”

  She nodded. “Yes, a nice girl from Essex, the daughter of a lord and great friend to your father.”

  I turned away in disbelief. “Did he love her?”

  “Very much.”

  I shook my head. “Why didn’t he tell me?”

  She didn’t answer right away. She brushed the knots from my hair with her fingers. “He was going to war. Not many people knew. He wasn’t going to announce it until he returned formally.”

  “What became of her?”

  Pedoma looked away, and her mouth pulled tight. “She died from a fall from the highest tower of her estate.”

  My breath hitched in my throat.

  “Over Henry?”

  Pebbles nodded.

  I fell limp and almost collapsed from the bed. “Why are you telling me this now?”

  “Because you’re old enough now to know some truths that would have hurt you when you were younger.”

  “My father killed him.”

  Pedoma shook her head. “Izzy, I don’t think…”

  “I think he knew what my father did, and he tried to make it right.” I couldn’t get my father’s face out of my head. It’s his fault. It’s his fault. His voice…his words.

  Pedoma cut in again. “I don’t think—”

  “He did.” The words were final.

  She inched away from me so that she could face me and placed a warm hand to the welt on my cheek. I tried so hard not to break down and shatter in her hands. I felt so broken everywhere that it was difficult to discern her reaction.

  She didn’t give one. She took my chin and tipped it up.

  “Marry this Prince Ashe. I trust things will be all right.”

  I stared disbelievingly at my maid, but a

  knock on my door disrupted my thoughts. The door opened to a young maid. “Your mother has sent your attire for tomorrow night, my lady,” she said. Before I could respond, four more maids in their white and gray uniforms strolled in. They carried multiple pairs of shoes, jewelry, perfumes, and one very massive elegant dress. I touched the fabric. It seemed so long ago that I had gone to see Wargrave and made the deal for the tooth, and an eternity since that arrow had shot right through my shoulder and changed everything.

  “Tomorrow,” I breathed. “Tomorrow.”

  “Don’t worry,” said Pedoma before leaving me. “Everything will work out the way it is supposed to.”

&
nbsp; I nodded dutifully. I felt the worry lifted at her words, if only for a little while.

  “Izzy?”

  The voice came from the open door. Ashe stepped in, standing just beyond the threshold. Pedoma took her leave, as did the other maids, and before long I was alone with the prince in a silence that stretched on forever.

  “Get out,” I finally said, turning my back to him.

  “Izzy, please speak to me. This wasn’t up to me. It wasn’t. We’re both pawns to our parents, and you know it.”

  I folded my arms across my chest, breathing in and out slowly, thwarting tears the best I could. I couldn’t look at him. If I did, I’d see my future. Sitting beside him on our thrones. Lying next to him in my bed.

  I didn’t love him. I didn’t love him, and he knew it.

  “Look. I’m not even sure how I am going to handle you, but if it’s between those boys and me out there, then I’d fight for you. At least we know each other, Izzy. At least we have a foundation to build on. Even if you don’t want to build on it, even if I don’t, we can make it work.”

  “The devil you know,” I said under my breath. I blinked back tears as Ashe pinched the bridge of his nose. I had been too harsh. He didn’t deserve it. I turned to face him, keeping almost the entire room between us. “Do you love me?”

  Ashe leaned against the doorframe, his shoulders slumped over, something tearing into the always kind expression on his face. He furrowed his brow, pursed his lips, and went to speak, but decided against it. This silence was like a siren.

  I asked again because I had to know. I had to.

  I spoke softly, “Do you love me, Ashe?”

  He took a deep breath and blinked, refocusing his vision. “Maybe…someday I could. And you?”

  “Maybe someday.”

  Ashe kept his eyes downcast as he turned to leave. “I’ll do the best I can,” he said over his shoulder. I could hear the tremors in his voice. “For you. I’ll do my best.”

  And then he went. When the door shut, I dropped to my knees. I couldn’t see past the tears in my eyes, but I reached out to the dress draped over my vanity and tore it down onto the floor.