Lightfall, p.47
Lightfall, page 47
Her parents were seated by the fire just like the last night she sat with them here, sipping tea and discussing her coming-of-age ball months ago—someone else’s birthday, another girl’s life. Now she was this woman in the shreds of an armored dress and a man’s jacket, clinging to the door handles and breathing her family’s names.
Cyril looked up from his book and Solene from a pile of citizens’ requests—first with alarm, and then, after a fleeting moment, with shocked recognition. They came to their feet together, eyes wide, mouths agape.
A sob rolled from Cistine’s chest, and she closed the distance to them, crashing into her mother’s arms, the safe harbor she’d yearned for so many times since she went to Valgard. Solene staggered backward from the impact, her grip keeping them from falling into the fire; Cyril grabbed them both, his tears hot on Cistine’s hair when he kissed the crown of her head. They folded down on the rug in a heap of fine clothes and armored threads, and Cistine wept bitterly—for the joy of seeing them and the misery of leaving Valgard. For Pippet, for Quill, for Maleck, for the devastation in Thorne’s eyes when he said goodbye. For the ring on her finger and its promise that might no longer come true. For the fear of what was certainly coming for her cabal; what might still find them here in the Middle Kingdom if the ruse didn’t hold. Then she wept simply because she was exhausted, and had seen too much night—had held her selvenar and prayed he wouldn’t die, fought Salvotor and seen him fall, felt Pippet slip through her fingers, and let the cabal go.
Her parents held her, grieving the known and unknown until there was nothing left but their arms around each other and the fire popping quietly. Only then did Solene loosen her hold and peel back gently to assess her strange attire, her new scars, the crusted blood on the side of her face. “My beautiful, brave girl. Look at you.”
Cyril said nothing, but his hand tightened faintly on her shoulder and his gaze dropped to her waist, where Quill’s augment pouch hung. Cistine’s grief coiled up and faded into a dull, hard lump in her throat, letting other feelings free when her father’s gaze snapped back to hers.
She was not the same Princess who left; and she didn’t see him as the same King she loved back then.
“We thought you would stay.” Solene’s voice broke the silent war of thought between her husband and daughter.
“I was going to. Something terrible happened, Mama. The Bloodwights…the visnprests who sealed the Doors. They’re back.” Cyril’s face drained of color at that; softly and with all the articulacy of a hereditary archer from the wild plains, Solene cursed their enemies. “I wanted to stay and fight, but my friends voted against it. They sent me home.”
“To spare you rather than open the Doors?” Solene demanded.
“I can’t imagine why,” Cyril said blandly, taking Cistine’s hand and exposing the ultramarine opal to the firelight.
Solene covered her mouth, eyes darting from the ring to her daughter’s face. “Did you—Cistine. Did you make a marriage alliance with the North?”
“It wasn’t for alliance. Not that it matters anymore.” The words emerged bitterly. “I don’t know what will happen to him now. How long he’ll even live.” But she would never stop praying, as fervently and wholeheartedly as Ariadne taught her, until she felt the selvenar bond give way. And even after, she would pray Thorne stepped into Cenowyn and found Baba Kallah and Kristoff there, and that they’d wait for her.
“Oh, Cistine.” Her mother’s voice cracked. “I never wanted this life for you. The fear of war, seeing the man you love ride off to it while you stay behind…”
The man you love. “You’re not angry with me?”
“I think you’ve made it clear by now you’re a woman of your own choices,” Cyril said. “Besides, you’re here, when you could’ve been bled out on a Door. When you could’ve been their entire salvation, he chose your life over his whole kingdom. I need no other proof that this Valgardan, whoever he is, loves you with his entire heart.”
Cistine had never heard truer words. Nor had they ever hurt so much.
Solene took both their hands and rose. “Up, both of you. We need to be prepared if they break down Valgard’s defenses.” Though her words were calm, fear was plain in the slant of her mouth, the tremble of her hands, for her husband and daughter—the two Keys, the greatest prizes in a war just beginning beyond their kingdom.
With a swift nod, Cyril was the King again, focused and firm. “Muster the Wardens, love. Have Viktor bring his best to the throne room.”
“Not Rion?” Cistine asked.
“He and Eboni are on their way back to Practica. I don’t think his council is required for matters like this. Do you?” The question was honest, Cyril’s expression vulnerable. If she said Rion was needed, he would send for him in a moment.
“No, not for this. And not Viktor, either,” Cistine said. “I’d choose Rozalie. She can be trusted when it comes to Valgard.”
Cyril nodded to Solene. “Rozalie it is, then. Send for her at the northern forts. Let her select who she thinks is best to help shore up our defenses.”
Solene cast a last look of fondness and worry over her daughter. “Welcome home, my little love.”
Cyril beckoned with a tilt of his head when his wife departed. “Let’s get you into better clothes before your report.”
Cistine glanced down at her scant attire and flushed. “I suppose we should.”
They walked the corridors they’d traversed so many times together, Cistine often with her nose in a book or her eyes out the window, daydreaming while her father told her about legislature and swordplay and other things she didn’t care for. But today she was focused, waiting for the inevitable question.
“How many people know what you are?” Cyril asked at last.
And there it was.
“Only a handful.” And fewer still if Sander and Mira, Saychelle and Iri were dead. The thought shoved sour sickness into her mouth.
Cyril nodded. “The less, the better. Will the visnprests—?”
“Bloodwights.”
He grimaced at the name. “Will these Bloodwights sense you’re here? Sense we are here?”
“I don’t think so. Not from afar.” Not like she’d sensed the pestilence of their presence; mercifully, that stream seemed to flow mostly one way. “I’m sure Thorne and the others will spread a rumor that I’m still in Valgard. Gods willing, that will be enough.”
“Thorne,” Cyril mused. “I assume it’s his ring you’re wearing?”
Cheeks hot, she nodded.
“Well, I’m proud that you made the difficult choice,” Cyril said after they crossed another hall in silence. “Leaving Valgard was one of the most difficult things I’ve ever done. I could barely put one foot in front of the other. I thought it was war-weariness at the time, but it didn’t abate. It never really has, it’s just gotten easier to manage.”
She glanced up at his drawn face. “You can sense the augments I’m carrying, can’t you?” He nodded slowly, and a fresh ache pounded in her heart. “Papa, why didn’t you ever tell me about Valgard? That the augments still existed, that the Doors were sealed with Gammalkraft, that I was a Key?”
“I was afraid you would leave us and travel north if you knew you had some claim in those lands. And I was ashamed I saddled you with that burden. I thought if you knew, you would despise me. And especially after we lost your brothers, I couldn’t bear to lose you, too.”
She shook her head. “You should have prepared me better for this. I had the right to know.”
“I realize that now, far too late. I’m sorry for the lies and compromises that came between us. I hope you’ll forgive me.”
“I do. But if I’m going to succeed you, we have to be honest with one another from now on.”
“Is that what you want? To succeed me?”
There was desperate hope in his voice, as if she offered him a dream beyond reason. “Yes. I want my birthright so I can help our kingdom. I won’t neglect my duties from now on, I give you my word. But I want yours in return.”
“You have it, Cistine.”
“Then start by telling me this: do you think I’m worthy of the throne, or did you always want a different heir?”
He halted outside her bedroom door and took her hands, dragging her around to face him. “I have always wanted to see you on that throne. It’s all I’ve ever wanted.”
She bit back more tears at the small, delectable tug of an old wound in her heart slowly stitching itself shut. “Come inside. I want to show you something.”
The sheer normalcy of her bedroom was almost breathtaking, everything exactly as she’d left it—except for the mound of birthday gifts on the dining table and chairs, spilling all over the floor, forgotten in her wild rush to the North.
But they weren’t the presents that mattered. Not now.
She opened her augment pouch, reached for the white-gold whisper of light, uncorked the flagon, and poured a kernel of the augment into her palm. Its warmth and weight no longer surprised her; she let it climb to her elbow in streamers, bright enough to illumine her body and nothing more. Cyril watched it dance with yearning in his eyes, brighter than tears—a desire Cistine knew like her own name. That insatiable call.
“Come here, Papa,” she urged, and when Cyril stepped closer, she added, “don’t be afraid of it. It’s just a weapon. You can control it if you don’t fear it.”
His hand opened just below hers, and she dropped the kernel. The moment it touched his palm, the gods-gifted light bloomed like a lotus, furrowing out across his fingers and wrist, twining along his arm. It ate away at his clothing, but not his skin; just like her, he was impervious, even unarmored and uninked.
Tears slid down her cheeks as he pivoted on the balls of his feet, tracing the augment’s unfettered journey across his shoulders and down his torso, singeing away his shirt and crossing the scarred contours of his body…scars like hers, too; scars of war. He was just like her in every way.
The light spent itself and faded, and in the drape-drawn dimness of the chamber, father and daughter stared at one another.
“You have no idea how glad I am to have you home,” Cyril said hoarsely. “I meant what I said in that letter, but I’m glad you came back before…”
Before the battle. Before the storm. Before she shared her grandfather’s fate—or worse.
Miserable energy stirred in her chest, and she pushed Cyril’s shoulder. “Go and put on a shirt, Papa, you look ridiculous.”
Chuckling, he went to the door. “I’ll see you in the throne room in one hour. We’ll prepare the Citadel while we wait for Rozalie’s arrival.”
When he was gone, she flung the balcony doors wide, coaxing a breeze into the stale room, lifting the drapes like mourning banners. Then she wandered to the stack of gifts; there were dozens to look at, and with gratitude but no profound joy, she stacked them into smaller piles. Some were clearly dresses, others jewelry. The tallest heap was books, and she wished battle didn’t preoccupy her thoughts so she could muster an ounce of excitement at the prospect of reading them.
Her mind wandered so far from the task at hand that she was all but floating, her body in Talheim but her mind in Valgard, when the clock tower in Astoria’s center chimed midmorning, startling her so badly she jumped, elbowing the last gift from the table. It dropped to the floor with a dull clap, and she cursed, bending to retrieve it. But when she laid eyes on the note pinned to the trappings, her heart skipped.
That was Julian’s handwriting.
For a moment, she simply stared at it; if even the sight of that half-forgotten scrawl made her chest ache, she couldn’t begin to imagine what reading it would do to her heart.
She opened the parcel itself first. That seemed like something Julian would’ve wanted her to do.
It was a journal of medium size, its soft leather cover tooled with running horses, clearly handmade in Practica where horse husbandry was a common way of life. She unlooped the cord from around it and found blank pages inside—nothing to distract her from picking up the note and reading Julian’s voice back into her life for the first time since Eben’s wetlands.
I know you’ve always loved reading your books of adventure. I thought maybe you’d want the chance to start writing your own. Whenever you do, I hope I’ll be there to read it. And I hope I’ll always be a part of your story.
Forever your friend, whether close or apart,
-J
A tear plopped onto the note, and she swept it away with her thumb. “Oh, Julian.”
The wind in the drapes dropped suddenly, the fabric settling still as a corpse’s veil. Far away, so distant it was like God’s breath whispering, thunder stirred; she didn’t have to look to know it came from the north.
A rustle of wings, and Faer drifted in through the window to perch on the bedpost. He cawed and groomed his feathers, then fixed her with that beady, expectant gaze, wondering what would come next.
What, indeed?
She went back to the balcony doors, gripping the ornate handles as she gazed across her city toward the distant horizon—toward the kingdom, the friends, and the war she left behind.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I love you all.”
The only answer was another hiss of thunder.
She turned away from the call in her spirit, shut the doors, and dressed quickly in pants and a shirt—the closest thing to armor she had left. She hesitated a moment, hand hovering over the last piece of her raiment, wondering if she invited more pain by this. If it even mattered anymore.
But it did. It always would, even after they were all gone.
So she picked up Thorne’s jacket and slung it across her shoulders, fluffing out the seams and breathing in the scent of sandalwood and leather from its fibers. The smell of him, of the home she left behind.
With a sharp whistle, she summoned Faer to perch on her shoulder. Then the Princess of Talheim went to do her duty—to prepare her kingdom and herself to hold the line.
EPILOGUE
LONG INTO THE morning, people streamed out to join the cabal and the Chancellors on the plain, wounded, drenched, trembling from cold and the night’s trauma. They moved like Hive fighters after their first match, surviving with blood on their teeth and terror in their hearts, uncertain of what they’d become and what would become of them now.
Aden wished he could gather them all together and offer some hope. But they were too many by now—too many even to be on the plains. They would draw attention as their ranks swelled; they had to disperse, and soon. Already the Chancellors had rallied what Tribunes remained. Orders were being given, a plan enacted as hastily as it was sketched.
Aden didn’t like it. His father had taught him and Maleck that acting with too few options to consider, having no choice but to move and do it quickly, was as good as inviting disaster to dance.
But Thorne had dismissed him from that conference—to tend the cabal, he claimed. He’d dismissed Sander as well. So it was to Sander that Aden went, and Mira, sitting on the backside of the hill a ways from the others. He heard them arguing before he even arrived, their hushed tones full of aggravated affection.
“I’m all right, Sander, I told you, it’s just a wounded hand.”
“You are not all right, you were fortunate to have escaped the city at all! First your capture, and now this…” A rip of cloth punctuated Sander’s harsh tone as he tore his opulent scarf in half and bound Mira’s bloodied knuckles. “Of all the reckless, mad, dangerous things…”
“I’m told those were once my most attractive qualities.” Mira angled a tired smile up at Aden when he halted beside Sander. “Hello, you.”
“You’re hurt?”
“Just a scratch.”
“A scratch. She nearly broke her knuckles beating off criminals in the courthouse,” Sander snapped.
“They would’ve taken Saychelle and Iri if I hadn’t!” Mira’s calm tone showed a rare fracture; even when they’d freed her from Salvotor’s men, she had maintained that levelness, soothing Sander more than he soothed her while he carried her out of that abandoned house. But fury gleamed in her gaze now, as if she’d attack all those criminals again if given the chance.
“They were after the visnprestas in particular?” Aden asked.
Mira nodded. “They were taking captive as many of Ariadne’s friends as they could corner. Children as well.”
Aden glanced over his shoulder at Quill, sitting atop the hill with legs cocked and arms loosely linked around his knees, staring at the stomped-flat grass. Maleck, crouched beside him, was still as stone. Ashe had an arm around each of them, spine raised like a wildcat guarding her den.
Mira followed his gaze, then squeezed Sander’s hand. “Go find Thorne. Shove into his conversation if you must. You’re High Tribune, make him appreciate what you bring.”
“My place is at your side, Mira.”
“Your place is with your Chancellor, and if you keep spewing this protective nonsense, it’s going to send me into a fit, which will be all your stars-damned fault. Now go!”
Grumbling, Sander tossed a clipped nod to Aden and stalked off to join Thorne, the Chancellors, and the other Tribunes. Aden wondered if he ought to go as well, force himself into that discussion just like Sander; but it was not lost on him that Mira didn’t send him away.
He settled onto the hillside next to her, folded his hands under his chin with elbows braced on his knees, and shut his eyes. He tried not to wonder why Thorne didn’t want him there; Sander made sense, he’d escaped the city only recently and had Mira to think of. But was this really about Aden caring for the cabal? Or was he not wanted in that council, still not trusted after all this time?
