Kingsbane

by Claire Legrand

  “I love you,” she said over and over, and it was true, it would always be true. If Corien disappeared tomorrow, if he lived in her mind for the rest of her days, it would still be true. Even if Audric grew so afraid of her that he turned away from her forever. Even then, she would love him.

  He finished inside her, pulling her down once more along with him, and after the deep roar of her blood had quieted, and his sharp breaths against her neck had slowed, she turned around to face him. Gently, avoiding her eyes, he helped her sit on the table. Then he wrapped her in his arms and buried his face in her damp hair.

  She welcomed him, curling her shaking legs around his. “It’s all right,” she whispered, holding him as he wept. She wiped her cheeks on his sleeve, stared blearily past him at Saint Katell’s stern visage. “It’s going to be all right.”

  42

  Eliana

  “Go fast into the night,

  Go soft into the fight,

  Hold on to your heart,

  And keep your mind bright.”

  —Traditional Mazabatian soldier’s prayer

  Eliana awoke slowly to find herself wrapped in Simon’s arms, his face buried in her hair, his light snores coming soft and steady against her neck.

  For a moment she allowed herself to enjoy the warmth of him, the peaceful silence of the room. She pretended this was all there was—a quiet bed, a night of kisses upon her skin, Simon holding her securely against his chest.

  But soon dawn was painting the black windows gray, and she forced herself to sit up, slipping out from Simon’s heavy embrace. She dressed in silence, bare feet on the cold floor, and felt it the moment he awoke. The room expanded to contain the force of him.

  “Are you all right?” he asked, his voice hoarse with sleep.

  She did not turn to look at him. She couldn’t, or she would return to bed and never leave it.

  “I’m fine.” She buttoned her shirt, rolled the sleeves up to her elbows. “We have much to do today. Time travel, confronting my all-powerful mother. That sort of thing. I’d like to get started.”

  She heard him rise, and it took every ounce of her control not to turn and watch him dress.

  “Do you have a morning-after tonic?” he asked. “I didn’t think… I should have asked last night. I should have made certain. I’m sorry.”

  “Not to worry. I’m perfectly capable of taking care of my own body.” Briskly, she ran her fingers through her tangled hair and tied it back into a braid. “I took a medicine two years ago that will prevent me from having children. A woman who worked in one of the Orline Red Rooms gave it to me. There’s no need for concern.”

  Then she moved toward the door and was about to leave when Simon gently caught her wrist.

  “I won’t be able to concentrate if I think you’re angry with me,” he said.

  She glared at the door. “I’m not angry with you.”

  “You’re clearly not happy with me.”

  “I’m not happy with anything.” And then tears were filling her eyes, and she growled a little and looked up at the ceiling, blinking hard. “I was happy last night. I was so happy I felt reborn. And now it’s time for us to try this mad thing, and I’m furious with myself for letting this happen, because now part of me is hoping it won’t work. Part of me is hoping we’ll fail, because if we do, at least I’ll still have you with me.”

  Simon murmured her name, tenderly, and she turned to look up at him through a glassy film of tears. He bent low to kiss her—her lips, her cheeks, her brow—and she clung to him, and hid her face against his chest when she could no longer bear the touch of his mouth.

  “I don’t love you,” she whispered, the lie bitter on her tongue. “I refuse to love you.”

  “I know,” he said and held her to him, stroking her hair. “I don’t love you either.”

  She smiled a little, her throat aching. She held on to him until the ache became too sharp for her to breathe. Then she pulled away, squaring her shoulders against the sight of him standing there, so near and warm, his hair messy from sleep, and fled downstairs without looking back.

  • • •

  They worked in separate areas of Willow’s gardens, separated by a good mile of rain-heavy trees, muddied paths, swollen streams. Simon insisted upon it, claiming that traveling through time was a sensitive, unpredictable act, and that, while he was relearning all he had once known, he wanted no one near the danger of it.

  Even if he hadn’t requested this, Eliana would have left him to his work. Sitting with him in the gardens, healing the scar on his chest, had helped him recover the feeling of what it meant to weave a solid, stable thread. He was now able to summon them more easily, and so, her part finished for the moment, she wanted to be as far away from him as possible. The sight of him left her undone. She passed him in the hallways of Willow, and his presence pulled at her. She sat across from him at mealtime and felt so desperate to touch him that restraining herself required all her energy.

  After a few hours spent practicing various elemental tasks with her castings—Remy providing irritatingly cheerful encouragement from a nearby bench—Eliana marched around the estate until she found Jessamyn sitting in the grass under a sprawling silver oak, cleaning her knives.

  “I need to fight something,” Eliana announced.

  Jessamyn raised her eyebrows, then gestured at her leg. Her crutch stood propped against the tree. “I’m afraid you won’t find me much of a formidable partner at the moment.”

  “Fine.” Then a thought surfaced, startling her. “Can I heal you?”

  Jessamyn considered her quietly for a moment. “I was wondering if you’d offer that.” She set aside her knives and stretched out her wounded leg with a wince. “Do I need to do anything?”

  “Just sit quietly.”

  “Will it hurt you to do it? Will it require too much of your energy?”

  “No, and no.”

  Jessamyn waved a hand at her. “Slow down for a moment and really look at me. Is this all right? Will Simon be angry that you’ve wasted your strength on me?”

  “It’s not a waste. You’re a good fighter. We’ll need you in excellent shape for the Jubilee. And if Simon gets angry, well…”

  But the mere mention of him left her feeling muddled. She fell silent, glaring at the ground.

  “Would you like to talk about it?” Jessamyn asked mildly.

  “About what?”

  “About Simon.”

  “What about him?”

  “About how you love him.”

  Eliana’s head shot up, heat rushing to her face. “I don’t love him.”

  “Oh, please. I know that look. I’ve had that look.” Then Jessamyn leaned forward, her eyes sparkling. “Tell me, was he good? Please tell me he was good, even if it’s a lie. My heart will break otherwise.”

  The look on Jessamyn’s face was so wicked that Eliana couldn’t help but laugh.

  “Oh, he was good,” she said. “He was good several times over, in fact.”

  Jessamyn placed a hand to her heart. “Oh, thank God. Dare I ask for elaboration?”

  Eliana hesitated. As she thought of how to respond, images from their night together returned to her, and she could no longer find her voice. Heat tingled sharply behind her eyes and nose, and she looked away, mortified.

  “Never mind.” Jessamyn squeezed her hand. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have teased.” Then, after a pause, she added, “You really do love him, don’t you?”

  “No,” Eliana replied, her voice catching. She dashed her hand across her eyes, set her jaw. “I don’t love him.”

  Jessamyn nodded, squeezing her fingers once more. “Well, then. My leg hurts like a right royal bastard. Can you help me?”

  Eliana smiled and blew out a shaky breath. She placed her hands on Jessamyn’s wounded thigh and turned her
thoughts away from Simon, directing them instead toward the castings nestled in her palms. They awakened, humming, and she slipped into a world of gold.

  • • •

  And that was how two days passed—Eliana using her castings to both practice elemental magic and bring comfort to those at Willow suffering from injuries.

  She closed Jessamyn’s wounds and stitched Patrik’s broken bones back together. She soothed an old pain in Dani’s hips, which had long kept her from moving as nimbly as she would have liked, and sat with her eldest son, Evon, whose mind had been battered with far too many traumas. He slept very little, and his muscles were knotted with the tension of perpetually steeling himself against the possibility of some terrible assault. But when Eliana sat with him, stepping into the realm of the empirium to read the scars his body held, he seemed to relax a little, and he began to speak of old hurts she sensed he had never before confessed aloud.

  And though it exhausted her to take on new burdens, she refused to stop. There was something reassuring in the work; healing wounds grounded her in a way that summoning fire and water could not. When she manipulated wind or earth, she felt far removed from herself, as if it were not really her body carrying out these remarkable tasks, but rather the ghost of her mother, working through her from death. But sitting with someone in a quiet room to heal their wounds, or using her power to see more clearly the map of pain they carried inside them, reminded her of her humanity, of her own flesh-and-blood fragility. Such a reminder would once have angered and frightened her, but now it reassured her.

  She was not her mother. She was neither God nor queen, and she was not the once-invincible Dread.

  She was a girl, and she was human.

  So she pushed herself on, until nearly everyone on the estate had been tended to. Their hurts seen and heard, their pain soothed.

  Nearly everyone—except for Harkan.

  She recognized that she had been avoiding him, and that doing so was childish. But what was she to say to him that would be of any comfort? And anyway, it seemed he had been avoiding her as well. Every time she found him, he was huddling with Patrik or Jessamyn or Dani, consulting with them on various strategies—securing a ship for Eliana, creating diversions throughout Festival, deciding what Red Crown soldiers should be posted where and when on the various routes through the city and in the canyons and cliffs surrounding it.

  Two days after her night with Simon, after the evening meal, Eliana decided she could no longer hide from Harkan. He had gone on a long walk through the gardens with Zahra, and Eliana settled on a bench near the wide terrace at the back of the house, waiting for him.

  It was nearly full dark by the time they returned. Eliana watched them approach, her stomach twisting. Zahra met her first, swooping down to brush a cold, airy kiss across her brow.

  Be gentle with him, my queen, the wraith urged, and then she was gone, drifting soundlessly into the house.

  Eliana pressed her hands flat against her thighs. “Hello.”

  Harkan stood at the edge of the terrace, hands shoved in his pockets. “Hello.”

  She scooted over, making room for him on her bench. “Will you sit with me?”

  He hesitated, then obeyed. They sat in rigid silence for a moment before Eliana sighed sharply and took his hand in hers.

  He laughed, smoothing his thumb across her fingers. “I’m not good at this anymore. I’m not good at being your friend, and I’m sorry for it.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t be.” She drew a deep breath. “I feel like I should be the one to apologize.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Because I can’t give you what you want. Because I’ve changed, and because none of this is fair. Because I feel like it’s my fault that we’re all fighting and in terrible danger, even though, logically, I know it’s not.”

  “And because you’ve fallen in love with someone else?”

  She turned to look at him. He had said it without judgment or anger. He sat beside her, leaning against the wall at their backs, looking up at the sky. The lanterns flickering around the terrace threw soft, shivering shapes across his skin—white-gold over golden-brown.

  “I’ll always love you, Harkan,” she said quietly. “And I think you know that.”

  “And I’ll always love you.” He looked over at her, his eyes soft on her face. “I worry for you.”

  She bristled. “Because of Simon?”

  “No, not in that way. Because of what he wants you to do, and because of how hard you’ve been working over the last few days. Driving yourself to exhaustion. Do you think I haven’t noticed?”

  “You’ve been avoiding me.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “And you’ve been avoiding me.”

  For a moment they stared at each other, and then Eliana began to laugh from the sheer absurdity of it—sitting there, so far away from home, with an angelic army en route to destroy them, and Simon practicing time traveling somewhere in the trees, and Patrik sitting inside by the fire, mending Dani’s old gowns for the Jubilee. And the castings on her own hands, alien and beloved, and the power in her veins, and the horrible knowledge of her mother living somewhere in the past, not knowing that soon her grown daughter would appear before her, begging her to have mercy on the world.

  It was all absurd, and yet Eliana could not turn away from it. It was her future, and her past. It was the war she had chosen to fight.

  Harkan’s laughter joined her own, and when they subsided at last, she leaned her head on his shoulder, wiping her eyes. She watched the garden’s shadows deepen. She wondered if years of war had altered the shapes of the trees, the colors of the blooms. She wondered what they all would have been, had they grown up in a world not ruled by the Empire, and what kind of girl she would be if they succeeded in changing the course of history. Raised in a castle, child of a king and a queen, what kind of woman would she become? What friends would she make? What lovers would she invite into her bed?

  “I’m leaving in the morning,” Harkan told her.

  She shook away her spinning thoughts. “To prepare for the army’s arrival?”

  He nodded against her head. “We’re forming a perimeter.”

  “Who will go with you?”

  “Catilla, Viri. Evon, Dani’s son. Gerren too.”

  “Gerren.” Eliana sighed. “He’s too young to be a soldier.”

  “We’re all too young to be soldiers.”

  “Surely there won’t only be five of you.”

  “No. Thirty, on our team alone. And Simon and Dani have arranged for five other teams to wait stationed throughout the city, standing by to provide you cover as needed.”

  Eliana’s eyes grew hot. “So many. More than I expected.”

  “They’re eager to fight for you,” Harkan said quietly. “They heard of what you did in Karlaine. In Astavar too. Sinking the fleet.” He pressed his mouth against her hair. “They’d do anything for you, any one of them. They speak of you with tears in their eyes.”

  “Stop saying these things,” Eliana whispered.

  “El, you’ve given them hope.”

  “Please, stop. I can’t bear to hear about their love for me when I very well might end up killing them.”

  “What shall I talk about, then? How my ass hurts from sitting here for so long? How Darby hums when he takes a shit?”

  She offered him a false, slight laugh. “Tell me where you’ll go, exactly. Your team. You particularly.”

  “The less you know, the better.”

  “Bastard. I knew you would say that.” She swallowed hard. “You said your team leaves in the morning. When?”

  “Dawn.”

  Never had a single word sounded so cruel. “As your Sun Queen, I command you to come back to me safely.” She tried to make a joke of it, but her voice sounded flat and strange.

  “And as y
our friend,” Harkan said, “I beg you to take care of yourself.” He drew in a long, slow breath. “El… Simon wants you to fight a war for him, and for everyone, and you’ve been doing that marvelously, and I’ve no doubt you will continue to. But please don’t push yourself beyond your limits on his account. I know you love him, but I also know he’s rather a zealot, and you tend to jump into the role of martyr whenever you can. It’s a dangerous combination.”

  And then, before she could say anything more, before she could work past the lump in her throat, he gently pulled away from her and stood. Facing the gardens, he straightened his coat.

  “I don’t want to leave you,” he said, his voice strange and closed, “but I really must, or I’ll lose my mind. I’ll say things I shouldn’t. I’ll beg you for things you can’t give. And anyway, Simon is coming, and he looks as though he has something important to tell you.”

  Then Harkan strode into the house, leaving her to stare helplessly after him.

  Zahra, you will go with him, she thought desperately into the night, not even sure if the wraith was close enough to hear her. Keep him safe. Let him know that I love him. I don’t think he believes me.

  And then Simon was there, hurrying across the terrace toward her, looking bright-eyed and wild. She realized with a start that she hadn’t seen him all day.

  His frantic energy pulled her to her feet. He carried with him a cold, acrid smell, like the tang of smoke and the hot buzz of galvanized light.

  “You did it,” she guessed, reading the oddness in his eyes. “You traveled.”

  “I did. Not far.” He sat heavily on the bench, running his hands through his hair. His voice and fingers shook, though with excitement or terror, Eliana didn’t know.

  She caught his hands in her own, brought them to her lips, and then, when he would not stop trembling, she swung her legs over his lap and slid her arms around him. She pressed the warmth of herself against him, tucked her head beneath his.

  “I’m sorry,” he whispered, his arms coming around her. “It’s just that I haven’t traveled in years. I thought it was lost to me. And now, so suddenly, it’s returned, and all at once I must do a thing I never thought I would do again. And if I fail, we’re all lost.”