by Cait Spivey
“Sempra, get her legs,” Moira said. As she and Kanika hefted Fiona, she said to the remaining witches, “Observe and repair now, as quickly as you can.”
Kanika, Moira, and Sempra carried their leader back to her room by the secret way. There would be panic if the Citadel saw her. Fiona was harsh, but precious to those who served her in Thiymen clan; for many, she had been the first to treat their skills as a noble calling instead of a curse. It was sometimes difficult to hold on to the high purpose the clan served when humans flinched at the sight, or even at the mention, of a Thiymen witch. To be treated in such a way, after everything a Thiymen witch suffered for the sake of human souls. . . . Kanika threw a glance back down the path, the hateful gate to the world under the mountain as clear in her mind as if she was still standing in front of it.
She remembered distinctly her first visit. It had been on her first night in the Citadel. Fiona had come to her in the middle of the night, coaxed her out of bed, and brought her down into the belly of the mountains. Nine-year-old Kanika had wept to look at it. It was blacker than her own skin, scored with great slashes cut deep into the rock. There were places where it buckled, and there appeared to be the impressions of hands pushing through; in some spots, screaming faces could be discerned. She had tried to look away, but Fiona had seized her small hand.
“Look at it, Asenath. Look, and understand. This is our great charge. This is the boundary between life and death, and we must keep the two from merging. No one else in Arido can do this, and so we must; though it will take our lives, we must protect Arido from evil,” she said. “Never forget this moment.”
Kanika had looked at the barrier for what seemed like an age before finally turning and burying her face in Fiona’s robes, weeping uncontrollably. Fiona had led her silently back to bed, the way she had done with every new Thiymen witch.
“Kanika . . .” Fiona breathed.
“Nearly there, Fiona-lami,” Kanika said, smiling at her.
The three of them laid Fiona in her bed and brought herbal teas for her, which she drank silently. Her hands shook and her eyelids fluttered as she struggled to maintain consciousness. Kanika reached out to help her hold the cup, but Fiona waved her assistance away. She set the cup down and leaned back against her headboard, eyes closed. The three witches waited a long while for her to speak, watching anxiously. They burned with curiosity. Kanika folded her hands over her chest, sitting in her usual chair by Fiona’s desk, and meditated. Moira tapped her foot, and Sempra paced.
Fiona stirred.
The three witches flew to her bedside and Fiona sat up, looking at them. Her eyes were glazed over, and her brows knit together.
“It sucks at my soul,” she said quietly.
“Like crossing the threshold?” Sempra asked.
Fiona paused. “It is the thing that tries to claim us as we pass.”
The words settled heavily in the air as the witches took them in. Crossing the threshold between life and death was dangerous for many reasons, chief among them being the possibility of losing one’s soul in the passing and being trapped among the dead. There was always something tugging at a witch’s soul during a crossing; it was unnatural to be a whole soul and body in the world of the dead. While they had always known and understood this danger, they assumed it was a natural law; they had certainly never thought it was being done by a conscious thing.
Kanika’s mind raced through the millennium of history she had committed to memory during her youth, the hundreds of years she had lived. If such a force existed, surely some witch had written about it before. But she knew there was no such record. If it was true that there was a thing under the mountain which stole the souls of crossing witches, it would be widespread knowledge. Kanika trusted that Fiona was right, though; so the question was whether this thing was new, or whether it was ancient. She glanced at Fiona’s stuffed bookshelves, tucked into a corner of the room, and remembered Moira’s words in the cavern. Fiona had never allowed Kanika to read through her papers, which had never seemed strange before. But that there should be no record of something strong enough, and old enough, to threaten witches’ passings . . . it seemed too great an omission. If there were records of it, Kanika was sure they’d be among Fiona’s private library. Unease prickled along Kanika’s neck—she was the Memory. It was her responsibility to know the history of the clan; how could she do that if Fiona kept information from her?
There was no one to ask, either. The previous Memory of the Clan was dead, and if Fiona was keeping secrets already, she’d hardly divulge them if Kanika only asked. Perhaps . . . the Dragon Queen. She was as old as Fiona, as powerful in her own way.
Fiona slid out of her bed, brushing past the dumbfounded witches and drawing Kanika’s attention. She went to a thin cabinet by her bookshelf and pulled out a decanter filled with a dark red tonic. She poured a small glass for herself and raised it to her black lips, throwing it back all at once.
“It senses our current weakness,” she said. “It knows our disadvantage and positions itself to strike. It has been imprisoned a long time.”
“It spoke to you?” Kanika asked.
“Yes,” Fiona said after a pause. Kanika raised an eyebrow but didn’t press the issue.
“What can we do?” Moira said.
Fiona didn’t answer. She stood with her back to them, as immovable as the stone of her walls. Kanika watched her carefully, wondering what she was thinking, what knowledge she had that she would not share with them yet.
“The Gate must be our focus,” she said. “Crossings are forbidden, for now. Every witch is to make strengthening the barrier her priority. Make it known.”
Moira and Sempra jumped to their feet. They kissed their fists and pressed their flat palms to their hearts, then left the room to spread the mandate.
“Fiona . . .” Kanika began.
“This is all we can do now anyway,” Fiona said. “They know it is dangerous, and that is enough. There’s no need to cause a panic.”
“Thiymen does not panic,” Kanika said with a wry smile. “No witch panics.”
Fiona turned and walked back to her bed, squeezing Kanika’s shoulder as she passed. She took off her heavy black robe, and, wearing only her thin black shift, crept back under the silky bed coverings and closed her eyes. She looked impossibly frail, now that her black eyes were closed. Looking down at her, Kanika suddenly saw an old, weary woman. Moved, she reached for Fiona’s hand.
“Make the record, and send a copy to my sisters,” the youngest of the Kavanaghs said.
The door shut behind Kanika Asenath, and immediately afterward, Fiona felt the charge in the air. She did not open her eyes, too weary even to lift the thin lids. The dragon blood always took longer to restore her the longer it had been absent from Silas’s veins. Let the creature think she was rude; better that than she should think she was weak.
“You don’t fool me, child,” said the creature.
Fiona felt the weight as it sat on the edge of the bed, and did not resist when it gathered her up in her arms. The creature’s wolf-fur itched Fiona’s face, and she could not tell if it was a dead pelt or if the creature had only partially transformed—it definitely had a woman’s arms. In the end, it didn’t matter; Fiona curled into the warmth and sobbed as she had not done since she was a child. Six hundred years of not weeping spilled out of her.
“It gives me no joy to see you suffer,” said the wolf.
“I do not suffer, to do my duty to you cannot be suffering,” Fiona replied.
“Your duty to me,” the wolf repeated. “You say you do your duty, and yet you told them.”
A fang’s edge in the wolf’s voice. “No,” Fiona breathed. “Not truly. But I need. . . . Something must be done. I’m no longer strong enough.”
“I know, child; that’s why I’m here now,” the wolf said. She kissed Fiona’s head and laid her down again. The weight and warmth of her bedding was drawn up once more over her shoulders. “Yet, swear again t
o me . . . swear you will let none speak with it.”
“I swear,” Fiona said. “Of course.”
The wolf was silent, and Fiona wondered if she had gone. She was so tired.
“What did it say this time?” the wolf asked, in a whisper so small Fiona thought it might have been in her head.
She took a shuddering breath. “All it did was scream.”
Another long pause, and then the pressure of a hand on her forehead. “Rest,” said the wolf, and Fiona slept.
Chapter Four
The dawn was pale when Evadine woke, but she didn’t need much light to appreciate the woman next to her. She knew every line of Guerline’s body, knew her every sound; she had dedicated herself to the study and adoration of Guerline, her own gentle princess. Eva rested her cheek against the tight curls on Guerline’s head, and while she watched the sun rise through a tall window, she reveled in the weight of that head sleeping soundly against her chest.
Two months had passed since the deaths of Alcander and his parents. Despite Guerline’s many entreaties, Evadine had yet to resume sleeping in her own room. How could she, when Guerline continued to wake screaming in the night? She had vowed to protect Guerline, even from the phantoms in her own head, however she could.
Oh, but it was such a sweet torture to share Lina’s bed so chastely. There were so many innocent moments that took Eva’s breath away while she lay awake, vigilant for signs of distress from Guerline. Guerline would roll toward her, and her hand would brush Eva’s stomach; she would bend her knee just so that it began to nudge Eva’s legs apart. Her lips would find a way to press themselves to Eva’s chest, and it would be all Eva could do not to wake Guerline with kisses. A beautiful conspiracy had begun to form in Eva’s mind, that these moments were not as innocent as she’d thought, that Guerline was sometimes contriving to touch her from the safety of sleep. The thought thrilled and frustrated her.
Her hand floated up and cupped Guerline’s cheek, as it so often did. Eva would have sworn, before the Hevya deaths, that Guerline was in love with her. But their greatest impediments, Guerline’s father and brother, were two months in the grave, and still they languished in a mire of unspoken words.
Eva sighed. New impediments had presented themselves since the Hevya deaths. Guerline’s nightmares left her with little energy, though they were becoming less frequent; and what energy she did accrue seemed quickly claimed by the First and Second Families, those chiefest of nobles who thought they had such claims on Guerline’s time. They never would have presumed in such a way with Johan, sending their heralds day in and day out, demanding audiences before their new empress was even crowned. It was madness, and more, it was rude. Eva took great pleasure in sending them away, especially since Guerline had appointed her Chief Adviser.
“I’d rather be your consort, though,” Eva whispered into Guerline’s hair.
It wasn’t long before the sun blazed through the room. Tomorrow was High Summer’s Day, the longest day of the year; an auspicious day for Guerline’s coronation, and the reminders of other new impediments to their relationship. Though Guerline would be empress and no longer subject to her father’s whims, she would have the responsibility of keeping peace, or establishing it . . . perhaps through a marriage with one of their sovereign neighbors. At least this time, Guerline’s husband or wife would come here, to Del, and Eva would not lose her—but that hardly took the sting out of the knowledge that a marriage between Guerline and Eva was, to say the least, politically unwise.
Eva’s appointment to Chief Adviser last week had caused a surprising amount of consternation among the First Families. Suddenly, all that mattered was her low birth, that she was the daughter of an ambitious marsh merchant from the peninsula waterways to the south. Her father, whose face she could no longer recall, had gotten over his head in some deal with the imperial household. Eva, then very young, had been given in payment as a companion to the toddler princess.
Despite the method of Eva’s placement in the household—a practice outlawed not two years later—she and Guerline had been inseparable ever since. Eva slipped an arm around the still sleeping Guerline’s shoulders and held her tight. Guerline was Eva’s family, her only love, no matter what else may happen. For all her unsatisfied desires, Eva’s greatest wish was to stay with Guerline always.
Guerline had said as much in response to the Families criticizing her choice. “The Chief Adviser’s function,” she had said, “is to be my right hand, my champion and my guide, to speak with my voice when I’m unable. Who among you could I trust more for this than my best friend of fifteen years?”
Eva had struggled so hard not to laugh at their faces, and she and Guerline had retreated from the luncheon where the announcement was made as quickly as possible. That had been the way of things the past two months—Guerline would marshal herself for perhaps half a day’s worth of politicking, and then she would need to withdraw. Eva sighed again into Guerline’s hair, her ever-present anxieties rising like storm clouds on a bright horizon.
Guerline had always had a kind of quiet strength, though Eva was typically the only one to see it, and perhaps Theodor Warren, since he matched Lina much in temperament. When Eva had first heard of Alcander’s death, and realized Guerline would ascend, it was this strength that had immediately formed a vision in her mind of Guerline, soft and beautiful upon a throne, loved like Gentle Fontaine, second empress of Arido, who was still remembered by some as though she were their doting grandmother.
But Fontaine had ruled only ten years. True, this was because she was old when she came to the throne—but history still stood and showed that the Aridan people favored rulers who projected strength. Eva, though she loved Guerline, was not sure her friend was up to the task of leading an empire still pervaded by ancient tribe loyalties, made worse by the witch-lords at the borders.
Eva scowled. The witch-lords . . .
“So bright,” Guerline muttered, her voice heavy with sleep.
Eva smiled, her worries forgotten. “Harken ye, the first lady of Arido stirs. We may all now rise from our beds.”
Guerline lifted herself up on her elbow enough to squint at Eva, a smirk on her large lips. Her cheek was pressed with indents from the folds of Eva’s nightdress, her hair was smushed into several conflicting directions, and her eyes were puffy and shadowed; but none of that changed Eva’s opinion that Guerline was the most beautiful woman in Arido. Feeling brave, she slid down from her half-sitting position and rested her head on Guerline’s thick arm.
“Now it is my turn to sleep,” she said, closing her eyes.
“Eva, don’t tell me you . . . have you slept at all these two months?” Lina asked, her voice serious.
Eva opened her eyes, and saw Guerline looking down at her with new alertness and concern. She smiled and said, “The more sleep you get, the more rested I feel.”
“You must take care of yourself,” Lina said, her eyes drifting the length of Eva’s body. Eva’s heart raced. Lina continued, “You ought to sleep in your own bed, for one thing.”
Eva laughed. “Oh no, I rest far better at your side.”
Guerline didn’t lose the serious look on her face, her brows pulled up into an expression of concern that frustrated Eva. How could Guerline look at her like that, when she herself was struggling to sleep through the night, when she had such shadows under her eyes? Firm words rose on her tongue, telling Guerline to mind her own health before she showed concern for others. Eva reached up and put her hand on Guerline’s cheek, intending to deliver those words with Lina’s full attention—but at Eva’s touch, Lina gasped just enough to part her lips, and Eva found herself distracted.
She looked from Guerline’s lips to her eyes, saw them round and bright. Guerline would never initiate, Eva knew that.
She moved her hand to the back of Guerline’s head and pulled while simultaneously arching herself up. Their lips met, and it seemed as if time stopped. Eva shut her eyes, content to stay there as long as t
he universe allowed it. She ventured only to open her mouth against Guerline’s already parted lips, but then Guerline’s hand was on her back and pressing their bodies together, and Eva kissed her harder. Her body seemed to almost ripple against Guerline’s, flexing from head to toe again and again in an attempt to get as close as possible. Their chemises rode up and their bare legs intertwined. Guerline returned the growing eagerness of Eva’s kisses and they clutched at each other, at the fine thin fabric that tangled around them. Heat flowered deep in Eva, and she felt the same heat from Guerline when she slipped her leg high between Guerline’s legs.
It was that discovery that finally made Eva gasp and break the kiss. She and Guerline stared at each other, faces dark, eyes shining, each of them panting. Guerline had ended up on her back, slightly propped by the abundance of pillows, and Eva lay half on top of her with that one leg gradually spreading Guerline’s. Finally, they broke the stare and looked around, each of them taking in this scene. Eva licked her swelling lips. Had Guerline imagined this as often as she had?
Guerline looked up at Eva in what could have been wonder, a smile tugging at the corners of her mouth, and Eva grinned. She kissed Guerline again, gentle and brief this time.
“I love you,” Eva said. “I’ve said it a thousand times, I know, but this time . . .”
“I’m in love with you,” Lina said, nodding ever so slightly. Her smile widened, and she tilted her chin up. Eva kissed her, giddiness bubbling in her chest.
When they broke apart, Guerline glanced to the window. There was no denying now; the sun was up, and it was full day. As Eva stared into the bright yellow light, Guerline hooked a hand around the back of her neck and pulled her down, slightly to the side, and started to kiss her neck. Eva closed her eyes and hummed with pleasure.
“How much time do we have?” Guerline asked between kisses.
