“I, ah … I’m not entirely sure that is an appropriate discussion to have with a young lady,” she continued. “The fact is that they are all gone, and there’s no need to worry her about the specifics.” Mother kept her gaze focused on her plate, where she methodically cut her roasted potatoes into halves, then halves again and again, until the pieces were so small she had to scoop them up with her spoon to eat them as if they were peas.
“We thought they were all gone, until today,” Halvor pointed out with a meaningful glance toward the door, where, perhaps, he still hoped to see Inara come through.
“She is not what you think,” Mother bit out.
My heart clenched beneath my rib cage. What would happen if the hedge did let him leave in the morning—if he spread word of not just humans, but a Paladin living in the citadel?
“And this is not an appropriate conversation to have with my daughter.”
“Respectfully, I must disagree. I find that the female mind is perfectly capable of as much learning and lively discussion as the male’s.”
“Of course it is,” Mother retorted sharply, while I nearly choked on my bite of vegetable stew I’d forced myself to take in an attempt to hide my fear, “but that doesn’t make it appropriate for a young lady to converse about scandalous histories and theories that have little or nothing to do with her present or future life.”
“Little or nothing?” Halvor echoed incredulously. I could practically feel the words he managed to swallow, even as his gaze traveled around the room as if to say, You do realize you live in their citadel, right?
“How old are you?” Mother set down her silverware, her attention now fully focused on him.
“Excuse me?”
“You said you received your inheritance when you came of age. Does that mean you are eighteen? Or did it take some time to put your ‘expedition’ together?”
“I don’t see how that—”
“Zuhra just reached her maturity, a month ago. Despite our—secluded—existence here, she is well prepared to be mistress of her own home. I have seen to it personally.”
“I am sure she—”
“Zuhra can play the pianoforte, she can sew and darn and do needlepoint. Her stitches are superb. She can read and write, making her a valuable asset to any young lord.”
“Mother.” I turned pleadingly toward her. My blood dredged through my veins, thick with the protests that I didn’t dare voice.
“It is unfortunate that you…” She trailed off with a shake of her head. “Well, there’s nothing to be done for it.” And she suddenly stood, pushing her chair back, though we’d barely eaten a quarter of what Mahsami had brought out for us. “Your room is prepared for you. I will show the way.”
Halvor stared at her for a beat, then hastily stood. He looked both bewildered and irritated as he sketched her a bow and then turned to me. It was Mother’s special gift: to inspire multiple—often conflicting—emotions in a person at once.
I forced myself to rise to my feet and dropped into a curtsy, hoping Halvor could read the apology in my eyes. She does not speak for me, I shouted to him within the confines of my mind. I am not her and her beliefs are not mine!
But if he understood my silent messages, he gave no indication as he stiffly bowed without meeting my gaze and then followed after Mother, who had already turned for the door, the click of her heels on the stone floor the only sound in the cavernous room.
SIX
“What will we do with all of this?” I stared at the platters of food in dismay.
“I will store what I can in the larder, and the rest…” Sami sighed.
“Perhaps you could take it to a family in Gateskeep?” I didn’t look up from the dishes I was drying when I made the suggestion.
Sami clucked disapprovingly. “The hedge would never let me out for something such as that. If we were in need of food, that is another matter. But to distribute excess? Not likely.”
“How could it possibly know? Why does it do this to us? To them?”
“It’s Paladin magic, love. There’s no use worrying your head about it. ’Twill only make you madder than a rabbit in a thistle patch.”
I’d only seen a rabbit a few times in my life. The hedge sometimes allowed animals through; when the first rabbit showed up, it was during a particularly terrible snowstorm when Inara had been sick, confined to her bed with a fever, and our supply of winter vegetables—only capable of being grown by her hand, through her power—had fallen alarmingly low. I’d been the first to notice the creature, hopping across the snowdrifts. I’d read about pets in my fairy-tale book and had foolishly asked to keep the rabbit as one. But Sami had quickly seized the chance to keep us alive, and instead made us rabbit stew. It was hard to imagine the poor creature being mad, when all I could summon was a memory of its big brown eyes … and then watching in fascinated horror as Sami skinned it later that night. The stew was good, though different—we rarely had meat. So though I didn’t quite understand her warning, the intent was clear.
It was my turn to sigh, as I plunged my hands back into the sudsy water to retrieve another plate and wipe it clean. The kitchen was as warm and bright as always. The large fire where Mahsami boiled our water and cooked our food popped and hissed behind us, enthusiastically devouring the wood she’d fed it. The room was fragrant with the yeasty scent of dough, the sharp, wild tang of herbs, and even the lingering aroma of the bread, stew, and potatoes we’d had for supper. Sami stood next to me, working side by side to clean up the mess, as we always did. It was peaceful and comfortingly familiar.
I could almost pretend nothing had changed.
Almost.
“Sami,” I began, my hands going still on the china dinner plate I held, “Halvor said something at dinner … about a … a death decree. He said the king thought the Paladin were trying to overthrow the kingdom.”
She stiffened slightly next to me, but merely said, “Did he now?”
“I know you said many have come to fear them and the power they wielded, hoping they don’t return. But why would anyone think they were trying to rule us—when they willingly left?” I forced myself to keep drying the plate, to set it gently on top of its gleaming sisters on the counter. “Why would he say that the king wanted to … to kill them?”
“I suspect because it’s true.”
I nearly dropped the knife I’d picked up to wash.
“Zuhra.” Sami turned, waiting for me to stop and face her. When I did, her gray eyes were soft and sad in the firelight. “Your mother … she doesn’t want us to discuss these things.”
“You think I don’t know that?” She flinched at the bitterness I couldn’t conceal. “What does she want? She claims to wish me married, but the first chance I have of making a connection—no matter how remote it might be—she tries to throw him out and then humiliates me in front of him. And what if he had shown even a modicum of interest in me? What if I had somehow convinced him to propose and the hedge had miraculously let me pass? Mother would send me to his world unprepared—naïve and uninformed of even the most basic beliefs of the people I was to go live among? Ignorant of my own heritage—of my own father? Of the fact that even if we could leave here, we never should because Inara would be killed for what she is?”
Sami took both my hands in hers, a gesture she hadn’t done since I was in knee skirts and braids. “Zuhra, your mother loves you.” I nearly snorted at that, but Sami continued undeterred. “She has a hard time knowing how to show it. She’s suffered in her life—she has experienced pain and loss that you can’t fathom.”
“Because she won’t talk about it—she won’t tell me!”
“Because she doesn’t want to relive it,” Sami admonished. “You were too young to remember, but she was happy. When she came here … with him … she was a different person back then. But even then, their life was never easy.”
The flash of memory I’d had tonight at supper, of her in the meadow, hair down, a smile unlike I’d eve
r seen lighting her face, rose up once more. It stung, a prick of pain that burrowed into the buried bruises of my heart, to realize Sami was right. Mother had been a different person then, with him. And we—Inara and I—hadn’t been enough. He’d broken her when he left us here, and we’d never been sufficient to put her back together.
“I remember the hedge was smaller before that night—that it grew when he left,” I spoke quietly to our clasped hands. “Did he do it? Did he trap us here?”
Sami was silent a long time. I didn’t dare look up.
“I don’t know. But … I’m not sure what other explanation there could be.”
A cold heaviness settled into my belly, upsetting the little bit I’d eaten at the disastrous dinner.
Sami squeezed my hands. “Your mother’s choices have pushed you into a life that has given you very little choice or freedom. You’ve been locked out of too many doors. Perhaps this Halvor Roskery coming here is a window finally opening for you.” Sami squeezed my hands once more then released me. “Here, love. Why don’t you take this plate to Inara? She hasn’t had supper yet. I helped her up to her room just before you came.”
I took the proffered tray in one hand, a lit lantern in the other, and turned for the arched doorway to exit the kitchen.
“Oh, and Zuhra,” Sami called out to me just before I walked underneath the stone archway that was etched in the language of the Paladin—swirls and lines that were as familiar to me as the wrinkles on Sami’s face, but completely incomprehensible in their meaning. She hurried over to put a mug of fresh water on the tray. “I already took your mother her nightly tea. I think she will probably sleep quite well tonight.”
I looked up sharply, eyebrows lifted. Sami’s gray eyes were trained on mine, speaking words that her lips didn’t.
“I don’t know why the boy was let through, but I do know there must be a reason. And if he’s worth anything, he’ll look past your mother and really see you. Perhaps this may be your chance at finding happiness of your own. May he only be so lucky.”
I blinked, a hope too painful to acknowledge rising in my chest. She reached up to cup my cheek briefly, the look on her face far more maternal than any I’d seen on my own mother’s, and then stepped back.
“Hurry along now, before her food gets any colder.”
I nodded and then turned and left Sami and the kitchen behind, her words echoing through my body, creating a want so intense, a desire for happiness—true happiness—that was so powerful it made my bones ache.
* * *
The door clicked shut softly behind me as I exited Inara’s room, after making sure she ate at least some of her supper and then helped her into bed. I didn’t have to help her anymore, not like when we were younger. But it still gave me comfort to tuck the covers around her shoulders, to see her in bed, before we shut the door and locked it for the night, knowing she was safe in her room. I hated having to lock her in, but it was better than lying awake for hours, worrying that she might be wandering the citadel and get hurt—or worse. She’d wandered into the kitchen once when she was four, during the night. The crash of pots and pans had woken Sami, who was closest to the kitchen. Luckily, she hadn’t been hurt, but the fear of what could have happened forced us to make the heartbreaking decision to turn that key every night. As much as I hated doing it, I couldn’t stop the worry any more than I could stop the Paladin power from holding her captive in her own body.
I stood outside her room, the circle of light from my lantern the only illumination in the dark hallway, my thoughts a jumble. Sami’s cryptic hints could only mean she’d added a sleeping draught to Mother’s nightly tea—her way of giving me the freedom to seize this chance with Halvor. To … what, exactly?
My gaze caught on the tapestry that hung across from Inara’s bedroom door, depicting a scene of an entire battalion of Paladin soaring on their gryphons, toward a human village besieged by a herd of Chimera, one of the most fearsome rakasa that existed.
I’d always believed the Paladin had saved us, had made our world safe from the monsters that had once roamed across Vamala, bringing death and suffering in their wake—and were now eradicated, thanks to them. That was one of the few things Mother had told us, and the books I’d managed to sneak from the library about them written in our language seemed to corroborate her claim.
But then why didn’t the rest of Vamala think so too?
You haven’t heard of the Treason and Death Decree?
Had I been irrational to believe that even though my father had left us, trapping us within the hedge as his parting gift, that the rest of the Paladin were heroes—that their power had rescued the humans from destruction? The only two instances I’d seen of it in my life—the hedge and Inara—had given me no reason to believe them to be good, but I’d also never had a reason to second-guess what I assumed to be true. Until tonight. As much as Mother hated Adelric for leaving us, she’d never spoken negatively about the Paladin as a whole. Surely she would have been the first to proclaim their villainy if it were true. If a death decree had been warranted.
My breath came faster as I squinted into the darkness, straining to listen for any indication that Mother was awake. But as Mahsami had promised, everything was silent, completely still and dark.
I didn’t know what the morning would hold—if the hedge would open and let Halvor escape our prison, or if he would remain trapped with us. But I did know one thing: he was here now.
And he’d spent years studying the Paladin.
Though Mother would have claimed it indecent, I removed the slippers from my feet so that I only wore stockings, stowed them behind a large vase that stood in the alcove between my room and Inara’s, and lowered the light on my lantern until it barely emitted a glow. I hurried on silent feet away from our rooms in the east quarters that overlooked the hedge and the mountains beyond, to the west wing rooms that pressed up against the sheer cliffs that continued to rise above the citadel. They’d been unused my entire life. I’d snuck into that wing a few times, when the sun was shining brightly enough through the interspersed windows to chase away a bit of the gloom of so many shut doors and abandoned rooms. I remembered opening those doors, catching glimpses of enormous beds and tall, proud dressers through swirling eddies of dust, stirred up by my unexpected arrival. But there had been an eerie sense of intrusion, like I was barging in on a scene I wasn’t intended to see, and with a shiver, I’d shut the doors, leaving the rooms unexplored. Leaving them to await the masters that would never return. Earlier that night in the kitchen, Sami had confessed that Mother put Halvor there for the night—as far away from our rooms as possible. I could only imagine the state it must have been in and had to suppress a shudder at the thought of rodents, spiders, or worse nesting in the most likely ruined bedding and furniture.
Poor Halvor Roskery.
Thankful the dress I’d worn was dark, I slipped from shadow to shadow in the familiar corridors of our section of the citadel, toward the unused wings where I was forbidden to go. But despite not knowing this part of my home very well, I didn’t dare increase the light of the lantern.
Sami hadn’t known exactly which room he was in, only that it was in the west wing. Creeping forward, I strained to see any flicker of light beneath a door or for a hint of sound from any of the rooms. There was nothing except dust and silence.
And then I heard a creak. I froze, tilting my head to the side, trying to ascertain exactly where it had come from.
The doorknob had already begun to turn when I spotted the faint glow just ahead to my left. Inhaling a squeak of alarm, I simultaneously shuttered my lantern and flattened myself against the wall next to a tapestry, with a silent prayer that it was too dark for him to spot me.
Firelight flooded the hallway when the door opened, but was quickly doused again as Halvor hurried to shut it. I stood immobile, breath held. He looked left first, away from me, then right, his gaze sweeping past where I pressed against the wall. I nearly sighed in relief, b
ut then he paused.
“Who’s there?” Halvor lifted his left hand, gripping something that looked unsettlingly like a dagger, and stepped forward—directly toward me.
SEVEN
My lungs burned with the need for oxygen, but I didn’t dare breathe, let alone move.
Halvor moved closer. “Reveal yourself or suffer the consequences!”
Left with no choice but to do as he said or possibly get stabbed, I threw the shade open on my lantern and stepped forward, lifting the sudden burst of light into his face. “Where are you going?” I demanded, inserting every ounce of bravery I didn’t actually possess into my words.
Halvor blanched and hastily lowered the knife. Then he squinted. “It’s you?”
“My name is Zuhra.”
“I remember, I just—”
“And you’d best thank all the stars in heaven that it is me, and not my mother.”
“Yes, of course, I—”
“She would have—I don’t even know what she would have done if she’d caught you sneaking around, holding a dagger, trying to … um … what exactly are you doing?”
Halvor waited a moment this time before responding, and I flushed. Not that he could tell in the meager glow of the lantern. I hoped.
“I’ve dedicated three years of my life to studying the Paladin, and my Master much longer than that,” he finally responded when I didn’t cut him off again. “If I truly am to be sent away in the morning, you couldn’t expect me to waste my one night in their citadel sleeping?”
The note of desperation in his voice struck a responding chord deep within me. The darkness surrounding us was heavier now that he stood in it with me; somehow his presence made the lack of light that much more real—that much more dangerous. I was alone, in the forbidden section of the citadel, with a young man I didn’t know, talking to him as if I did this all the time. I, who had only vague, dreamlike memories of the only man I’d ever known.
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