Royce staggered up the beach, every part of his body feeling bruised. Even so, he knew he was better off than Matilde and Bolis, both of whom were injured, limping along in his wake only with the help of Neave and Mark.
“We’re trapped here,” Bolis managed to grumble through the pain.
It would have been better if he weren’t right. The remnants of the ship that had brought them here were long since blown away, leaving just the island and its beaches. The island looked beautiful in its way, verdant and tree covered, with the heady musk of flowers filling the air. Even so, Royce had no wish to be stuck here for the rest of his life. Especially not with Sir Bolis.
“We’ll find a way off here,” Royce promised. “We’ll build a boat if we have to. We’ll find my father, and we’ll get back to the kingdom in time to help.”
The others didn’t look convinced by it, but they still followed as Royce made his way along the beach. Ember flew above, but could show Royce only the canopy of the forest that filled the island. No, not a forest, or at least not one like the ones back home; the heat from the volcanic island at the Seven Isles’ heart had made it into something more tropical than that.
“We need to find shelter,” Neave said, the Picti girl obviously knowing what it took to survive outdoors. “Then fire, food…”
“Who put you in charge?” Bolis asked.
Royce decided that he’d had enough. “Sir Bolis, am I your king?”
Bolis stared at him in shock. “I’m sorry?”
“Am I your king? Or at least the son of your king, if we find my father?”
Bolis dropped to one knee. “You know that you are. After the battle—”
“After the battle, I would have thought that you’d have seen Picti and knights, ordinary folk and everyone else fighting on the same side. Yet you’re here, treating Neave like some kind of savage who doesn’t belong.”
Royce saw Neave smirk and turned to her.
“And Neave, you spend your time goading Bolis because of wars that happened long before he was born. I will rule for the Picti as well as for everyone else, but I will not tolerate this division among us. We must work together if we are to survive and find my father.”
Neave looked sheepish for a moment, but then offered a bow.
“You’re right. We still need shelter though.”
Royce nodded and headed for the trees. That was when the musk of the place truly hit him, rotting and living all at once, beautiful and filled with life, the smell of it almost overpowering. It seemed as though creatures lived on every branch and vine, from the smallest of insects through to frogs and birds. But there was no sign of people.
“Someone is watching us,” Neave said. Beside her, Gwylim growled, low and rumbling.
Royce couldn’t see anything through Ember’s eyes, but he trusted the senses of his companions almost as much. He drew his sword.
“You’ve no need for that,” a voice said, and it was as musical as if the words had been sung. “You don’t need to fear me.”
The girl who stepped from the forest might have been Royce’s age, might have been a little older, and she was, quite simply, the most beautiful person Royce had ever seen. Her skin was almost golden, her eyes a deep tawny brown. Her hair shone lustrous and silvery, while every line of her body seemed perfect in a diaphanous dress that seemed to be made from the petals of some giant flower. A scent seemed to float with her that was of the forest and more, a mixture of flowers and sweat and something more that filled Royce’s nostrils and overwhelmed him, until he could barely think through it.
This girl was beautiful, she was perfect. In that moment, he had never wanted anything as much in his life as simply to be there with her, had never felt so safe as he did around her. He could see that it was the same for the others; they stared at her as if they had never been so in love with anything in their lives.
“Who are you?” Royce asked, entranced.
She smiled, and Royce hadn’t thought that she could become any more beautiful than she had been, but now that beauty was so intense it physically hurt.
“You may call me Lethe,” she said. She put a gentle hand on Royce’s sword, and there was surprising strength there. “Come to my home, all of you. I have food and drink, and I so rarely see visitors.”
She led the way and Royce followed her without thinking. So did the others. Gwylim was still growling low in his throat, but that just made their new companion look at him oddly, before saying something in a harsh tongue that seemed at odds with the melody of her voice.
Gwylim ran into the forest, disappearing from sight. A part of Royce wanted to call after him and bring the bhargir back, but more of him was grateful that he was gone. Nothing should growl at Lethe like that.
They kept going through the forest, and it was as if every creature of the forest was Lethe’s friend. Birds flew close to her, small creatures jumped on her for a moment of her attention, and larger ones hung back, posing no threat. She led the way to a large clearing, where there was a house made from the branches of trees, intertwined with vines and flowers.
“Please, be welcome in my home,” Lethe said. She held up a hand. “First though, I should say that I allow none of the things of violence there. You will have to leave your armor and weapons behind.”
“But what if we’re attacked?” Mark asked, and Royce found himself cursing his friend for his stupidity. Of course they wouldn’t be attacked. Lethe would keep them safe.
“This is a place of peace,” Lethe said. “You have nothing to fear here.”
She moved to Mark, and Royce saw his friend give in to the sense of peace that seemed to surround her, setting down even his eating knife. The others did the same, and Royce was already struggling out of his armor, putting it down in the pile with the rest before laying the crystal sword across the top.
“Now you can come into my home,” Lethe said. “We will patch your wounds and feed you. You can tell me about yourselves, and I can learn of the world. Then perhaps later, we can feast.”
“Do you know of any way off the island?” Royce asked. It seemed as though it had been important to him once, although now he was having trouble remembering why.
“I believe some of those who have come here to be mine brought boats,” Lethe said. “But why would you want to leave the island? Why would you want to leave me?”
Royce didn’t know. He had only just met Lethe, but already, she felt like the most important person in the world. He couldn’t imagine spending a single moment apart from her now.
In some dim recess of his mind, he realized that it was wrong to think that way, and that there was no reason why he should be so suddenly, so completely in love with this girl. A part of his mind even insisted that his heart belonged to another, although even that was confusing, because her features kept shifting, first Olivia’s, then Genevieve’s.
Then Lethe’s seemed to overwhelm all of it.
They followed Lethe into the house, into a space where there were beds woven from forest branches, and fruits that were clearly there for the juice within. There were the remains of a fire at the heart of the place, meat and bones above it, slowly charring. There were more bones in the corner, some with meat still on. There were skulls too, and some of them looked suspiciously human.
Royce might have been worried by that, if he weren’t so in love right then.
“Oh, those are some of the ones who came here to be with me,” Lethe said, as if catching the direction of his gaze. “They come to love me, to worship me, to be with me. I’m sorry to say that sometimes they fight over me, and sometimes, if I am not there, they despair so much that they… do foolish things. A few even offer themselves up into death willingly, to prove how much I mean to them.”
It made so much sense when she put it like that. Of course people would fight over Lethe, because wasn’t she the embodiment of perfection? And of course they would see that there was nothing worth living for in the world if she weren’t there. There was no reason for it to be otherwise.
A small part of him kept insisting that it wasn’t right, though. That part kept pushing an image of Genevieve into his mind, and that image felt like a kind of heresy, because there was a tiny part of him that seemed to love her, rather than being consumed with Lethe. It made no sense, but that part of him kept telling him that this wasn’t right.
The bones, he insisted to himself, look at the bones. She’s eating the people who die.
Royce’s eyes were on the beds, though, because every glance at them told him that they were places where he and Lethe might lie together, and be the perfect oneness that seemed like the only way the world could be right.
Then he looked at his so-called friends and knew that they were thinking the same things, or some tawdry version of it. Every single one of them was looking at Lethe with such complete adoration that Royce knew they wanted her for themselves. They wanted her to themselves, and would do anything to make that happen. Already, Royce could see Matilde moving apart from Neave, looking at her with suspicion. Bolis was preening, as if he were the only one there noble enough for Lethe’s attention, while Mark…
Mark was supposed to be his friend, but what kind of friend looked at the woman Royce loved like that? A friend would have stood back and let Royce simply be absorbed in the beauty that Lethe possessed, not stayed there, lusted after her, rivaled him for her. Already, a part of Royce wanted him to kill Mark just for being there.
No, Royce insisted to himself, Mark is my friend, and I love Gen… Olivia.
The lack of clarity wasn’t helping, just seemed to provide more spaces for thoughts of Lethe to slip into, and the more they did, the more he found himself hating his friends, feeling suspicious of them, seeing them for the rivals they were.
“Oh, let’s not fight yet,” Lethe said. “You haven’t told me your stories. Come, sit by the fire and drink. Tell me everything about the world and your lives.”
They sat, and there was a brief scuffle as Bolis and Neave sought to sit closer to Lethe.
“Out of my way, savage,” Bolis snapped.
“If I still had my knives, invader!” Neave shot back.
Lethe spread her hands to calm them. “There is space enough for everyone. Tell me about yourselves, my loves. Tell me who you were before you came to me.”
They told her. Piece by piece, they told all of it, arguing over who got to go first.
“I am Bolis. I was a knight,” Bolis said. “I fought with honor for Earl Undine. Then he came to follow Royce, and we all went with him. I saw he was a leader, and a king… but I am better than him. You should love me, not him!”
“Better?” Neave shouted. “He’s one of the invaders who took Picti lands. I am Neave of the Picti, one of the old people! I know the ways of the land, and I have fought in battles for my people. We came to follow Royce too, but you are more beautiful, and more—”
“She couldn’t even fight well enough to beat me!” Matilde shouted. “I defeated her in the battle by the healing stone. I was part of the resistance to the old duke’s rule, and I followed Royce before any of them.”
“Before any of us?” Mark asked, with obvious incredulity. “I was there on the Red Isle. I learned to fight from its warriors. I was there when we took the crystal sword. You should love me.”
“And you?” Lethe asked, looking at Royce. “You are this ‘Royce,’ yes? You must be very special.”
A part of Royce wanted to ignore that. He latched onto thoughts of Olivia, trying to push aside the need to be better than the others, to prove himself to Lethe. Perhaps it might even have worked if he hadn’t found his attention split, torn between images of her and of Genevieve. That gap was just big enough for the cloying scent of Lethe’s power to fit through, and he felt his heart overwhelmed, knowing above all that if he could only impress her enough, it would be him she chose.
He would even offer himself up as a sacrifice to her, if she would only love him.
“I am Royce,” he said. “I am the son of King Philip, and heir to a kingdom. I have fought in all the battles the others have, and I helped to win most of them. I am the one who holds the crystal sword, and armor that only one of my blood could recover. Choose me, and I will give you a whole kingdom to love you, though none of them will love you the way I can.”
He added the last part hastily, not wanting Lethe to want anyone but him.
“You’re all so sweet,” she said. She handed around wine that tasted as if it had fermented from the forest’s fruits. “It’s hard to know what to say, or who to choose. I am intrigued by the idea of a crystal sword though.”
“I could show you,” Royce said, half standing. Mark pulled him back down.
“I have as much right to do that as you ever had.”
“Easy,” Lethe said. “Why don’t I go alone? Then maybe you can start to think about who would be worthy of me, and which of you… wouldn’t.”
She stood, walking to the door, and it felt like heartbreak to watch her go like that. Royce knew she would be back, but even so, he ached with the thought that she wasn’t there. A part of him knew it was unnatural to feel like this, urged him to look around at the bones and the house, told him that they were all in grave danger.
He ignored that part though, because right then another thought occurred to him: Lethe had left because there were too many people there claiming her love. To get her back, they would have to do something; they would have to prove themselves. To his fevered mind, it seemed that there was only one real solution to the problem:
The ones who loved her least would have to die, and to prove his love, Royce would have to be the one to kill them.