Embers

by Ronie Kendig

  “No.” Thiel stood abruptly when she saw the Nivar crest. “I can’t wear that.” It would be a presumption. Audacious to presume she could return and resume her place as his daughter.

  “But, miss—it’s yers. From when ye were a lass. I only put it on a ribbon until the leather can be—”

  “It’s too soon to determine whether King Thurig will restore me.”

  The girl opened her mouth.

  “I thank ye, Tarien.” Thiel stood, a little wobbly in the heeled shoes borrowed from her mother and a size too big. She walked toward the door, and stumbled. “Oh, these won’t do. I’ll fall and then where’s the hope he’ll accept me?”

  A strong rap came at the door.

  Thiel considered kicking off the shoes and going barefoot, but wouldn’t that be the riot if she showed up barefoot. What an insult!

  “Here, miss,” Tarien rushed to a wardrobe, opened the doors, and tugged out something. She turned. Gorgeous embroidered slippers. “If they’re too big, as least ye won’t fall.”

  Another strong thud.

  She tried them, found them still too large, but some tissue stuffed into them worked. Straightened, she smoothed her dress. Took a slow breath and nodded.

  She opened the door and froze.

  The man before her stood head-and-shoulders above her. His hair was tied back in a tight queue. His cloak was rich and adorned with the Nivar crest. She flashed him a look. “I—” Then saw in his eyes. “Osmon?”

  “Sister.” His eyes were as wide as hers, she was sure. He offered a hand and a small smile.

  “Little brother,” she breathed a laugh. “You were shorter than me . . .”

  His expression hardened. “People change in four years.” The edge to his voice served as warning for how this interview with their father might go.

  Tentatively, she placed her hand in his. “I thank ye for the escort.”

  Stony featured, he tucked her hand into the crook of his arm and walked her down the hall. Nerves made her anxious to offer apologies, but with each step, the realization of what would happen in the solar weighed on her. He guided her to the passage on the right. As they rounded the corner, firelight from the solar danced across the paintings of their forebears and lands.

  A few steps before the door, Thiel stopped. “Wait,” she whispered.

  Osmon frowned at her.

  Hand on her stomach again, Thiel closed her eyes. This just wasn’t about her future, whether she’d have a home again. This was about Haegan. His identity. His life.

  45

  “Afraid?”

  Thiel gave a slight smile, her nerves jangled.

  With a long look, Osmon moved ahead of her. “Ye should be.” He slipped into the solar. “Good eve, Father.”

  “Yer sister—”

  “Is in the hall. Afraid to enter.”

  Thiel squeezed her eyes, defeated. Angry, she forced herself to muster the courage Haegan said she had. She stepped over the threshold, half expecting the air to vacate her lungs. The fire danced and popped in the enormous pit to the right. Her father had donned his official coat and long cloak, as well as his plain gold circlet. Beside him stood Tili, who winked at her. And to his right . . . Relig. The dark, brooding brother who had women swooning and tavern owners barring doors. At least, that was almost five years ago. He had aged. But had he grown up?

  “She’s the image of ye,” Relig said to their mother, who sat in her cushioned chair, perfectly poised.

  Setting a glass of some dark liquid on the table before him, her father motioned to the servant. “Close the doors. No one enters.”

  The servant bowed and left. At the thud of the doors being secured, it was hard not to feel trapped. Suffocated. But Thiel pushed her gaze back to their father.

  “Ye have much to answer for, Kiethiel.”

  She lowered her gaze. “Yes, Father.”

  “Ye don’t have the right to call him that after abandoning our family—”

  “Bind yer tongue, Osmon!” Father snapped.

  Nostrils flared, Osmon flopped into the chair like a petulant lad. He would be but fifteen, yet he looked a man.

  Chest rising and falling unevenly, their father let out a breath. “I canna’ pretend there is no damage from ye running off. There is.”

  Thiel held her hands, afraid he’d see them trembling. “I understand.”

  “Do ye?”

  After a long glance to him, her brothers, and their mother, Thiel nodded. “I do, much more than when I left.”

  “And how do ye explain yer leaving?”

  “I did it to protect ye, our family, and the Nivar clan from the shame forced upon it, upon me.” She swallowed, refusing to remember.

  Her father lunged forward, startling her. “But that was my job, Kiethiel.” A ferocity spiraled through his ruddy face. He motioned to her brothers. “Their job. To protect those beneath this roof!”

  “Yes,” she said firmly. “But the shame persisted, even when the blood price was extracted. When the people saw me, they saw not the daughter of Thurig the Formidable. They saw the daughter raped and held hostage for a ransom. They saw—”

  “Our failings.” Her father’s voice cracked.

  Thiel yanked her gaze to the thick rug. “Ye did not fail. It was me, Father. I brought shame. I had to leave—”

  “And in leaving, ye made it impossible for me to protect ye.”

  She hadn’t thought of it like that. Did her brothers, too, feel this way? Slighted by her attempt to protect them? “I beg your mercy—”

  “The people lost confidence in House Nivar for a while,” Relig said, his voice gravelly, like rocks tumbling against one another. “One house after another tried to overthrow our father in the year after ye left.”

  Thiel started. Looked at their father, whose face went like stone.

  “Only in the last two years have they accepted that, while ye had fled, our father was still as strong and powerful as ever.” Relig tossed back a glass of wine.

  “Father . . . I beg your mercy!” She shook her head. “I had no idea—”

  “Aye, mayhap,” he said, his voice quieting, “But ye did know ye brought Haegan Celahar under my roof, did ye not?”

  A queasy feeling roiled through her stomach, threatening to toss bile up her throat. She could not lie. Neither would she have. “Aye, I knew.”

  “And ye brought him here, knowing his father is the Fire King. The man who would as soon burn this house down as look at us!”

  “No!” Thiel moved forward a step. “No, I brought him here because Haegan needed help. He was badly injured. When Chima showed up and Gwogh—”

  “Gwogh.” Her mother was on her feet, her face pale.

  She met her mother’s gaze but plowed ahead. “Haegan needs help, and if we are in a place to give, is it not only our duty but our honor to help those in need? Is that not what ye taught me as a girl?”

  Her father growled. “Don’t ye go lecturing me. That boy—”

  “That boy has been thrown into impossible circumstances. Given no choice in what happened to him. Since I met him, he has fought for one thing—to reach the Great Falls and save his sister.” She flashed her gaze around to the others. “Would not each of ye do the same for me? Did ye not just tell me, Tili, that ye searched for me? Did ye not hunt down Filcher and extract a blood price? Would ye not have gone to the ends of Primer to do such?”

  Their father’s eyes went wide. His mouth hung open.

  Watching her, Tili smiled and leaned toward their father. “Did I not warn ye she managed to find more fire?”

  She tried to laugh, but there was too much pain, too much exhaustion to endure a longer interrogation. “I beg your mercy, Father. For the shame. For my departure. For everything ye have endured because I did what I believed best. But I beg on your honor, please don’t send me away—or Haegan. He was dead.” Tears blurred her vision, but she blinked them away. “He was dead and we had to bring him back.” Her chin trembled with
the memories, the fright. “When Gwogh said to come here, I argued. Because I knew how fierce your anger could be. I knew ye would not grant me mercy. But on my life—I beg ye to grant it to Haegan. He is innocent and deserves neither your censure nor your anger because of an old wound.”

  He stared at her, his expression unreadable beneath the graying beard. When had he gone gray?

  “Please.” This time, a tear slipped free. “If ye must cast me out, then . . .” She shuddered at the thought. “I accept it, but please—will ye withhold that anger until Haegan is recovered? Please.”

  Three large strides carried him to her. He swept her up in his large, thick arms and crushed her against his chest. “Oh, my sweet lass!”

  A sob, unexpected and its existence unknown, exploded through her. “Mercy, Father. Mercy.” She cried into the stiff, scratchy fabric of his coat.

  His hand was against her head. “My lass.” He planted a noisy kiss against her ear. Then pulled her back. Held her shoulders as one of his large hands cupped her face. “Ye are my blood and that will no’ change. Ever.” He pressed a kiss to her forehead, a tear glistening in his beard. “I am glad yer home. Truly.” Again, he crushed her to him. “Ye willna leave again. Promise me that.”

  “I have no desire to leave, Father.”

  46

  Weightlessness. Emptiness. Haegan hovered in a blank, white vacuum. Voices warbled in and out, luring him into the deeper recesses of the nothingness. Screams. A crack-popping.

  Falling . . . falling . . . falling . . .

  “Augh!” He jolted.

  “Easy, my lord, easy.”

  Haegan thrashed, fighting the water. Drowning. I am drowning! Sinking deeper and darker. Icy water.

  “The sheets—he’s caught!” Grunts. “Another blanket—he’s freezing!”

  Haegan blinked, the world blurring out. He lifted his head, fighting the heaviness. He groaned and forced his eyes open. Instead, the world spun, catching him once more in the barrenness.

  • • •

  Thiel wrapped an arm around her waist, chewing her thumbnail as the healer bent over Haegan, while Relig and Tili struggled to restrain the Fire King’s son, who fought violently in his dreams.

  “Hold his arms,” Pao’chk ordered, lifting a concoction from a side table. “If he frees his hands—that’ll be all for the lot of us.” The aged man, back crooked and fingers gnarled with arthritis, took a chair and moved it closer to the bed. He sat then lifted Haegan’s sweaty head in one hand and the cup in another.

  A terror sprinted behind Haegan’s closed eyes. He moaned, pulled his head away, then bucked. Hard. Bouncing the bed and nearly sloshing the cup the healer held.

  “Hold him!”

  Tili grunted. “He’s like a newly born colt—slippery and—”

  Thud!

  Haegan’s hand broke free and knocked Tili’s head backward.

  “Augh!” Stunned, her brother gave Haegan a mean glare, then attacked the job of holding his arm down. This time, the prince couldn’t move.

  The healer squeezed Haegan’s mouth as he lifted the liquid to his lips and poured it.

  “What’s in it?” Thiel asked.

  “A mixture of a potion to temper the fire and another to aid his recovery . . . I hope.”

  “You hope?” Thiel’s own fire blazed. “Gwogh said to bring ye here. Have ye been guessing all this time, healer?”

  “Easy, easy.” Her brother’s words were soft as Tili came and guided her back. “Ye shouldn’t be here, sister. Come—”

  “There’s nowhere else I should be!” She wrested free, glaring at him. “Sir Gwogh said his life is in my hands. I am not leaving.”

  “Where is this accelerant anyway?” Relig moved into the hall.

  “Father has enough to concern himself with the Drigo coming out of the mountains,” Tili said, “without inviting two accelerants into Nivar Hold.”

  “Not Drigo,” Relig countered. “Unauri. Drigo are mythical beings with the ability to transform into an ungodly size and possess incredible abilities. Unauri are simply people grown too large.”

  “Like ye?” Tili said.

  “Ye’re only jealous I’m taller, younger, and better looking—and stole yer future bride.”

  Thiel started. “What?”

  “Don’t listen to him,” Tili said with a growl. “I gave Peani to him—keeps me from having to be shackled to the hold and tend a dithering wife.” He stood behind her, staring into the room where Haegan now lay sleeping once more.

  “That’s what he wants us to think. Fact is, she saw me and couldn’t wait to shed him like last winter’s coat.” Relig rested an arm on the doorpost as the three of them looked in on the healer. “The prince, huh?” He knuckled Thiel’s chin. “Ye know how to pick them, little sister.”

  Heat climbed her neck, so she stretched, trying to hide it. “I didn’t pick him. In fact, I just sort of fell upon him. Quite literally. He was lying in the tunnels like a dead rat.”

  “I would hear that story,” Tili said.

  “Ye won’t.”

  In spite of being younger, Relig always had a way of superseding Tili. “What happened at the Falls . . .” His expression waxed serious. “The whole bailey is in an uproar over something strange that happened there and some prophecy.”

  Thiel nodded. “The Parchments,” she muttered, remembering Laertes’s excited ramblings that night Haegan was captured.

  The healer stopped and glared at her from beneath his bushy eyebrows. “What know ye of the Parchments?” It sounded more like a challenge than a question.

  “I don’t.” She glowered at Pao’chk. “Who do you think you are to—”

  “Hey,” Tili said, stepping in front of her and taking her arms, pushing her back.

  “Get off me!”

  “Hey!” His gaze was fierce, his tone worse. He stared down at her, his dark eyes piercing, his face rimmed in the shadows of the hall. Then his expression softened suddenly. “When was the last time ye slept?”

  “What?” Thiel blinked. “I am not worried about me. Hae—”

  “Ye should!” His shout bounced off the beams in the ceiling, but then he sighed. “If ye die from exhaustion, who will harangue the healer over how poorly he’s doing his job?”

  Thiel rolled her eyes. “I have to stay. Sir Gwogh put Haegan in my care. I have to—”

  “What?” Tili tilted his head. “What is it ye can do at his side that I or Relig canna do for him while ye sleep?”

  Thiel turned away, feeling strangled at the thought of leaving Haegan. “I can’t—” Her voice cracked. She swallowed tears.

  Mercy of Abiassa! Crying?

  She was tired.

  “Go, or I will drug ye myself.”

  • • •

  Prince of the Nine. Heir of Zaethien.

  Fugitive.

  Tili stared at the Celahar prince as he lay unmoving. He had lain as such for the last ten years, crippled. How then was he healed? What harm had he perpetrated against his own family to find himself here with Kiethiel as his guardian?

  Threading his fingers, Tili considered the damage this prince could cause. A fugitive from his own home, he would give the Jujak plenty to say if his location were made known.

  That could seriously strain the thin threads that kept their families from war. But there were other concerns. Ones that made Tili consider ending this prince’s life right here and now.

  “How does he fare?”

  Startled at his father’s presence, Tili wiped the sleep from his eyes, then scruffed his hands over his face. “Quiet. Finally.” He glanced at the sleeping boy. Man. “What hour is it?”

  “Midnight.”

  Tili yawned again. “Kiethiel will be here soon.”

  “It is good of ye to share watch with her.”

  “I tried to get her to rest, to get reacquainted with our mother, but she wouldn’t have it. So I insisted on splitting the watch.”

  “Good,” his father said. �
��It is yer job to watch out for her. Not this . . .” He huffed and moved closer to the cot. “He has the look of his father about him, but around the mouth, I see Adrroania.” Hands behind his back, his father shook his head. “I sent word to Zireli.”

  “Of course.” Tili then noticed the grave expression his father bore. “The messenger has already returned?” It had been only two days. Had his father authorized the use of a raqine? It would be the only way to travel such a distance in so short a time.

  Hauling in a long breath, his father scratched his beard. “No, though I wish he could have.” He frowned. “What trouble is this Celahar bringing to my door?” His thick finger traced the leather straps. “Restrained?”

  “The healer said he’d be the end of us all if we didn’t secure him.” Arms crossed, Tili grunted. “Father, what do ye know of the Parchments?”

  “Too much and yet too little.” He turned toward the door. “Why do ye ask—oh, the healer. He mentioned them?”

  “Actually, Thiel did.”

  “Kiethiel?” He snorted. “Has she been reading Parchments as well as gallivanting across the Nine?”

  “Father, ye must give her credit. She is well—mostly, nothing a little stew and rest won’t heal—and she’s strong.” He grinned. “Much stronger than the petulant brat whining over pearls on her dress.”

  Something flickered through his father’s expression. His beard twitched as he pinched his lips. “What I would not give to have that spoiled lass back, to wipe from her mind all the harms done against her. The failings—”

  “Father . . .”

  He held up a hand. “Ye will not say anything yer mother has not already said a thousand times. But I will take my leave.” He looked over his shoulder. “Cover him—his hands are like ice. And notify me when he is awake. I would have words with him.”

  “Aye, Father.” They would all want words with this young man.

  • • •

  With her chair against his cot, Thiel propped her legs up on the edge, the velvet bell of her dress modestly tucked around her legs as she slumped down, head propped back. Her arm rested on the blanket covering him, and she toyed with a loose thread, all while staring at him. Her hopes rose when his eyes had darted back and forth, but instead of awakening, the terrors took him yet again. Soon Haegan would simply go limp. The same pattern. Over and over. A fortnight of this. She was losing hope he’d come around.