by Serena Chase
“Julien speaks of this as you do, but it all sounds like riddles to me.”
“Ah, Julien.” Her eyes radiated warmth. “He was a wonderful little boy. A joy to know. I am nearly as sorrowed to have missed the rest of his childhood as I am that I missed the entirety of yours.”
“He speaks fondly of you, as well.” I bent to kiss her cheek. “We will find the Remedy, Mother. Somehow. And when you are back at Castle Rynwyk we will bore you with every mundane detail of our lives.”
Her hand shook as she reached up to cup my cheek. “I doubt that anything you could say could ever bore me.” She took a labored breath. “Julien’s family has searched for the Remedy for centuries, Rynnaia. But with you I believe they may finally succeed.”
The Queen’s smile might have been the sweetest I’d ever seen.“I have loved you all these years, even though I could not be with you. Time is short, but love is a mighty guard, dear one, and I will continue to cloak you with its power.
“Time is short,” I repeated. “That’s what Lady Anya told me.”
“Lady Anya?” Questions filled her eyes. “But how—?”
“Not today.” Dyfnel’s voice was quiet, but firm.
The Queen shot him a look of defiance that almost made me laugh.
“My Queen, if you wish to spend more time with your daughter, you must keep to the schedule of your regimen.”
She glared at him a moment longer, but then relaxed. “The dratted physician is correct.” She acquiesced with a sigh, but there was fondness in her tone. “I must on to dreams again. But I will expect to hear that tale, Rynnaia. Soon.”
“I’ll be back. I promise.” I arched an eyebrow at Dyfnel. “Just try and keep me away.”
“I wouldn’t dare.”
“I love you, Rynnaia.” Even the limited strength of her voice was fading. “No matter what happens, know that I have always loved you.”
“I—”
I paused as a strange new warmth spilled from my heart and into my consciousness. I bit my lip. I wanted to return the words, but I knew they should not be given lightly. Could I profess to love her?
Warm, beautiful colors flowed through me, but they were not entirely mine. Subtle differences marked my mother’s love—as well as her pain, desperation, and determination—as clearly as the higher, more defined set of her cheekbones and the narrower shape of her mouth and chin differentiated her face from mine. The colors were deeply honest and undeniably real and they brought fresh tears to my eyes at the trueness of their beauty.
Could I say the words aloud?
Yes, I could.
“I love you too, Mother.”
Closing her eyes, the Queen smiled. “What more could I need?”
Dyfnel helped her recline on her pillows and I bent to kiss her cheek. “Sleep well, Mother. I’ll see you again soon.”
She was already asleep when I rose and followed Dyfnel through the curtain.
We were almost to the door when a lone thought stopped me in my tracks. “Dyfnel?”
“Yes?”
“Does the King know she lives?”
He blinked. “Of course! To keep something like this from the King would be high treason.” He sighed. “You must understand, however, that King Jarryn and the Andoven at Tirandov are the only ones privy to the truth. Not even Sir Gladiel and Sir Drinius suspect that she lives. The King and Queen thought the burden of keeping you safe was enough. And she has not had need of their services here.”
“He should have told me, at least!” I hissed. “She’s my mother! And you!” I accused. “You could’ve told me before we ever reached Tirandov! You could have prepared me for this, but you didn’t!” A strange taste—bitterness—touched the sides of my tongue. “Is this part of your job, then?” The words felt like poison in my mouth and my tone reflected their toxicity. “This, then, is the duty of the Andoven?”
“No, Your Highness,” he said. “This is our duty in obedience to our King. This is our duty to preserve the life of the Queen.”
He looked down at the floor and the fight fizzled within me.
“I led my people to believe that, if I were to find a Remedy in time, the Queen could be saved,” he said softly. “That she and the King might yet produce an heir.”
“None of them knew I survived? Not even Jezmyn?”
“Not even Jezmyn. As he implied, my gifting in the gray—in the keeping of secrets—is strong.” His voice was quiet and filled with regret. “The knights who ferried you to safety were told the Queen had perished. And indeed,” he sighed, “I thought it would be the most likely outcome of the curse she received.”
He swallowed with some difficulty. The depth of his despair was carved deeply into the wrinkles surrounding his bright eyes. “Truly, it is nothing less than a miracle that she has survived. But living wears on her. At times it has seemed almost cruel to go to such lengths to keep her alive when death could free her, and could yet succeed in claiming her at any moment.”
At any moment. But I just found her!
“It’s that bad?”
“She has fought well, child. But when you learned your name and your abilities were released, it pulled the fullness of the blessing given to you from within her. If I hadn’t been here . . .” he shook his head. “I’m not sure she would have survived it.”
“I thought a blessing was supposed to be a good thing!”
“Indeed. To the one who receives it.” He smiled. “When you were born, she placed her hands on you and spoke using her Andoven gifts, and I can only surmise, a great deal of power granted her by The First.”
“What did she say?”
“Her blessing pledged all of her own gifts and strengths and abilities to you . . . and may have imparted even more that we have yet to discover. ‘I give you all that I am’ is what she said.” He shook his head. “It sounds simple enough, but what that could entail is anyone’s guess. It could reach back generations, perhaps as far as Sir Andov himself.”
“Sir Andov?”
“One of the original knights of E’veria,” he explained. “The first Regent of Tirandov Isle. You’ll read of him in The Story of The First.” Dyfnel sighed. “Your mother will never regret the blessing she gave you, no matter the cost to her health. But without the Remedy?” He shrugged. “I cannot see how she will last much longer.”
Grief for the years we’d lost pressed upon my soul. She had already sacrificed so much for me. “I will find the Remedy.” My throat tightened. “I must.”
“It is my dearest hope that you will. But you have much to learn before you’re ready to take on that quest.” His smile was weak as he gestured to the door. “Your knight awaits.”
“I will be allowed to come back.”
It wasn’t a request, and he knew it.
The gravity of this new knowledge fell fully upon me then, strangling me, yet filling my heart with such desperate joy and fettered hope that it smothered every other emotion.
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
As promised, Julien awaited us just outside the door. “All is . . . well?”
The look on his face was expectant, concerned, but with a strange flicker of hope. But my strength was too spent to address it.
“Yes,” Dyfnel nodded. “All is well.”
I wanted to shout, “My mother is alive!” but the words, even whispered, wouldn’t come. It felt like a dream, and at the moment, I was too overcome to discuss what had happened beyond the bright stone door. Therefore, it was in silence we walked back through the corridors and up the long staircases. With each level we ascended a dull ache pressed more firmly against my temples, and though I felt worn, sleep was the last thing on my mind.
“Your Highness?”
Dyfnel spoke so softly that I had to step closer to hear him.
“Sometimes,” he said, “when my heart is particularly heavy, I find that lying on the earth, looking up at the vastness of the night sky, allows me to feel small enough to bring things into a clearer perspecti
ve.”
“Thank you,” I whispered. For taking me to my mother. For taking care of my mother. For your loyalty to the King. I gave in to the impulse to hug him. As Dyfnel returned my embrace a wave of relief flowed through his mind.
He bid us good night, but turned back after only taking a few steps. “You may find,” he said, “that neither protecting the truth nor serving it is a straightforward occupation. Do not be too quick to judge your father. He did what he thought was best with the information he had at the time.”
Without waiting for a reply, which was probably a good thing considering my mixed feelings toward the King, Dyfnel turned down a hallway and walked out of sight.
I turned to Julien. “Do you feel like a walk?”
“If that is what you wish.”
“It is. You’ll have to find the door, though. I’m lost in this place.”
“It is something of a maze,” he agreed. “But I think I can find our way outside.”
In no time at all Julien led me out of the castle and onto the rich-smelling lawn. For several minutes we walked in silence, following a crushed stone pathway that led down a slight hill and away from the glow of the castle.
Like a blanket that had just been brought in from the line on a sunny summer day, the ground itself seemed to give off a comfortable heat. We sat on the grass and stared out at the sea.
“There’s no moon tonight.”
“And not a cloud in sight, either,” Julien noted.
I nodded. “All the better to see the stars.” With that, I reclined on the spongy lawn to better take in the night sky.
Blue-black with pinpricks of light filtering through, there seemed no end to it, and as Dyfnel had suggested, I began to feel small. I couldn’t see Julien’s face, sitting as he was, with me flat on my back in the grass beside him.
“What do you think a star would see, looking down at us?”
Julien didn’t answer. I didn’t really need him to.
“Would it even acknowledge our existence?” I continued my wondering aloud. “Or would it be so captivated by its purpose, its obligation to pierce the night, that it wouldn’t even register something so insignificant as two breathing dots upon Tirandov’s lawn?”
Under the vast canopy of stars, my smallness came into focus. I didn’t know why the King had deceived his Kingdom rather than just keeping us both near, guarded by his knights; but maybe, like the stars above, there was a greater purpose that was still beyond my comprehension.
Closing my eyes, I took a deep breath in through my nose, and as I sent it back into the night, my anger dissolved, at least for the moment, and the truth I had been unable to utter, drenched as it was in layers of emotion and time, released.
“Julien?”
He angled his head back to look at me. “Yes?”
“My mother is alive.”
Julien dropped his head on to his upraised knees and exhaled. After a few moments he lifted his head and gazed off toward the sea. His breathing was shaky, each inhalation jagged, each exhalation like a stream of staccato sighs.
“I had dared to hope it,” he said at last.
Leaning back on to the grass beside me, he rested his head in his hands. “When the door opened I caught the scent of roses. It reminded me of her, and I wondered, with all the truths that have come to light these past weeks, if it was possible that she, too, had survived,” he said. “The Queen always smelled of roses. She put bouquets of them all over the castle. When she died—or went away, rather,” he paused and the breath he took sounded painful, “the roses stayed in the garden.” He turned his face toward me and smiled. “Except for the one she sent to Veetri, of course.”
“Yes.” I chuckled. “Except for that one.”
We gazed at the deepness of the night, content in the quiet of our smallness. Finally, he spoke. “Is she very ill?”
“Yes.” I kept my gaze to the sky, worried that to look at him would release more emotion than I was prepared to reveal. “Dyfnel has kept the poison at bay with medicines, but she is very weak. She needs the Remedy soon or she will die.”
Saying the words aloud seemed to confirm them in my mind. A heavy weight settled painfully in my chest. “Nineteen years is a long time to carry poison in your body. I—” I swallowed and took a deep breath. “I don’t think she can last much longer.”
“The task is daunting,” he whispered. “My family has searched for the Remedy for centuries without success, and unless there is some miraculous clue in those scrolls Erielle found, I’m afraid there is little hope. I’m sorry.” He reached for my hand. “You have no idea how sorry I am, Rynnaia.”
A fluttering surety moved across my heart as lines of Lady Anya’s poetry flooded my mind.
The Ryn Lady E’veria will Cobeld’s curse exile.
A tiny smile played upon my lips. “You may have sought the Remedy, Julien, but you were missing two crucial tools in your search.”
Beside me, Julien turned, propping himself up on his elbow. “We’ve used every combination of research, force, and cunning that we could contrive. Beyond that,” he shrugged, “what else is there?”
A rush of confidence gave my words a saucy edge. “Sky-jeweled eyes,” I said, “and a head ablaze with fire.”
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
My mother is alive!
It was the first thought in my mind as I awoke, but jubilation warred with despair when the second arrived closely on its heels.
My mother is dying.
I’d dreamt of my mother all night, and if I was to fulfill my quest and save the Queen, there was no time to waste. Lady Anya charged me with finding the Remedy and exiling the Cobeld curse, so if my mother died before that happened, it was no one’s fault but mine.
Fueled by a new urgency to learn all I could from the Andoven, I threw off the coverlet, picked a dress I could get into myself, and went in search of Celyse.
A young Andoven man was more than happy to give me directions and promised to advise Sir Julien as to my whereabouts.
“You are about rather early this morning, Princess.” Celyse opened the door just as I was about to knock. Her faded blond hair was pulled back into a knot at the nape of her neck, but her expression was so open, so welcoming, that it didn’t cause her to look severe.
“Not too early, I hope.”
“No,” she said with a smile. “You must be anxious to begin your lessons now that you have met the Queen.”
“Yes,” I nodded. “I know I don’t have much time here. I would use all that I have wisely.”
“Follow me.”
We entered a sparsely furnished room, and with a flick of her wrist, Celyse closed the door behind us.
I will teach you that. She spoke into my thoughts. But later. We have much to learn.
Celyse led me to a table with two chairs. We will not speak aloud, Celyse began. Rather, I will teach you to communicate more effectively in this manner. It is my charge to gauge your gifts and to see how far we can push you beyond their limits . . . or mine! She laughed aloud at that. Your Mother’s lessons taxed me quite thoroughly when she came here the first time!
“You taught my—”
She shook her head, reminding me to use my mind rather than my mouth.
You taught my mother?
She nodded.
My abilities will be weaker than hers, won’t they?
That remains to be seen. Celyse smiled and the warmth of it colored her words. There is much about your birth that was unique. Besides your being an E’veri Ryn, your mother’s blessing was most unusual. My father believes your abilities may well surpass those of your mother. They may even surpass his own.
I blinked. How is that possible?
A mystery we would all like to solve. When she laughed, the sound was audible, but it also echoed in my thoughts. Shall we proceed with the lesson?
I nodded.
I would like you to try and call out, using your mind, to someone within the castle. I would like you to
wake them up and summon them to meet us here.
I immediately thought of Julien. Celyse’s eyebrows rose.
I suggest, this first time, that you choose someone Andoven. Calling your knight might cause him undue alarm.
I hadn’t thought of that. Dyfnel?
A very good choice, Princess.
Several long moments passed.
“I’m not doing it right.”
She shook her head and put a finger to her lips. Concentrate on his face. Close your eyes if it helps. You may say his name aloud if you wish, but it is not necessary.
I closed my eyes and pictured the physician as I’d last seen him, wearing a dull gray robe and with his long gray beard gathered at his chest with a leather strap.
“Dyfnel.” My mind visualized an unfamiliar hallway and a door. It did not open, but it didn’t have to. Somehow, I gained access to the room as if the door did not exist.
I saw Argeena first, pouring tea at a table, and then Dyfnel, hunched over a book.
“He’s already awake. Oh. Sorry. I didn’t mean to—”
Call him.
“Dyfnel.” I repeated.
Dyfnel looked up from his book. A smile parted his lips as he closed his eyes. Yes, Princess? He asked, opening them again and looking at me.
Celyse asks . . . that I . . . I concentrated, giving each word equal weight, bid you to come to . . . uh . . .
The sunrise room, Celyse supplied. You don’t have to work so hard, Princess. Let it flow, just as if he were before you.
The vision blurred for a second. Even though I knew we were in different parts of the castle, it seemed like I was in the same room with Dyfnel. But Celyse was in my thoughts, too.
Dyfnel?
Good, good! Celyse silently cheered. You got it back.
I took a deep breath. Dyfnel, I’m with Celyse. She asked me to bid you come to the sunrise room.
An amused sort of affection colored the Andoven man’s thoughts. I will come in a moment, bearing your breakfast tray.
Thank you. I opened my eyes and shifted my mind fully toward Celyse.
