“I am Duchess Branwen, the Royal Healer,” she said to the guards, words lodging in her throat, as she stopped in front of them. “I am here to see the prisoner.”
The guard closest to the door exchanged a glance with Otho’s wife.
“Welcome, Duchess,” said a man only slightly older than Branwen. He turned a large iron key.
Branwen crossed the threshold into the tower first, timid. Petra was close behind her, tutting. The other woman directed Branwen up a flight of winding stairs. Pressure mounted beneath her skin.
Petra knocked on the first door on the second landing, bumping Branwen’s shoulder. Otho’s wife didn’t wait for a response before pushing into the room.
Kensa turned her head toward the intruders. She sat on a stool before a looking glass, a girl of fifteen summers in the midst of braiding Kensa’s caramel locks, which hung like a curtain about her shoulders, nearly reaching her waist. Even stripped of her rank, Kensa was allowed by King Marc to have the trappings of a countess.
She afforded Branwen a languorous smile. “I had been expecting Captain Manduca,” she said.
Petra spoke crisply to the girl, whom Branwen recognized immediately as the woman’s daughter. The girl scurried toward her mother.
Kensa stood. The half-woven plaits came apart, falling haphazardly on either side of her face. Branwen had not once seen Kensa with bare skin, free of rouge or tints. She looked younger and sadder, and more beautiful. Her smile deepened, the slope of her mouth the same as Ruan’s. Branwen swallowed hard.
Looking between Kensa and Branwen, Petra said, “We go.” She pressed a hand to her daughter’s elbow and marched her from the room.
“Greetings, Kensa,” said Branwen, hoping her voice wouldn’t crack.
“I am no longer a countess. Although it would seem you are a duchess.” Her smile wilted to a grimace. Baron Dynyon must be the source of her information.
“I would like to visit Endelyn’s grave,” Kensa stated. “It lies just beyond the perimeter wall.”
“As does Conchobar’s.”
Kensa’s blue eyes flashed. “Ruan trusted you too much. He wanted me to like you—he said we were cut from the same cloth.”
“He told me the same.”
Drizzle began to mull against the window. “And here you are,” said Kensa. “So it would seem he was right.”
“You’ve killed for your ambition.”
“I’ve done what was necessary to survive in a world of cruel men.”
“Marc is not cruel.”
“Ah, and therein lies his weakness. There will always be someone more ruthless who wants to wear the crown more.” Kensa took a step toward Branwen. “You are ruthless enough, Duchess.”
Branwen didn’t reply, because the other woman was not wrong, and that was precisely why she had come.
“Grant me permission to walk outside the wall?” said Kensa, voice cloying. “I would like to feel the rain on my face one last time.”
She spread her hands. “I have no weapons. I have nowhere to run.”
“After you,” said Branwen. She should not delay, and yet she found herself telling the guards that she and the prisoner were taking the air. They didn’t dare question a duchess, although their gazes were wary. Petra and her daughter had vanished.
Kensa shut her eyes as the light rain dappled her lids. She took Branwen’s arm. They strolled through a small gate in the perimeter wall as if they were friends. Branwen’s skin crawled.
Kensa came to a halt when they neared the edge of the cliff. Hedges of thorns trailed down to the sea, clinging to variegated rock.
A mound of earth, recently packed, had been planted with blush roses. Raindrops sprinkled the blooms like tears. The petals were beginning to brown as autumn spread across Kernyv.
Kensa released her hold on Branwen and sank to her knees before the burial mound. “You seem anxious, Duchess,” she said, glancing over her shoulder. Again her tone was saccharine. The wind harangued Kensa’s dark blond tresses.
“We are just two women.” She spread her lips into a viper’s smile. “What is there to fear?”
“I asked the Old Ones what was the greatest threat to peace,” Branwen replied. “They told me it was you.”
“I’m flattered.” The other woman snorted. She closed her fist around a dead rose and tore it from the bush. “Conchobar told me of the Old Ones. He said the rain was the tears of Goddess Ériu.” Kensa canted her head at Branwen.
“Does she still give you succor?”
Branwen shifted her weight. Her heart hammered. She had forsaken Ériu’s succor when she’d bargained with Dhusnos.
Kensa heard an answer in Branwen’s silence.
“No, I don’t think Conchobar’s goddess comforted him at the end, either, when Edern forced Conchobar’s friends to tear him limb from limb.”
She plunged her nails into the dirt. “I could not protect my children. I could not protect myself.” A sigh racked Kensa’s frame. “Gods—if they do exist—do not care about us. We must help ourselves. Especially us women.”
“Do you think Seer Casek would have let you hold on to power?” said Branwen in disbelief. “He thought very little of us.”
“Seer Casek was a means to an end. The Cult of the Horned One will dominate all of Albion soon enough—if Ruan had been the king to bring it about, so be it. I cannot save all women. I tried to save myself. My daughter.”
Kensa brushed her hand from Endelyn’s grave to the flattened earth beside it.
“I met Conchobar when I was seventeen. When I still believed love could change the world.” She lifted her eyes to Branwen. “I was a fool, but for a short time I was free.” She clumped a bit of earth in her fist, and kissed it.
“Do it here,” Kensa told Branwen. “I looked at you today and saw my death. Maybe I’ve always known.”
Branwen’s eyes stung, and not from the wind. The sea roared. It sounded like the hungry beaks that covered the Shades’ hideous bodies.
“You could have chosen a different path,” said Branwen.
“No. I couldn’t. I wouldn’t. I’ve been the prisoner of one man or another my entire life. Why should I be content to live out my days under lock and key?” Kensa raked Branwen with her eyes. “Don’t fool yourself that your ambition is any less great than mine, Duchess. We merely desire different things—and I am an obstacle to what you want.”
“Yes,” she choked out.
“Then don’t disrespect me by indulging your guilt. You are making this choice. Guilt changes nothing.”
Branwen sank to the earth beside her. “Is there anything you want me to tell Andred?”
Kensa sighed. “He is my greatest regret. I wish I could have loved him.” She stared Branwen in the eye, resolved. “You might think it’s because of his clubfoot, but you would be wrong. When I look at Andred, I see the violence of his conception. I see the years Edern terrorized me to produce a rightful heir.”
“I am sorry for you,” said Branwen, guttural. Her sympathy was a dagger in her own heart.
“Perhaps you are.” Kensa lifted her chin. “How will I die?”
Branwen slipped the leather glove from her right hand.
“Quickly,” she said.
“I do not believe in the Otherworld. For me, this is the end.”
How Branwen wished it were true. She gulped down the last breath she would take as this version of herself.
“Take my hand,” she entreated Kensa.
The other woman closed her eyes as she extended her hand, regal and composed in the face of death. Branwen watched her for a suspended moment, the rain dripping onto the bow of Kensa’s mouth.
The instant Branwen clasped her hand, Kensa convulsed.
Euphoria streamed through Branwen. She gripped the other woman’s hand tighter. A hysterical noise escaped from her lips, a shriek or a peal of laughter she couldn’t tell. Branwen floated far, far away from herself.
She saw a younger Kensa embrace a fair-h
aired man. Joy bled through her.
She watched Endelyn’s birth, and fear pricked her, combined with the ferocious need to protect.
Time grew sticky around Branwen. Ruan beat Edern bloody, and she experienced both relief and pride. All of Kensa’s anger, all of her affection emptied from her heart, feeding Branwen, making her strong. Vitality—she knew its flavor, mineral and constantly shifting like the tide.
The force of absorbing Kensa’s life—her unbecoming—laid Branwen on the ground beside the woman she had killed. Her own limbs twitched.
Rolling onto her side, a scream died in her throat. A desiccated corpse with blond hair stared up at the sinister sky.
Lips quivering, Branwen relinquished Kensa’s hand, the other woman’s fingers covered with rot.
Thunder rumbled across the cape. White bolts pierced the clouds. The sea rushed in, scaling the cliff in an impossible manner. Branwen’s mind filled with the whispers of the surf, the hungry surf, until she could scarcely hear the chattering of her own teeth.
Branwen cradled Kensa’s corpse in her arms, like Matrona with Carnonos, and lifted her body with stolen strength. She tiptoed toward the edge. The obsidian tidal wave reached out, tickling Branwen’s forearms as it accepted her offering.
A vortex opened, a gobbling beak, Kensa’s body falling into its center. The Sea of the Dead consumed her, and Branwen felt its yearning.
She stepped back from the edge of the cliff, fighting the temptation to swan dive after the other woman.
Branwen of Iveriu. The Dark One’s voice slid over her like the caress of a lover. You fulfilled our bargain, as I knew you would, said the god. You understand the power of death. It gives you the life you want.
No, said Branwen, but her protest sounded feeble.
You served me a most delicious Shade. You tasted her for yourself. Thank you.
Our deal is done. You will not claim the soul of anyone I love.
Dhusnos laughed. Your heart is darker than the abyss. Do not fight me. You will want my aid again. Soon.
I won’t. Restore my healing magic. The Hand of Bríga.
That is not within my power to grant. Lightning streaked the sky, and Branwen felt the rain on her face like a wet tongue.
Then leave me be, she told him.
I have always been inside you, Branwen of Iveriu, the Dark One chided her. I helped you when the Land could not, and yet you would repudiate me? Cast me out like Ériu did? The Sea of the Dead roared, freezing the blood in her veins.
Branwen’s right hand began to smolder. Her scream rent the air. The black mark drained of color. Tears of agony rushed down her cheeks.
You will crave life as I do, but you will be unable to take it unless you join my House, pronounced Dhusnos, as if it were a curse. You will no longer be able to summon fire against my Shades.
Through her blurred vision, Branwen saw the mark become a hateful red welt, a brand. Slayer. She would never be able to forget what she had done.
But I will restore the Fire of Inspiration to you, the Dark One taunted her. You will see death and destruction on the horizon, yet you will be powerless to prevent it.
Tristan glimmered behind Branwen’s eyes as if she were scrying. He lay on a battlefield, bleeding heavily. His flesh began to decay.
Farewell, Branwen of Iveriu.
The Dark One’s laughter was earsplitting as the unnatural wave evaporated, drenching Branwen with the salt of the sea.
Dhusnos could not frighten her with visions of the past. She already knew the outcome of Tristan’s duel with Uncle Morholt. She’d witnessed the destiny snake’s venom burning its way through his veins—and she had saved him.
Her thighs quaked and Branwen fell backward onto the rosebushes. Thorns bit into her palms.
Killer. Branwen had wanted to take Kensa’s life and she had received all of it. She had snatched mere glimpses from the pirates.
The woman she had murdered was the only person whom she understood completely. More than her cousin. More than the man she’d loved, or the man she’d taken to her bed. Now she knew Kensa as well as she knew herself. Better.
A place in Branwen’s heart, in her soul, had been carved out and Kensa had been interred there—all of who she was. She understood the Wise Damsel’s admonition: with each life she took, she would lose a piece of herself, something even more essential than the memory she had sacrificed for the forgetting spell. If she followed Dhusnos’s path, she would become nothing but a collection of stolen souls, her heart a Sea of the Dead.
Kensa did not want her guilt. This was Branwen’s burden, her punishment. She would have to reconstruct who she was—who she would be, who she would love—with the weight of another life inside her. Empathy would be Kensa’s revenge on her, and she had no choice but to let herself be haunted.
In the distance, she saw the skeletal fox prance across the waves.
ALMOST FOUND
ANDRED WAS WORKING IN THE gardens with King Marc when Branwen returned to Monwiku. The afternoon was bright, autumn sun showering the island. Xandru stood beside them, observing, a wry smile on his face. For a fleeting, unguarded moment, devotion softened the captain’s features as he watched Marc. The king was absorbed with pruning weeds from his flower beds.
Xandru’s shoulders drew back as he sensed Branwen treading the path toward them. He pivoted as she emerged from behind a spear-leafed tree. She had not smiled since she’d left Villa Illogan and she could not conjure one now.
His calculating eyes latched onto hers. Before Branwen could speak, Xandru gave her a nod. The small movement conveyed not so much relief as appreciation, as if she were a member of his crew who had obeyed an order. But Branwen had taken Kensa’s life because she was both an obstacle and a solution. The fresh welt on Branwen’s palm stung. She would not cover it. This was who she was now.
Andred crouched in the dirt beside Marc, and Branwen saw his mother kneeling on the clifftop. Branwen had failed to see before just how much of Kensa lay in the aspect of Andred’s face, the tilt of his forehead, his curly brown hair.
He smiled, less full than he had once, as he glimpsed Branwen over his shoulder, and her heart fractured.
“Dymatis. Marc and I are preparing the earth for the winter months.”
The king angled his head toward Branwen, pushing to his feet. “Sister.” He, too, smiled at her, and she could not return it. “Xandru tells me you went to investigate reports of black lung.”
She shifted her eyes between the king and Xandru. Both Xandru and Branwen were willing to lie to Marc because they loved him.
Branwen nodded, wetting her lips. She had spoken the fewest possible words with Otho before departing the villa, and fewer still with the innkeeper last night. Her tongue was heavy, her throat cracked.
The king’s brow stitched itself with concern. “Have you taken ill?” he asked, stepping toward her, touching a hand to Branwen’s shoulder.
She shivered. The king’s unthinking gesture, the need to console her without fear of contracting a sickness, confirmed what she already knew: his kingdom was blessed that Marc was not as ruthless as those who sought the crown. As she was.
“Branwen?” said Andred, levering himself to standing with his arm.
All attention was on her as she shook her head. “I—” Branwen started. She sucked on her tongue. “I’m afraid the reports of black lung were accurate,” she said. “Andred, the sickness has spread to Illogan.”
He rubbed his left hip. His gaze anchored somewhere in the mid-distance.
“I’m so sorry,” Branwen told her apprentice. “Your mother was in the final throes of the illness when I arrived.” The grief threading through her words was not feigned. She did grieve for this boy from whom so much had been taken.
Andred continued to stare at her blankly.
“The body needed to be burned,” said Branwen, flicking her eyes at Xandru. “Villa Illogan and its inhabitants will be quarantined until further notice.”
Marc rubbed a hand over his beard, creases forming at the corners of his eyes in sympathy. “This is sad news,” said the king. He betrayed no hint of relief that the woman who’d plotted his death was gone. Perhaps he didn’t feel any.
“Andred—” Marc began, dropping a hand on his shoulder. Andred shrugged him off. Without a word, the boy broke away from him.
The king traded a look with Branwen. “Let me go,” she said.
“Mormerkti,” he replied in a hush. Xandru’s eyes were steady on hers.
Branwen raced after her apprentice, lifting the hem of her skirt, small pebbles crunching beneath her boots. Sunlight warmed her face; incongruous, a perfect autumn day that made it seem like nothing bad could happen.
Andred stopped abruptly. He pressed one hand against the trunk of a reedy tree and let it take his weight. He doubled over and began to dry heave. Branwen had seen how shock affected people differently. She felt a compulsion to rock the boy in her arms, but she did not touch him.
Coming to stand beside the tree, she listened to Andred’s shallow breathing. Branwen looked at him and saw herself the day her aunt found her on the beach, when her sandcastle was destroyed. The Branwen she would have become if her parents hadn’t been killed had also died that day.
“I’m here,” she whispered. Even without her promise to Ruan, Branwen would be here for Andred.
The curls atop his head vibrated. He clawed the bark of the tree with his fingernails. Branwen shoved down her guilt. Kensa was right. Guilt wouldn’t change what she had done. She watched the pain she had caused and felt it acutely, as she should. Branwen had altered the course of Andred’s life the way raiders had once altered hers.
Slowly, his breaths grew deeper and he raised his head, fixing Branwen with bloodshot eyes.
“I didn’t visit her,” Andred said in a rasp. Tears stained his cheeks. “I waited for her to send for me, and she didn’t.”
Branwen could hear the wound behind his words. “It’s not your fault,” she said. “Black lung is a swift death.”
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