Lightfall, p.28
LightFall, page 28
The prince didn’t respond, just gathered the other scrolls I’d identified and swept them toward himself. “There’s too much to go through here tonight. I’ll take these with me, read through them, and we’ll reconvene. But for now, it’s late, and I don’t want to leave the dragon unwatched.”
I narrowed my eyes at his abrupt and authoritarian manner—and the way he commandeered our scrolls. But as everyone else nodded, stood, and stretched wearily, Dyania made her way to my side. “What brought you down from the tower, Fei? What did you need to tell me?”
I was aware of the prince’s hard stare above the spiraling ends of the scrolls. Was telling her a kindness or a blow? My earlier confidence was crumbling like old parchment. “Which would you rather,” I asked, “a cruel truth or a tender lie?”
She was quiet long enough that I knew she was giving it careful thought. But finally she gave me a wry smile. “Maybe it would be wiser to say the lie,” she said. “But why do I feel that your uncommon seriousness suggests that perhaps bravery will serve me better than wisdom.”
Since I knew she didn’t necessarily appreciate unwarranted physical contact, I forced myself not to reach out for her since it would’ve only comforted me. “Come to the prince’s tower tomorrow.” I hesitated. She might not want physical consolation, but she’d need something. “Bring Zik.”
“Feinan,” the prince growled.
I shot a furious glare at him. “You won’t need to be there.” My tone must’ve been harsher than I really meant, because the lady clicked her tongue in disapproval. I pursed my lips. “I just meant that I don’t mean to entangle you in my bad decisions.”
“As I’ve ensnared others?” His question was a furious whisper.
“That’s not what I—”
“Carry the rest of those scrolls,” he snapped. He gentled his voice, not much but a little, when he turned to give the lady a short bow. “I will send my retainer to fetch you in the morning. Rest well.” He lifted his head to take in the others with that slightly foreboding farewell.
Glum and resentful, I grabbed the scrolls, cradling them awkwardly against my chest as I followed him out.
He kept that punishing silence and three-quarters of a stride ahead, leaving me to wrestle with the scrolls that seemed to want to suddenly unspool themselves after centuries bound up, the stupid things, until we were at the obsidian archway to the black spire.
There he finally took pity on me and half the scrolls. “You’re going to hurt her,” he said harshly.
So much for pity. “I don’t want to,” I said helplessly.
“That won’t matter,” he snarled. “Every time she sees you from now on, she’ll remember that the pain and horror were inflicted at your hand.”
I wanted to argue, but he of all people would know. “Then they can look at us both that way.”
For a heartbeat he just stared at me before his lip curled in a jeer. “You think that’s what I want? For you to join me in reviled exile?”
I swallowed. “Obviously not,” I said, even though I heard my voice waver. I lifted my chin. “I would never dream of sneaking in to steal what you’ve hoarded here in the shadows.” The fear, the anger, the sorrow—but for all the times I’d let my tongue run away with me, I left that part unsaid.
He glared at me. “Just know that the lady’s heartache will be worsened by your doing, not mine.”
And that was the truth I’d have to live with—however long that was.
The brilliance of life’s light surrendered burns back the abyss.
~ A bloodrune invocation
CHAPTER 21
THE NEXT MORNING, I waited at the top of the spiraling passageway for Nenzo, leading Dyania and Zik. When the little Rokynd looked at me with a rattling shake of his beard, I grimaced. “Yes, I know. Your prince of gloom and grimaces has castigated me already.”
Last night, the prince had left me behind in the corridor, striding away as swiftly as if he’d borrowed the dragon’s wings, and when I’d gone to his chamber to hand over the other scrolls since their incomprehensible scribblings were no use to me, the barred door was closed against me, and he didn’t answer my ungentle knock. The bars were not locked, and even if they had been, I could’ve undone them, but I’d dumped the parchments—neatly rolled now that it didn’t matter—on his unwelcoming doorstep and stalked away.
I’d slept poorly and woke early, still trying to decide which of my life choices I regretted most.
Dyania glanced between us. “Might we be done with this mystery at least?”
I nodded briskly and gestured for Nenzo to take us into the cavern.
He signaled to me the word for ‘mistake’, which in Rokynd was only one finger twist different from the sign for cave-in, and his verdict bothered me almost more than the prince’s. But it was too late now.
For all Prince Aric’s condemnation, he must have told Nenzo what I’d done and said he’d allowed it because the corridor to the sleepers’ cave was lit with lamps that made the obsidian edges where I’d sliced my hand gleam prettily. Zik pressed close to me anyway.
And of course there was no way to prettify the sleepers. At least Nenzo’s entrance a few steps ahead of us had sent the scorpiders scuttling away.
Glancing around the reclined bodies, Dyania sucked in a hard breath, and then the breath left her again as if someone had punched her. “Wyn?”
Nenzo had placed a brighter lamp and a low stool next to Lady Morowyn’s pallet, but Dyania stumbled forward and sank to the cold stone, reaching out for the white hands folded peacefully atop the silkha.
Zik jumped forward and grabbed her elbow before she could touch her sister. “Lady, wait,” he whispered brokenly as he crouched beside her. “She is…”
“Dreadmarked,” Dyania said in a shockingly clear voice. “How…? No, never mind. I know how. But why?” She raised her tortured gaze to me, tears turning to diamondes in the lamplight.
I swallowed. “He wanted to save them.”
“Save them?” Her voice pitched sharper. “But he did this to them.”
Having been down this path myself, I winced. “And he believed there was a chance they might come back, that their auras could be rekindled.”
“How?”
Oh, how I wished I could’ve listened to the prince when he told me not to do this. “We don’t know. Yet. But maybe in the books or scrolls, or the haloria, or maybe—”
Dyania bolted upright, shedding Zik’s cautioning grasp like a hart fleeing for the high mountains. “You told me once that not being dead yet is an opportunity. So what is this, this strange not alive or dead?”
When I could only gaze at her in misery, she looked down at her sister and slowly backed away. “I can’t… I was sent here to save the Living Lands, and I knew what I would sacrifice. But I can’t… Not like this.”
She bolted from the room, fleeing back down the corridor that Nenzo had so thoughtfully lit. Not trying to stop her—at least she wouldn’t run into the prince since he was undoubtedly hiding, and rightly so, from this compounded tragedy—I sagged down onto the stool.
If only running away would save her from the pain.
“Go after her,” Zik said. “I’ll stay here and help.” He looked at Nenzo shyly. “If you could use my service.”
The little Rokynd, who was about the same size as the boy, nodded.
Scrubbing my hands down my face, I pushed to my feet, gave Zik a hug, and raced after the lady.
She was almost back to the passageway down to the palace when I caught up with her, and I had to be impressed with her memory even while in distress. She would’ve made a very good thief.
When I told her that, she just stared at me, her dark and light eyes still sparkling with tears. “Except I wouldn’t steal. I would give anything to see her rise. I’d give her my life.”
“Doesn’t work that way though,” I said. “And I suspect if she loved you as much as you love her, she would not want you to sacrifice yourself.”
“But I already did,” she said fiercely. “Or I would have.” She shook her head. “How did this all become so much more complicated?”
“Who would’ve guessed that dying would’ve been the simpler part.” I gave her a tentative, watery smile.
She did not smile back. “I want to hate you.”
The honesty, blunt as my animdao blade and yet cutting deep nevertheless, reminded me why I avoided honesty. But she was only giving me a truth as I’d given her. “Fair enough. You warned me not to take anything from the Dragon Prince. Yet I took this secret. And perhaps I should’ve kept it after all.”
After another long moment when I thought she might agree, she let out a slow breath, her shoulders wilting. “I just wanted to be a martyr like my sister, and instead it’s going to be worse.”
Sighing out my own held breath that she seemed to have forgiven me, or at least wasn’t going to hate me unbearably, I said, “I’m sorry for the pain, but I thought you’d want to know she is still…here.”
“I’m just reminded, in some ways reaching for hope hurts more than giving up. But how can I not?”
“Heyo, let’s not disparage a good giving up and running away,” I cautioned.
“I would never,” she lied, dredging up at last a serviceable smirk, and I was honored to not receive one of her cautiously kindly prince smiles or gently encouraging Zik smiles. Though I had not much to share with her, lying and smirking through the impossible was a worthy gift. “Also it may yet become our only path.”
I explained to her that Zik had chosen to stay with the sleepers to help Nenzo, and she nodded. “I…I can’t go back there right at this moment, but I’ll gather myself. I just need a little time. And I need to speak to Imbril and Lisel about our studies today. If you could tell Zik how much it means to me to have him watch over my sister, and thank Nenzo too.”
“I think Zik would die for you as you would for your sister,” I said quietly. “I suspect Lisel would do the same.”
She glanced away. “It was never my intent to mislead them.”
“Because you are a good person. And I think that’s why they’d fight for you and die for you.” I hesitated. “And I think, with a crook of your finger, the prince too would declare himself your champion.” I squirmed just a little saying it, but I didn’t think I was telling her anything she wouldn’t have intuited on her own. “In his guilt over your sister and the others, I think he has lost the dragon’s appetite, if he ever had it.”
Turning another quarter circle away, she grimaced. “I’ll not crook a thing at him, thank you. And I confess, after meeting the nobility of the High Keep, my taste for martyrdom has been at least partly assuaged.” She let out a small sigh. “But if the haloria and the king’s guard enforce a Devouring, I don’t think I or even Prince Aric can speak to the contrary.”
I didn’t contradict her—how could I, when to speak would be seen as a betrayal of the Living Lands?—but I wasn’t going to agree with her either.
We’d survived enough close calls that I thought even a clever bettor would be hard pressed to call our odds.
And I truly believed that at the time. That was the downside of hope.
After the lady departed by herself, I went to the little kitchen and began prepping a stew, following roughly what I remembered of the prince’s recipe, so that by the time Nenzo and Zik finished their efforts with the sleepers, I had something of a soup simmering. Zik made appreciative noises at the smell while Nenzo peered into the pot, took a little taste, added some spices and salt, and gave me a bead rattle of approval.
I told them what Dyania had said about appreciating their care of the sleepers, adding a few more effusive words along the way until both were blushing and smiling. As I ladled up the soup, Zik glanced over his shoulder warily. “Should we ask the prince if he wants some?”
Nenzo and I looked at each other. “I’m sure this delicious perfume wafted through the whole mountain,” I announced grandly. “If he wanted some, he would come.”
Zik relaxed while Nenzo arched an eyebrow at me. I would just pretend that he was questioning my cooking skills not the impact of my decision to invite the lady and Zik to the prince’s lair. Just because a prince thought he could spend all his days and nights brooding alone didn’t mean he would get what he wanted; who did he think he was, anyway?
Besides the Dragon Prince.
While we ate, Nenzo taught us a few more words of Rokynd, and Zik told me about an elixir favored by Osri drovers and herders in the rugged hills of his home that was believed to strengthen the vitality of body, heart, and mind even against plummeting temperatures and the delusions that plagued an extended solitary subsistence. A stronger distillation of the elixir was said to revive lost and wayward travelers caught in storms or villagers overcome by the tragedies of the relentless demon attacks that Osiroon had suffered lately.
“Do you mean ale?” I asked. “And stronger ale?”
He rolled his eyes. “It’s not ale or stronger ale, ya. It starts with fermented yombark and gets worse from there.”
Remembering the pungent Osri cordial he’s procured for us at the grand galley gathering, I wrinkled my nose. “And why would we want this?”
“I was telling Sir Nenzo that the sleepers are rather like the stormcaught in Osiroon. Sometimes, when the storms roll down from the Argonyx across the Mires, the wind and lightning whip up a peculiar malaise that can knock those caught by it into a swoon. The elixir brings them round again.”
Thinking of the ominous auric tempest I’d glimpsed from the palace colonnade, I gazed at him solemnly. “So much I did not know about Osiroon.”
He nodded. “You and everyone not Osri.”
Nenzo signed that he was curious and wanted to see if they could recreate it.
While they descended to the lightkeep to scrounge the makings for Zik’s elixir, I stayed behind to clean up the kitchen for their attempt at brewing, and when they hadn’t returned by the time I was done, I took myself off to the pool.
I’d only intended to let the hot, mineral bubbles soak the stink of onion out of my fingers, but also the splashes conveniently covered my snuffling misery when I thought of the sleepers and the lady and what might come next.
Because I could smile and hope and even pretend to pray when others were watching, but by myself, those cruel truths and the lies I could no longer tell myself closed around me like demon talons.
When my tears dried and my fingertips turned too wrinkly for even the most fumbling of pickpocketing, I boosted myself up onto the edge of the pool and swung one leg around, straddling the wet tile.
There was no sound, nothing to alert me, but a sensation more delicate than a water droplet traced down the back of my neck. I glanced up, and he was standing there.
How long had he been there? What did he want? The steam rising from the pool and my heated skin obscured my view of him just enough that I couldn’t even guess at what might be lurking beneath the shadows of his icy eyes. That sensation of water droplets spiraled out from my spine in all directions, to the ends of my limbs…and deeper within. The way I was sitting on the ledge, with one leg in the pool and one without, left my knees agape—and me aligned like a meridian with his wintry stare.
To complicate matters, I’d left my clothes next to the warming brazier. For all my claims of hopefulness, I had no faith that the curling steam was blocking his view of my most vulnerably intimate flesh.
“I made soup,” I told him, my voice vexatiously breathy. By the amaranthine light, what had I just said? “Not in the bathtub, obviously,” I scrambled to clarify. “In a pot. In the kitchen. For you, if you want it.”
How I wished I hadn’t said want with my legs spread so far apart.
But if I clamped my thighs together, he’d know that I was flustered, and I didn’t want to give him such satisfaction.
Oh, why had I thought about satisfaction?
He didn’t deserve anything from me, not after leaving me alone to explain Lady Morowyn’s heartbreaking half-life to her sorrowing sister. And then leaving me to make soup on my own. Which I had then offered up to him like…like I was practically offering myself. I scowled.
“So she didn’t tear your heart out with her bare hands.”
“If she had, you’d have known, because she would’ve gone after yours next.” Very slowly and subtly, I angled one knee inward.
He crossed his arms over his chest, though I wasn’t sure if he was protecting himself from the unrealized threat of an angry sister or subtly mocking my belated attempt at modesty. “I finished reviewing the scrolls.”
Was that an attempt at an apology for deserting me? He’d probably say it was just an explanation. “And?” I prodded.
“We should gather your friends so I don’t have to repeat myself.”
“Wouldn’t want to inconvenience you,” I muttered.
“I was up all night reading esoteric and blurry texts, so I came here to bathe, but you are in my pool.”
“Only halfway.” I took the opportunity to swing my leg out of the pool, bringing my knees together and flinging some droplets off my toes at him—accidentally, of course. “You can have the other half. But don’t worry, I don’t want to join you in your watery exile anyway.”
Slipping off the rim, I did everything in my power to ignore him as I padded across the room toward the braziers. Don’t look back, he’d told me once. Don’t look back…
As I toweled dry, I peeked back.
He was only a quarter of the way around the roughly circular pool from me, so I didn’t have to gawk too obviously. But I would have, because he took off his tunic, right there, after I’d said I didn’t want to join him.
When we’d been lashed to the dragon, I’d felt the breadth of his chest pressed behind me, and even before that, I’d noted the sleek strength in his swordsman’s body. But seeing it unveiled in front of me—neh, a quarter circle away from me—was something else.
His chest and shoulders were all coiled muscle over hard angles. No wonder he’d been able to lift me, haul me, entrap me whenever he wanted. The lean cut of his ribs angling down to his waistband reminded me of a hart, all elegant beauty that couldn’t disguise the simmering, explosive power.
