by Sam Farren
She pulled out more food, and Castelle ate, hands trembling with the rain and cold.
“Princess,” Eos said, when it was time to move on. The rain had let up enough for Castelle to hear her thoughts, but dark clouds promised more to come. “What I said before, about the temples. I believe the spirits influenced me. It was not my intention for it to come out with such vitriol.”
Castelle laughed.
“The spirits may have influenced you as they influenced me, but they are not solely to blame. You raised your voice. You were animated. That was the spirit’s doing. The rest, however, was yours. You wanted to say those things. You have always taken glee in revealing the so-called truth of the world to me.”
With that, she marched back into the returning rain, hood up. She didn’t know where she was going, but she’d ask for nothing, so long as she couldn’t see Eos, so long as she wasn’t following her.
“Princess,” Eos called. “I have only spoken the truth. I derive no pleasure from this.”
“Yes. Yes, you do. You have your—your moral high ground. You know the truth. You apparently know my family secrets. You get the distinct privilege of turning my life upside down, of punishing my family through me, making light of fourteen years in hiding, but you forget one thing,” Castelle yelled through the rain. “It does not matter how much you hate my family, how much of my life has been a lie. It does not even matter if everything you say is true, and I am the idiot who has believed every lie that has ever been fed to her. You’re forgetting something, Eos.”
Castelle balled her hands into fists. Eos caught up with her, boots sliding against the wet ground, peering around Castelle’s hood when she would not look at her.
“What, Princess?” Eos asked. “What is it?”
“That no matter what you say, it does not change the fact that my entire family was slaughtered in front of me,” Castelle said, rain streaking her face.
Eos stopped dead. Castelle fought to keep her feet still, but couldn’t stop herself. Puddles formed in the dirt, sending muddy water across her boots, her breeches, and she ran, slipping, sliding, not falling, not now.
Eos wouldn’t give chase. There was woodland ahead, dotted along the horizon. She could lose herself in there, could stumble upon a village and ask for help. Not as the Princess of Fenroe, but as someone who’d lost their way, someone who knew nothing of the world. Forget the throne. Forget Brackish. All she wanted was a bed, a bath, a hot meal and a life that made sense to her, if only for a few days.
She’d studied maps of Llyne. She’d prepared for something, if not this. There should be a town to the east, two or three miles downhill, towards the coast. All she had to do was keep running, following the lines of ink she’d traced her fingers over, in the study with her fathers. Her fathers who had told her Llyne was hers, that the rest of the archipelago ached for its true rulers to return, her fathers who had placed Brackish in their chambers, who lifted a false sword, who had given her the damn maps in the first place.
Castelle stopped dead on the edge of the woodland and found a wet rock to sit on.
She twisted her fingers in the hem of her cloak. Tears wouldn’t come.
Long minutes later, Eos sat by her side.
She hadn’t run.
“I didn’t know you were there,” Eos said.
“What do you mean?”
“I didn’t know you were there when it happened. That you saw it all. I assumed you were away from the castle at the time. That you survived by virtue of being absent.”
“No,” Castelle said, knitting her fingers together and pulling her hands apart. “I was there. I hid. I survived because… I don’t know. My fathers said I survived because I had to, because Fenroe needed me. But I think I survived because of sheer luck. Because the rebels miscounted the Greyser children, or mistook one of Marigold’s children for the fifth. They were drunk on victory, caught up in the moment, and I went unnoticed.”
“Hm,” Eos said.
“And so it doesn’t matter what you think of my parents. What horrors you believe they committed. They were my parents, and I saw them slaughtered. I was fourteen, Eos. Fourteen. Edward, my youngest brother, was five. The—never mind. I shouldn’t have to explain this to you.”
“You shouldn’t,” Eos agreed. “It does not change what they have done, but neither does it change the fact that they are your parents. I cannot imagine what it is like, from the inside. You are right. You were fourteen. You had no part in what was done. You only knew what they told you was true.”
“And now you want me to believe what you say is true,” Castelle said.
“No, Princess. It doesn’t matter whether you believe it or not. The truth is the truth, with or without you.”
It would take as long to get through to Eos as it would for the rain to erode the rock they sat upon. Her sympathy was surface level. Castelle had shocked her into one stint of silence, but Eos was steadfast in the truth she clung to.
Perhaps they were as stubborn as one another.
“Will you not listen to me? Will you not let me share my side of things?” Castelle asked.
Eos nodded, knowing it would make no difference to her.
“The temples, they—they harboured fugitives. Those who had attempted treason. The priests said it was a consequence of protecting the innocent, those in need. It was worth two or three people going unpunished by the law, if hundreds were kept safe,” Castelle began. Her mother had explained it to her in words a ten-year-old could understand, and her fathers had reinforced the decision she had made with a heavy heart over and over. “It pained my mother to act, but there were those hiding in the temples that would see to the downfall of Fenroe. She closed the temples, knowing hundreds would be displaced, but hundreds of thousands would be safe, in the long run. Future generations would thrive, thanks to their sacrifice.
“The temples were never meant to stay closed forever. It was a temporary, desperate measure.”
The rain had slowed. It sounded different, this close to the forest. It struck the leaves and clung on, creating a tiny patter that covered the woodland, ground not yet turned to mud.
“The people branded as traitors had reason to hide from Queen Marcella. They used the temples, as the law afforded them,” Eos said. “Their crimes were opposing the Greyser rule, in voice alone. They spread dissidence throughout the streets, held rallies, let it be known that they would no longer abide by the monarchy and nobility draining the life from the land.”
Castelle pressed her palms flat to her knees. It wasn’t time for her heart to race, for her thoughts to cloud her mind, until they blotted into one, deafening her. She’d asked Eos to listen to her, and had to listen in kind. She had to wade through this with the calm of a future Queen, mind open, heart closed.
“Why? Why did they object to our rule so? Fenroe was always prosperous, always strong. It could always stand against the larger nations. What was it about my family that they detested so?”
“You lived in the castle, Princess. You had countless servants, extravagant meals prepared for you each day, piles of gold in reserve, maids, tailors, footmen, all the spoils of the world within reach. You grew up surrounded by this. Why would you not believe your parents when they told you it was the same for everyone?
“Yet it was not so. Your parents and the nobility had more than the rest of the Kingdom combined. More land, more money, more resources.”
“That’s it?” Castelle asked. “This was all merely about money?”
“Things are only ever merely about money when you have it in abundance. When it is not something you spend every waking moment thinking of,” Eos said. “People starved in the streets. The archipelago was cut-off from outsiders and the influences they’d bring. Even travel between the islands became near-impossible, lest any foreigners sneak their way in.
“There was enough for everyone, Princess, but your family hoarded it. They ensured they had an iron grip on the archipelago, and that none cou
ld ever challenge their claim to the throne.”
Castelle prayed for the rain to roar in her ears again, but the gods had stopped listening to Greysers long ago.
“That can’t be. Look around. You saw Llyne, the port city, the towns in the distance. It is thriving, it is beautiful, and—”
“And the government has spent fourteen long years repairing what the monarchy left in ruin,” Eos said. “Some islands went without outside trade for years, under Greyser rule. Traitors to the crown could hide in shipments of wheat and corn.”
“They could and did! How do you think the rebels got so close to the castle? Everything my mother warned against came to be. All the impossible choices she made were for nothing, because it was still not enough to protect the Kingdom from the rebels.”
“That is the problem, Princess. You still call them rebels, like they are a single being whose purpose began and ended in sacking the castle. You call them rebels like they have not taken this tattered Kingdom into their hands and allowed Nor to free itself in the same way.”
Castelle shot to her feet. Her head spun, but she didn’t stumble.
There was her mother, sat in her study, dark mahogany desk made darker by the late evening shadows that fell across the room, candles burnt to the wick. She always wore green, lush as Laister’s forests and the hills of Fenroe, red hair spilling over her shoulders, brow ever creased.
She spent so much of her life deep in thought, nose pressed to maps, lost in letters sent from the far reaches of Fenroe. She was always working, was never not giving herself to her Kingdom, and she never turned Castelle away.
Castelle had been twelve, thirteen, when she’d snuck in, and her mother had pulled her into her lap. Queen Marcella twisted one of the wooden pieces she’d placed on a map of Fenroe and hummed.
Look, my darling, she’d said. These are the people who would take this all away from us.
“I call them rebels because I know exactly who they are,” Castelle hissed more than whispered. “You may treat them as heroes, may act as though they have freed this land from a terrible beast, but I alone know the truth. Isha Brookes. She was the first into our dining room, the first to act. And it was our dining room, not the banquet hall. It was a small space, filled with all our family’s things. The chairs would touch the walls, if you pushed them out a little too far…
“Isha Brookes. Her sword was already bloody. I don’t know whether she cut through nobles or guards to get there, but she pushed her blade through my father’s back before he could rise to his feet. He wasn’t born a Greyser. He wasn’t worth as much to them.
“Col Answorth. He murdered my oldest sister, my Marigold, and do you know what he did? He smiled. He told her the chair she was about to die in would be the only throne she ever got, and then he killed her husband, too. Isha Brookes grabbed Marigold’s bloody throat, threw her to the floor, and slaughtered her children. The only times I have prayed this last decade has been to thank the gods that she was taken before her children.
“Victoria Letas was more solemn. She didn’t smile, but she did kill my little sister and brother, Marcella and Tobias. They were twins. They were clinging to each other; that’s why it was so easy. One strike went clean through each of them.
“I hid behind a cabinet. The moment before they broke down the door, a salt shaker had rolled off the table. I leant down to retrieve it. My mother heard a clamour and shouted for me to hide, to get out of sight.
“Out of their sight. I saw it all. Isha held my mother in place while Col and Victoria killed Edward. He was five, Eos, and it took two of them to do it. Isha was grinning the entire time, clinging to my mother’s jaw with a hand covered in Marigold’s blood, making her watch as they slaughtered her youngest son. He was five, and it was not a clean cut, not a single cut. He was bleeding from his arms, his stomach, his chest, when they finally slit his throat. He was five, Eos, five, and they tortured him.
“He wasn’t dead when they threw him to the floor. I reached out for him, even though I should’ve been paralysed by fear, and do you know what my mother did? She bit Isha’s hand, took Marigold’s blood into her mouth, and distracted the three of them. Col and Victoria had their backs to me, Isha had her forehead pressed to my mother’s temple as she snarled at her, and I had one hand on Edward’s throat from under the cabinet, trying to stop the blood, and he was looking at me, whimpering, gurgling, and—and…
“They killed my mother. It wasn’t a slow thing. They took turns, and, and, Edward’s throat stopped gushing under my palms, and—and before they called in the rest of the rebels to sever their heads from their bodies, they sat at the table. They ate the rest of our dinner, drank the last of our wine.
“So, no, Eos. I do not call them by name. I call them rebels because that is easier, because it is the only way I can stop hearing the screams. You may believe they saved the Kingdom, and you may even be right about what they have done for the commoners, but they were monsters. They did not fight because they believed it was right. They enjoyed it. They could’ve slaughtered us in minutes, but they made my mother watch her husband, children, and grandchildren die.”
In fourteen years, she had not said the words out loud. In fourteen years, it had blurred together in her mind, without definition. In fourteen years, she had not stopped picturing her own death and the multitudes of agonies it could’ve covered.
She had convinced herself she only remembered the stench of the blood and the cut of the rebels’ grins, that there was no order in it, but she did not even have to close her eyes to see it play out, second by second.
It had not faded, would not fade.
Edward’s eyes were still on her.
“I am sorry, Princess,” Eos said, rocking forward, one hand pressed to her deepest scar. “It was the only way.”
Chapter Eleven
Castelle had an awareness she was running, but did not know where, or how she’d gained the momentum. Sharing the truth should’ve drained what little it hadn’t stolen from her, but she tore through the woodland as though being tossed downhill. The ground shifted for her and the trees parted. The woodland would go on forever, if she needed it to.
Eos’ face had been like stone. Her heart was something harder. Castelle’s words had been so sharp and clear she’d left herself to speak them, but the loss and bloodshed had not been enough to make Eos soften.
She still believed she was right. Castelle’s family was a blight to the end, and they deserved what happened to them at the rebel’s hands. Never mind the children, too young to be indoctrinated in the Greyser ways. The punishment wasn’t severe enough.
“Princess,” Eos called.
It was the first inclination she had of being followed, the first sign that the woodland hadn’t sprung up for her and her alone. The trees were too far apart. Eos was close, too close. Castelle couldn’t hide, couldn’t escape out into the open.
She didn’t dare look over her shoulder.
Eos could catch her, if she wanted to. She’d done so before. It’d taken no effort. She was stronger than Castelle, faster too, and had an endurance that couldn’t be matched by twelve sedentary years in a temple.
“Princess, it isn’t safe,” Eos said. She could reach out and grab Castelle’s shoulder, if she wanted to. “We’re close to—”
“Leave!” Castelle called. “Leave, leave. I don’t care where you’re taking me. I don’t care if you have Brackish, if that really is the spirit-sword. Leave! I want nothing to do with you.”
Eos didn’t heed her words.
“The villagers set—”
“Quiet!”
Castelle set off again, either marching or sprinting. The motion blurred into nothing, world moving too fast around her, footsteps rough and irregular. What did any of it matter? Her fathers had lied to her, even if it was to protect her. The one part of her Kingdom she thought safe was close to ruins, and the other islands prospered. Her family was dead, Brackish was in someone else’s possession, and
the woman who’d plunged her into the truth didn’t have the decency to respect the dead.
There was nothing for her. No distant family in Nor, waiting for the day she reclaimed her throne. No spirits in the capital, no legions of commoners holding hope in their hearts that one day, she’d reclaim her rightful place.
There was nothing for her. Nothing! Her feet pounded the ground, grass parted as she rushed through, and the light of the spirit-sword lashed against the trees as the whole world came to a stop.
There was a snap, a groan of metal and rust.
The pain came after.
Castelle wasn’t moving. Wasn’t breathing. Sweat gathered in her clenched fists, across her forehead, and her whole body crumbled like the ashes of her family’s legacy.
“Princess,” Eos called, skidding to a stop, falling to her side. “Princess. Look at me. Do not look down. Do not.”
Eos’ rich brown skin turned clammy. The spirit-sword’s light caught on the edges of her scars and faded. Castelle didn’t know what to do, didn’t know how to piece together what was happening, and her mind screamed it hurts! it hurts! before processing the pain.
Seconds ago, she’d been unstoppable. Her grief had changed the tapestry of the landscape, had redirected the soil to create a path. Now she was in Eos’ arms, reaching for the collar of her shirt, desperate to hold onto something.
“Don’t look down,” Eos murmured. “Don’t look down, Princess. Please. Look at me.”
Eos was the last person she wanted to see, the only person there for her. The only one who’d been honest with her. She hated her for that, despised her for thinking the truth redeemed anything in her actions. It swirled in the pit of Castelle’s stomach, and she lost herself in that whirlpool of contempt as the pain finally found its place around her ankle and shot up her leg.
“I need to remove the bear trap, Princess,” Eos said, short of breath. “Don’t move, or it’ll be worse. It’ll trigger again. Look at me, Princess. Look at me.”
“Don’t call me that,” Castelle murmured. “Don’t. Don’t. After all you’ve said, don’t you—”
