The Cruelest Mercy

by Natalie Mae

  Which feels like the perfect ending for my story . . . and maybe the beginning of something greater.

  I turn the wide band, feeling oddly shy. “Can my father live here?”

  “Absolutely. And Hen and her mother, too, if they want. Why do you think I made sure Hen’s job was here?”

  Ever the strategist, in all the best ways. “Then yes. Definitely.”

  His eyes shine bright as bronze. “Yes?”

  “Someone’s got to keep you in check.” I clasp on the armband and tap it with a finger. “I’m also going to need a list of all the places this can get me into.”

  He pulls a small scroll and a miniature quill from his pocket. “I’ll work on that.”

  I snicker. “You don’t have to do it right now. Aren’t you supposed to be meeting the priests soon?”

  “There’s only a hundred or so places to list. And it’s not like I haven’t been late to palace meetings before.”

  I freeze in adjusting the armband. “Wait, you’re being serious? And what do you mean ‘been late before’? When are you supposed to meet the priests?”

  Jet glances at the water clock on a golden end table. “Ten minutes ago?”

  I grab his wrist. “Are you trying to give me a heart attack? Do you know who gets blamed for these things in the stories? The new advisor! We are leaving, right now. I’m not being dragged behind a horse or hung from my toes or whatever it is you people do to disappointing servants.”

  He chuckles. “Those punishments are archaic, and you are most definitely not a servant—”

  A knock sounds on the door. “Dōmmel,” a man says. “May we come in?”

  Jet grins and pulls gently from my grasp. “Ah. See? If you wait long enough, the priests come to you.” He looks to the doors. “Enter.”

  And it’s like a terrible flashback to one of the worst moments of my life: in walks the grumpy priest who deemed Kasta’s knife mark on my wrist divine, followed by his haughty young apprentice, who still looks like a paler, meaner version of him. Except this time, instead of glaring down her nose at me, her gaze drops to my chest. Where her eyes widen in recognition at the vivid red scar the sacrificial knife left over my heart. And I again begin to question my life decisions. It seemed like such a good idea this morning, when Hen and I were getting ready, to choose a jole with a particularly low neckline—in this case, one cut almost to my navel—as I know the nobility will ask about the knife’s scar whether they can see it or not, and I’m determined to show them it belongs to me and not the boy who made it. That’s still my plan, but I’ll admit the staring is getting awkward.

  The apprentice drops to one knee . . . and raises her fingertips to her forehead, like she would for a Mestrah.

  “Gudina,” she says, the light gleaming off her blonde hair. “It’s an honor to be in your presence.”

  Gudina: Holy One. I glance uneasily at Jet, and at the grumpy priest, who—impossibly—is not regarding me with even a hint of a sneer. Well, maybe there’s a little bit of a grimace. But he looks like he’s trying very hard not to, which is still an improvement.

  “Living Sacrifice.” The priest dips his head. “My honor as well.”

  His apprentice rises, keeping her eyes on the floor. It’s only after the priest has turned to Jet that I realize they addressed me before addressing the crown prince. Which Jet warned me this morning might happen, at least until he’s crowned, because that’s how the priests scrambled to explain my survival at the end of the Crossing: as divine intervention. Apparently they’ve even gone so far as to claim the girl I was actually did die on the end of the sacrificial knife, and that a goddess returned in my place.

  Hiding my identity as the Living Sacrifice was easy enough in Kystlin, where I was just one more nameless refugee. But tonight that ends.

  “Perhaps you missed our summons, dōmmel.” The priest gives Jet a look like he knows that isn’t the case. “But it’s time to get dressed, and then the Mestrah would like to go over a few final ceremonial details. Gudina, are you sure you wouldn’t like to watch from the royal dais?”

  I almost laugh. “Gods, no.” I may be here to make this scar mine, but the last thing I want is to be studied like a piece of art for the better part of an hour. I realize too late this is a very uncourtly way to respond, and hastily correct myself. “I mean, no. Thank you.”

  Jet pockets the scroll and quill. “Has the Materialist finished her alterations on my tunic?”

  “Ah.” The priest rubs his bald head. “I forgot about the hole. Alise, will you check on that immediately?”

  “Of course, adel.” She bows and takes her leave.

  “There was a hole in your coronation tunic?” I ask. No wonder Jet wants the Royal Materialist to hire Hen.

  “A purposeful one, though for an outdated reason.” Jet taps the top of his chest. “In a normal contest, the sacrificial knife would have created a mark here on the winning heir. A circle of Numet that proves they completed the sacrifice. Galena referenced old paintings for her coronation design, where the tunics used to open at the center to show it off. We reminded her there wasn’t a sacrifice. No mark.” Jet smiles. “Thank the gods.”

  “Oh.” Dread prickles my arms, and I touch the wide necklace around my throat. “Right.”

  “I need to ask her about the banquet tunic, too,” Jet says, this time to the priest as they start for the door. “But I suppose we could always draw a mark if needed, for the purposes of tradition . . . Zahru, are you coming?”

  They turn in the doorway. I haven’t moved. That dread climbs my throat now, thick as smoke.

  “Yes!” I pipe. “I just . . . need to check my face.”

  “All right. We’ll be right outside.”

  I dart past the bed, suddenly grateful the room is so much more than a room. A washing basin waits inside a lavish en suite, and I catch my balance on its cold marble edge, panic shoving against my skull.

  I steel myself and look up at the gilded mirror.

  “It’s not, it’s not, it’s not,” I mutter, raising shaking hands to the bronze necklace. Hen and I chose this piece not only because its gemmed flowers add color to the plain gold of my dress, but also because I still have a nasty bruise on my chest from the sacrificial knife, and this is the best way to cover it. So maybe it’s a little strange, now that I think about it, that this particular bruise never faded to green or yellow with the rest of my bruises, and that it’s closer to the base of my throat than to the knife’s scar. Or that Hen and I had just been joking about how it seemed to be taking on a shape, and we were going to start charging people to see it, like someone might for a slice of cheese that looks like Sabil’s face. Coincidence. No one in the world can possibly be this unlucky.

  I lift the heavy gemstones, and my breath catches.

  The deep scarlet of the swirling circle of Numet smiles back at me.

  “Oh, no,” I whisper.

  II

  LIKE any rational person, I decide this is a problem I can ignore.

  I conclude the mark is irrelevant, as firstly, I am not a princess, and secondly, I did not perform a sacrifice, and thirdly . . . I don’t want to know what it means. A bombshell like this would be much better brought up in casual conversation, like in a few moons’ time when Jet and I are meeting over some critical civil affair and I could slip in, between the presentation of the issue and my possible solutions, that I have this annoying, persistent bruise on my chest and isn’t it funny how it kind of looks like the mark the winner of the Crossing is supposed to receive? We’ll laugh, and more importantly, Jet will remember he’s already crowned, and there’s no need to look into it further.

  I’m just freaking myself out. It’s not a gods’ mark, it’s a stubborn bruise. It will go away.

  It will.

  I’ve convinced myself of this so thoroughly that by the time I join Jet and m
y family under the soaring stone-and-glass ceiling of the royal hallway, I’m smiling. I may be overdoing it slightly, because Jet is looking rather worried as he leaves to do whatever it is he has to do before he becomes a god, but he doesn’t ask any questions, so I’m declaring that a victory.

  Except that the second he’s gone, Hen whirls on me with the intensity of a giant hawk. “All right. Spill.”

  Her fingers clutch my shoulders like talons. She’s really very intimidating in full makeup, with gold dust flashing along her beige skin and tiny metal skulls wrapping sections of her black hair. Kohl lines her eyes in edges so sharp they look fine enough to cut.

  This is the terror mice feel before they’re eaten.

  “Spill?” I laugh, a little too forcibly. “Spill what?”

  “This is not the smile of someone who just bedded a prince.” This makes me choke, and I glance at Fara, but he’s mercifully far away enough to not be paying attention. “Your hair is too perfect for that, anyway. This is a panicked smile. An ‘I just saw a dead person’ smile.”

  “Ah, no,” I say, thinking fast. “This is the smile of someone who just became an advisor to the crown!”

  This I say loud enough to draw my father’s attention, and he and Mora turn our way, their fine clothes shimmering in a slice of overhead sun. Orange for my fara, a compliment to his deeply tanned skin, and pink for Mora, to add a pretty blush to her beige complexion. Gold even lines their eyes—Mora’s doing, no doubt—and my father especially looks many years younger than I’m used to.

  I happily bound over to him, away from Hen’s still-suspicious glare, and throw my arms around his stomach.

  “An advisor?” Fara asks, sounding appropriately impressed.

  I beam. “Yes! We’re moving to the palace, and Hen can work under the Royal Materialist if she wants, and you’re invited, too, Mora!”

  “Really?” Mora clasps her hands. “This is wonderful! Oh, we should get you alone with that boy more often.” Fara cuts her a glare, but she waves it away, along with him, to hug me. “Congratulations, kar-a. And don’t be a prude, Aron. Unless you’d like me to start in on the stories I know about you and her mother.”

  “Please, no,” I whimper.

  “We were older,” Fara grumbles.

  “By a year.” Mora smirks and arranges loose waves of my brown hair over my shoulders. “Now, if he starts in on you about partners, you just let me know. We still want you to be safe—”

  I groan. “Mora—”

  “You don’t think I see how low this neckline is?”

  I jab a finger into my scar. “It’s for this! I’m showing people I’m not ashamed of it. Like an empowering, taking-ownership-type thing.”

  She gives me a look.

  “I’m serious! And we really don’t need to have this talk. There’s still a lot Jet and I have to figure out.”

  “Which is all the more reason to remind you . . .” She slowly straightens my dress, arranging my cape over my shoulders. “. . . that some things have lifelong consequences.”

  God of death, take me now. I make desperate eyes at Hen, who claps loudly, causing the guards along the walls to grab for their staffs.

  “There’s no time for this!” Hen’s voice echoes down the marble corridor. “Her Holiness has decreed there will be no more Talks of Embarrassment or unsolicited partner advice. Also, she’d like to reach the chocolates before the rest of the riffraff. Come, sacred family.”

  She holds her arm out, and I quickly take it, ignoring Mora’s snickers as we head for the foyer where the rest of the guests will be gathering. But whatever momentary relief I felt at this rescue dies the second Hen pulls me closer.

  “Don’t think I’ve let you off the hook yet,” she whispers. “I know there’s something else you’re not telling us.”

  “I think you’re being overly suspicious.”

  “I think you’ve forgotten who you’re dealing with.” Her brown eyes narrow. “No one has secrets from me. When the queen has secrets, I have people who bring them to me.”

  “Yes. I’ve often worried when you might be arrested for that.”

  “Just think about whether you’d like me to find this out on my own, or whether you’d like to tell me.” She pats my arm in the worrying way I’ve seen Mora do before she slips itching powder into a troublesome customer’s order of potions. “It’s up to you.”

  A compelling argument, but I hold my tongue. I love Hen, and I don’t normally keep secrets from her, but this is a case where I absolutely must. It was hard enough feeling her sobbing body against mine when we reunited in Kystlin, after she’d feared that she’d lost me forever and that it was her fault for sneaking me into the palace in the first place. So telling her now that the bruise on my chest actually is a strange, divine symbol, and that I might not be in the clear yet, is not an option. Also, we’re in a public hallway, and I won’t risk word of this getting back to the priests. For all I know, if someone has the knife’s mark and isn’t an heir, it means they really were supposed to die.

  Hard pass. I will take this to my grave, and I’d like to see Hen try to pry it out of me before then. Which is really a much bolder thought than I’m willing to share with her, so I just point ahead of us and change the subject. “Wow, is that really how many people will be watching?”

  We’ve reached the end of the corridor, where the milky alabaster floor yields to wide, theatrical stairs that overlook a towering foyer. We step past the Silencing wards that shield the royal wing from the commotion of the main hall, and a hundred conversations hit us in a gale. What has to be the entirety of Orkena’s elite mill below in a rainbow of joles and fine dark tunics, their heads adorned with extravagant, leafy crowns and metal circlets, many glinting with little charms: tiny rattlesnakes and golden jackals, glittering swords and miniature wings.

  “Actually, this isn’t that many,” Hen says. “A few hundred, maybe? The throne room fits two thousand. I’m pretty sure ten times that have been invited to listen outside.”

  “Good gods,” I wheeze as the leopard-masked soldiers guarding the stairs step aside. “Isn’t the ceremony starting soon? Why aren’t they moving into the coronation room?”

  Hen looks over, a strange smile in her lips. “Because they’re waiting to see you.”

  The entire three-story foyer goes quiet. No one announces us, but apparently standing at the top of the royal stairs is as good as shouting. Eyes take me in like I’m a trophy, gloved hands cover whispers, and the confidence I’d felt in making the knife’s scar my own fizzles. They’re going to ask you what happened, Hen warned me on the boat ride here. They’re going to ask what it was like.

  Let them, I said, but under the pressure of so much attention my vision blurs, and a flash of blue eyes, of a trembling knife, of white-hot pain cuts under my skin. Anxiety climbs my neck, fever-hot. I force it back. Hen and I practiced how I’d tell my story, anticipating every uncomfortable question and needling comment, until I could answer each with a smile. I exhale and assure myself this will only last a few hours. I’ll satisfy everyone’s curiosity, enjoy the celebration, steal off mysteriously into the night like proper nobles do, then begin an utterly wonderful, possibly anonymous new life as a Mestrah’s advisor.

  Behind us, Fara squeezes my shoulder, and I glance back with an appreciative smile.

  We start down the stairs. Jet said the guards would be watching in case anyone causes us trouble, but I can’t help but notice this is a lot of people to watch at once. Voices spin up with each of our steps. At the bottom of the stairs, Orkena’s elite part like water; a man in green intensely holding my gaze as we move forward, a woman in blue dipping her head and muttering prayers. The panic in my skin shifts to discomfort. Clearly there are different opinions here regarding whether I’m an actual goddess, since a trio of older girls simply glances over as we pass. But too many others watch me like
jackals, daring me to prove what I am.

  We’re halfway to the open doors of the throne room. Just as I’m hoping my reputation as the Living Sacrifice means no one will dare speak to me at all, a tall woman in a bright yellow jole steps in our path.

  “Gudina.” She bows low, fingertips held to her pale forehead, and tears brim in her eyes when she rises. “A blessing for my house, if you would? My daughter has been very ill since the planting season.”

  In Hen’s grip, I go rigid. Everyone in earshot turns toward us. All of them look devious now, their smiles coy, their eyes glinting. Will I dare blaspheme and bless her? Will I cruelly turn her away? It’s made worse by the stressed, pleading lines in the woman’s face. She’s not one of the jackals. She’s hurting, she’s desperate, and I can practically see the fragile hope inside of her, a thread of glass my words will strengthen or shatter.

  Static builds along my skin, and I feel strangely like I would in the stable with a hurt animal, the intensity of its emotions such that even from a distance I can feel its anxiety. But though I look in confusion at the woman’s jeweled purse to see if she’s carrying a pet, I’m very certain no animals are allowed at the coronation. Great. Now even my magic is going haywire from stress. I’m threading together an answer when Mora’s hand drops to my shoulder, and the static vanishes in a snap.

  Do you need me? she mouths.

  I shake my head and slowly turn back to the woman. I have a feeling this is going to be a very long night.

  “I-I’ll pray for her,” I manage. A safe, ambiguous response that anyone here could give, but the woman sobs like I’ve promised much more.

  “Thank you, adel,” she says, bowing again and again. “I will never forget your kindness. Long may you live!”

  Her retreat opens the floodgates. Chatter erupts around us, and a man in a deep red tunic pushes forward, tiny gazelle heads dangling from his ivy crown.