“Your Majesty,” he said, dropping to a knee as best he could in full plate.
Erida nodded. “Captain,” she said. “I assume my husband is in the ruins?”
“He is, Your Majesty,” the captain answered hurriedly. “His Highness requested we wait here,” he added, almost apologetic. His teeth worried at his lip.
She fixed on her brilliant smile, tugging the corners of her mouth toward her ears. “You were good to obey the prince consort,” she said with courtly grace.
The captain heaved a sigh, relieved, as Erida turned to her companions. They hung back on their horses or at the door of the coach, peering out at the landscape with fascination.
“Ladies, there’s no need for all of us to ruin our skirts,” the Queen called to them. “You may wait here with the captain. I’m sure his men will take good care of you all.”
Judging by the captain’s flush and the sly glances passed around her ladies-in-waiting, no one would object.
That left only the Lionguard to accompany her, the six knights in their golden armor, their green cloaks like spring among the dark thorns. More than a few snagged on the climb up the hill.
Again, Erida felt Prevail in her hand, the marriage sword planted between herself and her husband, their defense against the world. And each other.
A vaulted arch remained where the doors to Vergon’s great hall used to be, half choked by an ash tree. Its leaves were tinged yellow, another herald of autumn. She paused, laying a hand against rough bark.
“I’ll call for you if needed,” she said, glancing at her escort.
The knights stared back, stern beneath their helms. They wanted to refuse, she knew. Before the changing of her world, she would have heeded their judgment. But the Lionguard could do little if Taristan and the wizard turned on her. Her husband could not be harmed by weapons of the Ward. His accomplice was Spindletouched, crawling with magic. It made no difference if her knights followed at close range or waited for her screams, to come charging to glory and death.
Sir Emrid made a noise low in his throat when she turned her back, stepping through the archway. He was only a year older than the Queen, the newest recruit to the Lionguard, and the least disciplined. She kindly ignored his attempt to check the Queen of Galland, leaving her knights behind.
The roof of the great hall was gone, broken all over the ruins in ragged piles of stone and mortar. Moss lay across everything in a velvet blanket, the stone blocks like lumps beneath. It was springy under her feet, soft to walk on. Her boots left light indentations. So had his.
She followed the footprints.
Erida felt the all too familiar sensation of being watched. She wondered if the ghosts of the people who used to live here still clung to the stones. Were they following her now, whispering about the Queen of Galland as the rest of the world did?
She imagined what they might say. Married to a nobody. Four years a queen with nothing to show for it. No conquest, no victory.
Just wait, Erida told them. There is steel in me yet.
She found Taristan and the wizard in the old chapel, in front of the single intact window, its glass blue and red and golden. The goddess Adalen wept sapphire tears over the body of her mortal lover, his chest torn open by hounds of Infyrna, a realm of fire and judgment. Their forms retreated in the back of the glass, burning and unholy. Erida knew the scriptures. Adalen’s mortal gave his life to save the goddess from the fiery hounds. Strange, the scriptures never gave him a name.
Red Ronin knelt near the window but did not pray to it. Instead he put his back to the goddess while he whispered, eyes shut, his voice too low to hear. In the shadows of the chapel wall, Taristan prowled, a tiger with naked claws. His courtly attire was abandoned, traded for rough leathers and the same weatherworn cloak he’d first arrived in. He looked as far from queen’s consort as a man could be. The Spindleblade flashed in his hand, drawn from its sheath. The steel was clean, a mirror to the blue-and-white sky.
His eyes met Erida’s like lightning finding the earth.
She stopped walking, holding her ground. The air crackled between them, the work of a Spindle. Torn or close enough to feel. Burning or willing to burn. She sucked in a breath of air, wanting to taste it.
“Is it done?” she said, her eyes darting.
But the chapel looked unremarkable. Old stone, broken rocks, moss and roots. The trees weren’t old enough to form a new roof. She saw nothing out of place, nothing to hint at a Spindle torn, a realm opened, another gift given, be it an army or a monster.
“Not yet,” Taristan answered, his voice as deep as she remembered. She could still feel his fingers in her hair, still see his blood on her bed.
Erida glanced to Ronin, then back to the broken castle around them.
She took another breath. She couldn’t taste a Spindle, but she tasted truth. “An earthquake destroyed this place two decades ago. People said it was the will of the gods, or a simple act of nature. But that isn’t true, is it?” Sunshine filled the window, making Adalen glow. “There is a Spindle here, closed but waiting. It broke the castle, not anything else.”
The wizard’s eyes snapped open, his prayers cut off. “Your histories said as much, for anyone with the mind to see it,” he hissed. “Even the echoes have power.”
His red-rimmed glare ran over Erida’s skin from her wrists to her neck. It was like a glowing poker, close enough to throw off cloying heat, but not enough to burn. She raised her chin. The wizard would not best her with tricks.
It was Taristan who stepped between them, breaking Ronin’s raw-eyed stare.
“I thought you’d like to watch,” he said, silhouetted against Adalen’s tears.
Overhead, a cloud passed over the sun, plunging them all into shadow. The wind found them in the corpse of the castle, pulling at her traveling clothes with invisible fingers. It stirred the hair falling from the braided crown around her head, blowing a curtain of ash brown across her vision.
She held Taristan’s gaze.
“Indeed I would.”
He turned on his heel, stalking to the stained-glass window, his empty hand raised in a gloved fist. Without so much as a grunt, he punched clean through the goddess’s face, shattering blue and white onto the mossy ground. A few shards punctured his knuckles and he picked them out with a wince.
He still feels pain.
Erida looked on, filled with fascination.
“When you first came to me, I wondered if this was all a trick,” she murmured. A few drops of blood welled up in Taristan’s cuts, falling to the grass before the skin knit together again.
He tested his fist. Not even the glimmer of a scar remained. “Does this look like a trick to you?” he rumbled, glowering.
The ground muffled her footsteps as she moved, skirts wheeling around her legs. “A con man and his pet wizard,” Erida said, turning his fist over in her grasp. The blood was still there, but nothing else. “Using petty magic to ensnare a queen.”
“Petty magic,” Ronin spat, his scarlet robes like a gown around him. He rose smoothly to his feet, his face flushed like his clothing. “You know not of what you speak.”
Erida glared, her gaze like a volley of arrows. Very few upon the Ward would dare speak to her with such a tone. “Then enlighten me, Wizard.”
It was Taristan who answered, raising the sword in his other hand, the hilt clutched in his fist. It reflected his face, the scratches below his eye turned to pearly white scars. “I took this sword from the vaults of Iona, winding deep beneath an Elder fortress. They called me a thief for retrieving what was mine, wielded by my ancestors, even when my own brother carried its twin.”
He ran a finger down the strange steel, etched with runes in a language Erida could not read. She tried to picture the Elder enclave, hidden from the world, surrounded by mist. And ruin crawling within, a Corblood mortal with a deathless grudge and iron will.
“That day was long in coming. It was Ronin who found me, told me what I was. The
red wizard pulled a mercenary from the mud of a Treckish war camp and made him a conqueror,” Taristan continued, his voice low but strong, reverberating in Erida’s chest. He passed the sword through the air errantly, without thought. “I knew in my bones I was not the same, not a man like the ones beside me, content to fight and fuck and farm, drinking their money and pissing their lives into nothing. I wanted the horizon more than I wanted any cup or coin or concubine.”
Ronin raised his chin, looking on Taristan as he would a beloved son. He passed by him, brushing a white hand over his shoulder. “Such is the way of Old Cor. Of all your like,” the wizard said, moving on. “It’s the Spindle in your blood.”
“You are children of crossing,” Erida offered, remembering her lessons as best she could. As the heir to Galland, she had been taught the tales of Old Cor as much as any other part of her birthright. Her father used to tell them at night, like any other bedtime story. Children of crossing, children of conquest. Destined to rule every corner of the Ward, but they fell. They failed. We are their successors.
And I will prove it, the Queen believed.
Taristan turned, silhouetted against the broken window. He stared into the ruins of Castle Vergon, but Erida knew he looked farther. Backward. Into his own past.
“The Elders took my brother, older by minutes, chose him for nothing but a few seconds of life. He would be their champion, their emperor, their dog, their sword to cut a path back home.” The words ripped from him, and color rose in his pale cheeks. The son of Old Cor cut a vicious line in the moss, splitting the green like flesh. Though he stood tall and whole, a prince of Galland, a prince of Old Cor, immune to harm, unbothered by pain, Erida could not help but feel pity for him. No, not for Taristan today. But for the boy who grew up alone, abandoned, with nothing but the road beneath his feet. “They left me screaming in the wilderness. And I became someone else’s sword, someone else’s beast.”
Her heartbeat sputtered. Mine, she thought too quickly.
Taristan met her eyes again but said no more, a muscle working in his jaw. Some part of him hesitated, holding back. Her gaze trailed down his neck. White veins stood out at his collar, visible beneath the ties. They had grown since last she’d seen him, like the roots of a tree.
Ronin moved, passing between the royal pair. He leered at Erida, showing small teeth.
She swallowed back a burst of revulsion. Get away from me, you rat, she thought.
“You serve your gods, your silent judges in their stained-glass prisons, dead but for their priests speaking for bones long turned to dust,” the wizard said. “If they were ever bones at all.”
Her body ran hot, a sweat breaking along her neck like fever, like sickness. The Queen chewed his words, turning them over and over.
“And who do you serve, Taristan?” she asked, her voice shaking.
Her husband lowered his black eyes.
“You know Him as What Waits.”
Her first instinct was to laugh, but to laugh at Taristan of Old Cor felt like signing her own death warrant. Her second instinct was to call her knights. Sacrifice as many Lionguard as she could to get away from the madman she had foolishly chained herself to.
The third instinct settled deeper than the others, stronger, darker.
I know What Waits as a ghost story, a villain in the fables, the shadow under the bed or the creak behind the door. He varies from tale to tale. The Red Darkness, the Torn King of Asunder. He is each and nothing. He is not real.
He is not real.
But staring into Taristan’s eyes, she could not say that aloud. Again she saw the odd sheen, the scarlet moving in the black, barely a flash or a reflection. She glanced down, then behind. There was nothing red before him, only green and gray and blue. How can this be?
What have I done?
What more will I do?
Again, she expected regret, remorse. It did not come. My ambition is stronger than any shame.
“What Waits,” she heard herself say, shaping the words. Her ladies would giggle to hear her voice tremble. Lord Konegin would gloat. And their opinions mean nothing. “So you are a priest, wizard. After a fashion.”
Ronin smiled a hateful grin. “To the only god this realm will ever know.”
“What of you, Erida?” Taristan asked, drawing close again, until there were only inches between them. Air and steel, hot breath and Spindleblade. “Will you serve Him as we do?”
Do I have a choice? Somehow, looking up into the eyes of Old Cor, she knew she did. Taristan stared down at her, unmoving. His black eyes, usually so unreadable, filled with a dark and wretched hope.
Her fingers brushed the scars on his face, her touch fleeting and featherlight. His white skin felt hot as flame. “There are breakers of castles, breakers of chains, breakers of kings and kingdoms,” she said, her voice iron.
“Which am I?”
Power surged through her veins, delicious and seductive. She wanted more; she needed more. “You are a realm breaker, Taristan. You would crack this world apart and build an empire from its ruins.”
Flames burned at her wrist as his rough hand grazed hers.
Erida stood without her throne, without a crown, without any of the trappings of the ruler she was born to be. And, somehow, she’d never felt more like a king.
“So would I.”
His smile reminded her of a wolf, a lion, a dragon. Every predator upon the Ward, made in one face, with all their ferocious beauty and danger. She felt the wind on her teeth, her grin matching his own.
Leather and iron were nudged into her grasp before Erida knew it, and her fingers tightened around the hilt of the Spindleblade. The sword pointed outward, its tip inches from Taristan’s own heart. He leaned for a second, pressing his leather-clad chest into the sharp edge. One inch further and he would bleed.
Erida smiled wider, enjoying the feel of a sword.
With deliberate motions, never breaking her gaze, Taristan laid a palm to the keen blade.
“Let me bleed for you,” he murmured.
The Queen needed no more coaxing, and she drew against his skin, cutting a gash down his palm. The blade ran darkly red, his blood like syrup, coating the sword.
“Here,” Ronin said, staring into Adalen’s shattered face. The sun glowed through, its rays swirling with dust so thick they seemed solid enough to touch. The wizard did just that, reaching out a white hand to run it through the sunbeams, his fingers trembling as he did.
Taristan reclaimed the sword without a word, both hands wrapped around the hilt. He stalked to Adalen’s window and raised it high, like a woodsman before a tree.
The Spindleblade cut through open air, the sun flashing against it for a second as it crossed through the rays.
And then the light itself splintered, shattering like the stained glass, into shards of yellow and white. A crackling filled the air, the sound of a red-hot iron plunging into water, or the soft tear of silk, or the ripping of parchment—Erida could not say. It was nothing she knew, nothing she’d heard before. The sound echoed in the air, in her bones, rattling up her spine until she felt she might choke on it. The air on her face seemed to prickle, tingling her cheeks like the first breath of frost. Her mouth dropped open, gasping, and she tasted iron and blood both.
She had imagined a Spindle all her life, like most children. The stories varied; the histories were vague. It had been a thousand years: only Elders remembered, and they had not been forthcoming these last centuries. Even now, she pictured a great column like a lightning bolt, veined purple, frozen in its brilliance, with an archway to the next realm. An open doorway. A pillar. Something gigantic and beautiful enough to hold such rare power.
She was wrong.
The thread hung in the air, seven feet high, slim as a needle, and easy to miss at the wrong angle. It glimmered, gold then silver, wavering as sunlight on the surface of gentle water.
Taristan stared, transfixed, the thread reflected in his coal-black eyes, splitting their darkn
ess. He didn’t bother to clean his sword, sheathing it back at his hip before running a hand as close to the Spindle as he dared. It bowed, arcing toward his skin, coming within an inch.
The Queen clenched her jaw and took a small step backward. Anything might come through, and it would not be loyal to her. She swallowed hard, trying not to show fear.
Her husband felt her discomfort anyway. He looked away from the Spindle, finding her face. She felt herself pale.
“Have I frightened you?” he said, his voice too soft. “You are not foolish, and only a fool would be unafraid.”
Erida wanted the lie. Admitting weakness was not a luxury queens enjoyed.
“I’m terrified,” she forced out.
The Spindle gleamed at her, beckoning. Her insides twisted in reply, every nerve singing a warning. The gold and silver flashed. Within them, there was another color. At first she thought it to be black, but on closer inspection it proved to be darkest, most lethal red. She felt it like breath on skin, gentle and foreboding. A promise. It was watching.
What Waits.
She raised her chin. “And I intend to use that terror to my advantage.”
“Good.” Pride laced through Taristan’s face, and he dropped his hand. “Fear should never be ignored, only controlled. I learned that lesson long ago. It’s good I don’t have to teach it to you.”
“Where does this doorway lead?” she asked, taking another step. This time forward again, her feet moving of their own accord even as her mind flew through all the reasons to stay far away. The Spindle set the hairs on her neck on end. “What comes? Another army?”
She stared at it, closer now, expecting to see a sliver of what lay beyond. But she saw nothing, not even the red presence. The Spindle hissed, a snake warning away enemies.
“The blessings of What Waits,” Ronin murmured.
He shifted so he stood alongside Taristan. The man of Old Cor dwarfed him, but Ronin did not seem small despite his slight frame. The Spindle filled him with something, a power Erida could not name. He nudged Taristan.
“Take what is offered,” the wizard said, urging him on.
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