It was dawn when I woke, judging from the light trailing in through a window. For several moments, I was confused, because the Falling Leaf had small, oblong frames that look out into their central garden, while this had a view of the oracle’s temple, pale smoke still rising out from somewhere underneath its polished dome roof. Lady Mykaela stood before the glass pane, one hand lifted to brush back a curtain. She was staring at something in the distance.
“Do you know of King Randrall the Quiet?” she asked without turning around.
“I think so.” My head felt better, the unwanted pressure gone. I had read about him in one of Lady Mykaela’s books. “He ruled Odalia during the Plantenorth Dynasty but disappeared during his eighty-third naming day celebrations. What happened to him has always been a mystery.”
“He disappeared during his trip to Kion; this is a very important detail because the history books will need rewriting. King Randrall the Quiet briefly rose from the dead. Whoever his assassins were is not certain, but we now know they buried him underneath Falling Leaf, whose gardens and flowers have greatly benefited from his royal compost ever since. Randrall had a very prominent nose, mind, and they were still able to identify the king from the impressive amount of flesh and muscle you brought back along with him.”
I shot out of bed, fear gripping my insides. The colony of rats. The grinning skeleton that had broken through the floor. The inexplicable pain I felt that cut at me like knives. The unexpected release and relief, the sudden weakness that followed—and then remembering nothing after that.
“King Randrall the Quiet proved the lie to his name,” Lady Mykaela continued serenely. “For a corpse, he was quite emphatic. He declared that the then-crown prince was not his son at all but came about as a result of his wife’s liaison with General Bosven, the commander of his army, and if there is one thing constant about the dead, it is that they cannot lie. It would seem that King Telemaine cannot claim to be a descendant after all, though his son still shares the man’s lineage from his mother’s side of the family, centuries of royal intermarriages being what they are.”
“Did I…?”
Lady Mykaela turned to look at me, and I read the answer in her gaze.
“How…how many did I—”
“King Randrall and a little over half of the Ankyon cemetery. You also resurrected some dead rats, a dozen cats and dogs, and disrupted a funeral in progress. There was a small stampede when they realized the guest of honor was clawing his way out of his coffin, but fortunately no one was hurt—much. You have a habit for interrupting burials, don’t you?”
I gulped. “When am I to be executed?”
Surprise bloomed on Mykaela’s face, and she actually laughed. “Executed! Don’t you worry your young head about it, child. No one shall be executing anybody. A term of imprisonment was more likely, but the good thing about being bone witches is that people fear to keep us even in castle dungeons. Prince Kance and I convinced the empress that it was an accident—yes, Prince Kance spoke on your behalf, so you have at least one ally in Odalia. You may be punished by the asha council, however, but they have no desire to expel you from the Willows. I trust this to mean they are still interested in continuing your training. For the present at least. The long-term effects can be far-flung, but it is something we shall have to accept as unavoidable. Even as I speak, Fox is guarding the door outside, ready to defend your honor if necessary.”
“Fox?”
“He brought you here. We discourage people from loitering around the teahouses when they have no business there, but in this instance, I am glad he is quite a stubborn man. He sensed you leaving the Valerian and thought to follow, just in case.”
“I’m sorry.” I couldn’t stop crying. Tears spilled from my eyes, dousing the sheets and blankets in salty rain. I hunched over, hiccupping, and Lady Mykaela left her perch by the window to wrap her arms around me.
“It’s called a seeking stone,” she said softly once the violence of my sobbing had abated. “It finds those with the strongest capacity for magic and amplifies their abilities at the cost of their strength. Draw far more than what you can handle, and there is a danger of burning yourself out, even fatally. It is particularly potent for Dark asha, who by nature draw the strongest spells innately, which explains how it ignored the other asha and drew on you. I found it hidden behind one of the stone pillars outside the room you sat in with Zoya and her friends. All unbound corpses should have fallen the instant you lost consciousness, but the seeking stone kept them sentient and moving, which was how I was able to guess its presence. It is not your fault, Tea. It seems that some people are not satisfied with despising us from afar.”
“But why?” The idea that I could have been killed made me want to throw up again. “What do they want?”
“There are many reasons to despise us bone witches. It may be that they seek revenge against some other bone witch or perhaps one who conspired with a kingdom that cost them their own in ages past. Sometimes it can be no more than listening to the tale of Blade that Soars and Dancing Wind to be inflamed by self-righteousness. More likely, it is a Faceless who entered the Willows undetected and sought to ferment discord. Ankyo would be a good place to start for that, and few people can get their hands on one so rare as a seeking stone. We shall lay low for a while, until people remember to forget again, so if this was their purpose, they have succeeded—for now. You need some time to recuperate from what the stone drained from you, and that means bed rest and no unnecessary work. Mother agrees with me.”
“But whoever attacked me—”
“Shall be dealt with at the first opportunity. Your health is more important than even that.”
“But I feel so helpless.”
“That is usually the rule when you are taken advantage of. You can be the most powerful witch in the land, but you will always have a weakness, and that will always make you believe you have no power when someone exploits it. There is no greater strength than the ability to understand and accept your own flaws.”
“Are we still welcomed in the palace?”
“The empress has always been a staunch ally of ours, and King Telemaine and I are old friends. We’ve known each other for a long time. We met back when he was still a skinny child with a loud, squeaky voice.”
“One of the princesses—Maeve, I think—said something about you.” I didn’t want to upset Mykaela but felt I had an obligation to inform her of anyone who bore a grudge, in light of everything. “She said that you don’t have a heart because—because you’ve given it away, and that King Telemaine only allows you here to honor his brother’s memory.”
For several seconds, Lady Mykaela remained immobile, smooth and alabaster as a statue against the morning light. And then she breathed again and resumed flesh and blood.
“I think you should know,” she said, “the more people you meet in the city, the greater the possibility of you learning of my past, and I would rather you hear it from my own lips, as much as it pains me, than from someone else. I would make myself to be a liar and a hypocrite otherwise, after all my talk about knowing your flaws to learn your strength.”
Mykaela settled herself into a more comfortable position beside me on the bed.
“It happened when I was young—not as young as you and surely old enough to have known better. I tell you often not to give your heart away because my own mentor taught me so, as did her teacher before her. It is a warning passed down from teacher to student and one that I paid little heed to. For I broke the rules and gave mine away. I fell in love, you see.”
My face must have looked funny, for she smiled. “Yes, sometimes it’s that simple. Princess Maeve must have heard about it from her mother. Queen Lynoria rules the kingdom of Arhen-Kosho to the west, and she was my rival for his heart. I’m not surprised her daughter would inherit her hatred of me. It was Telemaine’s older brother, King Vanor.” Her voice changed; it grew softer, a faint tremor in her usually strident tones. Her eyes returned to the window, but they gazed at something farther away.
“It didn’t matter that I was a bone witch and he was the successor to the throne. He wanted to marry me, was willing to give up everything. His father threatened to disown him, which suited him just fine. But I refused. King Telemaine is a just and able ruler now, but he was only sixteen years old then, too young to rule. Vanor was brilliant. He built schools for the poor and spearheaded runeberry farming as one of the kingdom’s chief exports. Odalia only had Murkwick’s runeberry patch to go by, but he learned how to import runeberries the world over, to package them into high-quality wine and spin the fibers into cloth good enough to rival Drycht’s. I could not take him and his achievements away from the people.
“He refused to marry anyone else; that was his only stipulation to remaining on the throne. That did not stop his father from forbidding us to see each other, but it was too late. Vanor gave me his heart, and I gave him mine, like we were bound by marriage, and you know that you cannot give your heartsglass away unless you give your consent. But a bone witch needed her heart for her magic, or she would be much diminished. It didn’t matter to me at that time. I had his heart, and that was the only thing I wanted.”
Mykaela sighed, and the rising sun cast small shadows across her ageless face. “I do not know what made him change. Perhaps he was beginning to realize that I was a millstone around his neck, that his relationship with me forever colored how other people judged him and made his state affairs all the more difficult. He began to pull away. It was the little things at first. He would put off days we’d planned on spending together, citing meetings and other unavoidable duties. I knew I was insignificant in comparison to his other royal responsibilities and went along with his requests, until the day came when he stopped visiting altogether and refused to see me when I came. The heart that he had entrusted to my keeping began to fade over time. I watched it shrink, little by little, eaten up by the neglect and the worry and my tears, until one morning when there was nothing left.
“But my heart remained with him. Isn’t it funny, these little ironies? He could take back his heart because he grew indifferent, but I could not take back mine because I loved him no matter what he did. He never used it to harm me; more likely, he tucked it away someplace he wouldn’t need to see and forgot about it in time. Even today, I can still feel it grieving.
“And then he died. It was one of those little insurgencies that crop up from time to time in Odalia. Vanor’s grandfather was too free with titles, and as a consequence, there were too many nobles and too much greed for more land and property to go around than there actually was. He was ambushed on his way to meet with Emperor Undol of Daanoris, to conclude a peace treaty. I never found my heart.
“The sadness can eat you up sometimes, remembering what could have been, what you should have done. Perhaps my presence would have averted the tragedy, and he would still be alive. Or perhaps my being there would have made no difference, because he had my heart and with it most of my magic. We can endure any amount of sadness for the people we love.
“I have told you many things, Tea, and this is the most important of them all. Never give your heartsglass away to anyone. Anyone else versed in magic can do you harm with it. People will never be what you make of them, but at least your own heart stays yours and true.”
And Mykaela squeezed my hand; her own was warm, with only a touch of the early frost.