The Essence

by Kimberly Derting

  But not everyone knew the rest of the story: that I could understand everyone.

  She didn’t answer, just nodded slowly as the man looked away once more. Her cheeks were red now, and I knew it had nothing to do with the fire. It was unlikely she’d meant to reveal so much of her private life to her queen.

  I couldn’t stop myself from asking my next question. “Do you ever miss it? Ludania, I mean. Have you ever wanted to leave the Scablands?”

  “Everyone has regrets, I suppose. You can’t choose one path without missing out on another,” she said slowly, thoughtfully. “But I can’t say I wish I’d done things differently. It’s a hard life out here in the Scablands, sure, but it was a matter of trading one form of tyranny for another.”

  I knew she meant living under Sabara’s dictatorial rule.

  She smiled then, her eyes wandering to the other rider. “I think I made the right decision.”

  I looked too, noticing him for the first time. He was younger than the other man. Younger than both of them, but similar to each as well. “What’s his name?” I asked.

  She stood up, making an attempt to brush the dirt from the front of her pants but it was everywhere, coating everything, and I realized the gesture was more habit than useful. “Jacob. He was the only child we had that ever reached an age where we could name him,” she said, and then she left, joining her family.

  I watched her go, determined to change things out here. Determined to give these people a better life.

  I turned to Avonlea then, my curiosity unending. “How long have you lived with them? Floss and Jeremiah?”

  She dug around in the dirt some more with her stick, pondering the question. “Ten years. Maybe more.” She shrugged. “Probably more.”

  I studied her disbelievingly. “How—how old are you?” I asked.

  She was silent for so long I thought she wasn’t going to answer me. But after what felt like an endless stretch, she glanced up, her eyes locking with mine. “Last I thought about it, I was in my sixteenth year. So not much older than that, I guess.”

  I was almost as shocked by that information as I had been by how long she’d been in Floss’s care. When I’d first met her, she’d looked so much older . . . so tired and worn-down. Knowing the truth, I could see that she’d been robbed of any real childhood.

  I tried to imagine Avonlea as a little girl with no name. A child bride taken away from everything she knew and transplanted into a new home, with another family. I thought of the way Floss had treated her. He was demanding and crude and certainly not affectionate. Not what a little girl needed. At best, she was a tolerated servant beneath his roof.

  I wanted to wrap my arms around her, to let her start her life all over again. To give her a new story altogether, one complete with parents and a home. One in which she hadn’t been sold into servitude as a mere child. One in which she had her own name, rather than the one I’d made up for her.

  “Do you like living with them?” I asked, trying to keep the censure from my voice.

  “I don’t hate it,” she answered. “There’re worse places I could’a ended up.”

  She was right, of course. Everyone in Ludania had heard the rumors of life in the work camps. Stories of children worked in the fields until they could no longer stand on their own two feet, and then being tied to the horses and dragged back to the camps. Stories of children who’d been chained to the fences for speaking out of turn, and then charred to death when the generator-power fences were started up. There were stories of intentional starvations and of guards experimenting on children who weren’t old enough to work, using all manner of medical, farm, and science equipment.

  The camps were a source of childhood nightmares, and every little girl and boy in Ludania feared that if they misbehaved badly enough their parents might send them to the camps.

  Orphans were often sent there when there was no other family. And I’d seen more than one household send their children away simply because they could no longer afford to feed them.

  “Are you all right, Your Majesty?”

  I blinked, frowning at Avonlea who stared back at me. I nodded slowly. “Of course. I’m fine. Why do you ask?”

  Avonlea started to reach out to me, but she paused, her hand frozen halfway between us. Her face scrunched up. “I—,” she started. “I didn’t mean to make you cry.”

  I glanced away from her, wiping my cheeks. I hadn’t realized I’d been crying. “It’s not you,” I assured her when I turned back to her. She was still watching me with that same horrified expression. “I swear it wasn’t your fault.”

  It’s mine. I winced inwardly, realizing how negligent I’d been. There was still so much I had to do for my country.

  max

  He tried to tell himself a lone rider wasn’t a bad sign.

  But it was a lie, and he knew it.

  It was the middle of the night. A lone rider was always a bad sign.

  “What do you think it means?” Claude asked from the empty library behind him.

  “A message,” Max answered.

  “From who?”

  Both of them should have been in bed at this hour, but Max hadn’t been in his bed in days. Not since he’d watched Charlie board the train to the summit.

  It had been too soon for her to go and too hard for him to let her. Sleep, ever since, had been damn near impossible.

  Instead he spent his nights like this, staring out the palace windows. He was worried and afraid. He wouldn’t rest until Charlie was home again. Safe.

  He turned to face Claude, who watched him with quiet resignation. Claude, who could have left him alone hours ago, but who stubbornly remained at his side. Just as he had for years. “Only one way to find out.”

  The doors were already being opened when Max reached the entrance, and the messenger was escorted inside. His clothing was ragged and torn, and he was covered in grime that went far deeper than a day’s ride. His cheeks were lean, and dark circles ringed his eyes. He staggered slightly when Claude’s shadow passed over him, not an uncommon reaction—royal guards were known to make grown men cower in fear.

  “Who sent you?” Max questioned the rider, who seemed to have a hard time keeping his gaze level.

  The man glanced up, ever so slightly. Ever so hesitantly. “A-a man named B-Bartolo, Your High—” He stopped himself in time. It was a common mistake, one that was made often since people still assumed he was the crowned prince. But that legacy had died when Charlie—the rightful queen of Ludania—had taken his grandmother’s place on the throne. “I was sent with word that a party of ten soldiers was found slaughtered just outside the Scablands, just south of the train line.” He lowered his head now, unable to look at anything but the floor. “They were from the palace,” he offered nervously, as if he himself were responsible for the soldiers’ demise. “That’s all I was told. I ran my horse here fast as I could. Barely stopped to piss.”

  Max looked to Claude, and wondered if his guard’s heart was racing nearly as fast as his own, but he knew that it wasn’t. Claude liked to tell that he’d been born without a heart.

  Max’s, however, was trying to beat its way out of his chest.

  There were only so many palace soldiers out there right now. And the only ones anywhere near the Scablands were those sent with Charlie.

  “Damn,” he heard Claude mutter.

  Damn, Max thought as his airway constricted, was an understatement.

  xiv

  The flowers were just out of my reach and I had to lean forward, the water lapping around my knees. My small hands—my fingertips—grazed one of the blue petals, sending the flower shooting away from my grasp.

  I stood there for a moment, studying the still surface, trying to decide. I was already in too deep, deeper than I’d ever been before. But it was right there, one more step and I’d have it.

  I held my breath and took a step. Only this time I wasn’t standing on the same slimy surface I’d been on before. This time
I stood on something rigid, something scaly, something alive.

  It moved before I could think, and the water around me thrashed before I could react. The scream that reached my throat came seconds after I felt sharp teeth sink into the tender flesh of my leg . . . tugging, tearing, ripping.

  I felt myself being dragged beneath the water as I searched for something to reach for. But all I could see were the flowers, too delicate and insubstantial to keep me from going under. I kicked as hard as I could with my other leg, but it was too late. I came up once, gasping for air. Already the water choked me, filling my lungs. And already blood replaced water in the river around me.

  My sister’s screams must have alerted the others, the guards who’d been standing watch on the hill above us, making sure the queen’s daughters weren’t disturbed. I saw them advancing even as I was pulled down once more, until water was all that surrounded me, and pain sliced through my leg.

  I didn’t remember the jaws releasing me, didn’t remember being dragged to the shore, but I remembered hearing my sister’s voice: “Please, take me. Take me instead. . . .” The words were repeated, whispered against my ear, over and over again as she rocked me, clutching me tightly. “Take me instead. . . .”

  She hadn’t understood at the time, but her whispered plea had changed everything.

  This time I awoke not startled but spent.

  A deep-down kind of fatigue kept me from stirring right away. Kept my gaze unfocused and my breathing shallow.

  I hated that I couldn’t find peace from Sabara when I closed my eyes.

  I reached for my neck, rubbing the cramp in it, surprised that I’d managed to sleep at all. I wondered when I’d finally yielded, when I’d finally leaned my back against the scraggly dead log and let my eyes drift closed.

  And then a thought ripped through me like a shot, scalding every crevice, electrifying every fissure and nook of my awareness.

  He’s here.

  Inconspicuously, I searched for him. I didn’t want to be caught if he saw me there, awake. I watched as soldiers and Scablanders worked together to break down camp: rolling blankets and picking horse’s hooves and tightening saddle straps. The smell of wood and burnt meat filled the crisp air and I pulled the scratchy blanket up to my lips, breathing into it to warm my lips.

  Nowhere did I see Niko.

  Zafir spotted me then and took two giant strides in my direction before he halted, his gaze focused on someone over my shoulder.

  I turned and found him there—Niko, his golden eyes staring back at me. He held a mug out to me, steam drifting upward.

  “Sleep well, Your Majesty?”

  I accepted the ceramic mug and wrapped my cold fingers around its rough surface. “Charlie,” I answered.

  He smiled crookedly as he squatted beside me. My stomach dipped, a reaction I immediately regretted. These weren’t my feelings to feel.

  “Charlie, then. Sleep well, Charlie?”

  I avoided his gaze by sniffing the coffee in my hands. It wasn’t a smell I normally cared for, but this morning my nose tingled from the sharp scent. “I didn’t sleep much, but I’m ready to get going.” My gaze drifted to his shoulder. “Are you . . . better today?”

  “Glad the arrow’s gone.” He rolled his shoulder, as if proving his point, and I grimaced. “Grateful to your man for fixing me up.”

  I hated the way my insides quivered whenever he was near, and the way my outsides felt wound too tightly, like I might snap from all the tension. I hated it more that I wanted to touch him.

  That a part of me could imagine what it felt like to have his hands on my hips. His lips on mine.

  Searching for an excuse to get away from him, I lurched to my feet. “I—I . . . have to—”

  Then I froze. From somewhere deep within, Sabara’s panic unfurled. The same type of panic she’d known as a little girl on the river’s edge: gut-wrenching fear.

  He rose too, studying me, his eyes finding me as I battled with myself—with her.

  No, she begged me. Stay. And I was suddenly filled with a sensation so close to tenderness it was hard to imagine it was Sabara’s at all.

  I can’t, I argued back. But I did as she asked, unable to leave.

  I glanced back up at him, avoiding his honey-colored eyes. “Did—did you come through the Capitol on your way through Ludania? Did you stop at the palace?” I didn’t ask the questions I really wanted to: How was Max? Does he long for me the way I do for him?

  He shook his head. “We stayed on the train line most of the way. It wasn’t until we heard tell of the slaughtered soldiers at one of our stops that we realized there might be trouble. That we realized . . .” His voice trailed off, and he studied me even more closely—too closely—then. His attention was my undoing, and a tremor coursed through my body while Sabara tugged at me, willing me to move closer. “They didn’t hurt you?” he asked, his voice husky and low.

  This time I shook my head, slowly. Timidly.

  His eyes narrowed, but he nodded and leaned away from me, allowing me to breathe once more.

  Allowing me to find my voice again. “Where is the rest of your party? Shouldn’t Queen Vespaire be joining you for the summit?”

  “That’s why we’re here. She can’t make it. I’m to deliver the message personally to Queen Neva, sending my queen’s regrets.” Zafir joined us then, and Niko took a step back, smiling wryly. “Mostly,” he said, looking at me, “she’s sorry she won’t get the chance to meet you.”

  He nodded at Zafir and left us.

  And Sabara, who had been quiet for more than a day before his arrival, raged, her shrieks echoing hollowly inside my head.

  PART III

  brooklynn

  The air on the docks was filled with the smell of fish and body odor and wet dog and dirty snow, none of which Brook cared for. She also didn’t care for the crowds awaiting the incoming ferry or not feeling in control. Mostly, though, she hated being unarmed.

  “Stop complaining, Brook. Queen Neva did it for everyone’s good.” Aron reached for her arm, forcing her to halt as an old woman crossed the path in front of them.

  Aron nodded at the stooped woman, and she smiled back at him, a wide, toothless grin.

  Brook rolled her eyes, ignoring the geriatric flirtation. “How is it in my best interest to be weaponless? I’m completely defenseless. How is that in Charlie’s best interest?”

  She watched as two stray dogs fought over a scrap of meat on the ground, near a pile of rotting garbage. They were growling at each other, their hackles raised and their teeth bared. If it had been a sword there, lying on the cobbled pavers, rather than a piece of rancid meat, Brooklynn would have joined the fray.

  “Defenseless? You?” Aron laughed, drawing the attention of several people around them. “You’re the least defenseless person I know. Besides, you’re forgetting that everyone at the summit is unarmed, not just you. That’s why it’s in Charlie’s best interest.”

  Brook had to bite back her smile. She liked that Aron didn’t consider her helpless.

  If only she didn’t feel helpless at the moment.

  It wasn’t just that they’d had to forfeit their weapons when they’d arrived at Queen Neva’s palace, although that had definitely stung. Brook had complained louder than any of her soldiers, but it hadn’t stopped her from surrendering both firearms and blades from her personal arsenal. Despite her grumblings, though, she understood the need for the security precaution: the fewer weapons available, the less likely someone could be harmed.

  Namely, one of the monarchs in attendance.

  More specifically, at least as far as Brooklynn was concerned, Charlie.

  And after what had happened that first night they’d camped, Brook trusted no one. Not even her own men. It was a sickening feeling, and one she wasn’t accustomed to.

  She had handpicked that soldier—Caden Evans—just as she had all of them. She was responsible for every last woman and man in her army. So to find Evans like th
at, his throat ripped apart, mauled by an attacker out in the rocky hills of the Scablands, made her blood boil.

  The trick hadn’t fooled her, of course. She’d seen right through the shoddy attempt to make it look as if an animal had savaged her soldier. She wasn’t stupid.

  Unarmed, yes. Stupid, never.

  The killer had made a grievous mistake. He—or she—had overlooked the other injury, the stab wound in Caden’s gut. It was sloppy and amateurish, and made Brook realize that whomever she was up against wasn’t as experienced as he or she thought they were.

  Yet here they were, two days later and she still didn’t know who that person was.

  But she was sure of one thing.

  That whoever was responsible for her soldier’s death was here with them, in Caldera.

  And Brook had every intention of finding the killer.

  xv

  When Vannova, Queen Neva’s palace, finally came into view, my breath caught in the back of my throat. Not because Vannova was the storybook palace little girls imagined as they poured tea for their dollies and sang nursery rhymes.

  It was the opposite, in fact. Stark and harsh, a daunting fortress of towers and turrets and spires, all dusted in ice and rising above a thick layer of frozen fog that made it appear as if it was the only thing that existed on the entire snowbound isle. As if the palace itself were crafted from the great glacier that rose from the water.

  Clearly, we were no longer in the Scablands, no longer in Ludania at all. We hadn’t been since midafternoon, shortly after we’d first boarded the ferry, the massive passenger transport that bridged the arctic waters between the mainland and the glistening, frost-covered island. Yet even before leaving my country, the landscape had begun to change dramatically, becoming more and more wintry. Harsher. And infinitely more treacherous.