The brilliance of life’s light surrendered burns back the abyss.
~ A bloodrune invocation
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.
And then he leaned down to strip off his trousers.
Unfair! He knew I was a thief and would steal a glance. And I’d always been good at guessing what sort of treasure hid in a nobleman’s pockets.
Before I could be certain, I spun away, groping for my clothes. No more need for the towel, the droplets had likely all simmered away on my burning skin.
Maybe I was a thief, but in this case I wanted nothing that wasn’t freely and joyfully shared.
Had the Dragon Prince ever known joy? Maybe in those early days with his adoptive brother? But maybe even that was tainted—not demon-touched, but somehow worse—knowing it had all been a ruse to more tightly bind him, with fear and pain, to the dragon.
Dreadmarked not because he’d chosen the shadows but because the light had been stolen from him.
My inappropriate and unrequited lust cooled a bit, replaced by not pity—the prince would hate pity—but a cautious sympathy. I’d only been left behind, not tortured by the very people who’d pretended welcome to their home.
“Feinan.”
At my name, I glanced back carefully over my shoulder. He’d slipped into the pool without a splash, without even a soft sigh at the warm, buoyant pleasure of mineral water.
“What?” My tone was more petulant than warranted. My impossible yearning wasn’t his fault, of course, but the sight of his powerful shoulders flexed over the back of the tiled rim of the pool wasn’t exactly giving me the chance to get my rampaging imagination under control.
“Your friends are noble and military and clerical, and you’ve walked with the king and the marshal and the numinlor. Watch yourself with them. You’ve inserted yourself into deeper currents and more perilous rip tides than you know. They won’t hesitate to sacrifice you even faster than they discarded me.” When he reached up with both hands to slick back the dark locks of his hair, silvery droplets cascaded from his arms like gossamer wings. “It wouldn’t surprise me if one or several or all of them approach you to be their spy.” I didn’t react, I knew I didn’t react, and yet a grim smile twisted his mouth. “Which one, I wonder?”
“Petro no’Maru,” I said after what I hoped was an imperceptible hesitation. My facility with fast talking hadn’t necessarily prepared me for interrogation by the Dragon Prince because usually I only had to lie, and then my only decision was how much to lie. With him, though, things were…more complicated. “I suspect it was as much idle curiosity and his need to stir his fingers in every pot than any particular purpose.”
“This pot has nothing but darkness and fire.” The prince tilted his head the other way. “And what have you told him so far?”
“Nothing.” I knew my voice rang with honesty this time because it was true. “I hadn’t quite decided what would be useful to have him know, and it hasn’t been long enough yet for him to press me.”
The prince nodded. “We’ll come up with something for you to tell him.” We? As my heart skipped a beat, he sank a little deeper into the pool to rest his head on the rim, and the silver bubbles sluiced up the hard planes of his chest. “No’Maru was there when the palace guard separated me from Mikhalthe that last morning.”
I hesitated. I didn’t want to be like no’Maru, curious to the point of malice, and yet I did want to know. “Why did they need a child? Why not someone old enough to choose willingly?”
He kept staring up where the peaked ceiling of the cavern was lost in the shadows above. “Who would say yes to this?”
“Ormonde did.”
He rotated his head to stare at me. “He just wanted his arm back.”
I couldn’t hold back a smile at the hint of disgruntlement in the prince’s tone. “Maybe you could summon the bone dust from my innards and make a…neh, there’s not enough for a whistle anymore, but maybe a single, small, two-faced hedron? We could take a toss and guess at our chances: live or die.”
Slowly, he rolled to his side to look at me, his head cradled on his elbow still slung over the tiled edge. “Which would you guess, little thief? And what would you bet?”
“No thieving right now,” I reminded him. “So you may call me Fei.”
A lock of his hair, loosely coiled in the damp heat, unspooled on the tile like a diminutive version of the dragon’s tail. “And if I am not princing right now, call me Aric.”
I sucked the inner curve of my upper lip. “Aric.” I tested the word between my teeth like a golden coin fallen unexpectedly into my hand. “I suppose I’m betting my life, just as you are and the rest of the Living Lands.”
“Not just your life…your aura.”
I thought for a moment. “I suppose that doesn’t scare me as much considering my aura isn’t as precious.” I hesitated a longer moment. “Might I ask, if you were brought into the royal family, not noble born, how was your aura considered pure enough to be named a prince?”
“Not every noble-born is pure of aura,” he said. “And though it isn’t much bandied about, not every common-born is dulled. Lors can do their blessings to cleanse, and people can misbehave enough to sully, and of course upbringing and coin give access to more or less wickedness and sanctifications. But we’re born with at least some of the hues of thread we weave into our years, and I had the pattern they wanted.”
He rolled to his back again, leaving me staring at his raptor-keen profile. Beads of water turned the shadows of his cheekbones to translucent obsidian, and the glow of the low coals gleamed red in his eyes. “Purity alone couldn’t hold the dragon. Hence the beatings. But I’d been born with a touch of sin that would resonate with the monster.” A silent sigh from him, not of pleasure at all, sent a shiver of rings through the pool. “Because Mikhalthe’s father wasn’t true to the queen, and I, though unnamed, was his half-brother.”
I sucked in a slow breath. As he’d said before, even before Ormonde’s time, the royal bloodline had become a worn weaving, the threads thinning and fraying. Aric might be bastard-born, but with so few others in true contention, he had a very legitimate claim to the Radiant Throne.
“Probably I shouldn’t call you just Aric then,” I muttered.
Though he clearly wanted to be broody about it, my wry words made him look over at me again. “Will formality and decorum finally win you over?”
I opened my mouth, shut it, and shook my head. “I think you know guessing that answer would require only a one-sided hedron.”
He snorted, ruffling the water. “Mikhalthe’s mother would’ve happily seen me torn apart by the dragon, no matter the cost to the Living Lands. But I think she mollified herself at the thought of watching me suffer a slower, uglier fate. Taking no’Maru as her own lover might’ve eased some of the sting too.”
I gulped. “But no’Maru is the king’s personal advisor.”
“I doubt Mikhalthe knows of his father’s or his mother’s indiscretions. Must keep the names—and auras—of the protectors of the Living Lands out of the mud.”
My gaze traced over the slashes and pockmarks of pale scars marking his skin. “But you are a protector too.”
“So is everyone who defends against the demons. But that doesn’t make us pure.”
I didn’t know what to make of these grievous revelations, too much for even a spy, I thought. “I should leave you to your bath. I’ll gather the scrolls to return them to the library.”
He didn’t speak to object, but when I was almost beyond reach of the ember light, he called, “Fei.”
Again, I turned back, inexorably drawn like a demon to auric purity. “Yes?”
“If the haloria forces a Devouring, I won’t be able to hold her back. And you will hate me.”
His tone, gentler than I’d ever heard from him, pierced me. “Aric…”
“But I want you at least to know, I’ll hate myself too.”
As if that made it better.
He sank beneath the reflective water in a storm of silvery bubbles, and I almost ran back across the chamber to reach for him.
Then he shoved himself powerfully up from the depths, a dark tide sluicing from his scarred skin. He straight-armed himself to the rim, and with a flex of the muscles in his backside and thick thigh, levered one foot onto the tile to boost himself out. His long fingers slicked away the water that turned to diamonde droplets suspended in the air as I blinked.
The eldritch beauty to him was more than I, a thief, could take.
I turned and ran.