4

No Time to Mourn

I go as still as glass.

Everything is about to change. My grandmother is dead. The queen is dead. My own sweet sister will be crowned, and Tabra is going to need me. More than she ever has.

I don’t wait for Cain, or Pella, or the Wanderers. I take off running, desperate to get back to Enora. Omma will want me to journey to Oaesys immediately.

“Meren!” Cain’s shout is sharp, and I flinch, but I don’t stop.

Footfalls, fast and hard, sound behind me. “Meren, please!”

I clench my fists against the plea in his voice. The confusion. “I have to go!” I yell over my shoulder. “I’m so sorry, Cain!”

“Cain!” Pella is still close by, the snap of her voice carrying over the dunes.

I hear him stop. Only the sound of my feet on the packed sand follows me now, and I know that he’s given up.

He’ll stay with his people while I return to Enora and my hovel, where no doubt Omma will be waiting for me by the time I get back, furious that I left at all.

There are preparations that must be done to transform me into Tabra. After that, we’ll need to travel through the glass portal in the Temple of Enora to the sister portal in the temple in Oaesys where, for all intents and purposes, I will now be Omma, at the beck and call of my sister, the soon-to-be-crowned Queen of Aryd.

I glance over my shoulder one last time to see my friend standing tall and strong, a solid figure against the wall, watching as I run away from him.

I’ll see him again, but that might be worse. If the zariphate is headed to the capitol, the next time I see him, I’ll be Tabra, and he’ll want answers.

Answers I can never give.

I don’t bother to stop my tears as I sprint toward the city. I don’t even know that I could. I let them fall as I cross the south gate, for my grandmother, for Tabra, for the hope in Cain’s eyes, and for myself and all of the dreams I didn’t even realize I’d had. That was all over now.

It doesn’t occur to me until I’m standing before our hovel that this would be my final trip through the back alleys and darkened corners that have become as familiar to me as the palace is to Tabra. I could not risk such trips going forward. I wish I had appreciated it more.

Omma’s stringent voice reaches me the second I walk in the door. “I wondered if you’d bother to show at all.”

Knowing dawdling will only piss her off more, I hurry down the dark, narrow hallway that leads to the back of the hovel, turning the corner to find her pouring boiling water into a copperplated tub that stands in the center of the kitchen, already mostly full.

“We don’t have time to argue.” Her lips are pinched so tight, the puckered lines make her look like a seamstress sewed her mouth shut from the inside. “You’re filthy. Get in.”

Happy to avoid the yelling part of the night, I strip. Except, I remember the glass flower in my pocket at the last minute. Pretending to fold my clothes, I slip a hand into the pocket—

It’s gone.

Hells. It must’ve fallen out.

With any luck, it’s somewhere in the desert and the zariphate’s horses crushed it. Not that anyone could connect it to me.

I make myself finish folding, then step into the tepid water, grateful she’d bothered to warm it even a tiny bit. She hands me a scrub brush, then goes to pull out the sweet-smelling soaps and lotions and oils that we stash in a hidden panel in the wall, just in case someone suspicious snoops around looking for signs that not one but two hidden princesses live here.

I study her.

I know she was beautiful once. I’ve seen paintings and carvings of my grandmother at a younger age. But now… Omma’s salt-and-pepper hair is scraped harshly back from her face, pulling at the skin and giving her a perpetually shocked expression. She’s lost weight, mostly so that she would continue to look the same as Grandmother, who’s been sickly. Her bones now appear draped with loose, paper-thin skin covered in age spots.

She’s acting as if nothing unusual is happening—just another trip to the palace. Like her sister isn’t dead and Tabra isn’t about to be queen.

Omma is a cold woman, but does she feel nothing? What about how her entire world has just been upended? The time in her life to disappear and become nothing is here. I picture a fruit, withering away, unplucked on the vine until the bugs devour it whole.

Things for me to look forward to.

“Get moving, girl,” she snaps.

Omma puts the bottles on the small table by the tub, then sits down with a heavy sigh. I scrub and scrub the layers of grime and sand and sweat from my body. While I do that, Omma and I talk. This is also a deliberate part of our process. One that serves two purposes.

Partly it’s about practicing the cadence of speech of authoritates, who favor fancier words and a more affected accent than the lower classes here in Enora. Each syllable more pronounced, the vowels drawn out. It’s almost unrecognizable from the dialect of the Wanderers, who eat their S sounds and blur the harder consonants.

The other purpose is to prepare me for court when I have to pretend to be Tabra. Omma tells me all the news from the palace. By the time I am done bathing, I know which authoritates are in favor and which aren’t, plans already laid for the funeral and coronation, the status of the other dominions, and key bits of gossip that might be useful.

“Omma…will you miss your sister?” The question sort of tumbles out.

She doesn’t even blink. Why did I bother to ask?

“I don’t know who I am without her.”

I understand how she feels, perhaps more than I ever have. Then she ruins that small show of humanity by scowling. “Get up.”

She yanks me by my arm out of the tub, then hands me rough cloths, waiting impatiently as I dry off before we go up the narrow, steep stairs to my bedroom. There she stuffs me in my royal garments, also concealed in the walls. She turns to get something, and I quickly strap my two hidden knives in place. After drying and curling my hair, she does my makeup with swift, deft strokes, then yanks my hair into an elaborate knot piled high on my head.

And somewhere in the middle of all of that, it hits me that I’m the only one getting ready to leave…and why.

“There.” Omma gives a sharp tug to a curl. “You’re presentable.”

She hustles me back downstairs. At the door, I pause, waiting for her to say…something. I don’t know what.

When she doesn’t, I open the door.

“Wait.”

I turn back.

She holds out the key that I recognize as the one belonging to our hovel. Looking me dead in the eyes, she searches my face. “Use what I’ve taught you. Do your duty. Be there for your sister. Never trust Eidolon.”

That’s it? This woman has raised me since infancy, and that’s all she has to say? Vultures have more feeling for their rotting food.

After a pause, I give a jerking nod, trying to hide a shiver at how cold she sounds.

“Go.” She gives me a push.

As soon as I’m out the door, the click of the lock behind me echoes off the alleyway walls, the sound cringingly loud…and final.