The Beauty of Darkness

by Mary E. Pearson

  The footsteps drew closer and the office door opened, a triangle of yellow briefly illuminating the floor before it was shut out again. He crossed the room, his footfalls light, and a faint scent swept in with him. Cologne? I had forgotten about the perfumed and pampered smells of court. In Venda the Council mostly smelled of sweat and sour ale. I heard the soft whoosh of the thickly upholstered chair as he sat, and then he lit a candle.

  He still didn’t see me.

  “Hello, Lord Viceregent.”

  He startled and began to stand.

  “No,” I said softly but firmly. “Don’t.” I stepped into the light so he could see my sword casually resting over my shoulder.

  He eyed the weapon and returned to his seat, saying simply, “Arabella.”

  His expression was solemn, but his voice was low and even, unpanicked as I’d thought it would be. The Timekeeper would have been spinning in circles and screaming by now, but the Viceregent wasn’t prone to hysterics like some in the cabinet. He was never in a hurry, never rushed. I sat down in the chair across from him.

  “Are you going to point that thing at me the whole time?” he asked.

  “It’s not pointed. Believe me, if it were, you would know it—and feel it. I’m actually affording you a bit of grace. I always liked you more than the other members of the cabinet, but that doesn’t mean you’re not one of them.”

  “One of what, Arabella?”

  I tried to gauge the innocence of his response. At this moment, it didn’t matter if he had ever been kind to me. I hated that I couldn’t take a chance even on kindness. I could trust no one.

  “Are you a traitor, Viceregent?” I asked him. “Like the Chancellor and Royal Scholar?”

  “I’m not sure what you’re saying.”

  “Treason, Lord Viceregent. Treason at the highest levels. I think the Chancellor has grown tired of the baubles on his fingers. And who knows what the Royal Scholar’s stake in this is. One thing I’ve learned from our dear Komizar is it all comes down to power and an insatiable hunger for it.” I told him about the Morrighese scholars in Venda, helping the Komizar arm and build a massive army. As I explained, I carefully watched his eyes, his face, his hands. All I saw was surprise and disbelief, and possibly a certain level of fear, as if I were insane.

  When I was finished, he sat back in his chair, his head shaking slightly, still absorbing everything I had said. “A barbarian army? Scholars in Venda? Those are rather … fantastical claims, Arabella. I don’t know what to do with them. I can’t go to the cabinet armed only with accusations against esteemed members, especially from, I’m sorry to say, you. I’d be laughed out of the hall. Do you have any evidence?”

  I didn’t want to admit that I had none. I thought of Kaden, who had actually seen the army, the scholars in the caverns, and intimately knew of the Komizar’s plans—but the word of a Vendan Assassin would be as laughable as mine.

  “I may,” I answered. “And then I’ll expose the Dragon of many faces.”

  He looked at me, confusion wrinkling his brow. “A dragon? Now what are you talking about?”

  He wasn’t familiar with the phrase. Or at he least pretended not to be. I shook his question away and stood. “Don’t get up—and that’s not a polite request.”

  “What do you want from me, Arabella?”

  I looked at him, scrutinizing every angle of his face, every flutter of his lashes. “I want you to know there are traitors in your midst, and if you are one of them, you will pay. You’ll pay as dearly as my brother did. I wasn’t the one who killed him. It was those fools who conspire with the Komizar.”

  He frowned. “The conspiring fools again. If they exist, as you claim, they’ve managed to hide it from me, so maybe they’re not as foolish as you think.”

  “Trust me,” I said, “they’re not half as cunning as the Komizar, nor half as intelligent. They’re fools to believe he’d keep any agreement they’ve struck with him. The Komizar shares nothing, least of all, power. Whatever he has promised—and I’m guessing it’s the throne of Morrighan—they will never see it. Once he uses them for his purposes, they’re done. As are we.”

  I turned to leave, but he quickly leaned forward, the candlelight illuminating a stray blond wisp falling over his brow. His eyes were earnest. “Wait! Please, Arabella, stay. Let me help. I’m sorry I didn’t more vigorously defend you. I’ve made mistakes in the past too—ones I deeply regret.” He stood. “I’m sure we can straighten this out if—”

  “No,” I said, raising my sword. The scent wafted again, a flutter so faint it was hardly there, but it unsettled me in a deep distant way. It was jasmine. The thought burrowed deeper. Jasmine. In the same breath, I saw a little boy clinging to the trousers of his father, pleading to stay.

  Jasmine soap.

  I was jolted with the impossible. I gaped at the Viceregent, staring as if I were meeting him for the first time. His white-blond hair. His calm brown eyes. The smooth tremor of his voice floating through my head. And then another voice of a similar timbre. I was a bastard child born to a highborn lord.

  My breath froze in my lungs. How had I never seen it before?

  Heard it before?

  The Viceregent was Kaden’s father, a man as cruel as the Komizar, beating his son and selling him to strangers for a copper.

  He stared at me, waiting, hopeful.

  But was he a traitor?

  I’ve made mistakes in the past too—ones I deeply regret.

  Worry flashed through his eyes.

  Worry over me?

  Or worry that I had discovered his secret?

  “Why would I ever trust a man who threw out his eight-year-old son like a piece of garbage?”

  His eyes widened. “Kaden? Kaden’s alive?”

  “Yes, alive and still very scarred. He has never healed from your betrayal.”

  “I—” His face crumpled as if he was overwhelmed, and he leaned forward, his head braced in his hands. He mumbled quietly to himself then said, “I searched for him for years. I knew I’d made a mistake the minute it was done, but I couldn’t find him. I assumed he was dead.”

  “Searched for him after selling him for a copper to strangers?”

  He looked up, his eyes wet. “I did no such thing! Is that what he told you?” He leaned back in his chair, looking weak and spent. “I shouldn’t be surprised. He was a grieving child who had just lost his mother. I’ve wanted to take back that decision a hundred times, but I was grieving too.”

  “And what decision was that?”

  His eyes squeezed shut as if a painful memory tormented him. “I was trapped in a loveless marriage. I didn’t mean for the affair with Cataryn to happen, but it did. My wife tolerated the arrangement well enough because she had no use for me and Cataryn was good to our sons, but after Cataryn died, she’d have no part of Kaden. When I tried to move him into our house, she beat him in a rage. I didn’t know what else to do. For his own good, I contacted Cataryn’s only relative, a distant uncle who agreed to take him in. I was the one who gave him money for Kaden’s care. When I went to visit Kaden, the uncle and his family were gone.”

  “That’s a far different story than the one Kaden tells.”

  “What else can you expect, Arabella? He was only eight years old. In only a few days, his world was turned upside down—his mother died, and his father sent him to live with strangers. Where is he? Here?”

  Even if I had known where Kaden was, I wouldn’t have revealed it to the Viceregent—yet. “Last I saw him, he was in Venda—an accomplice of the Komizar.”

  Disbelief shone in his eyes, and I left before he could ask me another question.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

  I paced the caretaker’s cottage on the edge of the millpond, listening to the rain. I had already stoked a fire and wiped down the sparse furniture that filled it—a battered table, three rickety chairs, a stool, a rocker that was missing one arm, and the wooden frame of a bed, still sturdy, but its mattress eaten by mic
e long ago.

  The cottage and the mill that sat across from it on the other side of the pond were abandoned decades ago for a deeper, larger pond farther east of Civica. Only bullfrogs, dragonflies, and raccoons visited here now—and occasionally young princes and a princess fleeing the scrutiny of court. Our names were carved in the wide door frame, along with those of dozens of other village children—at least those brave enough to venture here. It was said to be haunted by the Ancients. Bryn and I may have had something to do with that rumor. I suppose we wanted it all to ourselves. Even my father’s name was carved here. Branson. I ran my fingers over the rough letters. It was hard to imagine that he’d ever been a carefree child running through the woods, and I wondered at the way we all change, all the outside forces that press and mold and push us into people and things we hadn’t planned to be. Maybe it happened so gradually that by the time we noticed, it was too late to be anything else.

  Like the Komizar. Reginaus. A boy and name snuffed out of existence.

  I fingered my name in the wood, the lines crooked, but deep. LIA. I took my knife out and squeezed in four more letters in front of it. JEZE. And I wondered at who I had become—someone I had never planned to be.

  Pauline’s name wasn’t carved in the wood, and as far as I knew, she had never been here. By the time she arrived in Civica, the cottage had lost some of its magic for me and my brothers and we rarely came anymore. Besides, such wanderings were off limits, and Pauline followed the protocol of the queen’s court to the letter—well, almost to the letter, until she met Mikael.

  Where was she? Had Natiya misunderstood, or spoken to the wrong person? Maybe the rain had delayed her? But it was only a light rain, and we were used to that in Civica.

  Today when I returned to my room, my mind had still been reeling with my late-night revelation. The Viceregent had seemed our best possibility of someone to trust in the cabinet. I had tried to test for his truthfulness, and everything he had said seemed genuine—even his claim about deep regrets. Was it possible he had changed in the eleven years since he threw Kaden out? Eleven years was a long time. I had changed in far less. So had Kaden. The Viceregent was already in a high position of power, second in command to my father. What more would he have to gain?

  I was so occupied with these thoughts that Natiya had had to grab my arms and shake them, then repeat her news. She claimed she’d found Pauline. She said Pauline’s head was bowed and covered so she couldn’t see her hair, but she knew a pregnant belly when she saw one, and Natiya had chased after her just outside the cemetery gate. When she was close enough, Natiya called her name. Pauline seemed fearful, but she agreed to come.

  I prayed she wasn’t afraid of me. Surely she couldn’t believe the lies. Or maybe she was only being cautious. She didn’t know Natiya, and perhaps she suspected a trap. But she knew the millpond had once been a favorite haunt of mine. A stranger wouldn’t have suggested it.

  Maybe Berdi and Gwyneth had delayed her. Gwyneth was suspicious of everything, and here in Civica, rightly so. I should take that as a good sign.

  But still my anxiety grew.

  I paced the cottage and finally pulled out a chair and sat staring at the cottage door, my hands kneading my thighs. Bit by bit, I was losing everything. If I lost Pauline too, I wasn’t sure what I would do. What if she—

  The handle rattled and the door eased open cautiously, its creak the only sound. As a quick afterthought, I put my hand on my dagger, but then Pauline stepped in, her hair dripping in wet strands, her flushed cheeks shimmering with rain. Our gazes met, and her eyes told me what I had feared. She knew. There was a condemning sharpness in them I had never seen before. My stomach floated even as my heart sank.

  “You should have told me, Lia,” she said. “You should have told me! I could have dealt with it. You didn’t even give me a chance.”

  I nodded, words stuck in my throat. She was right. “I was afraid, Pauline. I thought I could bury the truth and make it go away. I was wrong.”

  She stepped toward me, hesitant at first, then earnest, throwing her arms around me, a fierceness in her grip. Angry. Her fists curling into my clothes, demanding, shaking, and then she leaned into me, sobbing. “You’re alive,” she cried into my shoulder. “You’re alive.” My chest shook, and I cried with her, the months and lies between us vanishing. She told me how frightened she’d been, the agony of waiting with no word, and the relief she felt when she saw me impersonating the queen. She, Berdi, and Gwyneth had been discreetly looking for me since then. “I love you, Lia. You are my sister, by the gods, a sister as true as blood. I knew what they said about you were lies.”

  I wasn’t sure who held up whom, each of us heavy in the other’s arms, our cheeks wet against each other. “My brothers?”

  “Bryn and Regan are well, but worried about you.”

  Now it was my fists that curled into her clothes, and I choked back tears as she told me they hadn’t stopped believing in me either. They had asked a lot of questions trying to get at the truth and promised that as soon as they returned, they would find it. She said Berdi and Gwyneth were here with her and she told me where they were staying. I understood now why Natiya hadn’t been able to find them. It was a small tavern down an alley that let rooms above the shop. I remembered it. There was no sign. You had to know it was there. No doubt Gwyneth had found that one.

  I finally stepped back and wiped my cheeks, surveying her girth. “And you’re well?”

  She nodded, rubbing her hand over her belly. “I spotted Mikael weeks ago, but I only had the courage to confront him recently.” A bittersweet smile creased her eyes, and we sat down at the table. She talked about him, recalling her dreams for their future that she thought had been his dreams too, all the times they held hands and talked, and planned, and kissed. She went over memories and details as if they were flower petals she was plucking one at a time and then letting them go in the wind. I listened, feeling a part of me break.

  “He’ll never be this child’s father,” she finally said. She told me with calm resignation about the girls on his arm, his denial, and all the doubts she’d carefully tucked away that came to life before her eyes when they spoke. “I knew what he was like when I met him. I thought I was that one girl special enough to change him. I was a happy fool living in a fantasy. I’m not that girl anymore.”

  I saw the change in her. She was different. Sober. The dreams she’d had were swept from her eyes. I saw all the reasons I had lied to her, thinking if her fantasy stayed alive, maybe mine could too.

  “You were never a fool, Pauline. Your dreams gave flight to my own.”

  She pressed her hand to her back as if trying to counter the weight of the baby pulling against her spine. “I have different aspirations now.”

  “We all do,” I answered, feeling the tug of lost dreams.

  She frowned. “You mean Rafe.”

  I nodded.

  “He showed up at Berdi’s inn looking for you. When I told him about Kaden, he started giving orders, saying more men would come to help, and they did, but none of them ever returned. At first I feared something had happened to them, but then I wondered if he had deceived us just like Kaden. Berdi guessed that Rafe wasn’t really a farmer, which only fueled my worries that he couldn’t be trusted—”

  “Berdi was right. Rafe wasn’t a farmer,” I said. “He was a soldier—and also Prince Jaxon of Dalbreck—the betrothed I left at the altar.”

  She looked at me like I had lost my mind back in Venda.

  “But he’s no longer a prince,” I added. “Now he’s the king of Dalbreck.”

  “Prince? King? None of this makes sense.”

  “I know,” I said. “It doesn’t. Let me start at the beginning.”

  I tried to tell her everything in the order that it had happened, but very quickly she interrupted. “Kaden put a hood over your head? Then dragged you across the entire Cam Lanteux?” I saw the hatred in her eyes that Kaden had feared she would harbor.
r />   “Yes, he did, but—”

  “I don’t understand how he could share a holy feast with us at Berdi’s table in one moment and threaten to kill us both in the next? How could he—”

  We both froze. We heard the whicker of a horse. I put my finger to my lips. “Did you ride here?” I whispered.

  She shook her head. Neither did I. It was a short walk, and it was easier to slip through the woods unseen on foot.

  “Could someone have followed you?”

  Her eyes widened, and I was shocked to see her draw a knife. She had never carried one before. I drew mine as well.

  Heavy footsteps scraped on the stone steps outside the door. Pauline and I both stood and then the door opened.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

  KADEN

  I saw the blade before I saw her. It flashed past me, slicing my shoulder just as I slammed her up against the wall.

  And then I saw that it was Pauline.

  Lia was yelling at both of us. “Drop the knife, Pauline! Drop it! Kaden! Let her go!”

  The knife was still firm in her grip, her hand straining against mine. “Stop!” I yelled.

  She seethed. “Not this time, barbarian!”

  I felt the sting where the blade had cut me and the warmth of blood spreading across my shoulder. “What’s the matter with you? You could have killed me!”

  Her eyes held no apology, only hatred that I didn’t think it was possible for Pauline to possess.

  “Stop!” Lia said firmly, and she pulled the knife from Pauline’s hand. She nodded for me to let Pauline go. I took a chance and released her, moving out of her reach, waiting for her to come at me again. Lia stepped between us.

  “I told him to come, Pauline,” she said. “He’s here to help. We can trust him.”

  But Pauline was incensed and still not listening. “You lied to us! We treated you with nothing but kindness and then—”

  Lia continued to try to explain and calm Pauline down.