by Sam Farren
There were hundreds of people there. Thousands. Castelle had studied her books, had memorised the facts. Llyne had been home to eighty-thousand, and the port had housed a fifth of them. Had, father Ira always emphasised. Who could say how many remained, how many lives had been lost under this new, broken rule?
She could.
Castelle could see it for herself. She could see the buildings gleaming under the sun, built from white stone from lands beyond the archipelago. The shape of the city was new, strange, foreign; Eos had put them on the wrong ship. She’d taken them to Nor or Amaros, to the continent beyond. This wasn’t her Kingdom. This wasn’t Fenroe.
The markets overflowed with fruit she’d never tasted, clothing that wasn’t shaped as it should be, spices that made the back of her eyes sting. Music rose from a crowded corner of the docks, and her ears couldn’t follow the notes.
She took a step back, but there was no escaping it.
Eos placed a hand on her shoulder, stopping her from stumbling.
Castelle’s eyes met hers, wide, accusing. Eos inclined her head away from the bustle of the docks and Castelle’s feet led her to an alleyway, shielded from the sun, stifling the sounds of the strange, mismatched city.
Castelle leant against a wall for balance. This was Eos’ doing. No wonder she’d only given her an apple for breakfast. She was hallucinating, making mountains of the ruins of Llyne.
“What has happened here, Eos?” Castelle asked.
Eos stood at the entrance of the alleyway, hands clasped behind her back.
“Answer me, won’t you?” Castelle demanded.
“I do not understand, Princess.”
“This. The city. Llyne! There is so much to it, and it is all… it is thriving.”
Eos furrowed her brow. Her bemusement was genuine, and that was the worst of it.
“It has been more than a decade since you last moved freely through a city,” Eos said. “Perhaps you are overwhelmed.”
Overwhelmed didn’t begin to explain it. Castelle had been brought to a city that no longer existed, and something else, something hollow, towered around her.
“Llyne was one of the rebels’ strongholds,” Castelle said. “Even after my fathers secured it a handful of years back, there was so little left. So much had been plundered, burnt or abandoned, and yet—yet you have brought me here, and all this surrounds us.”
Something in Eos’ eyes changed. There was depth to her expression, beneath the scars.
“You are exhausted, Princess. We have slept little and eaten less. Come.”
Eos had spent enough time in Llyne to avoid the crowds. She led Castelle to one of the green, open spaces, far enough from the docks that crowds weren’t an innate part of it. There was an empty bench backing onto a row of bushes, sides cut square, and Eos left her there.
After kidnapping her in the night, dragging her across Laister, burning a bridge decades old, and fleeing the island, Eos left her sitting on a bench in a busy city. She took her bag, contents more important than the Heir of Fenroe, the last Greyser left in the land.
Small birds hopped through the grass, pecking at worms and the remnants of yesterday’s picnics. People walked the winding path through the open area, some hurrying, some wandering arm in arm, plenty gazing Castelle’s way. She could’ve caught anyone’s attention. She could’ve run from the bench, could’ve lost herself in the city and stayed that way, until the people her fathers had sent after her made themselves known.
The woman from Yaros’ words played in the back of Castelle’s head. She didn’t need to tell anyone she was their Princess. Saying she’d been abducted would be enough. She could even cry, for effect.
She could’ve done so many things, but she sat there for ten, twenty minutes until Eos returned, food bundled in her arms.
She placed it on the bench between them. More fruit, along with rolls the size of Castelle’s head, hollowed out and stuffed with mushrooms and grilled vegetables. Castelle picked up the canteen. Her hands had been shaking for days.
Eos tore chunks of bread off and chewed thoughtfully, watching the birds. She reached into her pocket, throwing handfuls of seed into the grass. She’d wasted time buying food for the birds, time Castelle could’ve used to disappear.
Castelle pulled one of the rolls into her lap, turning away from Eos. As she’d watched Eos, so too did the people passing through the open space. They gawked, gait faltering, some stunned into silence by her scars, others elbowing their companions and sharing whispers.
“Do you ever get used to that?” Castelle asked.
“Hm?”
“The staring. The wincing. People aren’t particularly subtle.”
Castelle was a Princess, but even her long red hair did not give her away. Being by Eos’ side made her invisible for the first time in her life.
“No, Princess,” Eos said. “I have not grown accustomed to any of it.”
Castelle tore into her food, knowing it was a mistake. Once she took her first bite, she wouldn’t stop eating. A lifetime of extravagant meals left her bones hollow, after a few lean days.
The bread was packed with spices and oils, bringing life to the vegetables. Castelle bit off bigger and bigger chunks, chewed faster and faster, sniffing, sniffing. The world was a blur, the air was heavy, and her hands were shaking.
“Princess?” Eos said.
“Much of Llyne was laid siege to. Caelfal and Yarrin too, but Llyne was the only island we truly reclaimed. But the fires that ravaged it, the riots, the looting, all at the hands of the rebels, or the result of people trying to fight back; the port was good as ruins,” Castelle said, not daring to blink. “It was to take decades to rebuild the place, to make it better than it once was, yet you bring me here in a matter of days and this is all around me.”
“Is that what your fathers told you?”
Castelle nodded, shovelling more food into her mouth.
“There is much you have been lied to about, Princess. Much you do not understand,” Eos said. “You would not believe it all. You do not want to believe it all.”
“How do—” Castelle began, pausing to clear her throat. “How do you know what I want?”
“I know you are a Greyser.”
The food was ash in Castelle’s mouth. The ice in Eos’ voice overpowered her accent, and the disdain with which she spoke her name had sounded from a hundred rebels’ mouths.
“What does that mean?”
“It means that you expect to see your sigil, your bear, standing watch over the people even now. For centuries, the Greyser family did as they pleased with these lands. They used it for its resources, accumulated their own wealth, and ignored the needs of their people. They piled one restriction upon another, punished people for doing their utmost to survive, and kept out those seeking shelter.
“Fenroe had been a ruin of itself for decades, Princess, and a resistance formed. It was the only way for Fenroe to survive. Llyne is as strong as it is, as vibrant as it is, because of these so-called rebels. The government holds Fenroe together. None starve. None are without shelter. It is not a perfect land, but none are. It is doing its utmost to shake off its imperial past.”
The food fell from Castelle’s lap as she shot to her feet.
“What’s wrong with you?” Castelle demanded. “How can you sit there and pretend the rebels have ever had Fenroe’s prosperity in mind? My family sacrificed everything to hold them back. Everything, and still, it was not enough.”
Eos stared up at her. She didn’t grit her teeth together and her breathing didn’t hitch. This meant nothing to her. Nothing. She was recounting a story, giving life to a lie. She was from a distant land; none of it reached her bones.
“Look around, Princess. Fenroe has the makings of an honest, fair nation,” Eos said. “I said you would not believe me. I said there were things you did not want to hear. But it is the truth, Princess. I have no reason to lie to you.”
“No reason?” Castelle’s voice ros
e. Passers-by pretended they weren’t eavesdropping. “You took me from my home, marched me across Laister with no explanation, and now you claim I can trust you? You are not of Fenroe. What could you possibly know of it?”
“You are right. I am not Fenronian. But Queen Marcella’s reach extended beyond the archipelago, as did the influence of her predecessors. For centuries, Nor was caught in the same turbulence, and it came to decades of bloodshed, of civil war. I know what the people of Fenroe tell me. I know the Queen followed in Ava Greyser’s example, I know she was a cruel woman, who—”
“Enough,” Castelle said, grabbing the front of Eos’ shirt. “Do not speak of my mother ever again. She gave all that she was to this Kingdom, and they put her head on a pike for it.”
Finally, it came to tears. Eos’ silence caved in on itself. She reached out, but it was too late.
With tears streaking her face, Castelle marched blindly into the city, chin raised, doing all she could to ignore those who would stare at her without offering help.
Her mother had sat on the throne for twenty-six years. She had ever been meeting with her council, hearing out commoners, travelling to the smaller islands, and addressing her military directly. She’d slept little and never rested when she could be working for the betterment of her people, yet she’d always found time for her five children. Their father, Prince Edward, had seen to most of their caregiving, but their mother’s presence spread throughout the time they spent apart.
The children never stopped looking forward to seeing her, beaming for the time they’d just spent together.
Marigold was next in line to the throne, yet her mother made time for them all equally. She’d sat with Castelle in her lap at feasts, ignoring the usual simpering and flattery of the nobles in favour of telling her stories. She’d taught her how to ride a horse, how to swim.
Eos didn’t know. How could she? She hadn’t been there, she hadn’t felt Queen Marcella’s presence, her unfaltering love and devotion. She didn’t know. Couldn’t know.
Yet the city spiralled around Castelle, offering more in storefronts than she’d been served in the castle’s grandest banquets. The people made the most of summer, walking hand in hand without a care in the world, standing tall in spite of the weight of the rebels pressing their spirits flat.
Something was wrong. This was not the ruined world she’d been promised, the land that ached for her return.
Not a single bear watched over the city, banners and carvings keeping the Greyser spirit alive.
Eos was close behind. She’d followed Castelle, as duty dictated.
“I don’t understand,” Castelle said, finally wiping her face on her sleeves. “Is this why you brought me here? To show me this? To—to prove something? That I know nothing about the outside world? That I have lost more than a decade of my life to ignorance? Is that it, Eos?”
“I do not need to prove anything. Fenroe is as it is. It will make sense to you, in time.”
“It ought to make sense to me now. I need—I need…”
“What do you need, Princess?”
Castelle closed her eyes. Eos called her Princess, in spite of all she’d said. She had to cling to that. She had to think with her head, not lose herself to her pounding heart. She needed to be Fenroe’s Princess, needed to dig deeper, to look beyond the shiny surface of one gleaming city. She’d spent hours there. She hadn’t exchanged words with any of the locals, didn’t know what they were really feeling, what they were too afraid to express.
She needed help. She needed someone other than Eos at her side, making lies of her past life.
“I need to go to Nor,” Castelle said.
“Nor?”
For the first time, Eos recoiled.
“I know contact has been cut off, of late, but Nor was once our ally. My family, distant though they may be, sit upon the throne,” Castelle said, plan coming to her as she spoke. “I may not have Brackish, but I know plenty of the secrets Nor and Fenroe share. My mother’s cousin will take me in. King Mykos will make sense of this.”
Eos looked away. Her silence was not one of her choosing, this time. Castelle saw her jaw twitch, but the words would not come. In the midday sun that skimmed the edge of a nearby clock tower, Eos grew wan.
“What is it?” Castelle asked.
Not a demand, but a whisper.
“Princess,” Eos said with an air of pity. “There is no monarchy in Nor. No one has sat upon its throne in almost a decade.”
“What? Don’t be ridiculous. We always heard word of Nor, even from the temple. The country dwarfs our archipelago. It would not fall.”
“It would not,” Eos agreed. “But it followed in Fenroe’s example, after centuries of senseless war. There is no royal family in Nor. Its government consults with Fenroe’s. Your family does not sit upon the throne in this land or any other, Princess.”
“You mean, they were—the rebels, they…?”
Eos bowed her head.
“All of them, Princess.”
Her parents were gone. Her siblings, aunts, uncles, grandparents, cousins, nieces, nephews were gone. Layla had lasted longer than any of them, had survived against all odds, but she was gone, too. Nor was the last tenuous link she had to her family, and no matter how little she wanted to believe it, she knew Eos wasn’t lying.
Fenroe had fallen.
Nor had crumbled.
She was the last of the Greysers, the last of any branches that could’ve spread from her.
She was the last of the Greysers, and thousands of strangers swarmed around her, living their lives without a passing thought to the blood that had stained the floor, that had run down the grooves between the tiles and soaked into the carpets.
“I am sorry, Princess,” Eos said. Not sorry her family had fallen, but sorry to deliver the news. In that, if nothing else, she was sincere. “Fenroe is not yours. There is no throne for you to reclaim. But there is much you can do for these lands, if you truly care for them.”
She’d spent fourteen years devoted to a Fenroe that no longer was. It was all she had left.
“What if I don’t want to? What if I do not wish to follow you, Eos?” Castelle said, edging backwards. “What if I scream and scream, and tell the whole city I fear for my life?”
“They will listen to you. I am Yrician; it will not be hard to convince them I mean you some harm. You may return to the temple. You may return to the Lords Damir and Ira.”
“You’d let me go? After all of this?”
“It does not matter if you do not believe a word of what I’ve said. What matters is that you have seen a sliver of Fenroe for yourself, and know these men have lied to you. You know that they have used you,” Eos said. “I do not think you will return. I think you want to know more.”
Eos’ gaze softened. Her shoulders fell slack. Castelle hated it with a reverence she had only hated waiting, in the past. Those were her options. Return to the temple, trapped in a forest full of dogs that would not protect her, where her fathers’ lies choked the air, or follow a Yrician across a Kingdom she claimed was no longer Castelle’s.
Her fathers promised her the throne, one day, a hundred years off. Eos promised to take all Castelle knew from her, day-by-day, minute-by-minute.
“Tell me,” Castelle said. “Tell me everything that happened to Nor. You were there, were you not? I want to know everything. Everything.”
Eos held out an arm, gesturing to the city’s main street.
“Yes, Princess. But we do not have time to waste. Your fathers’ mercenaries will soon be on our heels.”
Eos had two bags again. The one she’d carried from Laister Forest was scuffed and stained, dirt on the bottom, smoke clinging to the coarse fibres. Castelle snatched the other from her, full of nothing more valuable than food, and headed off.
Beyond the city and its strange, white buildings, Llyne was as Fenroe had always been: broad and green, wind and salt entangled in the air. The trees were sparse, the rough grey
rocks more prominent, and in the distance, the white specks of sheep grazed upon the slopes. Half a dozen roads spread from the city, splitting in two every few miles, and the outlines of settlements rose on the horizon to the east and west.
Eos ignored the paths and settlements alike, making her way through the grass, towards the sheep in the west.
Castelle followed, shifting the bag from one shoulder to the other. The terrain rose so gradually Castelle couldn’t account for the tightness in her legs, straight away. Gripping the bag straps, Castelle took a deep breath, determined to match Eos’ pace.
She’d spent the last twelve years walking the corridors of the temple, the perimeter of the forest clearing, and had slept less than three hours over the last handful of days. Castelle didn’t know what she was running on, but it wasn’t adrenaline.
It was in her throat, not her veins.
“Tell me what you know,” Eos said. “What you have been told of Nor.”
“Nor has been ruled by the Dracma family for the last few centuries,” Castelle said, doubting her words as she spoke. They were rote; they did not come from any part of her that had ever had to put two pieces together. “Adriana Greyser, my great-great-aunt, is the only Greyser to have ever left Fenroe. Having two older siblings, she married the Queen of Nor. To say the current ruler is my mother’s cousin is a gross simplification, but it was meant as an endearment, to strengthen bonds between our countries.
“King Mykos took the throne in 1283, forty years ago. His Royal Highness had trouble with civil wars throughout his reign, but nothing more testing than any other royal.”
Eos asked her for her truth, not the truth. Castelle was not a fool for reciting it, not a pawn to feed information to. It was her truth, and she would bear the brunt of it being demolished.
“Hm.”
Eos stopped at the crest of a slope, upon a plateau that made Castelle wheeze with relief.
“Well? Aren’t you going to tell me that everything I know is a lie?”
