A GARDEN; BUT this time, Sarcean was waiting.
His long hair was loose down his back. The simple black silks he wore were an affectation, declaring the sheer power of his magic. Even Anharion wore armour.
He trailed his fingertips over the petals of white blossom that hung heavy from the orange tree, walking along the path where sprays of flowers winked beneath arches, a pond nearby with its glimpses of colourful fish.
Consciously, Sarcean affected the manners of one unawares in a private moment. A young man who just happened to be strolling the palace gardens.
And then she entered.
She was younger than he had expected his prospective queen to be. Her colouring was similar to Anharion’s, her hair the same length, loosely plaited. She was from the kingdom of flowers, and she was beautiful, likely because the Sun King would have his queen no other way. He thought, an ornamental bloom chosen for the sweetness of its scent.
‘My lady,’ he said, pretending startlement. ‘Forgive me, I thought the gardens would be empty.’ This was a lie, for he had been waiting for her, choosing carefully a time when the Sun King would be absent.
‘No, it is I who have disturbed you,’ she replied quickly. ‘I was told not to wander the palace alone.’
‘Oh? Why not?’
‘They’re afraid I’ll meet one of the army commanders,’ she said, ‘the one they call the Dark General.’
Sarcean reacted, suppressed the reaction, and considered her anew, a sequence that he was too sophisticated to show on his face. The Sun King’s intended was not the formidable sorceress that he had imagined. She was a young lady, stepping unawares into a darkly tangled web.
‘Sarcean?’ he said, tasting his own name on his lips. ‘What did they say about him?’
He knew most of it, of course. They called him the king’s blade in the shadows, though none knew the deeds that he was tasked to perform, or guessed that while many of the king’s victories were celebrated in the sun, they were won in the dark.
‘That he’s dangerous,’ she said. ‘A seducer, an assassin. They call him the King’s Shadow; they say his gifts are unnatural. They say he’s a Darkbinder, that I should avoid him.’ She let out a breath. ‘There was more. I’m not sure I believe it.’
‘Why not? It’s all true.’ It amused him. He already knew his gifts made people afraid of him.
‘Simple stories are rarely true,’ she said. ‘And if I am to be queen, shouldn’t I know my subjects as they are, rather than as they are rumoured to be?’
Sarcean felt a little blink of surprise.
‘You seem to have a good heart,’ said Sarcean. ‘I hope the Dark General doesn’t eat you alive.’
She turned to him with sunlight in her hair; and the light wasn’t coming from the sun, it was coming from her, seeming to brighten all that it touched. Even him, infusing his skin with warmth. She said, ‘But I am a Lightbringer.’
And Sarcean, watching in shock, had never felt anything like this sweet exhilaration—
‘And what is your name?’ she said.
‘Will,’ said a voice.
A hand on his shoulder, shaking him. Will opened his eyes. He expected to see the light all around him. Instead, it was dark.
‘Will,’ said James, and Will came fully awake.
‘What is it? Are the others back?’
‘Not yet,’ said James.
Will pushed himself up, disoriented. He wasn’t in a garden. He was on the long seat in their room, having fallen asleep avoiding the bed. Fear squirmed in him again that he might have said something while he was sleeping.
‘You were right. This place is—’
‘I feel it too,’ said James.
James was dressed for dinner, but it was late. He’d been with Sloane. Play-acting. He had that lacquer on him, hard and shiny. But the way he looked at Will was real.
Will’s heart was pounding. He had seen Sarcean’s first meeting with the Lady. He was sure of it. They loved each other, Will thought. That was the story. He loved her. She loved him. Then she killed him.
He’d felt it, the exhilaration of her presence, his yearning for the light. He told himself these were Sarcean’s feelings, not his own.
And he told himself that what he had seen had been … before. Before the deaths, before the war. She hadn’t looked the way she had when he’d seen her in the mirror, staring back at him with the cold eyes of a killer. With the cold eyes of his mother.
‘Can I ask you a question?’ said James.
Confidences were dangerous. He knew that. If James had caught him at any other moment … but the rawness he’d woken up with linked him to James with strange intimacy. In the dim light, he nodded, once.
‘Why don’t you use your power?’
How could he breathe when the space was suddenly airless? He made himself speak as casually as he was able.
‘I can’t,’ said Will. ‘I’ve never been able to.’
‘Why not?’
Hours spent with the Elder Steward, trying to make a candle flicker. A door inside him that wouldn’t open.
You’re unnatural. You’re not my son. I shouldn’t have raised you. I should have killed you.
‘I don’t know,’ said Will. ‘Maybe I don’t have any.’
He had used the brand to possess Howell. He had commanded the Shadow Kings. He had touched the Corrupted Blade. But he knew these were Sarcean’s tools. Using them took no talent beyond his identity. Sinclair could use the brand to possess people. Even Simon had been able to command the Shadow Kings, to lift the Corrupted Blade.
Will’s own power, locked away inside him, he had never been able to access. He could guess why.
An easy posture, even when his heart was pounding. He was good at lying.
He had to be. He was the lie, even when he told the truth.
‘You do,’ said James. ‘I can feel it.’
James was closer on the seat than he expected, his voice lower in response to proximity.
‘You can?’
Every alarm in Will was sounding. Too close. No one can see. No one can know. James’s invisible touch was soft against his cheek. The same touch had dragged him to his knees and unlaced his shirt. Now it slid over his skin and came to rest tenderly on his neck. He’d seen James choke Howell, and he knew every violent specific of how Howell had felt, the collapsing windpipe, the blurring vision. It was the gentleness of this caress that was causing him spiralling panic.
‘You can feel mine, can’t you?’ James’s voice in his ear, soft as the touch.
‘You know I can.’ He felt it when James walked into a room, felt it even when James was depleted, a guttering flame, and Will wanted to curl around him, and nurse that flame into blazing fire.
‘What does it feel like?’ said James.
‘Like the sun. Or something brighter.’
The truth, even as he was breathing shallowly. James had always had his complete, helpless attention.
‘It’s the same for me. You’re powerful … more powerful than anything I’ve felt. I can’t look away.’ James said, ‘I could close my eyes and know you.’
You do know me, he couldn’t say. You were mine in a past we can’t remember. Feeling it was dangerous.
‘If I have power, I can’t use it,’ Will said.
‘Maybe you’ve used it without knowing,’ said James. ‘They say that on the ship, you called the Corrupted Blade.’
Not with magic. He couldn’t tell James that the Corrupted Blade had jumped to his hand because blood called to blood.
‘You want to use it, don’t you?’
Months of running from Simon’s men, running from a past he didn’t remember, then finding the Stewards only to learn that he was powerless, that he couldn’t stop the dark machinery of that past from bearing down on him.
His own early plays against Simon felt like another life. He had been naive then, believing that he could outmanoeuvre the Dark King, before he knew that the Dark King was more powerful and more subtle, his plans seeded patiently, and metastasising in the dark, in ways that could not be fought.
The word came out, an involuntary truth.
‘Yes.’
He should have lied. But the need was too strong: if he had been able to use his power, he could have saved the Stewards. He could have saved Katherine. He could have saved his mother.
James’s eyes were dark and earnest as the invisible touch dropped away in favour of the offer of flesh and blood: James had risen from the seat and extended his hand.
‘Then let me help you.’