The Beauty of Darkness

by Mary E. Pearson

  I kept my eyes fixed on the city, the seven blue domes of the chanterie barely visible. Another thump. A stack of papers. Sven brought me an itinerary each evening for the next day.

  “A full day tomorrow,” he said.

  As they all were. This was not news. This was more like the bang of a gavel proclaiming another day set in stone.

  He joined me at the rail looking out at the city. “Beautiful, isn’t it?”

  “Yes. Beautiful,” I answered.

  “But?”

  “No buts, Sven.” I didn’t want to go into it, the worry I couldn’t let go of, the vague something that didn’t feel right in my gut.

  “I’m afraid you’ll need to squeeze in one more meeting tonight that’s not on the schedule.”

  “Move it to tomorrow. It’s late—”

  “Merrick has the information you wanted. He’ll be here within the hour.”

  * * *

  Before Merrick sat down, before he even entered my chambers, I knew what he would say, but I let it play out. It is true, Rafe. Every word is true. But I still held out hope for a fraud, an epic hoax penned by some sick mind in Morrighan. After pleasantries and a few explanations about his surprise at the age of the document, he pulled the worn leather sleeve from his satchel and returned it to me, then handed me another paper covered with his perfect scrolled lettering. An experienced scholar’s translation.

  Merrick accepted a small glass of the spirits Sven offered to him and sat back. “May I ask where you acquired this?”

  “It was stolen from a library in Morrighan. Is it genuine?”

  He nodded. “It’s the oldest document I’ve ever translated. At least a couple of thousand years, or more. The word usage is similar to two dated documents in our archives—and the paper and ink are unquestionably from another era. It’s in remarkably good shape for its age.”

  But did it say what Lia claimed it did?

  I read his translation aloud. With each word and passage, I heard Lia’s voice instead of my own. I saw her worried eyes. I felt her hand squeezing mine, hopeful. I heard the murmurs of the clans in the square, listening to her. Word for word, it was the same as her translation. My mouth was suddenly dry when I got to the last verses, and I paused to drink some of the wine that Sven had poured me.

  For the Dragon will conspire,

  Wearing his many faces,

  Deceiving the oppressed, gathering the wicked,

  Wielding might like a god, unstoppable,

  Unforgiving in his judgment,

  Unyielding in his rule,

  A stealer of dreams,

  A slayer of hope.

  Until the one comes who is mightier,

  The one sprung from misery,

  The one who was weak,

  The one who was hunted,

  The one marked with claw and vine,

  The one named in secret,

  The one called Jezelia.

  “An unusual name,” Merrick said. “And if I recall correctly, it’s the princess’s name as well.”

  I looked up from the page, wondering how he knew.

  “The marriage documents,” he explained. “I saw them. You probably never even looked, did you?”

  “No,” I said quietly. I had signed and ignored them, just as I had ignored her note to me. “But I’m told these are only the babblings of a madwoman?”

  He pursed his lips as if thinking it over. “Could be. They’re certainly cryptic and odd. There’s no way to know for sure. But it’s curious that a madwoman could accurately describe such specific things thousands of years ago. And the brief Morrighese notes that were tucked in with it confirm it was uncovered more than a decade after Princess Arabella was born. Early nomadic text in Dalbreck’s historical record suggested something similar, in nearly identical phrasing—from the scheming of rulers, hope would be born. I always assumed it meant Breck, but perhaps not.”

  The steadiness of his gaze told me more than his commentary. He believed every word.

  I felt a beat like a warning, the juddering that crawls through your bones when a horse is galloping toward you.

  “There’s a little more on the next page.”

  I looked down at the papers and shuffled the top one aside. There were two more verses.

  Betrayed by her own,

  Beaten and scorned,

  She will expose the wicked,

  For the Dragon of many faces

  Knows no boundaries.

  And though the wait may be long,

  The promise is great,

  For the one named Jezelia,

  Whose life will be sacrificed,

  For the hope of saving yours.

  Sacrificed?

  This Lia had never shared with me.

  Had she known all along?

  Rage shot through me, and right on its heels, gutting fear.

  It is true, Rafe. Every word is true.

  I stood and walked to one end of my chamber and back again, circling around my desk, my head pounding, trying to make sense of it. Betrayed by her own? Beaten and scorned? Sacrificed?

  Dammit, Lia! Damn you!

  I grabbed tomorrow’s schedule and threw it against the wall, papers flying to the floor.

  Merrick stood. “Your Majesty, I—”

  I brushed past him. “Sven! I want General Draeger in my chamber first thing in the morning!”

  “I believe he already has—”

  “Here! By dawn!” I yelled.

  Sven smiled. “I’ll see to it.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  KADEN

  I used to go to market with my mother. Isolated on the estate, I didn’t get to see much of the world, so the market was a place of wonder to me. We traveled on this same road in the wagon with the cook. My mother bought supplies for my lessons with my half brothers—paper, books, inks, and small bags of candied peels as rewards for a week of diligent study.

  She always bought something just for me too. Strange small gifts that fascinated me—trinkets of the Ancients that had no purpose or meaning anymore, thin shiny disks that caught the sun, brown coins of worthless metals, battered ornaments from their carriages. She told me to imagine their greater purpose. I kept them on a shelf in the cottage, carefully arranged treasures that held my imagination and took me to places beyond the grounds of the estate, objects that grew in wonder and helped me imagine a greater purpose even for myself—until one day my eldest brother snuck into the cottage and stole them all away. I caught him just as he was dumping them down the well. He wanted me to have nothing. Less than I already did.

  It wasn’t the last time I cried. A year later, my mother died.

  Less was all I’d ever had, or been. Even now. I was nothing. A soldier without a kingdom, a son without a family. A man without—

  The day Lia and Rafe had parted churned in my thoughts again, as it had so many times before, like a piece was missing, something I didn’t understand. When she’d left Rafe to join us on the trail, her face was like a piece of stone sculpture with a thousand tiny cracks in it, a sightless stare, her lips parted, frozen the same way a statue might be. In the past months, I’d thought Lia had looked at me with everything her eyes could hold—hatred, tenderness, shame, sorrow, vengeance—and what I’d thought might be love. I’d thought I knew the language of Lia, but the look she’d had in her eyes the day she left Rafe behind, I had never seen.

  Yes, it’s different between us. It always has been, Kaden, and if you’re honest with yourself, you’ve always known it too.…

  We both care for Venda and Morrighan.… Don’t underestimate the bond we share. Great kingdoms have been built on far less.

  Maybe with Lia, less could be more, the greater purpose my mother had always hoped for.

  Maybe less could be enough.

  * * *

  The road to the manor was thicker with trees than I remembered. Branches hung overhead like a twisted-fingered canopy. For the first time, I wondered if I’d misremembered the way.
I couldn’t imagine the grand and powerful Lord Roché living down this unassuming, remote lane. I had never been back. The beggar’s threats to a child had lodged somewhere in my skull, he will drown you in a bucket. Even once I was Venda’s Assassin, the one the rest of the Rahtan had feared, the memory of that threat could still make my heart beat faster. It still did, every scar resurfacing as if I were eight years old again. Would killing him change that? I’d always thought it would. Maybe today I would find out.

  And then I saw it, a glimpse of the white stone through the trees. I hadn’t forgotten the way. As I drew closer, I saw that the grounds had fallen into disarray. The green clipped lawns were only stubble and dirt now, and the once-sculpted shrubs were overgrown and choked with vines. The sprawling manor, set far back from the road, looked unkempt and abandoned, but I spotted a thin trail of smoke rising from one of its five chimneys. Someone was there.

  I circled around so no one would see me, and first I went to the cottage I had shared with my mother. It was once white too, but most of the paint had flaked away long ago. There was no doubt that it was uninhabited. The same vines that choked the shrubs crept over the porch and front window. I tied up my horse, and the warped door gave way under my shoulder. When I walked inside, it seemed smaller than I remembered. The furniture was all gone, probably sold to beggars too, disposable things just like me. The cottage was simply a dusty hull now that held no trace of my mother or the life I had when I was loved. I looked at the empty hearth, the empty mantel above it, the empty room that used to hold my bed, the emptiness that pervaded it all. I spun and walked out. I needed fresh air.

  I leaned on the porch rail, staring at the quiet manor, the scent of jasmine strong in my memory. I pictured him sitting inside, stiff-backed in a chair, his trousers neatly pressed, a bucket of water at his side. Waiting. I couldn’t be drowned anymore. I stepped off the porch and walked to the eastern part of the estate, remaining out of sight. There was one place where I knew I would find my mother. Only the gravedigger and my father had been present when we buried her. Not even my half brothers, whom she had tutored and treated kindly, bothered to come and say a few last words. No marker had been made for her grave, so I had found the heaviest stones I could carry and laid them like a blanket atop the mounded dirt, fitting them together until my father told me to stop.

  I searched for the mound of stones now, but it was gone too. There was nothing to mark where she lay in the earth—but there were other graves not far away—two of which had large chiseled headstones. I pulled away the vines, hoping I had forgotten where she lay and that one of these was for her. Neither was. One was for my eldest brother. He had died only a few weeks after I left. My stepmother, if I could even call her that, had died a month later. An accident? A fever?

  I looked back at the house and the smoke curling from the chimney. Was it possible that my father was a sickly broken man now? That would explain the state of the grounds he had once taken so much pride in. My other half brother would be twenty-two now, strong and able to fight back—but he probably wouldn’t recognize me after all these years. I loosened the strap on my scabbard, feeling the position of my knife at my side. It was what the Komizar had always dangled in front of me—justice—and one day I would be the one to deliver it. I walked toward the house and knocked on the door.

  I heard shuffling inside, something slamming, a call to someone and a curse, and then finally the door swung open. I recognized her even though her hair had gone white and she was twice the size she had once been. It was the manor housekeeper. I had remembered her as pinched and made of angles and sharp knuckles that had frequently rapped my head. Now she was round and ample. A large iron pot dangled from her hand.

  She squinted at me. “Yaaap?”

  The sound of her voice crawled over my skin. That hadn’t changed. “I’m here to see Lord Roché.”

  She laughed. “Here? What rock have you been hiding under? He hasn’t been here in years. Not more than in passing now that he has his big important job.”

  Gone? For years? It didn’t seem possible. My memory of him lording over the estate and county was frozen here and in all my imaginings since.

  “What job would that be?” I asked.

  She hissed through her teeth like I was an oblivious jackass.

  “He’s at the citadelle working for the king. One of those fancy cabinet jobs. Got no need for this place nomore. Barely tosses me coin to keep it up. Shame how it looks now.”

  He’s in Civica? Part of the king’s cabinet?

  “Wait a minute,” the housekeeper said, leaning closer and wagging her finger at me. Disbelief shone in her eyes. “I know who you are. You’re that bastard boy.” In an instant, her disinterest flamed to hatred. Her finger poked my chest, but my head was still reeling with this new information. My father was in Civica? A far more deadly thought gripped me. Did the Komizar know? Had he guessed who my father was—was this why he kept his sources so closely held? Had he been working with the man I sought to destroy all along?

  I turned to leave, but the housekeeper grabbed my arm. “You and your gift!” she snarled. “You said the mistress would die a horrible death, and she did. You miserable little beast—”

  I heard a noise behind me and spun toward it drawing my knife at the same time, but then felt an explosion across the back of my head and the world tumbled as I fell forward.

  * * *

  When I woke, I was perched over the well. Two men held me. A cord cut into my hands, which were tied behind my back. The housekeeper grinned. “This is where the boy died,” she said, “but you know that, don’t you? Drowned. Someone pushed him in. We know it was you. You always hated him. Jealous you were. Mistress went crazy, dying slowly day by day, and finally slit her wrists a month later. A slow, horrible death, just like you predicted. Seeing her firstborn pulled from a well all clammy and bloated was the worst thing that could have happened to her. Nothing was the same around here after that. Not for any of us. Now it’s your turn, boy.”

  The world swam in front of me. I guessed that instead of her knuckles, this time her pot had met my skull. She nodded to the men holding me. It was a deep well. Once I was thrown down, there would be no climbing out. The men lifted me under my arms, but my legs were still free. I shook off the dizziness and struck out at them both almost simultaneously. One of my boots shattered a kneecap, and I jammed the other man in the groin.When he doubled over, my knee cracked his neck. I rolled away, grabbing my knife from the dead man’s side and sliced the cord behind my back. The man with the crushed knee screamed in pain but limped forward, thrashing at me with his machete. With one swipe of my blade, his throat lay open and he fell dead next to the other man. The housekeeper stared at me, horrified, and ran toward the house.

  My head throbbed, and I bent over, trying to get my bearings, the world still spinning, then I ran too. I didn’t know how long I’d been out. I stumbled to my horse, still tied behind the cottage, pain splitting my head in two, blood running down my neck, my back wet and sticky, and I rode, hoping Lia hadn’t left without me, hoping I wouldn’t pass out before I reached her. I knew at least one more traitor in the Morrighese cabinet, because if anyone had no concept of loyalty, it was my father.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  Drizzle fell lightly. I pulled my cloak closer. The wind circled, gusted, a hiss to its voice. Mist stung my cheeks with a thousand warning whispers. This was either the beginning or the end.

  The universe sang your name to me. I simply sang it back.

  For how many centuries had the name circled? How many had heard and turned away? Even now, the choice was still mine. I could turn away. Wait for someone else to hear the call. I was suddenly hit with the enormity of what I had to do. I was only Princess Arabella again, inadequate, voiceless, and, maybe most of all, unwelcome.

  But time was running out.

  It had to be someone.

  I pressed two fingers to my lips. For Pauline. Berdi, Gwyneth, my brothers.
For Walther, Greta, Aster. I lifted my hand, giving my prayers flight. And Kaden. Let him be alive. And Rafe. Let—But there was nothing to ask for. He was where he needed to be.

  Horses stamped behind me, their snorts muffled in the heavy air. I looked back at Father Maguire waiting beside Natiya for my signal. He nodded, his hair dripping with the damp, his eyes fixed on mine, as if he had always known this moment would come. Seventeen years ago, I held a squalling infant girl in my hands. I lifted her up to the gods, praying for her protection and promising mine. I’m not a fool. I keep my promises to the gods, not men. His promise to the gods was a currency worth more than gold to me now.

  I stared at my old life sprawled across hills and valleys in a patchwork of memories—the misshapen ruins, the white-capped bay, the leaning spire of Golgata, the hamlets nestled outside the city walls, the village streets, the towers of the citadelle, the abbey where I was to be married—the same place where a young priest had lifted a baby girl to the gods and promised his protection, while others had conspired against her from the very beginning.

  This was Civica.

  The heart of Morrighan.

  I was entering a city that reviled me.

  Guards posted along the roads would be on the lookout for Princess Arabella. But a veiled widow traveling with her young daughter and accompanied by a priest? We wouldn’t suffer much scrutiny.

  “Do you think Kaden’s dead?” Natiya asked.

  “No,” I answered for the third time. Natiya was betraying what she had worked so hard to deny, even to herself. I understood that denial of feelings. Sometimes it was necessary.

  “He’ll be here,” I reassured her.