“I never would have done that to my child,” Eseult said. She dropped a hand to her belly and pain washed over her face. “I would have loved my child more than all the gods.”
Branwen’s chest rose and fell, her cousin’s unbearable sorrow tempering her rage.
“I know you would have, Essy. Please, for your own sake, let Tristan go to Liones. Release your hold on him. Before you both get yourselves killed.”
“Is that a threat?”
“No, it’s a fact. I’m trying to protect you,” Branwen said, exasperation growing. “And if you burn, Iveriu burns with you. What will it take to make you understand?”
“I’ll tell you what I understand.” Her voice turned to ice. “I understand what it is to have no power, to have your choices taken away. My entire life, I felt like I was running toward a precipice. One day I would be pushed off that cliff and into a marriage with a man I didn’t know, a lifetime full of obligation I didn’t want.”
“Essy—”
The True Queen silenced her with a look. “I hated my future, and I turned that hate inward. I hurt myself because I hated how pathetic I was.” She touched her fingers to the scars Branwen knew lay beneath her plaits.
“Now I see that was wrong. When I felt a new life growing inside of me, a future that could be filled with love, it changed things. It changed me,” Eseult said. “Why should I hate myself? Shouldn’t I hate the world that hurts me? I don’t deserve to hurt. From now on, I will put my hate in the right place, and I will attack those who hurt me—who try to take away what I love.”
Branwen stood stock-still. “Does that include me, Lady Queen?”
“If you try to take what’s mine. Don’t forget I could have you executed for my miscarriage at any moment, Lady Branwen.”
Branwen took another step toward her cousin. When her face was less than a handsbreadth away, she said, “As long as you don’t forget that I have the power to destroy you, Lady Queen. I know all of your secrets.”
“And I know yours.”
“Tristan wouldn’t love you if he knew you as I do.”
Smack. Eseult’s open palm connected with Branwen’s jaw before she could even flinch.
Arthek barked, pawing at his mistress’s skirts.
Without another word, Branwen turned away from her cousin, rubbing her cheek, and walked out the door.
Tristan’s eyebrows lifted at the fury on Branwen’s face. Emerging from the stairwell, she said, “Prince Tristan, do you have my mother’s harp?”
“It’s in my chamber.”
“I need it back.” She massaged her aching jaw.
“Now?”
“Right now.”
* * *
Tutir was one of the guards stationed at the gate of the first perimeter wall.
He passed a quick glance over Branwen as she swept past him on her mount. If he thought it strange that Branwen had a harp strapped to her back, he gave no indication.
The Wise Damsel had asked Branwen to consider whether there was a better path.
There wasn’t.
The spell needed to be performed where she could see nothing but stars and love. Branwen knew of one place that fit that description.
As her mount galloped across the causeway, her mind traveled back to the first night that she’d hidden Tristan in her cave. Raiders had been spotted along the coast. Raiders who had not been authorized by King Marc. Branwen now knew that Queen Verica had sent raiders to retrieve her grandson from Iveriu, but she certainly hadn’t sent the pirates who’d attacked his ship in the first place.
The King of Kernyv had been losing his grip on power for far longer than anyone in Iveriu had realized.
Branwen reached the Stone of Waiting under a pale moon. The orb dangled so low over the moors that she could reach out and wrest it from the sky.
Since her arrival at Monwiku, she’d been fighting her magic. In these hours between night and day, Branwen would give herself over to its power.
Only magic could undo the pain the Loving Cup had caused. The illusion of love that courted destruction.
Tristan and Eseult were trapped in an illusion of truth. Despair was transforming her cousin into someone she never would have become. Not without Branwen’s magic. If Branwen lost part of herself in its unbinding, so be it. It would be no more than she’d already lost.
Although she barely drank any wine this evening, time moved dreamily around her. She dismounted her palfrey in the shadow of the crooked stone, black rather than green in the pre-dawn. From her saddlebag, Branwen retrieved a glass jar.
Last summer, if Branwen had waited long enough at this stone, she would have expected to see Tristan’s face.
She walked farther across the moor before she sank to her knees. Slinging the harp around from her back to her front, she pulled the leather strap over her head. Lady Alana had often carried the harp in this way when they went on seaside picnics with her father. Lord Caedmon claimed it was her mother’s singing voice that had first enchanted him.
When Branwen’s aunt had gifted the krotto to Tristan, she’d believed they would be wed in Kernyv. Before Tristan and Eseult had imbibed the Loving Cup, Eseult’s heart had softened toward the Kernyvman when he’d serenaded her aboard the Dragon Rising and called her a hero.
Their love had begun with music. With this harp. It had to be destroyed.
Branwen would save her cousin one last time. She would save the kingdom.
Only the krotto’s ashes might undo the terrible wrong she had done to Tristan and Eseult—and to Marc. She caressed the curve of its gold-painted frame. She plucked the silver strings. They reverberated across the empty moor.
As the last note faded, Branwen heard the sound of her own abandonment. Of that cavern inside herself that had been emptied on the day her parents died, refilled by the love of her cousin, and emptied again.
A gasping, hungry sob racked her body. Branwen forced it down.
She raised the Hand of Bríga. She summoned her spark.
Blue flame flickered against a melancholy horizon.
Branwen wrapped her right hand around the neck of the krotto the way her mother had instructed her when she was still too small to manage the harp’s weight. She had sat on her mother’s lap because she’d wanted to learn. She gripped it tight.
Crackling filled her ears. Fire ignited silver and gold. Releasing the burning frame, Branwen sat back on her knees. A vision appeared in the flames.
The Belotnia Festival of her twelfth year. She had just begun her monthly bleeding. Queen Eseult had explained that Branwen was on the cusp of womanhood. The prospect was both frightening and intriguing. For the first time, she was invited to attend the Festival of Lovers.
Essy wasn’t included because she was still a child. Her cousin begged Branwen not to leave her alone that night. Despite her curiosity about what the festival might entail, Branwen had capitulated.
When the bonfires could be spotted in the distance from the princess’s bedchamber window, Essy stuck her tongue out at them. She grabbed Branwen’s hand and dragged her down to the garden beneath the south tower.
“Let’s dance!” Essy had said. She and Branwen twirled until they were dizzy. Falling down between the roots of the hazel tree, they erupted into fits of giggles.
“Aren’t you glad you stayed behind at the castle with me?” her cousin had said, and Branwen knew the only acceptable answer was, “Yes.”
With a stolen kitchen knife, they carved their names into the tree.
“We don’t need lovers, Branny. We have each other. I’ll always love you best.”
“Me too.”
The burning harp hissed. The vision danced in the flames, enveloped her, the past and present merging.
As young Branwen lay beneath the hazel tree, a spark jumped from her hand to the roots. Fiery red streaked up the gnarled bark to the honeysuckle vines that clung to the trunk. Essy shrieked as the names they’d carved were eaten by flame.
Yel
low petals swirled in the air, singed, and landed on Branwen’s tongue.
It tasted sweet.
DON’T SPEAK
SENARA NUDGED HER AWAKE.
Branwen’s back was stiff from sleeping on the ground. Sitting up, she felt the joints of her neck crack. She wiped the slumber from her eyes.
The sun was drifting westward across the moors. She must have slept the day away. Still groggy, her gaze fell on the grass beside her. White strands of hair wavered atop a pile of ash.
Her mother’s harp was gone.
Urgency swept through her. Branwen removed the glass jar from her skirt pocket and scooped up a handful of ash. She stoppered it with a cork.
Her mind strained to recall what the Old Ones had shown her as she worked the spell. Like the night in Kerwindos’s Cauldron, Branwen could only clutch at fragments.
A honeysuckle vine burned in her mind. Why would the Old Ones show her that plant?
Tucking the glass jar firmly into the recess of her pocket, Branwen pushed to standing. She would mix the ash into spiced wine, serve it to Tristan and Eseult, and the anguish of the Loving Cup would be erased.
Patting Senara’s shoulder, Branwen thanked her for staying, and lifted herself into the saddle. She didn’t want to wait another moment. She gripped the reins and her mount galloped toward the forest.
Most of the funeral guests would have started their return journeys this morning and afternoon. With any luck, amidst the hustle and bustle of departures, Branwen’s absence from the castle wouldn’t have been noted too widely.
As she and Senara followed the coastal path into the Morrois Forest, Branwen spied several ships in the far distance, specks against the sea. Did any of them belong to either Morgawr or Xandru? She prayed to the Old Ones for their safekeeping.
Branwen tapped the pocket of her skirt, feeling for the jar.
Twilight began to shower the forest floor in amethyst light. An hour passed as Senara cantered through the wood, eager to return to her stall. From the branches above, the birds trilled their evening songs. Up ahead, her gaze landed on something bright white, out of place in the darkening forest. The sash of a Royal Guardsman. Branwen felt the downy hairs of her neck prickle.
Drawing closer, she recognized Tutir. He had stopped his stallion in the middle of the bridle path, blocking her route. She pulled back on Senara’s reins.
“Halt, Lady Branwen,” he called out, his Aquilan unpracticed.
“Has something happened?” Branwen asked him. Panic gripped her mind, showing her many potential scenarios where either the king or queen lay dying.
“I’m on an errand for the True Queen. I need you to dismount.”
“What errand?”
“Please dismount, my lady.”
A lament more spine-tingling than any call of the sea overwhelmed Branwen’s senses. It became a scream. The scream of the lost.
From the corner of her eye, she glimpsed a skeletal face. Branwen lurched backward in the saddle, splaying her body along Senara’s back, just missing an arrow that whizzed through the air and lodged in the nearest tree.
Tutir swore. He hadn’t heard the Death-Teller’s warning. Senara reared her front legs, and Branwen’s feet slipped from the stirrups. She slid sideways, tumbling to the forest floor.
As she fell, she watched in horror as the glass jar dropped from within her skirts.
It smashed against a rock. The shards were beautiful, blue glass twinkling amidst the ashes.
“No!” she screamed. It was too late. A breeze rolling off the Dreaming Sea scattered the glass and ashes through the Morrois Forest.
No, no, no …
Tutir approached Branwen with steady steps. “I’m sorry, my lady. You’ve betrayed the True Queen of Kernyv.”
She scrabbled backward on the ground. Twigs and rocks scratched her palms. The guardsman kept coming. Panic tangled her thoughts.
The knife, said an insistent voice. The knife Ruan had given her was still concealed in Branwen’s boot.
She reached for the blade just as Tutir dove on top of her. No. Branwen had sent the Shades running back to the Sea of the Dead. She would survive this. She swiped the dagger at Tutir’s torso. The guardsman groaned as the blade made contact, but the cut was shallow. Too shallow. And Tutir was strong.
He grabbed Branwen’s right wrist and slammed it against the ground with ferocious strength. And again.
“Stop!” Branwen yelled. “There’s been some mistake! I haven’t betrayed the queen!”
“I’m sorry. I have my orders.” The knife slipped uselessly from Branwen’s grip. Tutir grabbed it and hurled it into the forest.
Approaching at a diagonal, she saw another guardsman. The blond one with a scar on his left cheek. She remembered him, although she didn’t know his name. He’d also been on duty when the Armorican assassin was discovered poisoned.
“Please!” Branwen said, looking between Tutir and the man with the scar. “Take me back to the castle! Let me answer to the king!”
Tutir glanced at the other man. He shook his head.
“Be still,” Tutir told her. “I’ll make it quick, my lady. You won’t feel any pain.”
The guardsman thought the knife had been her only weapon. She laughed. Her knife would have been a mercy.
Branwen pressed the Hand of Bríga to his chest. Tutir stared at her, confused.
Please, Bríga, hear my call! Help me!
Before the guardsman could take another breath, he ignited. He seized the way Keane had in the stairwell at Castle Rigani.
Senara released a hysterical whinny at the sight of the burning man. The horse bolted into the wood, away from her mistress.
Branwen pushed Tutir off her and leapt to her feet. He continued to smolder. His flesh melted from his bones. Branwen’s rage was a beautiful, powerful thing.
Blood drained from the other guardsman’s cheeks; then he ran.
Branwen pursued him, fueled by need—a dark need. A consuming need. A need that was sweeter than any wine. She was drunk on it.
The scarred guardsman tripped on loose rocks and fell to the ground. “Please, no,” he said. “What are you?”
Branwen shrugged. “I don’t know. But you should be afraid.” She lowered herself beside him. “Who sent you after me?”
“We received a message from the True Queen. That’s all I know. It had her seal. Please, show me mercy.”
She considered. “Would you have shown me mercy?”
Branwen read the answer in his eyes. She pressed her hand to his heart.
He began to shake. She raised herself to standing and walked away from the guardsman.
Branwen let him burn. His screams filled the wood.
And then there was silence.
* * *
Night fell over the castle as Branwen made her way back on foot.
Her cloak was stained with smoke and ash, with dirt from the forest floor. Wild curls tangled in the breeze, escaping her lopsided plaits. Her feet ached.
The tide had started to rise again when she reached the causeway. Water lapped at her boots as she followed the elevated stone path. Moonlight brightened the slippery stones.
Her cousin had sent men to murder her.
Branwen knew too much, and she had lost her trust.
She kept repeating the truth in her mind, turning it over, kneading it like dough, trying to give it a form that made sense. Branwen had doomed Eseult, and Eseult wanted to kill her for it—even if she didn’t know the full truth.
How could Branwen not have seen what her cousin was capable of? Was it all the fault of the Loving Cup?
Her mother’s harp was gone. The True Queen’s assassins had thrown any chance of healing Eseult’s heart to the winds.
Branwen reached the gate at the bottom of the island. Did the other guardsmen wonder where Tutir had disappeared to? Or the scarred man whose name she didn’t know?
When the bodies were found, they would be unrecognizable.
Branwen had tried so many times to save her cousin.
She no longer knew why. She reached out for a reason and found nothing: a night without stars. What had driven Branwen to risk so much for a woman who would see her dead?
“Lady Branwen,” said a tall guard with brown skin. Some weeks ago, she’d sutured a laceration the man had sustained during single combat practice.
“Nosmatis,” Branwen replied, leery. Which other Royal Guardsmen might be in the queen’s employ?
The man gave her a rapid scan. “Are you hurt?”
“I was thrown from my horse.” She flicked up the corners of her mouth in a tight smile. “Nothing serious. Just a few bruises.”
“Glad to hear it.” He opened the gate. “Nosmatis, my lady.”
Relief flitting through her, Branwen thanked him and picked up her pace as she climbed the hill. What might the True Queen have told King Marc? Would he have sanctioned her unceremonious execution in the woods? Branwen found that hard to believe.
Several times on her walk back to the castle, she’d considered running away, abandoning Iveriu to whatever fate the True Queen was weaving for it. Why not let her cousin think Branwen had passed into the Otherworld? Escape to a distant land?
But she couldn’t. Branwen had made vows, too. She touched her mother’s brooch on her cloak. Her last vestige of Lady Alana. The right fight had become clearer to Branwen than the crystal waters of the River Bóand.
Something between excitement and terror swirled inside her. She caressed the inside of her hand.
It wasn’t solely the promises she’d made that propelled Branwen toward the Queen’s Tower—into a potential nest of enemies.
No, she wanted to see the look on her cousin’s face when she realized Branwen was still alive. Dhusnos had tried to kill Branwen. What made her cousin think she would succeed where the Dark One had failed?
There were no guards at the entrance when Branwen reached the tower. Perhaps with the funeral guests departed, King Marc thought the threat to his queen diminished.
Wild Savage Stars Page 33
