She hurried back to her mother and spread the blanket over her, covering her up to her chin, not wanting to cover her face, even though she was certain her selfish wish had come true. She shouldn’t have bothered with the blanket. Her mother was dead. Why hadn’t she just stayed here and held her hand in her final moments?
“I love you, Ma,” she said, wishing she’d thought to say this before she got the blanket, not after. Her mother had believed in heaven and angels, so if any of that were true then she’d have heard her anyway.
To think that only months ago, they’d been preparing for their family of four to become five. Now there was only one. Her.
She sniffed, realizing that she wasn’t crying. She was certain she should be crying at a time like this. Perhaps she’d already used up all her tears. When Jeremiah had left, she’d cried for a week. That’d felt better than this, like somehow the tears were taking some of the pain out of her body.
She squinted, trying to squeeze out some tears, but nothing happened. Why? She’d loved her mother. Maybe this kind of pain was too great to find its way out through her tears? It was going to stay trapped inside her until she figured out how to pound it into little pieces, small enough to find an escape.
Perhaps it was her brother’s escape she should be thinking about instead. How was she going to honor her mother’s wish and get him out of the palace?
She looked at Ma, the smell of blood filling her nostrils. Instead of pushing her pain out, she seemed to be only drawing more in.
That was when she realized. Maybe she was thinking about this whole thing the wrong way. She was never going to get Jeremiah out of the palace. Maybe it would be easier to get herself in there instead.
MICAH
THE AFTER
Micah wasn’t sure what was worse—finding Jeremiah, or how she’d have felt if he’d been lost forever.
It was definitely him she’d seen in the dining hall. It was his eyes. Still just as kind as they were blue. Although she wasn’t used to seeing tears spilling from them. She’d never seen him cry before.
This wasn’t the only thing that was different about him. He was older, as you’d expect with five years having passed, which meant he was taller. But also thinner. Stooped. He just looked … broken somehow. King Virtus had broken her brother.
She took her bowl to the cleaning room, grateful she hadn’t been assigned to this room as one of her tasks. Cleanliness had never been one of her strong suits. She hadn’t worked out what Jeremiah’s jobs in the palace were yet, however now that she’d seen him, that shouldn’t take too long.
Jeremiah was still her favorite person in the world. She loved him even more than she’d loved her parents. He was smart, funny and caring, having looked after her in a way most big brothers never did. When Da first got sick, Jeremiah had worked so hard to make sure they didn’t starve. Not once did she hear him complain about it either. It was the opposite. He’d joke about it, walking in the door at night, bent over, pretending his back was too sore to stand up straight. She’d laugh and climb on top of him, sitting on his shoulders, until he had enough and would tip her onto the bed and tickle her.
It wasn’t until years later, when she was working hard herself, that she began to wonder if it’d been a joke at all. Survival was hard work. He was probably just as sore as he’d said he was, if not worse. She knew she’d ached in places she hadn’t previously known it was possible to hurt. Even her fingernails had felt sore.
She glanced down at her nails now, noticing how clean they were, possibly the only positive thing to happen to her since coming to the palace.
Tucking her hands back under the long sleeves of her robe, she made her way slowly to the arena for rest time. She was used to running or skipping everywhere she went. Walking at this pace was difficult. It reminded her of the hunched way Tallis had walked around the village when Jeremiah first left.
She tried not to smile as she thought of Tallis.
She’d gone to live with his family for a while after Ma died. It’d been a shock to find herself homeless. Females in Forte Cadence weren’t allowed to own property, so Micah and her mother had assumed their house would pass to Jeremiah when her father died. Except not long after her mother joined their father in the ground, palace guards had seized the house, ejecting Micah onto the street. It was only luck that they hadn’t caught up with her before her mother died. That would have been one final shock in her life that she hadn’t needed. Micah tried to explain that she was living in her brother’s house, but the guards said Jeremiah belonged to the King now.
Tallis had found her crying in the gutter, watching as the guards set fire to the only home she’d ever known. It felt like another death and the impact left her feeling hollow. Without saying a word, Tallis had wrapped an arm around her and taken her back to his house.
His family never said anything about not wanting her there, but she could feel it in the way his mother glanced at her when she shared out the evening meal, trying not to make it obvious she was giving her sons a larger share. Tallis tried to even it up when he thought his mother wasn’t watching and Micah would push his spoon away. It didn’t sit well with her to take from a family who had so little themselves.
When Micah turned thirteen, she went to Tallis’s mother and told her she was leaving. She explained that she was old enough to fend for herself, and despite the sadness in Tallis’s mother’s eyes, she didn’t argue with her. Instead, she pulled Micah into her arms and wished her good fortune. Micah had felt the walnut shell pressing against her chest as if taunting her with its inability to bring her any luck.
She didn’t say goodbye to Tallis, purely because she knew he wouldn’t let her leave. Or he’d insist on coming with her and she’d already taken enough from his family—she couldn’t possibly take their eldest son too.
She’d walked from farm to farm until she found someone prepared to let her sleep in their barn, tending animals in exchange for food and water.
However, she knew nothing about animals and when three pigs were found dead one morning after she forgot to fill their water during a particularly hot spell, she’d been asked to leave. She’d felt awful, having accidentally denied those poor animals the one thing she herself had come to the farm seeking, and vowed to do a better job next time.
She found work at a neighboring farm, although when it became obvious that the farmer would rather she tend his personal needs than those of the animals, she’d left there too.
After walking west for three days, she’d eventually found work at an orchard bursting with berries being grown for the palace. She was given board in an old farmhouse alongside a dozen other workers and they picked berries that whole summer, until their hands turned purple, from both the fruit and their blisters.
When the picking was done and it was time to move on, she went with the workers to beg for a job in the markets. It was easier for the men, who were strong and could carry loads of produce with ease, just like Jeremiah had once done. Nobody wanted to employ a skinny girl with a dirty face and purple hands.
But those days felt like so long ago now. She was in another lifetime now, here in the palace.
Micah adjusted her hood and entered the arena, making her way past the first rows of mats, unable to stop her eyes from searching for Jeremiah. He was there with his head buried under his blanket. She noticed his body shaking and knew the tears that’d fallen from his eyes in the dining hall were continuing to rain down.
She walked past him and continued down the rows of mats, fighting the urge to turn around and throw herself on her brother to tell him she was okay. Hopefully, once he got used to the idea of her being here, his tears would dry up. He only knew her as a helpless child. He had no idea how she’d learned to fend for herself.
She’d proven that when she’d been unable to find work at the markets and had decided to try something different where she could use the unique skills that she’d developed over the years. She couldn’t lift heavy objec
ts or cook a decent meal, but she could do tumble turns and handstands and juggle and dance. She developed complex routines that she’d perform at the markets, before holding out an empty cup to the people who stopped to watch. Often the cup remained empty, although every now and then somebody would give her a coin or two. It was enough for her to scrape by. Sometimes she camped with the workers from the orchard, although mostly she preferred to keep to herself. She slept under bridges and in doorways and occasionally in a warm bed if someone felt sorry enough for her. She bathed in the river and wore clothes discarded by other villagers. In the summer months, she’d return to the orchard to pick berries.
Once, Tallis had seen her at the markets and begged her to return home with him, saying that his family missed her. She knew that was a lie. It was possible he missed her, but his family didn’t, especially at dinnertime. The only person in the world who she knew for sure missed her, was Jeremiah. That was why she’d had to bide her time until she was sixteen and could sit the test of the Whisperers. Then she could join him. She’d thought life in the palace couldn’t be any more difficult than the life she was already living. At least there she’d have her brother. How little she’d known back then.
Tallis had returned to the market to look for her as often as he could and they’d spend time together, like they had when they were young. She’d looked forward to his visits and how they reminded her of her childhood. He was the next best thing to Jeremiah, even if he wasn’t the same.
But that was in the Before. This was how she’d come to think of the first sixteen years of her life. The Before. And as hard as they’d been, they were nothing compared to the After. For just as much as Jeremiah was now broken, so was she. His heart may have had more time to break into even more pieces than hers, but that was the only difference now.
The Conductor had stripped her of her clothes, her name, her tangled red hair, and her voice. He’d taken everything that made her Micah and left a body in a hooded robe in her place. A body whose job was to whisper on command and stay alive with minimal fuss at all other times. No, not minimal. No fuss. Zero. Fuss equaled death. And she couldn’t save Jeremiah if she were dead.
Until she’d seen him in the dining hall, she hadn’t even known he was still alive. Her training had taught her that continuation of life wasn’t something a Whisperer could count on, no matter how careful they were. It’d been years since Jeremiah had left, with a thousand opportunities in every day of those years for him to lose his head.
So, it was with relief when she first saw him walking slowly into the dining hall. His eyes had been cast downward, but she saw his secret glances at the servery. He’d always loved his food. By the size of his frame, clearly, he was getting even less of it in the palace than he’d been getting at home. Except his hunger still existed. She could see it in the way he moved, certain that the Conductor couldn’t. Because the Conductor knew the After Jeremiah and she knew the Before. And the Before was the only version of him that counted. That was his true self.
She settled down on her mat and pulled her blanket over her head in the same way Jeremiah had. At least she didn’t have to control the expression on her face from under there.
She wondered if Jeremiah would get his true self back one day when they began life in the Evernow—a life when they no longer pined for the Before or the After. A life when they were happy to live forever more in the Now.
The Evernow was something she’d heard people in the valley talking about when she was young and had never really understood it. She’d been perfectly happy, despite the grumbling in her stomach, not realizing there was any other way to live. But her parents had known. Times hadn’t been so tough when they were young and they yearned for happier times once more. Their Evernow.
Micah understood this with brutal clarity now.
Once she and Jeremiah were out of this place, never would they return. The Evernow was the life she longed for. A time when she was happy to be exactly where she was at that moment. The thought of this was the only thing that’d stopped her collapsing when she saw her brother after so long apart.
He was alive. And that made all her efforts worth it. She’d live through a thousand versions of the hell she’d just survived if she knew this was waiting for her at the end.
Seeing Jeremiah once more was the greatest victory of her life. Until he’d seen her too and his face had broken apart, revealing all the cracks in his soul. Thank the stars that Whisperer had dropped his spoon and diverted the Conductor’s attention. She felt bad for feeling this way—that Whisperer had been robbed of his chance of an Evernow. However, if it were a choice between a nameless man and her brother, she’d save Jeremiah every time. She would’ve dropped her spoon herself if it meant it would keep him safe.
His face told her that he felt the same. She was the last person he wanted to see in the palace. And he must surely know that he’d helped her get here. If he hadn’t told her how to pass the test, then she would never have known what to say. He probably still didn’t even know what it was about him that made him able to pass the test.
She rolled over, trying to get comfortable, doing it slowly so that the blanket didn’t rustle. She had to be twice as careful as any of the other Whisperers. Because she wasn’t like them. She was an imposter, which not only put her in danger, it also made her dangerous. The Conductor really had no idea what he’d let into the King’s palace.
It was time to bring it down.
ROSE
THE BEFORE
When Rose was young, her mother told her a story about a girl locked up by an evil witch in a high tower in the middle of a lonely forest. The girl’s hair grows so long that the witch is able to climb up her braid and visit her, feeding off her beauty to retain her youth. One day, a handsome Prince comes upon the girl and she holds out her hair for him to climb. They fall in love and he visits her every day, until the girl accidentally mentions him to the witch, who flies into a rage, cuts off the girl’s hair and banishes her into the wilderness. The next time the Prince visits, the witch fools him by holding the girl’s severed braid from the window. The Prince climbs the braid and when he reaches the top, the witch lets go and he falls into the thorns below and is blinded. He stumbles through the forest until he finds the girl and her tears fall into his eyes and once again he can see. And of course, they live happily ever after.
Rose had heard her mother talk of something called the Evernow, and this “happily ever after” sounded a bit like that. When the prince and the girl were together, at last, they wouldn’t be wishing for their days before or their days after. They’d just be enjoying every minute they had with each other right in that moment.
Rose stretched out in her bed as she thought about this. The palace was quiet and she’d only just woken from a dream about the girl in the tower. She often dreamed of her. The story haunted her like it was trying to tell her something.
It was a strange story and Rose had searched it for hidden messages, wondering why her mother had chosen to tell it to her. Was she warning her of dangers inside their own palace? It was hard to tell. Perhaps it was just a story with no meaning at all. But the Princess felt so much like the girl in the tower. She was certain it must’ve been a story made up just for her.
Although, the witch wasn’t a bit like her own mother. Her mother was far from evil and had been beautiful long before Rose was born. She didn’t need to harness her beauty from anyone. Her father made no secret of the fact that was the reason he’d married her.
As she grew older, Rose started to see there were more similarities between the witch and her mother than she’d first thought, for both of them were responsible for keeping a girl locked inside a tower, hidden from the world. However, the witch had kept the girl hidden, afraid of her running away. The Queen kept her hidden, afraid that she would never get the opportunity to escape.
“One day you must leave,” her mother would tell her, when she was sure nobody was listening. “There’s no happines
s to be found here, my darling girl. When I tell you to run, you must listen. Do you understand?”
Rose wondered where she’d go and who she’d meet. Would she find her true love like the girl in the story? Or would he come to her? Would she meet an evil witch? And why did her mother want her to run anyway?
She had no idea what evil lay outside the palace. The only evil she knew, lived within. The evil even had a name. A few names actually. His Royal Highness, His Majesty, His Grace, King Virtus, Ruler of Forte Cadence. Or to her … Father.
Perhaps her father was the evil witch in the story. After all, he was the one who insisted she remain trapped inside the palace. Her mother was only following his ruling that she and her sisters be kept hidden from the world, never to ride in a golden carriage, never to climb a tree in the forest and never to call to a Prince from her window and have him climb her hair. How many other fourteen-year-olds had never set foot outside their home? It was just as well her home was so large and filled with so many people, even if the walls were made from stone.
Her stomach growled, despite the early hour. Soon the Whisperer would be here with her breakfast.
She missed being able to wander down to the kitchen and sit on one of the benches and talk to the cook while she made her breakfast. Nobody even told her where the cook had gone. Where anybody who worked in the palace had gone. Most of them had simply vanished one night, while these strange Whisperers moved in and took their place.
And now she had to wait for her breakfast to be delivered to her on a tray. It didn’t seem enough lately for her to be kept hidden in the palace. More and more often now, she was being confined to her bedchamber. And although her room was large, there was not a lot for her to do in there, except look out the window and dream of the day her mother would tell her to run. She was painfully lonely.
The Kingdoms of Evernow Box Set Page 5
