THE DUNGEON DOOR groaned open, remaining ajar for a long time before Madam Ophelia stepped into the room. The guard who dutifully watched the healer the day before did not follow her inside and closed the door behind her. The older woman stood tall and regal in her gray healer’s dress, her white apron pulled snug around her narrow waist. She clasped her hands before her and turned a pitying look on the princess.
“I told him this conversation was personal,” she said, answering Saran’s unspoken question. “He agreed to wait outside. Obviously a healer cannot hope to help you escape.”
“Obviously,” Saran muttered, sitting with her back against the wall. Her breath caught in her throat. She hurt, but she’d felt truer pain than this before.
Madam Ophelia stepped forward and stood just before the straw mat that made up Saran’s small bed. “You do not carry a child.”
Something dropped in Saran, settling in the pit of her stomach before swelling in her breast. Her physical pain replaced itself in a wash of heated blissful relief. “I don’t?”
“No,” the healer replied, her voice an edge darker than before.
Too many emotions ran through Saran’s mind in seconds for her to make any sense of what she felt about the revelation. A momentary pang of sadness fluttered through her breast at the thought of what might have been, but it warred with undeniable solace. Someday she would like to be a mother, but not today. Not when her life was so unsteady and dangerous. It left little room for a child. If anything, it would be cruel to bear one into her personal hell.
“This pleases you?” Madam Ophelia asked.
Saran glanced up from her thoughts. The healer looked primmer than usual, and the princess thought she spotted a hint of disdain in her eye.
“I’d be lying if I said that it doesn’t make me happy,” Saran replied. She willed herself to think no more of a child that had not been and would not be real for some time. Perhaps if she were someone else, someone with the luxury of time …
Saran snorted at the thought. How funny to think she once controlled time the same way a potter shaped clay. Now she had no power. She had no control. Even if she had, there was no room to mourn the loss of something that had not been real when she needed to escape a dungeon. She forced indifference into her voice and stretched her aching legs out in front of her, “I have no time for children.”
A glimmer of light appeared in the healer’s eyes. She straightened, a tall woman growing ever taller with pride. “And have you had enough?”
Saran cocked her head. “I’m sorry?”
Madam Ophelia took another step forward and peered down at Saran with a sharp gaze. “Have you had enough of this abuse? Enough of your father’s depravity? Have you had enough of your complacency in it, and are you finally willing to accept what you were born for?”
Saran pressed her hands into her sore cheeks and smoothed her hair back. “I swear, if you give me a speech about destiny, I will kill you.”
“I know nothing of your destiny, Saran D’mor, but I know of your bloodright.” The healer bent ever so slightly down to her. “For years I have watched you and waited. I have patiently tended your wounds. I have healed every strike that crossed your flesh that you could not reverse. I soothed your flame-ravaged body after you faced the Oruke in Lifesbane. I have yearned for you to take what is your right and burned for you to free yourself from the boot of your father. I have forever been your quiet supporter since the moment that I helped bring you into this world. I cannot be quiet anymore.”
The princess lost her words. She had them on the tip of her tongue, and they fell away. The revelation stole the protest from her, and the healer took great advantage of it, along with another step forward. The woman nearly stood on top of Saran.
“You cannot run from this! You cannot hide behind Lord Blackwell or Lord Ahriman’s demons. You cannot fix the broken and continue to break yourself, just as you can no longer shirk your path. A path chosen by blood and not heart, but none of us in this horrible, damaged world get the luxury of choice! Not even princesses! Sometimes we must be what we hate to do what is right.”
Saran stiffened. Sometimes we must be what we hate to do what is right. It was a variation of the mantra that Madam Ophelia had pushed on Saran since she was a little girl. Sometimes we must do what we hate to do what is right. Sometimes we have to be uncomfortable in order to make progress … in order to see a better outcome.
Madam Ophelia continued, “You have no idea how much the people here long for you. Do you truly think that all those residing under this roof are followers of Yarin? If you asked it of them, they would lay down their lives to make you queen. You, who turned time back to save them. You, who took beatings and imprisonment to protect them. You, who walk among them, eat among them, live among them, while their king rests comfortably upon his ill-gotten throne, sending them to slaughter. His madness has ruined this kingdom, and he means to ruin you.” The healer paused, letting her words sink through Saran like the cold of the dungeon managed to hours ago. “So I ask again,” the healer began, looming over Saran. “Have. You. Had. Enough?”
Saran stared unblinking at the stern woman, at the emotion welling in her eyes. This woman who, for as long as the princess could remember, had never shed a tear, never truly smiled, nor shown an ounce of emotion. She hid them behind a mask pulled tight.
“Yes.” The word burst out of Saran as if the healer had reached into her soul and snatched it out. “I have.” Her hands shook with anger, but not anger at Madam Ophelia, not even anger at her father. She felt angry with herself.
Saran had never wanted to be Yarin’s heir. She had never wanted to be queen. She wanted a cottage on a lake with the two men she loved, living their days out in peace. So she’d avoided that part of her life with every fiber of her being, because the closer attention she paid to it, the more she realized how inescapable it really was. She’d always, deep down, known the truth. There was no such thing as peace. Not for her. Not for Keleir. Not for anyone. Her life, and all the dreams beyond her reality, were a girl’s dreams. They had always been a girl’s dreams.
A part of Saran slipped away, passing like sand through her fingers. The dreamer in her quieted. Like the slow, graceful end of a season, the girl in her died.
The time had come, well past due, for her to be a woman.
No … that wasn’t it. She was a woman.
She needed to be a queen.
Saran stilled the quiver of anger in her hands and with clenched teeth shifted to stand. Her body throbbed from the effort, still reeling from last night’s beating.
The healer stepped back with a pleased smile and clasped her hands politely before her. “And what will you do?” she asked.
Saran took a slow, limping step toward the sunlight filtering in through the small, barred window in her cell. She admired the glint of dust dancing in the yellow beam. “In two days, Ishep Darshan will come to our walls with an army. If what you say is true, then have those who would wish me to be queen lower their weapons and join him. Those who would stand with Yarin will fall by our blade.”