She knows it’s a dream because she is able to keep her back to the prince. She is in control of her body.
He moves to stand behind her, not quite touching her. But close enough that his breath tickles the back of her hair, and she feels the warmth of his body. Close enough that he might as well be touching her, so present is he in that moment. Outside of dreams his skin is cold, lifeless, like the clay he favors for his bodyguards. When he comes to her in her sleep, though, he’s always warm. She’d like to keep him from her mind completely, but the vulnerability of sleep is as an open door to him; then he can wander through the hallways of her dreams at will. And though in her waking hours he can write a command and force her body to obey it, in dreams he cannot.
She often wonders whether he prefers the challenge of the dreams. Whether it’s more fun for him to have to work to get her to do what he wants.
“Do you like it?” he asks.
The apothecary hears the rustling of cloth as he shifts, leaning forward so his face is next to hers as he speaks again. “I asked you a question, sweetling.”
“Don’t call me that,” she snaps.
She can hear his smile. “My lady speaks,” he says, clearly delighted that he goaded her into responding. “Will she grace me with more words from her lovely lips?”
The apothecary presses those lips together, and the prince’s grin widens. He turns, speaking directly into the soft pink shell of her ear. “The tower we’re standing in is the Tower of Courage. It’s where your friend’s ancestor stayed, briefly, just before she tried to kill me.” He pauses, tilting his head back so his chin brushes against the top of her ear, rubbing gently like a cat. “Over there”—he lowers his head—“is the Tower of Wisdom. That’s where your Silas’s however-many-greats-grandmother kept her rooms. Mine, as you know, was the Tower of Love.”
This time she feels his lips against her skin as they stretch into a grin.
“Which would your tower be? Maybe Wisdom? No … No. You’re many things, Errin Vastel, but you’re not wise. Nor peaceful. Perhaps Truth? You do seem to have a constancy to you. This refusal to be happy with me. Do you think they’re out there, Errin? Plotting to come and save you?”
When his fingers grip her chin, she slaps his hand away.
“No,” she says. “You don’t get to make me move how you want in here.” As though she’s summoned it in response to her anger, inside the dream she feels a cool breeze behind her, her skin becoming gooseflesh on her arms.
His head tilts, his eyes sly as he assesses her. “I think your friends will come, sweetling. But not for you. They’ll come for the philtersmith, because he is a rare and special thing. And the others. The base goldsmiths. But you … you’re not special at all.”
“Then why keep me here?”
The prince laughs. “I said you weren’t special. Not that you weren’t useful. Silas will bleed himself dry if he believes it will keep you from harm. He tried to take his own life, you know. Until I reminded him that that would mean consequences for you. And your brother will undertake any task I ask of him as long as he believes me your protector. You’re a convenience to me, Errin. Which is odd, considering what a huge inconvenience you’ve been thus far to everyone else in your life. You’ve betrayed your father, who you allowed to die. Your mother, who you allowed to go mad. Your brother. Your friends. My kin. I could never have found the Conclave if you hadn’t told me you were in Tremayne, with the Sin Eater.”
The wind whips behind the apothecary now, icy rain stabbing at her, and she turns to the window.
The prince speaks behind her. “I am the only thing in this world that you have not betrayed.” She feels his hand trail down her spine, pressing his thumb against each ridge, punctuating his words with touch. “And it’s not for lack of trying, is it? So perhaps I should ask myself, why do I keep you here?”
She wakes up abruptly. Tallith is gone instantly, and she stares into the darkness of her room. Her heart beats sickeningly fast, her whole body seeming to pulse in time with it. She leans forward, drawing up her knees and resting her head on them, wrapping her arms around them.
Then she’s moving, standing up, almost tripping over the bedclothes. She realizes the prince has taken control of her and tries to stop herself, reaching for the bedpost and wrapping her arms around it. But her legs keep driving her forward, with such force she shifts the heavy wooden bedframe an inch before she lets go.
Her legs take her to the windowsill. She climbs up, and onto it, facing the outside.
There was no glass in the windows in her dream, but there is here.
She chokes back a sob as she pushes the window open.
As in her dream, the weather is violent, rain lashes her face like needles, the wind picks up her nightdress and whips it about her thighs. She can’t move to hold it down.
“I could make you jump,” the prince says softly, from behind her. She didn’t hear him come in. “If I wrote it on here”—he holds up a piece of paper—“I could have you throw yourself from the tower. Out here, I very much can make you move.”
Dread rises up in the apothecary, her stomach swooping so violently she sways without the prince’s instruction. She reaches out to brace herself against the wall.
The prince pulls a pen from inside his tunic and scrawls something on the paper, and the apothecary feels bile rise in her throat, momentarily dizzy.
The prince presses the paper to the simulacrum’s body and the apothecary feels herself start to turn.
“No,” she whimpers.
She faces the darkness, the might of the wind and rain scouring her face. She cannot see the ground beneath her, cannot see anything.
She hears the scratch of a nib on paper.
Her knees bend.
“Please,” she tries to say, but the word won’t come.
She jumps.
She lands on her back at the prince’s feet, all breath knocked from her; for a moment her lungs cannot fill and she thinks she is going to die. The prince stares down at her; for once his eyes are empty of cunning, for once he seems unamused at his own antics. His voice, when he speaks, is emotionless, fathomless.
“I was willing to make us into a proper family; I was willing to put the time into it. I’ve sent your brother to fetch your mother, despite needing him elsewhere, in a bid to make you happy. But I don’t have time to play with you anymore. Your friends are not the only ones who understand you’re replaceable. You’re alive only because I permit it, and I am fast running out of patience with you. So tomorrow evening, you will present yourself in the Great Hall an hour after sunset. You will wear something very pretty, and your best smile. And we will dine together, companionably. You will not try to stab me. You will not spit at me or slap me. You will behave with decorum. In short, sweetling, you will make yourself special to me, or I will remove you from my game board. I need your brother, and I need the philtersmith. But I don’t need you. Bear that in mind.”
He turns toward the door, then stops. “The Tower of Attrition,” he says. “That’s what this will be known as. A place to break the spirits of mares that run wild. Because you will break, Errin. Or you will die.”
Once again he leaves her on the floor, too frightened to move, or even cry.
From across the scarred wooden table, I feel him watching me, the weight of his gaze heavy, and oily, like a coating of filth. It makes me want to bathe immediately, scrub and scrub until there’s nothing he’d recognize as me. My skin crawls as his eyes implore me to look at him. I can almost hear the command. Instead, I keep my gaze locked on the plate of food on the table before me and my stomach contracts, but not with hunger. Three moons ago I would have ripped off my own arm and sold it in a heartbeat for a feast like this. The meat glistens with juices, the vegetables covered in a buttery sheen, the bread steaming when the crust is cracked. Carrots, peas, corn. Colorful and tempting. But as his gaze oozes its demands over me, I shudder.
“Are you cold, sweetling?” he say
s. I shake my head. Two moons here has given me a new tolerance for the freezing temperatures, and it’s not the cold that makes me shiver as though someone is crossing my grave. “Look at me.”
I obey him because if I don’t, he’ll make me, with his simulacrum. Or he’ll kill me. I’m painfully aware that at the doors behind me, two golems stand like the statues they should be, but at a word from him, they’d crush my skull between their gargantuan clay hands. So I lift my head, meeting his golden eyes as steadily as I can. The moment I do, he nods in victory and loses interest in me, returning his attention to his meal.
Now it’s my turn to watch him as he picks meat from a thin bone, dropping it onto his plate, his slender fingers grease-slicked and shining in the candlelight. He whistles softly and one of the dogs beneath the table emerges soundlessly, sending a chill through me.
“Sit,” Aurek says, and the dog does. He selects a piece of flesh and holds it out to the animal, not flinching even when the mutt’s teeth snap shut over the morsel and tear it from his grip. They watch each other, dog and new master, for a moment, before Aurek waves his hand and the dog slinks back beneath the table. I feel my stomach lurch when the coarse fur brushes against my gown.
Aurek holds the bone up, examining it before he sucks it clean. His golden eyes stay fixed on me, emotionless, as he uses it to clean his teeth, tracing his canines with it. He tosses it to the ground after he’s done and I hear one of the beasts beneath the table shuffle forward, then the sound of crunching.
“You’ve not eaten much, Errin,” he says. “Is there something wrong with the food?”
“No. It’s fine.” I poke at my food with a spoon; I lost knife privileges two weeks ago. When I peek back at him, he’s looking at me, deadpan.
“If you won’t eat, you’ll have to be fed.”
“I’ll eat,” I say, pulling the plate toward me. I reach for a leg, chicken, duck, who knows, but I can’t make myself pick it up. My hand shakes. I can’t. I can’t do it.
“Open wide.” Aurek grins.
I do it. I put a piece of meat into my dry mouth and chew, and chew, and chew. Aurek watches the whole time as my jaw moves up and down, aching with the repeated motion. Eventually, the food disintegrates into a kind of paste and I force myself to swallow it, feeling it stick somewhere between my throat and my heart.
“There,” Aurek says, reaching for his goblet and drinking from it deeply. He sets it down with a satisfied clunk, the grin on his face highlighted by the stain of the wine curving away from his lips. “You eat up like a good girl. You, boy, fetch her some more meat. Nice small pieces; I have no desire to watch her chomping away like a cow at the cud.”
A servant emerges from the recesses of the room and does as he’s bid, reaching across to take a lump of meat and ripping it into bite-size chunks. His shoulders are rounded, curled in, as though trying not to be noticed, his head bowed so low his chin rests against his chest. My eyes fill with angry, humiliated tears that threaten to spill down my cheeks.
“Give it to her,” Aurek instructs him. The servant twitches, and moves to my side with the new plate held in faintly trembling fingers.
Suddenly, my arm jerks out, knocking the plate from his hand. We both watch in horror as the whole lot, food and plate, arcs across the room, the platter hitting the stone floor with a deafening crash, accompanying the snarls from the dogs that bolt from beneath the table. They pause, looking to the Sleeping Prince for permission to eat the fallen food. And the servant and I also turn to Aurek to see what he’ll do.
He’s laughing silently, his face creased in mirth, his eyes squeezed shut. He takes a huge breath and his laughter becomes loud as he bangs one fist on the table, rattling the goblets and making the candles gutter. I see the simulacrum held loosely in his other hand.
“Your faces …” he manages before a new fit overcomes him. “That was beautiful.” He wipes his eyes, his shoulders still shaking, as we stare at him. Finally our horror seems to sober him, and an ugly look crosses his face. He sits back in his chair and crosses his arms. “Fine. Just clean it up.” The servant begins to bend again to reach for the food. “No. Don’t pick it up. Eat it.”
I stare at Aurek.
“Have you been struck deaf? Eat it. On your knees, like the animal you are, and eat it.”
Without making any protest, the rightful king of Lormere sinks to his knees, then leans forward. On all fours he lowers his face to the ground and begins to eat the fallen meat, the dogs growling viciously as he does, though they make no move toward him. I asked him why they didn’t remember him, and he said they likely did. But they only ever obeyed one master, and he was never of their pack.
Aurek beholds him in silence, no trace of enjoyment on his face, but I won’t watch. Instead, I look down at my lap and tug a thread from the dress I’m wearing, making a small hole. Merek said he believes it was one of Twylla’s; it’s too short and too tight on me, the seams straining at my waist and chest. I wonder where she is now, and hope she’s safe. I also hope she still wants to fight after she sees the carnage the Sleeping Prince left behind in the catacombs.
He led me through hallways littered with bodies, men, women, and children lying where they were slain. The curtains had been ripped from the doorways, blood was splattered over the stone walls, and I looked away from it as he paraded me through the Conclave. When we’d entered the Great Hall and passed the bodies of one of the Sisters and the Sin Eater, I’d cried out, and the Sleeping Prince had grinned, slipping an arm around me as though we were friends. His triumph was palpable; he exuded pleasure in his victory. I saw Silas briefly, seemingly unconscious, hooded and bound and bundled into a golem-pulled carriage with half a dozen guards. I haven’t seen him since we’ve been here.
That was ten weeks ago, and I still don’t know whether Twylla got out. I hope so. And I hope she still wants to fight. Though I have to admit I wouldn’t blame her if she turned tail and ran as far and as fast as she could.
When Merek has finished, he lifts his head but remains kneeling.
“Good dog,” Aurek says, and the real hounds whimper at him. “Now, why don’t—”
We’re saved from whatever he may have said next, by a knock. The atmosphere in the room changes immediately, sharpening to a point, and Aurek’s voice when he demands the caller enter is like a whip. The servant, dressed in black livery with the Solaris picked out in gold across his chest, can sense it, too, terror plain in his pale face as he bows deeply to Aurek. I look at the scroll in his shaking hand and feel a thrill of hope cut through my fear.
“A message, Your Grace,” the man says needlessly, eyes darting to the golems on either side of the door.
Aurek waves at Merek to stand and collect the rolled parchment, and then dismisses the servant, who leaves so quickly it’s as if he’s vanished into thin air the moment Merek has the paper tube in his hands.
Without Aurek needing to issue the order, Merek takes it to him, closing his eyes and breaking the seal on the message, unfurling it in front of Aurek, who grips his arm roughly and pulls it down so he can read whatever is written on the paper. I see Merek’s eyelashes flutter as he parts them, the tiniest fraction, to read the message for himself.
“Leave me,” Aurek explodes. “Both of you. Get out!”
I push away from the table, all but fleeing the room, Merek behind me as the golems swing their clubs. There is a crash from inside the Great Hall, the dogs begin to howl, and then I do run, picking up my skirts and putting as much distance as I can between me and the Sleeping Prince. I daren’t speak to Merek, and I hear his footsteps move away from mine, pausing to step behind a tapestry that I know conceals a door to the kitchens. I don’t look back, or stop.
I hurry through the unlit icy corridors, empty of people, moonlight guiding my way, casting shadows on the floor like prison bars. Once I reach the library, I close the door and lean against it, willing my heart to slow its thrumming in my chest. Minutes pass, until I finally have my brea
thing back under control, my legs no longer shaking, and I move to the fire I left burning. I’m back just in time; it’s beginning to die, and I reach for some of the books I put aside for this very purpose.
The door opens and I wheel around to see Merek standing in the doorway, with a goblet in his hands. He looks at me, then the books in my hand, and finally the fire. Without speaking, he crosses to one of the remaining small tables, puts the wine on it, and grips the chair in front of it.
“Don’t—” I begin, but it’s too late. He’s raised it over his head and brought it smashing to the floor. I throw my hands in front of my face as it shatters, pieces flying everywhere. When I lower them, Merek is already stuffing the wood into the fire, using a leg as a poker.
“I’d rather we burned the furniture than more books,” he says pointedly, and despite the cold air I blush.
“Sorry,” I say. It’s not the first time he’s caught me feeding books to the hearth in a bid to stay warm. “You did say these ones would be fine to use.”
“If you had no choice, I said. In an emergency.” His lips hint at a rueful smile.
I follow his gaze to the shelves, the gaps in them now where we’ve—I’ve—taken books and used them as fuel. Ordinarily I’d balk at it, too, but Aurek won’t supply any rooms with firewood save those he uses himself. I have a small allowance for the tower room he allocated me, but I’ve used this moon’s up already, and it’s too risky to meet Merek there too often anyway. Here it seems reasonable; he always brings something, and if Aurek or anyone else comes, we can say I summoned him to bring me food or wine while I read. To that end, I sit at the table and pull a book about agricultural management toward me, flipping it open. Merek, who has been lighting the few candles in the room from the now crackling fire, turns at the sound.
“What’s that?” he asks, and I hold it up so he can see the cover.
He squints to read the title. “Gods, that’s old.” He moves back to the table with the goblet and looks down at it.
The Scarecrow Queen Page 9