by J. E. Holmes
—Lord Tathia
After, Ediline thought she would fall asleep. Muscles she didn’t know she had were sore, and every bit of her body sighed with exhaustion—but her mind wouldn’t rest. She lay naked beneath the sheet, on her back in Javras’s bed, and stared at the ceiling, tracing the grain of the wood with her eyes. He slept deeply, on his side, one arm still draped across her. Dim starlight pooled through the windows.
She recalled a washroom downstairs. With nothing to do but think and fail to fall asleep, she may as well clean up. Before slipping out of the bed, she lifted Javras’s hand off her belly. She tucked it near his head, then traced her fingertips along his arm, down the shape of his shoulder all the way to the curve of his hip, beneath the sheet. Carefully, she leaned forward and kissed his forehead. Then she slid out of bed.
The air on her body was a relief from the heat of the bed. She allowed herself a few moments to enjoy it before she found her satchel and a fresh change of clothes. She slipped on a linen blouse and skirt and bundled everything else back into her satchel on her way out of Javras’s room.
Ashwin would arrive tomorrow. She couldn’t shake the thought from her mind, couldn’t keep herself from wondering, and fearing. Where was he now? Maybe he was asleep in the jungle, confident in his power. Or maybe he didn’t sleep, simply marched onward, to kill the warmonger and his family because he had power enough and the ego to think he would save the world from itself. Had Loethe once thought the same, when he made the sword of the darkness, when he brought about the Desolation? Ediline had fed off Javras’s animosity. She couldn’t help but revile Ashwin, his smugness, his ruthlessness. Not unlike her own father.
Insects buzzed around her on the ladders down to the lower levels of the manor. She tried to ignore them, spat one from her lips where it landed, and finally reached the bottom. There were three washrooms, all in a row. She stepped toward the closest one.
There was a bang against wood. The front door.
She threw her back to the wall and grabbed at her waist, finding nothing. Of course she didn’t have the hunting knife now. It had been on her belt. Where had she thrown the belt, in her frantic disrobing?
The door opened, slowly at first and then with a jarring whack against the wall. A dark figure loomed through the opening. She could see him through the rungs of the ladder. And he saw her. A long stretch of corridor and a flimsy ladder was all that separated her from the massive shape, broad and powerful.
“So you are here,” Deffren whispered. “Ninthborn whore.” The words slithered down the hall. He advanced.
“What do you want?” she said. “I’ve done everything that was asked of me.” She kept her voice steady even as her chest and shoulders shook. To get up the ladder, she would need to get around the other side of it. To do that, she would put her back to him. She was quick. Was she that quick?
“You told him the truth.” His voice was steady, menace in every syllable. He wasn’t drunk. This wasn’t some raging outlet for his own misery. This was a task. He was here, finally, to kill her. A thousand screams were stuck in a ball in her throat.
“You think he was going to fall in love with a lie?”
“You didn’t have to make him love you,” Deffren said. “The bastard was supposed to marry you and think he was getting something worthwhile.” He stalked closer.
“I’m not going to play your game. I’m done. You can save yourself.”
“Easy to say, now that you’ve failed.” Halfway down the hall, she could only see his outline, silhouetted by the moonlight from the open doorway, from the faint glowing oak in the common room. “Your mother was a fool to think you could do anything but disappoint.”
I am more than you think, she wanted to say. I am strong, and whole, and you can’t make me less than that. “Choke on piss,” she spat.
He roared and closed the gap between them in two strides. He grabbed for her around the ladder. Panic pulled her out of the way. She shoved his arm up then swung a curled fist into his ribs. It was like hitting an oak. Maybe somewhere deep in there were bones, organs, something she could wound, but she didn’t come close.
Between the rungs he grabbed a fistful of her hair. With a yank that tore the scream from her throat, he smacked her head into the ladder. Dizzying pain spread from her head down her spine. He drove his fist into her back, once, twice, before wrapping the massive arm around her head, clamped down on her throat, pinned against the ladder. Her breath was nothing more than a gasp, and her eyes and cheeks burned with the strain for air.
“No one wants you,” Deffren hissed. “Now we can all have that wish granted.”
Her vision started to go dark. Then, a whir of movement and a crunching impact. Deffren’s arms were pulled away from her. The ground shook. She gasped and staggered to the wall, choking down air and leaning on the cool wood.
Beyond the ladder loomed a second figure, square-shouldered and tall. Deffren was on the ground, reeling. Wulfgar advanced, drew his arm back, and swung a punch across the back of Deffren’s head. Deffren hit the ground with another shuddering thud. He rolled forward and stumbled to his feet.
“Let him go,” Ediline coughed. “He’s not worth it.”
Wulfgar held his ground. Deffren fled, spitting curses as he went. When he was gone, Wulfgar went to the door and tried to close it, but it swung open again on its own. “Vaváfak,” Wulfgar swore. “Brittle wooden locks. Door is broken.” He lifted a chair from the dining area like it was weightless and jammed it up against the door. “Better, for now.” He walked the length of the hallway back to Ediline. “Princess, you are hurt?”
“Yeah,” she said. Her voice didn’t rasp as much as she’d feared. Her neck still hurt, and she had to lean away from the swollen pain blossoming in her back. “Were you awake? You came so fast, I can’t—”
He rounded the ladder, gripped her shoulders, and straightened her. With a finger under her chin, he tipped her head back and peered at her eyes. Then he ran his hands over her head, at her scalp, just gently touching. It was so startling to see such a change in Wulfgar’s demeanor that she didn’t think to object. When his fingertips brushed the place she’d been punched, she winced, and Wulfgar stopped. He gently nudged her shoulder to turn her around. “May I see wound, Princess?”
“It’s hardly a wound. A bruise, maybe.”
“Your blood is staying on your inside,” he said. “This is good, but not always good. May I see?”
“Yes.”
He lifted the shirt, and she felt the brush of his calloused fingers again. Any amount of pressure felt like he was digging his knuckle into her. “Nothing is broken,” he said. “I do not see bleeding on your inside, but it is best to check again later.”
“I’m all right, Wulfgar,” she said. She turned back around and straightened the blouse.
“Young Javras is telling me to protect you.” He gestured down the hall, toward the door, his hand making a rude sign. “I should have been down ladder even faster. Thug like this should not have made it close enough to hurt you.”
“He’s my brother,” she said.
“Worse, then.”
“He’s a prince.”
“This does not matter to me. Being prince means he has right to call lovely Princess whore names and try to strangle her? Shit on his princedom.” He made the sound and motion of spitting, but didn’t actually spit.
She was too shocked, too upset to laugh. It had come so fast. That Deffren had come here just confirmed for her that she had been followed, that some spy had heard her confess to Javras. Would they stop at all, until she was dead? As awful as that would be, the thought of running from her home, even if it were with Javras, sat low in her stomach, sour.
“Wulfgar, did you hear . . . ?”
“You are ninthborn.”
She swallowed and looked up into his pale blue eyes. “Yes,” she said.
He nodded. “Does Javras know?”
“Yes,” she said. Her breath was caught in
her throat. If she saw disappointment or resentment or disdain pass over Wulfgar’s features, it would crush her. For the first time in her life, she’d had something like friendship with more than one person at a time. She wasn’t ready, not just yet, to go back to what her life had been like.
He just shrugged. “I am have to tell Javras that thug prince breaks into manor. He is probably not awake, though. Very tired from fornaf ti lulúoneknabek truso ecécanaf.”
“Wulfgar! We did not do that!”
He let out a satisfactorily Wulfgar-like guffaw. She had to grin a little, even as she slapped his arm. “So,” she said, the grin fading a little, “you don’t care?”
“That you do not do fornaf ti lulúoneknabek truso ecécanaf? No. But is fun, you should try.”
“No! About—”
“You are Truist,” he said. “Ninthborn offends me less.”
Relief flooded her. She relaxed, but that hurt her new bruises, so she straightened again. “Really?” He gave a perfunctory nod. “Why?”
“Truist makes history of Attenia seem like all good times. It was not. And worse, it says you are right and other people are wrong. Real history is not as easy as yes or no. I like Ruinism better. More honest.”
“Oh.”
He patted her shoulder. “You were coming to use washroom, yes?” he said. “Wash. Then go back and sleep. Tomorrow is not an easy day.” He tilted his chin up. “Wien—it is your turn to watch now.”
He nudged Ediline aside before she could look up the ladder. Wien dropped down in the space between them without a sound. She unfurled with Grace that mocked Ediline’s and looked slightly upward into Ediline’s eyes. There didn’t need to be any words. Everything came across in the look they shared. Wien knew, she understood, and she apologized. Then she walked away toward the front door, and Wulfgar pulled himself up the ladder. Ediline was alone in the quiet corridor, where she swore she could still feel the floorboards shake.
Frigid shadows. Warmth, a tiny speck of it, a mote of light swirling through a hungry chasm of darkness. There were voices.
“How does it work?” said a strong female voice, though softer than remembered.
Someone scoffed. “If you were truly interested in that, you’d have started this, not me,” said another woman, the edges of her words touched by an accent of emphasized syllables. She sounded like a steel bell, like the first rush of a thawing river. “Be more concerned with—”
“Will it work?”
There was a silence, a wordless space that carried a heavy tension, a massive weight on a thread, unravelling. “If it isn’t finished in time, we won’t need to ask that question.”
. . .
“Where did you find it?” said the first woman. There was a subtle sound of a cloth being pulled, but something wet stuck to it. “And what did you . . . ?”
“I did what was necessary,” said a male voice, broad and powerful. “Beyond the bridge, last night. It wasn’t the only one, either.”
“More? How many?”
“So many from the dark,” said a harmonic third voice. It was like the tip of a crescent moon, like a frozen drop of water on the tip of a needle. “Rising, falling, always.”
“You again?” demanded the woman. “What do you know of these?”
“Don’t listen to it,” the male said.
“We need to listen to something. If not this, what? If not us, who? This cannot be ignored.”
The room was dark. Ediline sat up. Water that she couldn’t hear sloshed against her chest. The buzz of the Everquiet was intense, all around her. She stood, slipped, and scrambled out of the bath, almost falling on her way to the little vase of candletwigs. Her swatting hand knocked it off the counter, but she came away with one of the twigs. She squeezed and snapped it in half. Light blazed into the room, casting long shadows. The glass vase had fallen but hadn’t shattered. Naked and wet, she scooped it up and set it back down. Then, she sat on the stool and let out a breath as she collected herself. The voices from the dream stuck to her like tar as she tried to forget them. There were more important things to worry about than some ominous words in a dark dream. There was a dark reality tomorrow, and she needed to rest.
She dried and dressed and went back to Javras, around whom she tucked herself, curled, despite the painful bruises in her back, and she planted small kisses in his hair until she fell asleep again.
— Chapter 14 —
“The Asferath River swelled with the clear-rains until it was so wide that neither side could see over its bloated width. A dense fog rose, and my troops forded the river at midnight. A thousand men surrounded the resistance camp while I infiltrated the base, captured the Bannoch commander, and demanded surrender. It was a relief for everyone, after losing so many to wetland combat the previous two seasons. I ordered my men to treat the surrendering forces with respect. It was a bloodless victory. Until the unheralded and unexpected arrival of a third party. Then, the Asferath ran red.”
—The journal of Imperial Commander Terelis, 697
The morning’s sunlight poured into the bedroom. Waking up, seeing it lit, Ediline felt new waves of the impact of what she’d done last night. It felt more real, in the room with clothes scattered, bathed in harsh judging light, holding a sheet over herself and peering at the man who slept beside her. She touched his hair. He stirred.
Today, his father would confront the King of Tithelk. Today, everything would come crashing together. Maybe, if she held on tightly enough, she could make it through the collision with Javras at her side. There were so many questions still, even as pieces began to fit together in Ediline’s mind, little bits of maybe creating shapes that she didn’t like. She was worried what her role would be, how long it would take for her life to be offered—or sacrificed—for King Maxen’s aspirations. She was worried what Javras would do, how he might dissuade Ashwin from delivering peace to Lanen one bloody body at a time. How quick and furious her father’s retaliation would be.
Exhaling, she rose once again from the bed. As she began to dress, she heard Javras stir again. She glanced over, her stockings halfway up her legs. He watched her, turned on his side, the sheet clinging to his hip. She forgot what she was doing, entranced by the way the light shone on his fair skin, through the fine hair on his chest, the pale stubble on his jaw. Caught there, Ediline felt pulled in opposite directions—toward him, by the same desire that had thrown her onto him last night—and away, covering herself into the corner, by the insecurity of being naked in front of someone for the first time.
He started to say something. She started to tip over, balancing still with stockings bunched in her hands. She caught herself and twirled a full circle. He was sitting up, halfway to help her, when she slid to a stop.
“Good morning,” he laughed, three sweet syllables.
“Yeah,” she said. She pushed away the memories of Deffren’s attack. Wulfgar would tell Javras about it later. It didn’t need to cloud his mind now. She finished with the stockings and began to pull on her plainclothes blouse, then cleared her throat. “Javras, I’m sorry,” she said.
“Why should you be?”
“I . . . don’t really know. Lying? Throwing myself at you?”
“I’m becoming quite proficient at catching flung princesses.”
She met his smirk with her own, enough to want to leap on top of him. She needed out of this bedroom, if she ever hoped to sober from the drunkenness of this passion. She tried clearing her throat again. “Was it, well, you know . . . good?”
“Indescribably.”
“Good.” She turned her back to him and bit her lip. Nervousness swirled in her. “We need to . . . .”
“Right.” She heard him shuffle out of the bed, heard the pull of cloth and the thump thump of his hop as he got into his trousers. Then there were soft hands around her belly, and a chest pressed to her back. There were lips in her hair, electric breath on her scalp.
“Or this,” she murmured.
“I trus
t you,” he said.
It caught her off-guard. “I’m relieved to hear it,” she said, after a moment.
“Do you trust me, too?”
She slid her arm over his and laced her fingers with his. “Yes,” she said.
He held her tight to himself another moment, bent to kiss the back of her neck, then stepped back. “Would you mind if I had a moment to prepare myself?” he said.
She spun around and kissed his lips. “Not at all,” she said. “I have a few things to prepare as well. I’ll meet you at the front door downstairs.”
Before there were any more reasons to linger, Ediline left, climbed down the ladder to the second structure of the manor, then another ladder to the ground floor, and sped past Jinnrey and out the door. The early morning brightness was now threatened by bluish clouds, coming in fast from the north. An ice-rain, maybe a storm. Ugly weather for an ugly encounter.
All the nervous energy of the day, spilling over from the night before, burned away as Ediline dashed out of Korv, into the jungle. She let the still damp air cool her as she flew downhill over roots and thickets, as she pumped her legs and breathed and ran and ran. It wasn’t hard to find the emblems she needed. After Straad’s training, she had a simple map in her head of the jungle on Korv’s perimeter. Two fistfuls of windsurge moss—to run fast, to jump higher, or to shove someone with a gust—and six bluish reeds—swamp skulker or deadfish reed, her last resort. Before going back to Yithin’s manor, she leaned her back to a tree at the bottom of a slope and caught her breath. The bright quiet of the jungle comforted her.
There was one thing that she’d decided for certain, fueled by her encounter last night with Deffren. She would be beholden to her family no more. Ninthborn or not, she could make a difference all her own, and she would prove it.