Seraphina

by Rachel Hartman

  So that’s what he was: not a dragon, but a parricide who’d changed his name. “What about Lars?”

  “I told him I would kill him if I saw him again, and then I set him loose in the hills. I had no idea where he went until he popped up here, an avenging ghost sent to haunt me.”

  He glared at me sullenly, hating me for knowing too much, never mind that he himself had told me. I cleared my throat. “What will you do now?”

  He rose, straightened the hem of his black doublet, and gave mocking courtesy. “I am returning to Samsam. I will make the Regent see sense.”

  His tone chilled me. “What kind of sense?”

  “The only kind there is. The kind that puts humans first over animals.”

  With those words he stalked away across the atrium. He seemed to take all the air with him when he left.

  I found Glisselda in Millie’s room, weeping, her head in her hands. Millie, who was rubbing the princess’s shoulders, looked alarmed that I had entered without knocking. “The princess is tired,” said Millie, stepping toward me anxiously.

  “It’s all right,” said Glisselda, wiping her eyes. Her hair was loose around her shoulders, and her blotchy pink cheeks made her look very young. She tried to smile. “I am always pleased to see you, Phina.”

  My heart constricted at the sight of her sorrow. She’d just lost her mother and had the weight of an entire realm thrust onto her shoulders, and I was a bad friend. I couldn’t ask after Kiggs; I didn’t know why it had ever seemed like a good idea.

  “How are you holding up?” I said, taking a seat across from her.

  She looked at her hands. “Well enough in public. I was just taking a little time to … to let myself be a daughter. We have to sit vigil with St. Eustace tonight, the eyes of the world upon us, and we thought a quiet, dignified sorrow would be most fitting. That means taking some time to bawl like a baby now.”

  I thought she was referring to herself in the plural, as was her royal right, but she continued, “You should have seen us drafting that letter after council. I would weep, and Lucian would try to console me, which started him weeping and made me sob the more. I sent him to his beastly tower, told him to get it all out.”

  “He’s lucky to have you looking out for him,” I said, and meant it, however torn up I felt.

  “The reverse is true,” she said, her voice breaking. “But it is nearly sunset, and he has not yet come down.” Her face crumpled; Millie hastened to her side and put an arm around her. “Would you go fetch him, Phina? I would take it as a great kindness.”

  It was a rotten time for my lying skills to fail me, but too many contradictory feelings crowded in on me at once. If I was kind to her for selfish reasons, was that worse than being virtuously unhelpful? Was there no course I could take that would not leave me wracked with guilt?

  Glisselda noticed my hesitation. “I know he’s been a bit cantankerous since learning you were half dragon,” she said, leaning in toward me. “You understand, surely, that he might find it difficult to adjust to the idea.”

  “I think no less of him for it,” I said.

  “And I … I think no less of you,” said Glisselda firmly. She rose; I rose with her, thinking she intended to dismiss me. She raised her arms a little and then dropped them—a false start—but then she steeled herself to it and embraced me. I hugged her back, unable to stop my own tears or to identify their source as relief or regret.

  She let me go and stood with her chin raised. “It wasn’t so difficult to accept,” she said stoutly. “It was simply a matter of will.”

  Her protest was too vehement, but I recognized her good intention and believed utterly in her steely will. She said, “I shall scold Lucian if he is ever less than courteous to you, Seraphina. You let me know!”

  I nodded, my heart breaking a little, and departed for the East Tower.

  At first I wasn’t sure he was there. The tower door was unlocked, so I rushed up the stairs with my heart in my throat only to find the top room empty. Well, not entirely—it was full of books, pens, palimpsests, geodes and lenses, antique caskets, drawings. The Queen had her study; this was Prince Lucian’s, charmingly untidy, everything in use. I hadn’t appreciated the surroundings when we’d been up here with Lady Corongi. Now, all I saw were more things to love about him, and it made me sad.

  The wind ran an icy finger up my neck; the door to the outer walkway was open a crack. I took a deep breath, willed down my vertigo, and opened the door.

  He leaned upon the parapet, staring out over the sunset city. The wind tousled his hair; the edge of his cloak danced. I gingerly stepped out to him, picking my way around patches of ice, pulling my cloak tight around me for courage and for warmth.

  He looked back at me, his dark eyes distant though not exactly unwelcoming. I stammered out my message: “Glisselda sent me to remind you, um, that everyone will be sitting with St. Eustace for her mother as soon as the sun goes down, and she, uh …”

  “I haven’t forgotten.” He looked away. “The sun is not yet set, Seraphina. Would you stand with me awhile?”

  I stepped to the parapet and watched the shadows lengthen in the mountains. Whatever resolve I might have had was setting with that sun. Maybe it was just as well. Kiggs would go down to his cousin; I would go traveling in search of the rest of my kind. Everything would be as it should be, on the surface at least, every untidy and inconvenient part of myself tucked away where no one would see it.

  Saints’ bones. I was done living like that.

  “The truth of me is out,” I said, my words crystallizing into cloud upon the icy air.

  “All of it?” he said. He spoke less sharply than when he was truly interrogating me, but I could tell a lot was hinging on my answer.

  “All the important parts, yes,” I said firmly. “Maybe not all the eccentric details. Ask, and I will answer. What do you want to know?”

  “Everything.” He had been leaning on his elbows, but he pushed back now and gripped the balustrade with both hands. “It’s always this way with me: if it can be known, I want to know it.”

  I did not know where to begin, so I just started talking. I told him about collapsing under visions, about building the garden, and about my mother’s memories falling all around me like snow. I told him how I’d recognized Orma as a dragon, how the scales had erupted forth out of my skin, how it felt to believe myself utterly disgusting, and how lying became an unbearable burden.

  It felt good to talk. The words rushed out of me so forcefully that I fancied myself a jug being poured out. I felt lighter when I had finished, and for once emptiness was a sweet relief and a condition to be treasured.

  I glanced at Kiggs; his eyes had not glazed over yet, but I grew suddenly self-conscious about how long I’d been talking. “I’m sure I’m forgetting things, but there are things about myself I can’t even fathom yet.”

  “ ‘The world inside myself is vaster and richer than this paltry plane, peopled with mere galaxies and gods,’ ” he quoted. “I’m beginning to understand why you like Necans.”

  I met his gaze, and there was warmth and sympathy in his eyes. I was forgiven. No, better: understood. The wind rushed between us, blowing his hair about. Finally I managed to stammer, “There is one more … one true thing I want you to know, and I … I love you.”

  He looked at me intently but did not speak.

  “I’m so sorry,” I said, despairing. “Everything I do is wrong. You’re in mourning; Glisselda needs you; you only just learned I’m half monster—”

  “No part of you is monster,” he said vehemently.

  It took me a moment to find my voice again. “I wanted you to know. I wanted to go on from here with a clean conscience, knowing that I told you the truth at the last. I hope that may be worth something in your eyes.”

  He looked up at the reddening sky and said with a self-deprecating laugh, “You put me to shame, Seraphina. Your bravery always has.”

  “It’s not bravery; it�
�s bullheaded bumbling.”

  He shook his head, staring off into the middle distance. “I know courage when I see it, and when I lack it.”

  “You’re too hard on yourself.”

  “I’m a bastard; it’s what we do,” he said, smiling bitterly. “You, of all people, understand the burden of having to prove that you are good enough to exist, that you are worth all the grief your mother caused everyone. Bastard equals monster in our hearts’ respective lexicons; that’s why you always had such insight into it.”

  He rubbed his hands together against the cold. “Are you willing to hear another self-pitying ‘I was a sad, sad bastard child’ story?”

  “I’m happy to hear it; I’ve probably lived it.”

  “Not this story,” he said, picking at a patch of lichen on the balustrade. “When my parents drowned and I first came here, I was angry. I did play the bastard, behaving as badly as such a young boy could contrive to behave. I lied, stole, picked fights with the page boys, embarrassed my grandmother every chance I got. I kept this up for years until she sent for Uncle Rufus—”

  “Rest he on Heaven’s hearthstone,” we said together, and Kiggs smiled ruefully.

  “She brought him all the way back from Samsam, thinking he’d have a firm enough hand to keep me in line. He did, although it was months before I would submit. There was an emptiness in me I did not understand. He saw it, and he named it for me. ‘You’re like your uncle, lad,’ he said. ‘The world is not enough for us without real work to do. The Saints mean to put you to some purpose. Pray, walk with an open heart, and you will hear the call. You will see your task shining before you, like a star.’

  “So I prayed to St. Clare, but I took it a step further: I made her a promise. If she showed me the way, I would speak nothing but the truth from that day forward.”

  “St. Masha and St. Daan!” I blurted out. “I mean, that explains a lot.”

  He smiled, almost imperceptibly. “St. Clare saved me, and she bound my hands. But I’m skipping ahead. Uncle Rufus attended a wedding when I was nine years old, to provide a royal presence. I went with him. It was the first time they’d trusted me out of the castle walls in years, and I was anxious to show I could handle it.”

  “My father’s wedding, where I sang,” I said, my voice unexpectedly hoarse. “You told me. I do vaguely remember seeing the pair of you.”

  “It was a beautiful song,” he said. “I’ve never forgotten. It still gives me chills to hear it.”

  I stared at his silhouette against the rusty sky, dumbfounded that this song of my mother’s should be a favorite of his. It glorified romantic recklessness; it was everything he scorned to be or do. I could not stop myself. I began to sing, and he joined in:

  Blessed is he who passes, love,

  Beneath your window’s eye

  And does not sigh.

  Gone my heart and gone my soul,

  Look on me love, look down

  Before I die.

  One glimpse, my royal pearl, one smile

  Sufficient to sustain me,

  Grant me this,

  Or take my life and make it yours:

  I’d fight a hundred thousand wars

  For just one kiss.

  “Y-you’re not a bad singer. You could join the castle choir,” I said, casting about for something neutral to say so I wouldn’t cry. My mother was as reckless as his, but she’d believed in this; she’d given everything she had. What if our mothers were not the fools we had taken them for? What was love really worth? A hundred thousand wars?

  He smiled at his hands upon the parapet, and continued: “You sang, and then it hit me like a lightning strike, like the clarion of Heaven: the voice of St. Clare, saying, The truth will out! You yourself embodied the truth that could not be concealed or contained—not by a hundred fathers, or a hundred nursemaids—that would burst forth unbidden and fill the world with beauty. I knew I was to investigate the truth of things; I had been called to do this. I fell to my knees, thanked St. Clare, and swore I would not forget my vow to her.”

  I was staring at him, thunderstruck. “I was the truth, and beautiful? Heaven has a terrible sense of humor.”

  “I mistook you for a metaphor. But you’re right about Heaven because otherwise how is it that I am in this position now? I made a promise and have kept it to the best of my ability—though I have lied to myself, may St. Clare forgive me. But I hoped to avoid this very trap where I am caught between my own feeling and the knowledge that uttering the truth aloud will hurt someone very important to me.”

  I barely dared think which truth he meant; I both hoped and dreaded that he would tell me.

  His voice grew dense with sorrow. “I have been so preoccupied with you, Phina. I keep second-guessing myself. Could I have kept Aunt Dionne from Comonot’s suite if I hadn’t been dancing with you? I was so intent upon giving you that book. We might never have noticed Comonot leaving the ball but for Dame Okra.”

  “Or you might have stopped them both, and then gone up and toasted the New Year with Lady Corongi,” I said, trying to reassure him. “You might be dead in that other scenario.”

  He threw up his hands, despairing. “I have struggled all my life to put thought before feeling, not to be as rash and irresponsible as my mother!”

  “Ah, right, your mother, and her terrible crimes against her family!” I cried, angry with him now. “If I saw your mother in Heaven, you know what I would do? I would kiss her right on the mouth! And then I would drag her to the bottom of the Heavenly Stair and point at you down here, and say, ‘Look what you did, you archfiend!’ ”

  He looked scandalized, or startled anyway. I could not stop myself. “What could St. Clare have been thinking, choosing me as her unworthy instrument? She would have known I couldn’t speak the truth to you.”

  “Phina, no,” said Kiggs, and at first I thought he was scolding me for maligning St. Clare. He raised a hand, let it hover a moment, and then placed it over mine. It was warm, and it stole my breath away. “St. Clare did not choose wrongly,” he said softly. “I always saw the truth in you, however much you prevaricated, even as you lied right to my face. I glimpsed the very heart of you, clear as sunlight, and it was something extraordinary.”

  He took up my hand between both of his. “Your lies didn’t stop me loving you; your truth hasn’t stopped me either.”

  I looked down reflexively; he was holding my left hand. He noticed my discomfiture and with a deft and delicate touch folded back my sleeve—all four of my sleeves—exposing my forearm to the frigid air, the fading sunset, and the emerging stars. He ran his thumb along the silver line of scales, his brow puckering in concern at the scab, and then, with a sly glance at me, he bowed his head and kissed my scaly wrist.

  I couldn’t breathe; I was overcome. I didn’t usually feel much through my scales, but I felt that to the soles of my feet.

  He replaced my sleeves, respectfully, as if draping a Saint’s altar. He kept my hand between his, warming it. “I was thinking about you, before you came up. Thinking, praying, and reaching no conclusion. I was inclined to leave love unspoken. Let us get through this war; let Glisselda grow into her crown. The day will come, please Heaven, when I can tell her this without throwing us all into chaos. Maybe she would release me from my promise, but maybe not. I may have to marry her in any case, because she must marry, and I remain her best option. Can you live with that?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “But you’re right: she needs you.”

  “She needs us both,” he said, “and she needs us not to be so distracted by each other that we are unable to do our parts in this war.”

  I nodded. “Crisis first, love later. The day will come, Kiggs. I believe that.”

  His brow creased fretfully. “I hate keeping this from her; it’s deceit. Small lies are no better than big ones, but if we could please keep everything to a minimum until—”

  “Everything?” I said. “Porphyrian philosophy? Amusing tales of bastardy?
”

  He smiled. Ah, I could last a long time on those smiles. I would sow and reap them like wheat.

  “You know what I mean,” he said.

  “You mean you’re not going to kiss my wrist again,” I said. “But that’s all right, because I am going to kiss you.”

  And I did.

  If I could keep a single moment for all time, that would be the one.

  I became the very air; I was full of stars. I was the soaring spaces between the spires of the cathedral, the solemn breath of chimneys, a whispered prayer upon the winter wind. I was silence, and I was music, one clear transcendent chord rising toward Heaven. I believed, then, that I would have risen bodily into the sky but for the anchor of his hand in my hair and his round soft perfect mouth.

  No Heaven but this! I thought, and I knew that it was true to a standard even St. Clare could not have argued.

  Then it was done, and he was holding both my hands between his and saying, “In some ballad or Porphyrian romance, we would run off together.”

  I looked quickly at his face, trying to discern whether he was proposing we do just that. The resolve written in his eyes said no, but I could see exactly where I would have to push, and how hard, to break that resolve. It would be shockingly easy, but I found I did not wish it. My Kiggs could not behave so shabbily and still remain my Kiggs. Some other part of him would break, along with his resolve, and I did not see a way to make it whole again. The jagged edge of it would stab at him all his life.

  If we were to go forward from here, we would proceed not rashly, not thoughtlessly, but Kiggs-and-Phina fashion. That was the only way it could work.

  “I think I’ve heard that ballad,” I said. “It’s beautiful but it ends sadly.”

  He closed his eyes and leaned his forehead against mine. “Is it less sad that I’m going to ask you not to kiss me again?”

  “Yes. Because it’s just for now. The day will come.”