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The king stood in the garden, amidst the perfectly manicured lawns and the rising sun, and was sure he could see the kingdom burning. He couldn’t be sure if it was the morning sun or the trail left by the cardinal. Anger rose in his throat at the thought of the cardinal, the destruction he was marking Burasal with. A scar that Dunstan would have to answer for.
He had heard nothing from the cardinal or the soldier as to his return. But it had only been a few days, and they were likely still trying to reach him. The cardinal from all accounts was moving quickly across the world. Was he doing good, or was he trying to make a name for himself?
Dunstan’s father had talked at length on the subject of the church, and he realised now he hadn’t paid enough attention. He hadn’t seen it as important, nothing really key to the future of the kingdom—and yet here they were, a lifetime later and the head of that church was trying to burn his kingdom to the ground.
A hand touched his sleeve; he flinched, and it was lifted immediately.
“I am sorry,” Aphera whispered.
“Not at all.” He tried to smile. The morning sun lit up her perfect features and added a pink hue to her ash-coloured hair. Not that she looked old—quite the contrary, and he was sure her hair was because of the fire and loss. “The cardinal is burning convents,” he said by way of explanation, and she looked out across the lawn and trees.
“I can’t see it,” she said.
“It is likely too far away for us to see from here, but he is determined.”
“Are there witches hidden within them? Or is he seeking to win some factions war we were not aware of?” Her voice was soft and gentle, as though she needed to ask rather than wanted to know the answer. “Do they not worship the same gods?”
Dunstan let out a relieved laugh. It was a thought he’d had himself but never voiced. The God and the Goddess were discussed in general terms only, unless you were a monk and could discuss it with another. He wondered who the sisters of the convents conversed with—likely not the cardinal’s monks. There were many other gods the people followed. He had heard the maids talking when he was a boy about the god of lost things, although he couldn’t remember the name they had given him then. It wasn’t one the cardinal included in his sermons.
“You agree?” she asked. A small smile pulled at her lips, and he was reminded again of just how beautiful she was. He nodded rather than trust himself to speak. “I don’t like the cardinal,” she went on, turning back to the view and slipping her hand around his elbow. “There is something ungodly about him.”
“His burning women and children of the Goddess hasn’t helped that image,” Dunstan replied. He gently placed his hand on hers, although it felt unnatural. They had never been so close in private, only standing this way once for a portrait that had been lost that night in the fire.
He wanted to ask more of her then—how she felt, whether she thought of their lost son, his lost father, and the souls that fire took. One that still haunted him.
“Witches,” she murmured.
That was the reason behind it all. But he said nothing further.
“Why would we not want to learn from them?”
He stared, wondering at the idea she’d voiced. Did she really not fear the repercussions? Or was she honestly asking?
“There was more to them than destruction. Healing, skills with nature. We could have used them,” she suggested, looking up at him. “And if she hadn’t feared for her life, she might have put the fire out,” she added.
Dunstan opened his mouth and then closed it, looking back to the view. The sky became less intense, a lighter blue appearing through the pinks and oranges. And yet with the growing light, the clouds on the horizon appeared to darken. He had never considered such a point, that the witch who had burned them to the ground might have been able to stop what she had started. That she might have been able to reverse the damage done.
Would his son have survived such a thing? Would his father?
“I think about it every day,” she whispered, leaning into him. “I miss him. I miss them both.”
He nodded. There had been another maid, not the witch, who had died in the flames with them trying desperately to save the child. They had spent a lot of time together in the lead up to the birth.
Dunstan’s father had tried to save others while the flames had spread too quickly through the stone castle, as though hungrily searching out those it would take. Dunstan wasn’t sure how he had managed to survive in the dark smoke and heat of the flames. He had pulled his wife to safety; she had been calling for him. He remembered that. And someone helped them into the courtyard. Despite the fire taking their new child, she had been unmarked except for the small burn on her cheek.
He looked down at Aphera’s head. She rested against him as though it had taken twenty years for her to forgive him for the loss, as though he were to blame for the hurt. But she had survived. When her rooms had been reduced to ash and rubble, the tiny skeleton blackened beyond what he’d thought possible all that remained. The image woke him from his sleep too often. And yet, she had survived.
A chill covered his skin, and she sighed contentedly.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
“For what?” he asked, the odd feeling clinging to his skin.
“That I survived when he could not.”
He turned then and took her in his arms. She leaned her head against his chest, and although it was something he had longed to do for so long, it felt even more uncomfortable and unnatural than when she had just taken his arm. She closed her arms around him.
“I am sorry that I have been distant. It has been a difficult time.”
He said nothing as he looked down at her. Did that mean it was over? That she would return to the wife she could have been? Not one lost to grief. Although, at that moment, he felt as though he had lost her too. He had lost a son, a father and a wife in one night, and although she was trying to walk back into his life, he felt a nervousness he never had around her. It was different than when he thought he might upset her, or when he knew how upset she was. She had been distant long before the fire and the child lost. He doubted he could trust her. And for the first time since he had been crowned king, he wondered if he had surrounded himself with the right people.
“What will you do to the cardinal?” she asked.
“There is little I can do to the head of the church other than demand he stop killing.”
“Will he listen?” she asked.
“His determination to destroy all witches might make it hard for him to listen.”
She pulled away and looked up at him, her eyes filled with worry.
“He has only found a few, although I am surprised there are any left at all.”
“How can you be sure that they were witches? And not just women he claimed were something they were not? We have seen that. Even when I was a child, we saw women burned alive who were nothing more than mothers and nursemaids.”
Her maid had been a witch—the witch. He remembered General Graewyth describing her walking through the flames as though they were nothing to her. They licked at her clothing, and she was covered in soot and smoke, but the flames had not touched her as they had him. He had been so angry, and so sad at the same time.
“He has his ways. Some can tell just by looking.”
“No, they can’t.” Aphera turned away then, moving back towards the castle. Although he had felt something odd in the woman as she leaned into him, he watched her walk away and wanted to follow. Instead, he turned back to the view.
In those first days and weeks after the fire, he had hunted with them, searching out the girl responsible for taking so much. Despite the fact that her brother had nearly killed her as she tried to escape from Sunsong, she had disappeared. He wondered now if she had travelled to a convent, if she knew they would take her in. Either way they could not find her, and yet they had found many others.
He knew there was something about witches, a feel, a sense of the power they had. He had killed without hesitation. And he would continue to kill every witch in Burasal until they were all gone and the little girl who had destroyed his hopes of happiness was amongst them.
Would General Graewyth hesitate if he found her? He didn’t seem to with others, and he claimed to want her dead. But there was a bond between the brother and sister that Dunstan rarely saw with other siblings. He turned for the castle. Too many conflicting thoughts fought for his attention. And as he followed the path his wife had taken, the image of the smiling, beautiful, dark-haired maid returned.
King Dunstan Sunsorrow sat in the silence of the throne room, trying to order his still-scattered thoughts, when a soldier appeared at the door.
“There is news from the general,” he said, waiting.
Despite not wanting to deal with anything else that day, the king waved the man forward and held out his hand for the small parchment he knew the general would have sent. A tiny black package dropped into his outstretched palm. The general always used black when it was for his eyes only. He waved the soldier away, carefully unwrapped the little package, and unfolded the fine parchment containing a short note.
“The cardinal has captured a witch as a pet. I am using her to lure Nelda, who has razed the cardinal’s tent.”
“A pet?” Dunstan murmured. What was the man thinking? He would kill his own kind and yet not kill a witch? Why was the general so confident that the witch the cardinal had captured hadn’t razed the tent? But maybe there was a greater connection between the siblings than he’d considered and the general knew when she was near. It would be the only explanation as to why he was with the cardinal. When he had been sent out from Sunsong, his instruction had been to find the witch, not the man.
The discomfort Dunstan had felt around his wife that morning—the lack of trust—returned. The general had searched unsuccessfully for twenty years for the sister who had nearly destroyed them all. And now he had followed the cardinal and thought she was close? Or was he just hopeful that the witch could draw out his sister?
He shook his head and rubbed at his eyes.
None of it made any sense. Dunstan had spent his time as King chasing his tail. Trying to find and destroy what had so nearly successfully destroyed the kingdom. Where had his father’s focus been in the years before his death, in the time before the witches had become the threat that they were? Although they were always a threat, always shunned, but rarely considered.
How often had there been a witch burning when Dunstan was a child? Aphera had mentioned burnings and yet he couldn’t remember them. In the years that followed the fire, they were commonplace, as were their activities. But that wasn’t right either, he thought as he leaned back and scrunched the note in his hand. What had changed other than a fire in the castle? One that had killed so many, including his father and son.
Was he doing this for the good of the kingdom or revenge? And where did the cardinal fit in all of this? The church openly opposed witches, considered them working against the God, trying to change the natural order of the world. Dunstan had seen little evidence of that.
But as he thought of her now as the girl she had been, Nelda had never been a threat to him. She’d been at hand day and night, helping Aphera while she was with child. She had worked hard, and he wouldn’t have had anyone else as close to his wife. And yet the world had turned on its head so quickly. In some ways, he had hoped she’d been killed in the fire. Disappeared in the smoke. But General Graewyth, as he was to become, had seen her walk from the flames. The look of horror and disgust as he’d relayed that to the prince—soon to be king—remained with him.
Nuris had lost his sister, and he'd felt it as keenly as Dunstan had felt his own loss. But she wasn’t dead, and he would have to be the cause of that. It had driven him ever since. It had flushed out many witches, but never the one they wanted. Was Nuris closer to finding her, or was he hopeful rather than certain?
How the general would react when face-to-face with the sister he had lost was something else entirely, and Dunstan could only hope that he would do as he needed to.