Tied to the Crown

by Neha Yazmin

  “I won’t smuggle anything onto that ship, Seth,” Aaryana promised. “I’ve learned my lesson.”

  “And you meant what you said about that Rudro fellow? You are free of him?”

  “I didn’t lie to the King.”

  “Good,” Seth said, sounding relieved. “I would hate for my brother to get hurt like that. He deserves better than to be second fiddle to someone who’s not even in the same Island.”

  Aaryana and Wyett were obviously doing a good job of convincing everyone that they were lovers, seen as Wyett’s own brother believed it.

  “So, how should we spend the day?” Aaryana asked brightly. “Cards? Walks? Riding?”

  Seth’s lips stretched into a grin. “I was thinking you could teach me how to fight—”

  “You don’t know how to—I mean, I’m sure you were trained in combat.”

  She really hoped that the King or Wyett hadn’t kept Seth from learning how to defend himself because they thought he was too weak, too ill.

  “Oh, I did get the training,” he assured her, seeing how appalled and worried she was. “I still train now. What I was going to say, if you’d let me finish my sentence, is that I want to learn how to fight like you. Some of your moves… well, I’ve never seen anything like them.”

  She burst out laughing. “Don’t be silly. I just trained for a long time, trained a lot.”

  Seth shook his head. “I’m telling you, you’re so much better than any fighter I’ve ever seen—”

  “I’ve picked up one or two things from the Champions of other Islands that competed against us in The Contest. Different lands have different styles and techniques. If you or your brother had been exposed to that, I’m sure you would have—”

  “Aaryana, listen. I’m not talking about techniques and styles. I’m talking about you. When you jump, you jump higher than I thought possible. When you leap, you go further. When you move, you’re so fast, my eyes can’t keep up.

  “You were holding back when fought with Wyett, but even then, you were incredible. Teach me how you do that.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” She really didn’t. “But I’d love to train with you. With His Majesty’s permission.”

  Aaryana had made a point of staying with Seth until it was very late in the night, so as not to leave any doubt about her whereabouts on the night before the seabird departed. Seth was a talented fighter. He didn’t tire as quickly as she’d expected, keeping his movements to a minimum, conserving his energy, using his opponent’s speed and strength against them. Which Aaryana approved of highly.

  But she didn’t know how to teach him to jump and leap like he said she did, how to move as fast as he thought she did. It came naturally to her. She was simply faster and stronger than most people, like her sisters were, like all Vijkantis in history were—her father being one of the most gifted of their bloodline.

  Until Aaryana was born, of course. Everyone had always attributed her exceptional abilities to the fact that her parents had been such exceptional warriors. This generation of Heirs, the Adgaris always said, are so superior because the King married a warrior as brilliant as him.

  Queen Kanona… a descendant of Nidiya. Did that have anything to do with her daughters’ advanced abilities? If so, what made Aaryana the best? Was it that she’d trained more, pushed herself to the limit—or was there something else about her that set her apart from her siblings? She had asked herself this question after meeting Arzu, but no answer had presented itself. In truth, she hadn’t let herself really think about that.

  “I think,” Seth said now, yawning, “it’s time I walked you to your chambers.”

  The two of them had chosen to remain in the dining hall after dinner, talking and laughing. The Crown Prince hadn’t come to eat. She didn’t ask after him and no one referred to his absence.

  “Yes,” Aaryana said, standing up. “You look like you’re about to fall asleep.”

  “What can I say? You worked me hard today.” He winked at her and yawned again.

  “Come on.” She held out her hand and helped him up.

  As they walked, Aaryana thought about asking Seth to not mention the training session to Wyett, but quickly realised it wasn’t necessary. Wyett probably already knew—and would give her a tongue-lashing when he next saw her—and Seth would never willingly tell his brother that she’d worked him hard.

  The other thing she wanted to ask him about was that strange mark just below the hollow of his throat. He had shrugged it off as nothing when she’d noticed it in the training room—the top button of his tunic had opened and exposed his chest—but she got the impression that there was some significance to it. It was as though a wedding ring had been pressed into his body, leaving an imprint on his skin. The mark hadn’t disappeared by the time they’d finished training.

  “Is it a birthmark?” Aaryana blurted out just as Seth turned to leave after escorting her to her room.

  “What?” he asked but quickly realised what she was referring to—she was staring at his throat, as though she could see the ring engraved there beneath his clothes. Sucking in a breath, he said, “It’s the mark of the doomed.” Then, he walked away.

  The mark of the doomed. Did that have anything to do with the Fresdan curse? Her heart squeezed, wondering if all the second brothers in the Fresdan line bore this mark.

  The first thing she spotted when she stepped inside her lounge was a folded piece of parchment sitting on her low table. Something from Wyett? Or the King? Because she hadn’t met up with them for their debriefing tonight? She knew she’d been walking a thin, dangerous line, not turning up at the tower, but she’d wanted to spend as much time as she possibly could with Seth.

  Knowing it was the King’s idea, she didn’t think it would offend him too much if she missed a meeting to satisfy his wishes.

  Hmm. The short note was from Quin. An invitation to join her for breakfast the next morning in her chambers. Immediately, Aaryana realised that the King was behind this sudden extension of friendship from the young Princess. The King didn’t trust her to not smuggle something else onto the seabird. Perhaps he thought that she might sneak aboard herself?

  She couldn’t blame him; he could probably see in her eyes that she wanted to go home. Only, he didn’t know that Aaryana had to wait until Vetna and the crew had safely returned to Adgar and fulfilled their obligations before she could make her own trip south.

  Besides, the only letter she cared about was the one she’d written to Myraa. The commotion caused by the discovery of her letter to Rudro meant that no one would have been on the lookout for a second message. Hopefully, it had found itself onto the ship and would make its way to her beloved friend soon.

  Frowning, Wyett left his father’s office after their meeting. The first meeting that the Adgari hadn’t attended. A fact that didn’t seem to bother his father. Apparently, the King had expected the girl’s absence tonight, but he didn’t elaborate on how he knew.

  The Crown Prince hadn’t been in the Palace all day and had only just returned, for this debriefing. He hadn’t had the chance to ask his staff about the day’s news. His father would have told him, however, if anything had happened to Seth or Quin, so he didn’t bother talking to anyone and went straight to bed.

  Unfortunately, the restlessness that had driven him to ride out to Sidkat in the early hours of this morning unfurled inside him, and he couldn’t sleep despite his exhaustion. Remembering his mother always unsettled him, made him feel like everything in his body was trembling. Not with rage, not anymore, but with the unease that came with knowing a secret that would change everything or change nothing at all.

  “Are you having an affair with my brother?”

  “No, Your Highness.”

  Quin pursed her lips and folded her arms across her chest. “Then, why do you sneak into the eastern tower every night?”

  “To talk,” Aaryana replied. It was the truth—they did talk; it just wasn’t with each o
ther, but with the King instead—and the young Princess took it as such.

  “About what?”

  “Your brother will petition for my beheading if I tell you.”

  “That, I do believe.” Quin dropped her arms and leaned back in her chair.

  They were in the dining area of her chambers, the table between their chairs laden with a delicious breakfast spread. Surprisingly, it was just the two of them. The Princess’s usual group of friends that followed her around Court—her ladies-in-waiting and Lisbeth’s two daughters—were nowhere to be seen this morning. Maybe the King had nothing to do with this breakfast date, after all. Maybe Quin simply wanted to know what was happening between her eldest brother and a former Princess of Adgar?

  At any rate, having breakfast with Quin was keeping her mind off the seabird, how it had probably set sail already, and what news it would bring back.

  “Everyone thinks that the two of you are in love.” Quin rolled her eyes at the word ‘love’, but there was curiosity in them. She wanted to know how Aaryana felt about Wyett.

  “They do?”

  “Lady Lisbeth is convinced that you’re going to be our next Queen.”

  “Lady Lisbeth is very sweet.”

  The Princess narrowed her eyes, but didn’t appear to be too offended by Aaryana’s non-answers. “You’re not going to tell me anything, are you?”

  “What do you want me to tell you?”

  Quin shook her head. “Rozlene would love you. You’re such a politician, just like her.”

  “Are Lady Rozlene and Erisa alright?” Aaryana asked with concern. “When they attended the Harmony Dance, I thought they were returning to Court, but I didn’t see them yesterday…”

  “They’re still keeping to their rooms,” Quin answered, wrinkling her nose. “Rozlene is still quite shaken up, apparently. They came for the Harmony Dance because it’s a very important tradition.”

  “Yes,” Aaryana agreed with a nod. “It’s to remember that we should all be united.”

  Finally, they’d touched upon a topic that she was interested in discussing. She was more eager to ask the Princess about what she knew of Nidiya, but that would have to come later.

  “Did you enjoy the party, Lady Aaryana?”

  “Please just call me Aaryana. And yes, I did enjoy the Dance, but I still don’t understand how it ties in with how the world came to be.” She gave a bewildered shake of her head.

  “Oh, that’s right! You don’t know anything about our history. What do they tell you in Adgar about how we came to exist?”

  Aaryana shrugged and said, “We lost religion a long time ago.”

  “So, it would seem.”

  “Will you tell me, Princess?” Aaryana asked, eagerness in her tone. “Prince Wyett said you know all the stories, and I remember you telling me that the Queen told you great stories, too.”

  “Well, this isn’t a bedtime tale, it’s how everything began.” Quin lifted her chin, trying to look superior.

  Aaryana nodded. “Of course.”

  “It’s what we believe, anyway.” She picked up her tea cup and took a sip before squaring her shoulders. “In the beginning, there were the godlings three,” she said in a sing-song voice. Then, she was very serious. “There were no Islands, no seas, no sun, or moon. There was only a vast expanse of land on which the Maker placed three godlings: Aanug, Ooshma, and Eena.

  “They were strong and fast and nearly indestructible, like gods, but not quite. They looked very much like humans, but much larger.”

  Aaryana leaned forward. Quin seemed pleased that her audience was so intent.

  “Aanug could conjure fire, eternal fire, so they were never cold and always had light,” the Princess continued. “Eena conjured water so their throats never ran dry and they were always clean. Ooshma hunted for their food—birds, rabbit, deer—so they were never hungry and had the means to make themselves clothing from the skin of their prey.”

  The words flowed out of the Princess in a way that made clear that she’d been told this story many times, with these very words.

  “They lived together happily enough, but... Aanug and Eena always fought. Ooshma was always in the middle, keeping the peace.” Quin shook her head. “One day, Aanug and Eena went too far, using their powers against each other, fire against water, which was forbidden.

  “As punishment, they were separated from Ooshma, whom they loved very much, and sent to opposite ends of the land. They could see over the edge of the world, into the Nothing that surrounded the land, and it chilled their souls.”

  “They saw over the edge of the world?” Aaryana gasped, eyes wide.

  Quin nodded, face growing graver. “Aanug was so angry by the punishment that, in his rage, he started breathing fire. His flames burned down everything around him, and it frightened him. Not wanting to destroy the entire world, he conjured himself wings of flame and took to the clouds. The sky couldn’t catch fire.”

  The world will drown in the ocean and the sky will catch fire… Aaryana shook her head to rid it of the memory of her mother’s words. This was a tale she didn’t want to miss a single word of.

  “His flames consumed him completely and he became the fire angel,” the Princess was saying. “He flew back to where Ooshma was, but was prohibited from joining her on land. He watched over her, though, like a guardian angel, gifting her his eternal fire to keep her warm and light her way.”

  Quin lowered her voice a little to add, “They say that one of the flames he exhaled turned into the sun; it never went out, but it did go to sleep at night, sinking into the horizon.”

  Aaryana didn’t think she believed this part of the story. No one in Adgar, not even the firaki, had an explanation for how the sun came to be, but she couldn’t see it being breathed out by a godling.

  “Eena,” Quin went on, “heartbroken by the separation from Ooshma, couldn’t stop crying. Her tears fell and fell and fell, filling the Nothing that surrounded the land with water.”

  Aaryana nodded. Jeena had said that the Queen of the Deep—or the Sea Goddess as the girl preferred to call her—had cried the ocean into being. Eena, one of the godlings three, was the Queen of the Deep!

  “The water started growing with her ever-falling tears, rising and drowning the edges of the land. Distraught by what she was doing, and unable to stop the tears, Eena delved into the sea and decided to stay under water for eternity, to keep the ocean under control. They say that Eena grew a tail and fins and scales to better navigate the water. She was part godling and part fish.”

  “And the first sea folk,” Aaryana murmured, thinking of the legs on King Keyan’s Throne, how they looked like fish tails.

  This also meant that Nidiya was a descendant of Eena’s, and so was Aaryana.

  “Ooshma, lonely and angry and devastated, couldn’t control her frustration,” Quin said with sympathy. “She hadn’t done anything wrong, but losing Aanug and Eena was a punishment she didn’t deserve.”

  “What did she do?” Aaryana asked with trepidation.

  The Princess took a sip of tea before replying. “She stomped her foot so hard on the ground that she cracked the land into several shards. The resulting Islands drifted away with the tide of the new ocean that Eena had cried. The shard of land on which she was standing later became known as Roshdan.”

  No wonder this Island remembered the first three inhabitants of the world—the godlings had lived in Roshdan itself. It was also the reason why Roshdan was the only Island that had the fire angel’s eternal fire. It was the place where he’d gifted it to Ooshma.

  “You can still see the dent in the ground where Ooshma stomped her foot, if you swim to the bottom of the Sacred Pool,” Quin informed her.

  “Really?” Aaryana recalled seeing the gated pool during her ‘tour’ of the Island in her first week here.

  “The Islands in the north are so far away from the other Islands because Ooshma was so strong—the impact of her foot on the ground sent the other Islan
ds soaring far, far away.”

  “Oh, my!” Aaryana cupped her mouth.

  Quin smiled at Aaryana’s reaction. “Regretting splitting the world apart, Ooshma became hopeless and sullen, so the Maker gave her a partner to spend her life with. A mortal.”

  Aaryana frowned. “Why give a godling a mortal partner?”

  “The Maker couldn’t trust two godlings to not turn on each other,” Quin answered. “Aanug and Eena’s quarrels had changed the world as they knew it. Anyway, half of their children inherited Ooshma’s godly gifts, her strength and speed, and the other half were like their mortal father and had no powers at all. All humans came from them.

  “Eena was rewarded with a partner, too, but he wasn’t a godling, either. Eena gave birth to the sea folk. The ones that took after her had similar gifts to her, like the ability to control water—we refer to them as the higher sea folk.”

  Aaryana nodded. Then: “Wait. Why have humans always feared the sea folk, if their ancestor Eena had kept the world safe from the water?”

  “I don’t think it was the kind of fear you’re thinking of,” Quin said after a long moment. “I don’t think they feared that the sea folk would harm them. They were in awe of them, of what these descendants of a godling were capable of, and didn’t want to displease them.

  “Then, once Nidiya died and people started going missing, it was easier to blame it on a group they were familiar with, rather than accept that there might be some other threat that they knew nothing about.”

  Such wise words for someone so young. Malin was like that, too.

  “So, back to our godlings three,” Quin said in a superior tone. “Aanug’s anger made him dangerous and unsuitable for a mate, so he remained alone.”

  “That doesn’t seem fair,” Aaryana said with a frown. “Maybe having a mate could have helped him move past his anger?”