by Anne Wheeler
Ryllis pinched the palm of her hand. With that, the empress was getting too close to the truth. “I did. It was better than the alternative. My lady, I really must be getting to work.”
“I would like to help. It’s been a long while since I felt the earth between my hands.” Her gaze grew distant.
“No!” The empress took a step back at her tone, and Ryllis swore to herself. “Your Majesty, please. There’s no need for that. Your hands, your dress—the prince will be here soon and—”
“My hands are old enough already, and fabric can be washed. And my son is loyal enough to not deny his mother whatever she wants, isn’t he?”
Ryllis opened her mouth, then closed it. The garden was her sanctuary, hers alone, and the empress was hardly benign, but there was no graceful way out of this situation. Not after the woman had delicately questioned her allegiance, which was tenuous to begin with. Either she yielded to imperial desire this very second or . . .
It wasn’t worth thinking about. Only Kresten’s life mattered now.
She dipped her head. “I am sure he will not, Your Majesty.”
“Good. Then show me where you planned to work.”
Her feet were half frozen to the damp ground in anxiety, but Ryllis motioned toward the greenhouse. “Inside, I suppose.” She trailed the empress by a pace. If further back was more appropriate, she had no way of knowing. “I need to water the seedlings I have set up.”
“I’ll do that.” The woman bypassed the automated watering system and reached for a large metal can. “No, don’t look at that spraying system. If only Vidar had any idea how peaceful it was to do things the old-fashioned way, he might spend more time out here. Realm knows the place needs it.”
She busied herself with the can, and Ryllis moved a few rows away, toward the trays of seedlings. They had already sprouted, and she ran her fingers down the edges of the trays, letting them linger on the sections where no green was yet visible. It was an ordinary enough gesture, even though her heart began to pound as she touched the plastic. But empress in sight or not, she needed to do the prince’s bidding, and there was no time to waste. Kresten would risk everything for her life, wouldn’t he?
“You are not here of your own free will,” the empress interrupted, refilling the watering can. She was getting closer and closer to the small nest of mice Ryllis had noticed before, but she didn’t dare a word. Royalty didn’t like pests.
“No, my lady,” she said. “I was brought here from Cereth. Against my will.”
“Well, that much is obvious.” The empress lay down the can and peered at her. “But I meant here, at Vidar’s estate. You were not brought to this place directly from Cereth, and you were happy for a time on Vilaria. You didn’t volunteer to serve to Vidar as you claim, so why are you here, at my son’s estate? And why are you so unhappy now?”
The woman’s uncannily accurate recounting of her experiences was bad enough, but the idea that someone could tell how miserable she was filled Ryllis’s eyes with tears until the greenhouse wall blurred in front of her. Vidar would be furious if he found out.
“I have never been happy on Vilaria,” she said.
“You dare lie to me, girl? You were happy once—more than that, you were in love. I can sense your loss and guilt. Almost anyone could, and there is only one reason you’d feel that guilty, I would think.” She twisted toward a full planter and spoke to the bulbs there. “You fell in love with the wrong person. A Vilarian man, and you would do anything to make the memories go away.”
Ryllis took a step backward. Her foot hit the stack of pots behind her, and they crashed the ground, echoing through the greenhouse. The empress was—oh, stars above, what a mess. How could she have walked into it? Well, it made sense. Kresten’s gift was genetic. She crouched down to gather the pots and looked up, wishing she was anywhere else. Or that the prince would barge in. Or that she was wrong about the empress.
“You’re a telepath, Your Majesty?”
The old woman set down the can with a soft chuckle. “I prefer to call it thought transference, but yes. It runs through my father’s distant branch of the imperial family, though only one of my children ended up with the gift. I had hoped for more, but it is for the best that it’s limited. Being feared like we are is no way to live.” Her eyes grew distant, then focused on Ryllis again. “Do not look so afraid of me. I cannot read your thoughts—I can only feel your emotions right now because they are so strong.”
“I know how it works,” Ryllis said quietly, the mice temporarily forgotten.
“Oh? A Cerethian is familiar with the process? That’s odd.” Her gaze fell to Ryllis’s forearm. “But you don’t wear the mark, which means you must have met Kresten. He visits here every so often, but it’s been a long while now.” She smiled fondly, an expression full of the past and love. “He’s at the academy now, you know. He’ll make a fine officer one day.”
“One day?” The woman’s out-of-sequence ramblings made no sense. Kresten had to be a dozen solar cycles out of the academy, if not more.
The empress chuckled. “Well, he’s practically a child, after all. I feel it was only last lunar cycle that I rocked him to sleep as he cried.”
Ryllis stared at her longer than appropriate. She’s rather ill, Kresten had said. She scarcely knows me anymore, and visiting usually makes things worse for her. Kresten is her baby, not a man.
Vilarian royalty or not, the situation made her heart hurt.
The empress wandered off like their conversation had ended more politely, then glanced at the nest of mice in the empty pot in the corner. Her eyes narrowed, and she bent down toward them. “What’s this?”
“My lady—” Ryllis wanted to snatch the pot away.
“Don’t look so fearful. Babies are babies, no matter the species, and I do miss them. Ten days or so?”
“I’m not sure. They were here when I arrived.”
Blind and hairless they had been, and no matter what she’d promised the prince, Ryllis hadn’t been able to bring herself to dispose of them. Their eyes had opened just recently, and they had stared at her every time she’d checked on them, only breaking their gaze to nurse. The mother was little herself, and there was no doubt the babies were borrowing her power to make up for what their mother couldn’t provide.
She set the pot down and eyed Ryllis. “You may be worried about them, but you needn’t be. They will be healthy and have enough descendants to fairly torment my son. And you . . . you will be happy again.”
Ryllis could have laughed, but the seriousness in the empress’s tone. “You prophesy as well as read minds, Your Majesty?”
The empress smiled. “No. I just have faith.”
“I don’t believe in faith anymore.” Ryllis looked away, then gritted her teeth. “Your locket is lovely, my lady.”
And it was—where Ryllis would have expected that dreaded imperial crest that was stamped inside her servant’s uniform and woven into the iron that made up the prince’s garden gate, the locket was etched in an organic vine pattern.
The empress pried it open it with gnarled fingers and handed over a dried flower with the faintest reminder of a stem. “Meadow sweetvine,” she said. “It fairly covered the imperial gardens until a virus swept through ten solar cycles ago. They never figured out what it was, and within two solar cycles, they were gone. We tried cloning what remained, but it was too late—none are left on Vilaria.”
Ryllis brushed a light fingertip over the crisp petals. To think she was holding the last of its kind. “And you miss them.”
The empress nodded. “They were a part of my past. I brought them to Carilles from my hometown when I married. They were a reminder, even at my loneliest, that the things I loved weren’t truly gone.” She picked up the watering can again. “But sometimes even flowers die,” she said over her shoulder.
Ryllis’s heart skipped. Dare she? There probably wasn’t any essence left in the dried bloom, but as easy as cloning was for the average
gardener, it was as easy as breathing for her. Even easier, sometimes. And the empress’s mental state was too deteriorated for her to realize where any new flower would come from, wasn’t it? Without thinking, she snipped off the small stem with her fingernail and stuck it in one of the seedling trays. By tomorrow, she would know.
The empress turned back toward her. “I’m tired,” she announced, sticking paper-like petals in the locket once more. “I think it’s time for a rest.”
Ryllis nodded and handed the flower over before placing her hand over the stem. Her breath caught in her chest at the familiar sensation. It already felt warm. Alive. Everyone on Cereth might think it wrong, but Kresten’s mother deserved a little of her happiness back—some of her memories, too.
“Mother!” Prince Vidar strode inside the greenhouse, dressed in finery, like he was about to have a formal audience with the emperor, and Ryllis yanked her hand away from the seed tray. “I didn’t expect you here today. What in the Realm—”
His gaze landed on Ryllis, and she pressed herself against the greenhouse glass, as though she could disappear into it. She wanted to reach out to the little stem again, but the way the prince was looking at her . . .
“And you, slave. There are some Fleet officers here to ask you some questions. Your work in the garden is done. You’ll go with them, and I don’t want to see you back here again.”
Suddenly, with her future staring her right in the face, handing herself over to torture and execution—even to save Kresten—didn’t seem as appealing. Ryllis leaned her cheek against the glass, heat and ice and terror fighting to outdo each other. She couldn’t stare at his hard face and embroidered jacket. She peered into the garden, squinted into the sunrise. On the other side of the thick glass, three silhouettes paced about in dark blue, angular weapons at their sides.
She looked inside, back at the prince, begging him for help with her eyes, but his expression was inscrutable. There was no aid here, for her or Kresten. The prince had fulfilled his bargain, all that she’d asked and nothing more.
This was it, then. She wouldn’t fight; she wouldn’t run.
With a short curtsey to the wide-eyed empress, Ryllis raised her hands to her sides and walked on to the dew-covered lawn to meet her death.
Chapter Nineteen
They walked her through the heavy steel doors without a word, and her knees refused to stop shaking. Only the thought of Kresten suffering in this place kept her moving forward. Not even the shock sticks they nudged her with when she slowed frightened her from her goal.
She would tell them everything. That she wasn’t a traitor, but she’d been hiding her gift for almost her entire life. That Kresten hadn’t known. That he hadn’t done anything wrong. That he’d questioned her, yes, and she’d denied everything, because he’d never hit on her real secret. That they needed to release him, because he was innocent of whatever they had accused him of.
They would question her the regular way at first, yes, even though she doubted her hand was capable of holding a stylus. And then, when she signed her confession and read it back to them, they would insist on doing just what Kresten had asked of her.
They would read her mind.
She stumbled that time, and the stick hit her in the ribs, right over where they’d hit her before. How far were they going to walk?
Too soon they yanked her to a halt and pushed her into the center of a bland, empty room. There was a man there already, tall and blond with watery blue eyes and a Fleet uniform like Kresten had once worn. Ryllis wanted to lunge at him and wipe the self-satisfied smirk off his face, but she stood there, silent, as he waved off the guards.
“Why did you turn yourself in?” he asked as the door closed.
“I didn’t.”
The blond man folded his arms. “Don’t lie to me. I’m not stupid.”
“Because I can’t run forever, and I can’t hide, not on Vilaria.” It wasn’t the entire truth, but protecting Kresten meant protecting his brother, to an extent.
He focused in on her. “That’s true. Most take a little longer to figure that out.”
Ryllis stiffened. “And because he’s innocent of whatever you’ve accused him of.”
The man chuckled. “How would you know?”
“Tell me what it is, and I’ll tell you.” The air vent turned on, and she almost jumped at the sound and sudden breeze.
“Concealing you, for one thing. Learning of your crimes and not informing us makes his crimes as bad as what you’ve done.”
“And what if I told you he didn’t know what I was hiding? That I have nothing to do with any resistance on Cereth, but still have a secret you’d be interested in. That Lieutenant Westermark was still questioning me, still trying to learn what I knew, even as you dragged him out there? He was close, too.”
He flinched just enough at that, and Ryllis almost wanted to smile. She’d turned his investigation on its head and criticized his competence at the same time.
“I wouldn’t believe you.”
“Then it’s a good thing,” she said, her heart threatening to race out of her chest at what she was about to suggest, “that you don’t need to.”
“You’re right.” He moved by her and rapped on the door. “But tell me one thing first—because I need to know, out of nothing more than desperate personal curiosity. Why are you really here?”
“I told you. I was tired of running.”
“After only a lunar cycle? You seem to tire rather easily. Were you tired of running or trying to protect him?”
“Why would I protect him?” she snapped.
“Why do people do half the things they do? Because of emotion. Misplaced devotion and some ill-conceived notion of a future together. I won’t pretend to understand it, but I know it happens.”
“You’re reaching.”
“Am I? He’s spent half his time here calling your name.”
The door opened—she’d been waiting for her fate. They were coming for her now, and she wanted to run, but there was nowhere to hide, and her feet seemed to be glued to the floor. But the guards who entered were dragging something between them—a figure, broken, and defeated, its feet scarcely reaching the floor. It looked like Kresten, but it wasn’t. This thin, fragile, haggard man with unkempt hair couldn’t be Kresten.
Tears that hadn’t been possible at the prince’s estate sprang into her eyes. “What have you done to him?”
At her voice, the figure looked up.
“Ryllis?” He struggled against the guards’ hold, and his voice broke when they dropped him to the floor. “You bastards. Again, with her? Anything but this. Can’t you come up with something more creative, Dahl?”
The man shrugged at her. “He thinks he’s seeing things.” He leaned down and gripped Kresten’s chin. “Not a hallucination this time, Lieutenant. She’s turned herself in. At least one of you has some sense of honor.”
“She’s here? Really here?” he whispered. “Ryllis—run. Don’t let them do this. Not for me.”
“Give it a rest, would you? She’s not getting out of here, and neither are you. We’re about to head to the telepathy clinic, in fact. Would you care to join us?” It was a needling question, delivered in the same tone as a dinner engagement request.
Kresten took a swing at the nearest guard, catching only the tips of his fingers against his ankle. The guard kicked a boot at his neck, and that time Ryllis couldn’t stop herself. She fell to her knees next to him and cradled his head in her hands, shocked at how cold he felt. He looked up at her, unseeing, and she brushed her fingers lightly over his eyes.
“He can’t see,” Dahl said.
“Why not?” The chill of Kresten’s body was beginning to spread into hers.
“They put a chip in my brain,” Kresten interrupted. “They can do all sorts of things with it. Don’t you understand? Once you confess, they’re going to do it to you, if they don’t execute you outright. Keep you from—” He sounded like he was struggling to catch
his breath. “I tried—I tried to keep you safe. Why did you come here? Why did you—”
The horror of what he’d experienced—what he’d said they would do to her—smashed into her. But she’d known, hadn’t she? From the very second they’d arrived to take her away from home, she’d known her life was over. Wasn’t it worth saving someone else at the same time?
“I had to,” she said to Kresten. “Because I love you, and I couldn’t leave you to this. I can’t save myself, but I can save you—and I won’t regret that, for as long as they let me live. But if you feel like you need to repay me, then stay with me until the end. And then you can let me go.”
They didn’t let go of her arms as they walked her to the telepathy clinic, and Ryllis wanted to scream at them that she’d surrendered of her own free will. That she’d do anything for Kresten, even this. But her escorts were cold and silent, and it matched the landscape. The gray jumpsuit they’d made her change into, and the blue uniforms of the guards were the only color in the brilliant white hallway, and the room they ushered her into was similarly blank. She could only guess that having nothing to focus on limited the subject’s mental resistance.
Kresten, his vision temporarily restored, paced in shaky circles as she sat on the gurney. Ryllis ignored him, his feral anxiety and pain too disconcerting to manage.
“Lie back.”
The ceiling was just as white as the rest of her surroundings. She began to shake in panic as they attached the electrodes to her head and cut the seam of her shirt just enough to access her collarbone. Dahl looked down at her, detached. His gaze held her, even though she wanted to fling her head around and find Kresten again.
“Regardless of his present situation, the Fleet has concurred with Lieutenant Westermark’s argument that you are the property of the imperial family and should be returned to His Majesty’s ownership if there is insufficient evidence of further crimes committed after your eradication from Cereth. Do you understand?”