by K. A. Tucker
“Why hasn’t he told them?”
“He has his motives,” she answers cryptically. “There would need to be a purpose for allowing you to leave these rooms, and a reason why the kingdom would be better served with the knowledge that you are alive rather than dead. It could happen. With time, he may grant you freedom to roam the castle, with an escort.”
“And outside?”
“I imagine so. The royal grounds, anyway.”
“Not the sacred garden?”
Her eyes dart to me.
“Annika mentioned it,” I lie, hoping no one ever calls my bluff.
“You mean the nymphaeum.”
My heart skips a beat. Nymphaeum. Is that what they call it? Regardless, it’s exactly where I need to go if I am to find this stone for Malachi. Malachi, who is one of their gods. I’m stealing an artifact from a sacred place. It’s counterintuitive. Not that it matters. I’ll do whatever is necessary to get back to my life—one where I’m no longer imprisoned or indebted to anyone. “What’s so sacred about it?”
“That’s where—” She halts abruptly, as if catching herself.
“That’s where what?” I probe in as innocent a voice as I can muster. I don’t want to get Wendeline in trouble with Zander, but I need to start collecting information should I ever hope to be free of these papered walls.
“It’s a place where the people of Islor go for Hudem.”
“Hudem?” I echo, letting the word dangle like bait on a hook.
She caps the jar of salve. “The night of the blood moon.”
Both Sofie and Annika have mentioned this blood moon. It must be important. “What happens on that night?”
“Are you trying to get me flogged by the king?”
I wince, thinking of Korsakov whipping the skin off that lecher’s back. “No. I was just curious.” I hope I don’t sound too eager. “And dying from boredom.”
With a heavy sigh of resignation, she wipes the residual salve from her fingers on a cloth. I’ve often admired her fingernails—neatly sculpted, the beds long. “Those wishing to be blessed with a child go to the nymphaeum.”
Annika said something about Zander and Princess Romeria “being blessed” with offspring. “The blood moon was the night of the attack.”
“Yes. A royal wedding on Hudem. It was to be quite the affair.” Her knowing eyes flicker to me.
I assume that means they would have gone into the nymphaeum after the ceremony. But instead, she had his parents murdered and inspired a war in the city streets.
It’s impossible to feel guilty for something I haven’t done, and yet somehow that uncomfortable twinge stirs in my gut. “When is the next blood moon?”
“It arrives every third lunar cycle of the common moon, to usher in the change of seasons with its brilliant light.”
The common moon. That must be the second moon that sat high in the sky. But what is a lunar cycle here? Is it the same as the one at home? And will I still be trapped in these rooms for the next one? I look up to the ceilings. God help me if I am.
As if able to read my thoughts, Wendeline says, “Should the king grant you freedom from this room, do not do something as foolish as attempt to flee. I promise you won’t get far, and I’ll have wasted all my efforts on you.”
“Because he’ll string me up on that pyre he’s saving for me. I remember.” Under my breath, “monster” slips out.
“Many would say the same of you, whether you remember what you’ve done or not.”
What does Wendeline think of me? The idea that she might feel the same pricks me more than I expect. She is my only ally here, and she likely reports my every word to Zander. What does Wendeline think of this young king who hates my guts? Is she loyal to him because she has to be or because she chooses to be?
I wish I could voice all the questions that have been swirling in my mind for the past three weeks. I’m used to relying on myself and trusting nobody, and yet here, trapped within these walls, I’m desperate for just one person to lean on, one person who can fill in all the blanks.
“Hold still for me. And do not talk.” She places her hand over my shoulder, closes her eyes, and bows her head.
That god-awful smelling salve is new, but this part of her process is familiar, and no less fascinating now than the first day I witnessed it. At the time, I assumed she was praying, and that the faint tingling was the salve absorbing into my skin. But then she held up the mirror to show me that the lacerations were markedly smaller and less angry when she finished, and I realized she had to be healing me with her magic. Actual magic.
Now, I watch her furrowed forehead as she concentrates, enthralled. I can never tell how much time passes—there are no clocks, and bells only toll at the hour—but when her eyelids finally crack open, that familiar red tinge looms.
“Does it hurt you to do that?”
She shakes her head. “It tires me. I am nowhere near as powerful as Margrethe was. She was a healer too. She might have been able to do more for you.” Her gaze settles on my shoulder and she smiles. “Yes, I think that is better.” She eases out of her chair and slowly shuffles—another result of her healing—to the vanity to collect the handheld mirror.
Margrethe was the high priestess. I’m assuming that’s a rank position. “Have they replaced her yet?”
“No. That is … not an option.”
“How many of you are there in Islor? Casters, I mean.”
“Few remain now. It is quite the journey to get here, and most are not interested in taking the risk.”
“Why not?”
“Because.” I sense her shutting the door on that conversation. She lifts the mirror in front of me.
I check my reflection. The marks haven’t shrunk much, but the raw redness of the knitted skin has faded noticeably.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t do more. If we are lucky, the scars will turn silver. They may be almost invisible under certain light.”
I highly doubt that. I’ll never be able to wear a tank top or bathing suit—if I ever get out of this hellhole—without attracting notice, but it’s a far cry better than what it was. I stretch my arm above my head. It’s a bit stiff, but the ache is gone.
Wendeline caps the jar as I pull my nightgown back into place. “The salve will keep working through the night. I know it will be tempting, but do not wash it off when you bathe tonight. Whatever healing you have left will happen while you sleep. You can remove it in the morning.” She nods to herself as she collects her things, as if satisfied. “Very well, then. Take care, Your Highness.”
“Romy,” I push, as I often do when she calls me that. Something about her farewell this time feels different, though. She doesn’t normally curtsy that deeply. “I’ll see you tomorrow?”
The doubtful look on her face answers me before her words do. “If the king deems it beneficial, but I’ve healed you as much as I can. I don’t know that my skills will make any more difference.”
If Wendeline doesn’t come back, I’ll be left with no one but Corrin and the footsteps of two guards. Dread tugs at my insides. “What about my mental health? Does the king deem to know when I lose my damn mind locked up in here?” I can’t keep the bite from my tone. I hope the question reaches his ears. Maybe it’ll satisfy him to know his punishment is working, enough that he’ll relent.
Her attention veers toward the sealed windows, her brow furrowed deeply. “He is not the monster you think him to be.”
Says the woman not being held prisoner by him. “He executes people. Burns them.” From previous experience, those people are all monsters.
“And you would not?”
“No. I’m not my—” I cut my words off. My mother. Except we are no longer talking about Romeria from New York.
“His Highness did what any king or queen would do, given the situation. Your parents have executed traitors for far less.” Her eyebrows arch as if daring me to challenge something she knows is the case. “As a queen, you would, as well.”
>
Her early words spark something Annika said in the sanctum. So far, I’ve pieced together that Princess Romeria’s marriage to Zander was arranged by her father, the king of Ybaris, under the guise of an effort for peace between the two kingdoms, though in reality, she was conspiring with an Islorian named Lord Muirn to raise an insurgent army and take the throne. Someone else—someone intricately connected to the royal family—helped her. And, on the day she was to marry Zander, when everyone was focused on a wedding and enemies easily flooded through the gates, her scheme unfolded. But obviously, all didn’t go as planned.
What I still don’t understand is, why Princess Romeria felt she needed to murder them in the first place.
I choose my words carefully. “Why would I do the horrible things I’m being accused of?”
“Why else does one kingdom fall but for another to rise?”
“I plotted to wipe out the king and his entire family, so I could have Islor’s throne?” Which Princess Romeria was already destined for, as Zander’s queen. Maybe she didn’t want to share? But if Zander is right and she promised marriage to this Lord Muirn, then she would have had to share, anyway. It doesn’t add up.
Setting the salve on the table again, Wendeline returns to my side. “You were taught from a young age that Islorians are your enemy. I know what that is like, to be raised with hatred for something you do not understand, for I was taught the same in Mordain. It can be hard to accept that you were wrong all this time about an entire people. But the Islorians are no different from you or me. We all want to sleep soundly in our beds and protect our loved ones.”
She ties the strings of my gown, her fingers working unhurriedly. “I’ll admit, I was afraid when I left my home to come here. I’ve found a life now, among them. But Ybaris has never tried to understand or accept them, not in all the centuries since the Great Rift. They’re a people born of the same elven blood that courses through your veins, and yet you have labeled them demons and cast them from your lands.”
My skin tingles. Did I hear that right? Did she say elven?
As in elves?
Is she saying I’m surrounded not by humans but by elves?
That Princess Romeria was not human?
Wendeline doesn’t seem to notice the waves of shock slamming into me. “When I saw you and the king, how close you two were, I had hoped …” Her words fade with her sigh.
She had hoped that we were truly in love, that our marriage would bring an end to whatever strife exists between the two kingdoms and people, just as Annika hoped.
Elves.
“The mortals of Islor have learned to coexist with the immortals, and while there is still friction, the crown has made many strides.” She bites her bottom lip in thought. “If you would open your heart and your mind, you would see they are not the barbaric fiends we were taught to see them as. In fact, you may find a kinship with them.”
Elven.
Immortals.
I force myself to keep engaging, though my thoughts spiral with all this new information. “A kinship from my prison cell, with the constant threat of death?”
She hesitates, then lowers her voice to say, “Somehow, you killed a daaknar. At the moment, you’re the only one in all of Islor who can do that.”
People tend to keep those of value alive longer. Sofie’s words echo in my head. “I’m more useful to the king alive than dead.”
Wendeline confirms it with a knowing look. “Take whatever comfort you can in that.” She collects her things again.
“Thank you. For everything. You’ve been kind to me.”
She purses her lips. “I believe you shall see some freedoms soon, now that you are mostly healed. But when that happens, do not expect you will find any allies within these walls.”
“Right.” A not-so-subtle warning to not trust anyone. Perhaps not even her.
“And Romeria?” She pauses at the threshold to my sitting room. It’s the first time she’s used my name. “Assume the king is always one step ahead of you and listening closely.” With one last hard look, she departs.
That night, I toss and turn in a fitful sleep. The stench of Wendeline’s salve fills my nostrils, and its burn toils away inside my wounds while elves and demons torment my dreams.
But it is the tall, regal figure I sense looming over me that wakes me with a gasp. I search the dark corners of my room, only to find them empty.
And yet long after I close my eyes, I feel the lingering shadow of a king.
I wake to a knock on my bedroom door. A second later, Corrin barges in. “Are you ill?” There isn’t a hint of concern in her tone.
“I didn’t sleep well,” I say groggily. I watch Corrin as she sets a tray of food on the small desk in the corner. What is she? I assume not a caster like Wendeline. She looks human, but so does everyone else I’ve encountered, and now I know some of them are elven.
Barbaric fiends, whatever that means. Corrin’s personality is brackish, but I wouldn’t call her barbaric.
I’ve read countless stories and watched many films about fantastical creatures, enough that the term triggered a myriad of ideas to dwell on late into last night—everything from sharp physical features and unnaturally long lives, to arrogance and wicked manipulation, to supernatural speed and powers tied to nature. I’m having a hard time applying fable to fact, though. Wendeline called them immortal, but they also assumed Princess Romeria dead, so immortal does not mean unkillable. I have yet to see any odd-looking appendages. Everyone appears human.
Everyone including me.
Am I not supposed to be elven too?
Except I’m not, I’m human. These limbs, this face, my thoughts … they’re human limbs, a human face, and human thoughts. They’re all that I know. So how am I to tell the difference between everyone else?
And how has Wendeline not discovered what I am yet? She’s been healing this body for weeks. Certainly her magic would notice a difference in species?
Unless … the fleeting thought that this somehow isn’t my body that I’m in but Princess Romeria’s, resurrected, skitters through my thoughts yet again. It is the only viable explanation.
“The king has requested an audience with you.” Corrin sets a mug of drinking water on my nightstand, pausing to sniff the air. She grimaces. “Did you not bathe last night?”
“Wendeline told me to not wash off the salve,” I explain, distracted. Zander wants an audience? He was adamant he never wanted to see me again. Why now?
“Come, we must hurry. You cannot present yourself in your nightgown, smelling like a fermented fish.” She draws back the lengthy curtains, and I blink against the blinding sunlight that streams in. It’s the first time I haven’t been awake and pacing before sunrise since my imprisonment.
One by one, she pries the window panels open. Laughter that was once muffled now carries to my ears, raucous and clear. Somewhere nearby, birds sing.
A quick twist of her wrists releases the balcony doors, and she throws them open, too.
I gape for a moment. “How did you do that?”
“I turned the knob, Your Highness.”
I’ve rattled those doorknobs a hundred times, at least, and they haven’t budged. I roll my eyes at her back, even as a victorious warmth swells in my chest. Zander must have approved my request.
“I will draw a fresh bath. When you have finished properly washing, don the blue dress that I leave out for you. It should suitably cover those scars so no one sees them during your escort.”
While I know my injuries are far from appealing to look at, her words are a sharp prick to my confidence.
“Put your nightgown in the hamper and I’ll have it laundered.” Under her breath, I hear her mutter, “If there’s any salvaging it.” As quickly as she stormed in, she departs.
I clamber out of bed to dart for the door. The sun is high in the sky and blazing, its heat roasting the balcony’s stone, but I barely notice the burn against my bare feet, too busy gaping at the splen
dor before me.
I arrived in Cirilea in the cover of night, and my brief travels within the city have been beneath hoods and blankets and through underground tunnels and dark stairwells. I had yet to even glimpse this castle I’ve been incarcerated in, beyond a cold tower and my papered walls.
It’s like nothing I could ever have imagined.
Stone the color of pale sand shapes walls that are sculpted into countless pointed arches. Multiple towers reach into the sky, and the spires—I count a dozen from where I stand, though there are surely more—are capped in rich burgundy pinnacles and adorned with a contrasting black detailing. The windows are massive, copious, and ornate, with geometric patterns crafted by an artist’s hand.
If I’m reading the sun’s position correctly, I’m on the third and top floor of the east side, though it feels so much higher given the height of the ceilings. A mirror of this wing stretches from the other side of a center section. Only the top floors have these circular balconies, all supported by a complex construction of pillars and stonework beneath. There must be hundreds of rooms within this place.
Peeling my stunned gaze from the castle for a moment, I shift my focus to the grounds below. It looks more like a botanical park, the manicured space stretching far, most of it obscured from my view by foliage. Intricately laid stone paths meander around leafy trees, beneath vine-clad trellises, along ponds, over decorative bridges. I hazard a person could get lost in that expanse, even without the cedar labyrinth.
The wall I escaped through that first night surrounds the entire vast grounds and on the other side of it, below the ridge, are lush, green rolling hills and dense forest as far as the eye can see. The city of Cirilea must be located on the other side of the castle.
And somewhere within this space has to be the nymphaeum.
I inhale. There is a faint, familiar scent in the air, though I can’t place it.
