For the rest of the visit and, indeed over the next two days, I think on his innocent and quite profound words. The deep parts of my mind have been whispering the same words to me since the confrontation with the mirror. What was to stop me looking at my reflection, apart from my own fear? No one had to know. The King appeared to have defrosted towards me, but this would disappear fast if I were to cross him on the matter of showing my face.
With Cameron’s innocent words came a swift resolve. This small defiance had, I believe, always been present in the back of my mind. My fear had shrivelled it into dormancy. With the opportunity now presented to me with the mirror and the awakening question from Cameron, this resolve was now the only thought in my mind.
With nothing else to do, I had time to think of what I have overcome in the past year. Kedrick’s death, climbing the Oscala, the hostility of the Bruma, my various broken bones. The thought of taking it off would have never entered my mind a year ago. In fact, I would have done anything to prevent its removal. Having someone else see my face had been terrifying to the point of crippling fear. But to see my own face. To never be able to go back to what I knew before. That fear was indescribable. Unspeakable. I think of one of the court members on Osolis who has a fear of water. He will not wash in the springs at all, and once I saw him scream in terror when someone spilt water on the table in front of him. That is how I felt when I thought about removing my veil.
But whether by choice or not, the veil had been removed several times now and with every removal the terror had lessened. Maybe it would be the same if I practised looking at my face.
On the third morning after the King’s departure, I wake knowing it’s time to be rid of my mother’s oppression. I drag myself down to the food hall ignoring my mind’s attempt to convince me to abandon this plan. I grab a pear and approach my friends.
“Fiona, what are you doing today?” I ask. I cannot be sure she has a mirror in her bathroom, but I was unable to think of a good excuse to go to Jacqueline’s. There isn’t one in my room, I assume it’s because it could be used as a weapon. They would have been worried about this in the beginning.
“I haven’t got any plans. Did you have something in mind?” she asks. This needs to be done today, I do not know when I will find my resolve again.
“I was wondering if you could start teaching me how to sew,” I say. My stomach lurches at her reply.
“Sure, it will be fun. You will have to excuse the mess, though,” she says. All the assembly households are being packed for the shift to the first sector in two days’ time. Sanjay looks at her fondly. I nod at her, unable to speak. It’s going to happen. This is it.
I am filled with nervous tension on our walk to Fiona’s. Sadra and Jacky are joining us, too. I try to act normal, but I know the three ladies notice. My senses are in overdrive. My body tingles as it does when I’m in the middle of fighting Olandon. I hope they put it down to excitement over Fiona teaching me to sew.
Fiona lays out material over the parlour floor. She takes me through the measuring, cutting and threading process. Jacky and Sadra are not at all interested and play cards, sitting on top of wooden chests because the chairs and other furniture have been covered and put away now. They chat amongst themselves about the shift to the first sector. The journey will take three days. Most of it is done on the sleds and then the last day is done by wagon or on foot. They make it sound like all they do is drink for three days. Sadra is complaining about riding in a sled with a hangover.
Fiona looks over my shoulder at intervals and, during her next assessment, exclaims over my erratic stitching. She grabs it to unpick my poor work. The thudding in my stomach comes back, this is my moment. I have been procrastinating all morning. If I wait any longer I will talk myself out of it.
I excuse myself from the room and make my way to the bathroom. The hallway seems to narrow as I get there. The walls throb in time with the heartbeat lodged in my throat.
I hurry into the bathroom and press the door closed, sinking to the ground. I lower my head between my knees in an attempt to regulate my breathing and clear my head, knowing if I take too long the others will come to check on me.
Pushing back against the wall, I stand and start towards the mirror.
My movements are heavy, weary, and memories peck at my mind making each step feel like a hundred. Cassius hacking off my hair, mother laughing as guards whip me, her screams as she hits my head against the ground, a five-year-old Olandon crying as they break my leg.
Bile surfaces. I hold a shaking hand over my mouth and swallow several times before turning to face the mirror.
I take in the small covered girl before me. She looks afraid and helpless. A sudden conviction that I won’t be able to remove the veil, settles over me. I don’t have the strength. I’m too weak - not good enough.
I’m the girl who lies on the floor and gets beaten.
Tears sting my eyes. I lean forward onto the table beneath the mirror. I know what I have to do, why can’t I just do it? Mother is right, I will never be strong enough to rule.
A thought steals through my churning panic. I lift my head to look at the girl again. Maybe I can pretend Kedrick is taking it off, like he did in the forest. My sweating hand barely twitches at my side. My head falls back down.
Then I think of Jovan and the night he burst into my room demanding to hear about his brother. My back had been to the wall and he had snatched off my veil as you would rip off a bandage stuck to the skin.
Quickly, boldly, without thought.
I straighten, and look at the heavy black veil over my face once more. Underneath this pathetic bit of material is a face I have both longed and dreaded to know. This cloth is just like the tower I was locked away in for ten years of my life.
It’s time to be free.
Lifting a shaking hand, I grasp the edge of the coarse fabric and with a deep breath, I rip the veil off.
The world is timeless as I take in the impossible sight before me.
My eyes are blue.
My sluggish mind is trying to understand what they mean. Kedrick had blue eyes, so does Jovan, Fiona, Jacky, all the delegates. All of the assembly have them.
On Glacium everyone has blue eyes, but Solati… they have brown eyes, green eyes, grey eyes. Never blue. My mother’s eyes were brown, and my father’s eyes were brown too.
I stare at them and will them to change, to turn brown like my brothers. They stay the same. A vivid, devastating, damning blue.
The sluggish part of my mind catches up and in an instant everything I have known, the truths of my life - that I have brothers, that I am Solati - evaporate like a drop of water on the hot ground.
My eyes belong to a Bruma.
I am Bruma.
Chapter Twenty-nine
So many thoughts are hurtling through my head. I cannot be a Bruma, I was born on Osolis.
This is why I have been veiled my whole life. It has to be. There is nothing else obviously wrong with my face - but this. Anyone who saw me on Osolis would know. I scrunch my eyes closed, relieved when the offensive blue eyes are gone from my sight. Really I don’t know anything of the time surrounding my birth, only what I have been told. Obviously lies.
Either my mother was not my mother or my father was not my father. Or could this be some bizarre birth defect? The thought of the Tatum taking in a child who was not hers, was as ridiculous as the thought of her having sex with a Bruma. The possibilities tumult over each other in my mind, piling up and crushing me underneath them. Moments from losing control, I place my hands on the wall and focus on the stone texture underneath them.
Were Olandon and the twins even my brothers? Did I have anyone in this world? No wonder the King had reacted with such horror. My mother was tricking two worlds by keeping such a secret. The people would not stand for it.
I open my eyes again and my breath becomes short. I cannot look at the heart-shattering sight anymore. I pull my veil back down and stumble backwards. The lip of the t
ub digs into my knees and I throw myself forward to avoid falling. Flinging my hands outwards, I crash into the mirror and the loud shattering noise pierces through the bathroom like a knife.
I’m on my hands and knees when the door bursts open. My group of watchmen barge through the door and drop to my side.
Fiona pushes through them.
My tongue is heavy and numb. “I’m sorry,” I say in a thick voice.
Fiona hushes me and makes me stand to check over my arms and legs. I have cuts all over my forearms where I tried to protect my face. The ladies exclaim over them and tell the guards to bring me down to the parlour where they can get the glass out. The problem being my legs are shaking too much to walk.
The older guard who never loses his professionalism picks me up and takes me downstairs. The ladies cluck over me, I stare and do not speak while they clean my arms. They try several times to engage me in conversation and I know from their voices and shared glances my reaction is worrying them.
I summon the effort to reassure them so they do not look more into the accident than I wish them to. I don’t want them alerting their husbands and for the incident to somehow get back to the King. He will guess that I have looked at my face. Speaking for the first time, I tell them a lie of how my brother cut his face on glass and how traumatising the episode had been to me. I apologise for being absent. The smashing glass had taken me back. It had caught me unawares.
I ask to return to the castle to rest. When Fiona starts apologising for my injuries, I cut her off with a hug. I hug Jacky and Sadra too, surprising them. I need some comfort because a startling thought has occurred to me while Fiona had been cleaning my wound.
We start back up to the castle, wedged between our guards, and I am lost in my own thoughts.
I had assumed my mother had been the one antagonising Glacium, but I wondered now if Jovan did not have his own agenda. I generally thought well of him. He could be arrogant, but I knew this was due to his position, his need to prove his worth despite his age and perhaps due to more than his fair share of grief. When I was around him, I did not think he was inherently evil like my mother. In fact, I had started looking forward to our conversations. But what if he had been using me? I knew I was to be used eventually in one way or the other. Whether for information or as a hostage. Though, the likelihood of this happening had been getting lesser every day. Why would he bother getting to know someone he was going to torture? I had expected to be used in this way, but now he held an ace in his hand which was much more effective. Blackmail, anarchy or ridicule. The possibilities were endless. Who would follow a Tatum with a Bruma child? I remember him lying to me the other day about not receiving a reply from my mother. If you had asked me if he was capable of using me in this way before then, I would have said no. Now, I was not so sure. If he was hiding that, what else would he hide?
We enter the castle, only to be intercepted by my favourite person.
“Excuse me, Tatuma. May I have a word with you?” Arla asks.
“No,” I say and continue walking.
“Please.” Her tone is desperate. Most of it put on, but part of it is real.
I sigh and wave Jacky, Sadra and Fiona onwards. They leave after some persuasion. I instruct the guards to wait at the bottom of the stairs and follow Arla as she leads me into a room on the upper level. She walks, hips swaying, over to a table lined with coloured bottles and brushes.
“We have a problem, Solati.” Her desperate tone is gone.
I feel my eyebrows lift at her address. “I believe I have told you to call me by my title once before.”
She sneers as she sprays some strong smelling concoction around her head and looks in the mirror above the table. She looks at me in the reflection, applying something to her lips now. “I’m not sure if you know, but Jovan and I sleep together. A lot. His room is just down the hall.”
Hah! Jacky was right. “I would have thought he had better taste,” I say. She opens her mouth to snap back, but I cut her off before she can speak. I’m past caring what toes I step on today. “Get to the point.”
“Here is my point. You may mistakenly think my Jovan has been showing interest in you. I called you up here to warn you - one female to another - what you’re seeing isn’t interest. It’s pity.” She follows her words with what I think is supposed to be a sympathetic look. It falls more into the category of a patronising grimace. But the desperation in her voice is back. She is truly worried that Jovan is interested in me.
I take my time picking my response, opting for the speediest way of getting out of the room. I sigh loudly. “I knew he wasn’t interested in me. He only ever talks of you when we are together.” Her eyes light up, only dimming slightly when I mention Jovan and I being together.
“What does he say?” She walks forward and stands in front of me, failing to conceal a beaming smile.
“Oh, this and that. How beautiful you are and how well you organised the snowfast ball. Nearly better than his mother, he said,” I say. A childish part of me hopes that if Jovan is using me, he ends up with this nasty woman.
“Really?” she says, dancing around the room.
I make a grunt of agreement. “If that is all…” I make a move to the door.
“Yes, yes, yes. Go.” She shoos me to the door, but grabs my forearm as I swing it open. I wince as she squeezes one of the cuts.
“You know what? We should be friends. You can sit with me at the front table every so often. It will give you a break from those stupid men you sit with. In return, you could tell me what Jovan says about me when he lets you near him.”
If I were not so distracted by my recent discovery, I would have collapsed to the floor with laughter. “I would be honoured. You’d really do that for me?” I ask. She nods back and winks.
“Thanks, Arla.” I shut the door behind me and take a moment to gather myself after the baffling encounter.
A body brushes past me as I start towards the stairs again. Macy darts a timid look at me before shuffling down the stairs.
Macy is out of her room and my guards are downstairs. The chance is too good to pass up.
I walk to her door, scanning the hall and listening for breathing or footsteps. I let myself into the room with a small creak. Time is short, I hold my veil up with one hand. The room is filled with expensive belongings. Things are glinting and shining all over the room. Instead of brightening the room, it gives it an eerie feel. The rest of the décor is dark, and everything is meticulously placed. A table sits in the corner. I move swiftly to it, heart hammering. There is nothing of interest there. He is too smart to leave something in plain sight. I scan the room again and freeze at the sound of voices outside the door. I dash behind the screen blocking the chamber pot from view and crouch in the corner. I let my veil down as the door swings open.
“No, go ahead. I just want to grab something,” someone says. It’s Macy.
“I’ll save a spot for you.” Arla is there. If she’s going downstairs, my guards will see her and soon be up.
The door closes. “I’ll save a spot for you,” Macy mimics Arla in a high voice. If I was not terrified of being caught, I would laugh and congratulate her for seeing through Arla’s pretences.
She is not in the room long and luckily she does not need to relieve herself. There is a clanging as a lid is removed and then replaced. It’s coming from the far side of the room.
The door bangs a little as she leaves the room. Flicking my veil back, I peek to make sure she is actually gone. I don’t have much time. There is a silver urn across from me with a lid. I skim across to it and lift the lid quietly.
There are papers in there. Stacks of them. I grab one and read its contents. There are more papers in here than I have time to go through. I open my coat and tuck my tunic into my trousers and then stuff all the papers down. I run to the table and grab half of the papers off, fold them in half, and put them in the urn.
One of my guards is still at the bottom of the stairs, th
e others are most likely trying to find me. The guard gives out an audible sigh, but does not say anything. I make a quick trip to my room to deposit the papers. By the time I come out, two more of the guards have found us. I go briefly to the dining hall, using the mirror incident as an excuse to leave soon after eating. I grab much more food than I usually do.
“I see you’re finally making an effort to grow,” Sanjay says.
“It’s for Kaura,” I say and force a laugh out.
Back in my quarters, Kaura bounds up to me. I lower to my knees, and collect her to me, trying to steal some comfort and ground myself. She senses my mood and begins to whine and lick my face.
I sit holding her for a long time. Finally, my head quiets enough that I make another discovery so crushing I’m not sure I want to think about it. With blue eyes, all my grand dreams for Osolis were forfeit. I would never be Tatum. Solati would not accept a woman who had conceived a child with a Bruma and they definitely would not accept a ruler who was half-Bruma. When mother had told me I would be the ruin of our world, she had been telling the truth.
The only way I could rule would be to keep my veil on and go back to my lonely life. And even then I would have to trust King Jovan not to use it against me for the duration of my life. And then there were my children who would have my Bruma heritage. Glacium would always have a hold over us if I became ruler.
“What am I going to do?” I ask Kaura in a whisper. Did I give up my identity for my dreams, or did I give up my dreams for my identity and the future safety of Osolis? Hot tears spill over my cheeks as I sob and hold her to my chest. I look into her blue eyes and think of my own. What a mess. The crunching of paper underneath my tunic reminds me I have something else to do.
I scan through all the documents, throwing the last paper away from me. There is plenty in there to incriminate Blaine, but nothing about plans to kill me. Yet another dead end. I wonder why he has kept all these documents. I would have burnt them as soon as I had read them, if they were mine. The information was useless in helping to find the killer, but it was information I would keep. I spend the next couple of hours hiding the papers and then fling myself onto the bed, completely exhausted.
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