by CS Hale
I WHIMPERED AS I lowered myself into the water. Climbing the stairs to the beach had not kept me in good enough shape to keep up with The Shadow. Iree added an oil to the bath. It smelled like a cross between lavender and mint, and I recognized it as a muscle relaxant.
“I might stay here all evening,” I said to her. “Just so you know.” I didn’t relish the communal meals in Aedenfal. Showing my face. Having them judge me.
Iree came around behind me and massaged my shoulders. I moaned and slid a little deeper into the water. Her hands worked along the length of my neck and started on my brow. She gently rubbed the center of my forehead and then brushed out across to my temples. I closed my eyes in bliss. “Some cultures believe that opens the third eye,” I said.
“Third eye?” she asked, never stopping her ministrations.
“Our two physical eyes see the world around us. But the third eye is hidden, right in the middle of our forehead. With it open, you become more like the Mödatal.”
“Do you wish to see, my queen?”
“No,” I said. “For I fear what the future holds and don’t want to observe any closer than it is now. A blind man might fear a maskpol but will pass by it unafraid since he does not see it.”
“Unless it eats him.”
“By the time you see a maskpol, it’s already too late if it wants to eat you.”
Iree hummed. “Very true.”
She moved to the other end of the tub and started on my feet. My conscious mind began to make a comparison, chalk up the differences between how I was served before and now, but I pushed it away.
“Which dress for dinner?” Iree asked, shifting her attention to the knots in my aching calves.
“The red, I think.” As I said it, I had a vision of me standing there, proud and terrible — well, as terrible as I could be at five foot four and a good six to eight inches shorter than everyone else — dressed as the Moon Princess. They’d cheered for me at my wedding. Maybe now that I had begun to believe it, they would, too.
I still shook as I entered on Valemar’s arm, but my mantra of, I’m the Moon Princess. I’m the Moon Princess. I’m the Moon Princess, allowed me to hold my head high. And I had my warrior husband at my side.
I scanned the crowd and smiled. Padrid would be on my right, as per usual. Garris was seated at Valemar’s left and Laera on her husband’s other side. I detected Niah and Vienne at a table toward the center of the room. And the young man sitting with them was probably Reez. Though there were other red-heads in the room, I didn’t see Zhanet. I wondered if Valemar had sent her away.
“Oh, my dear!” Padrid took my hand when I sat. “I hear you’ve been continuing your studies in Vanerife.”
Loss washed over me, but I wasn’t going to let this wonderful man know that his words had caused me pain. “Two Hundred Years and Adzil Jaharan —” Valemar’s eyes flicked our way. “— and Enartin Carbrev’s treatise on the treaty.”
“You’ve read my father’s work?” Valemar asked, abandoning his conversation with Garris.
“Change can only come with a willingness to change.” I said the words to my plate, unable to lift my eyes to meet Valemar’s. Would he consider this an insult or a compliment? Would it pain him to think of his father and the mess the son now cleaned up?
“You’re one of only —”
“Seven,” I said. “As Harrig scolded me when I returned it.”
“Returned it?” Valemar smiled. “He wasn’t grumbling when he handed it over?’
My lip began to wobble but I forced it still. “Daria fetched it for me. She thought I needed to be prepared.”
Valemar smiled gently. “She was right.”
Padrid clapped his hands in glee. “Then we can discuss it!”
“He’s one of the seven,” Valemar said unnecessarily.
“So I see.” Only the hard things are those worth doing.
Cracks traced their way along my heart, but I couldn’t figure out if it was breaking or healing. Sometimes, with a wound, it was hard to tell.
“What did you think of my father’s work?” Valemar asked me as we lay together hours later. I didn’t want to answer. I didn’t want to break the spell that our lovemaking had created: that somehow, draped together, our hearts beating as one, chest to chest, skin to skin, I was no longer me but a welcomed piece of the universe. To answer, I needed to become Astrid again.
I ran my lips gently across Valemar’s chest, tracing the outline of the tattooed barat leaf near my chin as I thought. Then I raised my head and met his gaze. “I wondered if he’d been weak.” Valemar flinched, and I laid a hand on his chest. “Because his actions hadn’t solved the problem and he’d given away Bánalfar’s lands.”
A sad smile filled Valemar’s face. “That is true.”
“But he was quite the visionary. Quite the thoughtful visionary.” I gave a small laugh. “Your parents’ marriage must have been interesting.”
Valemar smiled — a deep, yearning, yet tender smile. “He used to call her ‘maskpol’ —” Which I’d begun to translate as “hellcat.” “— and she is much like one. He was always much more the philosopher. I think he’d probably read every one of the books in the tower library in Vanerife at least once.” I smiled. That explained Harrig’s possessiveness of the library a bit. “But he was a warrior, too. He’s the one who taught me jaldun. He let Reina have her head but was quietly more than a match for her. She was a maskpol, is a maskpol, but he was an agré.”
“That’s a bird, right?”
“Yes. They’re found in the mountains. Slightly smaller than you, they hunt animals. They have been known to take a maskpol or two.”
“Remind me to stay out of the mountains,” I said. Valemar laughed. “You must miss him very much.”
“I do.” Valemar ran his fingers through my hair. “Were both of your parents living when you left?” The look in his eye told me he wanted to know how much I had lost when I came here, how much pain was old, how much was new. My chin wobbled as I nodded, and I laid my cheek against his chest again. “Oh my, grabeg. I am sorry.” For now, I had lost both of mine, while he still had Reina.
“What does ‘grabeg’ mean?” I asked. “That’s the second or third time you’ve called me that in the past couple of days, and it’s not translating.”
Valemar chuckled. “It’s old Alfari. ‘Gra’ means ‘little’ and ‘beg’ means love.” He gave me a squeeze. “You are certainly both.”
I snorted even as my heart crunched. An insult and a compliment rolled into one. “Not my fault I landed on a planet of giants.”
“So are you tall for … your people?”
“We call ourselves ‘humans’ or ‘Earthlings,’ for our planet is known to us as ‘Earth.’”
“Like the ground?” Valemar asked.
Stupid chip. I must have used the Alfari word. “Yes, like the ground. But in our language, my language — for there are many — it is ‘Earth.’”
“Ur – th,” Valemar said, trying it out on his tongue. “And are you a giant among Earth people?”
“No.” I sighed. “I’m on the short side, even there. But here I’m a dwarf. Do you have dwarves?” I asked. “People who never grow beyond the height of a child?”
Valemar chuckled and kissed the top of my head. “Yes, and you are taller than them. We don’t get many, but we do have some. They are generally viewed with suspicion. Why would the Father and Mother have denied them height?”
The strikes against me kept adding up — hair color, ear shape, and now height. “How will they ever accept me?”
Valemar raised my chin. “They will believe it if you believe it. You wore the red dress to dinner tonight, proclaimed yourself to be the Moon Princess. What do you need to truly accept it?”
“To not feel like a fraud.” I bit my lip then raised my head to look in his eyes. “I’m not a savior. Everyone on the Palmas Cove, my ship, died. All of them but me. My last distress call, I lied. I said I was going with
my ship to the sun —”
“Vashedna!” Valemar exclaimed. “You planned to burn?”
“No,” I reminded him. “I lied. I should have been on it.” I managed a weak smile. “I gave them the funeral of my ancestors who buried their dead by turning a boat into a funeral pyre on a lake or in the sea. And sending my ship into the sun left no trace that we’d been in your system. Nothing for you or the Shororato to find later.
“But I cheated. I cheated death, I abandoned my comrades, I broke the law, I lied by omission to you. I have done nothing honorable since I arrived in your star system, so why should your people accept me as a savior? Why should you?”
Valemar rolled us, coming to rest on top of me. “You have loved,” he said. “You have loved so much that it has broken you.”
I realized then that Valemar had changed position because he knew I would have run. There was no way I could push him off of me. I was trapped.
“I don’t want to love.”
“Maybe,” Valemar said. “But you do. You loved Daria. You loved your crew. You’ve sought to protect all of Crenfor from the knowledge you carry with you. I even think that you love me.” Valemar ran his fingers through my hair. “I don’t think it was penance that caused you to deny yourself food those first days on the road to Vanerife. Initially, I thought it was your guilt at having lied to me. But now, after Daria …”
Valemar tightened his grip around me. “No more wanting to die, Astrid. You are alive for a reason. You —” He broke off and kissed me deeply. “You have become my heart,” he said when he finally released me and I was breathless, without the capability of speech. “You are mine,” he said, and entered me with a thrust so great that I gasped. His fingers wound into my hair. “You are mine, and I forbid you to leave me.”
His lovemaking was fierce, demanding. I hung on as he sought to possess every bit of me. When his ardor slowed, he looked down at me and kissed me. “You are mine,” he said, gently this time. “You are my heart, you are my blood, you are my bone. Let me fill you so that you know you are loved.”
It hurt. His words ripped the protective cover off my shattered heart and began to glue the pieces back together. Valemar continued to love me — softly, tenderly — as I lay in his arms, tears running down my face. Our lovemaking became a crucible, but one that burned off the sludge from my shattered life and slowly started to fuse it together into something new.
THE MÖDATAL’S TRICK had become the truth. My blood and Valemar’s blood were now bound, seeking the other out, longing for connection. I thought about that as I lay spent and trembling on Valemar’s chest while he slept, worn out from the frantic activity and now reassured that I was indeed his.
I also thought about her words: The time is coming when you will need to know that you are loved. Had she foreseen Daria’s death?
A wave of hate washed through me. How could she have seen Daria’s death and not told me? How could she have let it happen?
Valemar stirred, and I forced myself back to calm. He didn’t need to deal with this as well.
As Valemar settled back into sleep, I returned to my assessment. She’d followed me. Shale had followed me from Aedenfal to Torfin to Glábac to Vanerife and back. Wherever I’d gone, she’d gone. It was time for us to have another talk.
“Jaldun?” Valemar asked me when we rose in the morning.
“Later,” I said, and kissed him. “I have something I need to do first.”
After much debate on my part, I had Iree lace me into the sky blue gown. “Do you want me to go with you?” she asked when I drew out the red veil.
“No,” I said and smiled at her before drawing the lace over me. “I know the way. And I’m not sure how long I’ll be.”
Four guards peeled off to accompany me when I walked out the gate of the High. Not the usual two. I received stares from the people I encountered along the way to the Cair and turned my thoughts inward. I had four shadows to deal with any unrest and, after last night, I knew that Valemar’s anger should anything happen to me would be completely without mercy. He had, indeed, instilled a measure of confidence in me.
I knelt and prayed at the altar, offered up thanks for the husband I hadn’t wanted, offered thanks for the friend who had loved and supported me and, in the end, given her life for me. I prayed for guidance, that I would be shown why I was here, what I was supposed to do.
I made the sign of the cross when I finished praying. It had always made me feel like I was drawing God into my heart and mind and lifting the burdens from my shoulders. And then I rose and walked through the door and down to Shale’s room.
“Come in, Astrid,” she called when I lifted my hand to knock. I rolled my eyes and opened the door.
Shale sat curled in a chair, drinking a cup of tea. A pot and an additional cup sat on the table before her. “Are you trying to get pregnant?” I asked before I closed the door behind me and removed my veil.
“A child would be a nice gift to the Mother and Father.” A smile lifted the corners of her mouth. Shale’s face became serene.
“Hmm.” I sat down in the chair across from her and leaned back.
“Yes, I knew that Daria would die. No, I wasn’t sure how.” Her words were like blows, and I gasped as they hit me. “That is why you came to see me?”
“Warning would have been nice,” I said, still grasping for equilibrium.
“Then or now?” she asked, then added, “No. Both.”
I pressed a hand to my heart and continued to force myself to exhale. “You know that’s one of the reasons I don’t like you. Can’t you be normal for once?”
“This is my normal,” she said simply.
“It’s not good for people. They need warning.”
“Do they?”
“Yes!” I said emphatically. “They can’t make good decisions when they don’t have time to prepare.”
Shale hooked an eyebrow. “So I should have told you not to get too attached to Daria since she was destined to die in your stead?”
“I —” But my jaw just dropped and refused to close.
“I should have told you that no matter how much you tried to shield him, that your truth would cause Valemar to send you away?”
“My truth?”
“Do you really want me to tell you what you are going to do next? Do you really want to know the consequences of your actions?” Do you want to know the future, Astrid? There was a weariness in her voice that hadn’t been there before.
“What’s it like?” I asked instead. “What’s it like to see the future?”
Shale absentmindedly ran her finger along the rim of her cup. “Like looking at a tapestry. So many threads woven, yet moving.”
“With one certain future? One certain path?”
“No. But the thickest one is usually the true one.” She shivered. “It’s why I so rarely speak it. Things can change the future.” She looked at me. “Telling you Daria was to die could have changed it. There was one where you sent her away, ate the tarts, and our land descended into chaos.”
“So you let her die.”
“I let you live.”
I tucked my feet up under me and fell silent.
“I let you live and showed you that your husband loves you. I showed you that you love him. And it still nearly wasn’t enough to save your life.”
“You could see that I wanted to die?” I asked.
“I could see you fading away. I hoped to provide you with an anchor.”
“I thought it was a trick.”
Shale smiled. “I know.”
“Was it a trick?” I asked. But she only gave me a silent, cat-like grin in return. I sighed and then poured a cup of the tea. What was the harm?
We sat silently, sipping tea for a while. Shale refilled her cup. Her eyes focused on the stream of amber liquid as it poured. “Ask,” she said.
“Am I going to know what to do?”
She smiled and tucked her bare feet under her again. “You will.” Tea
rs filled my eyes. “Yes, it will be painful, but you will know what to do.”
A lump caught in my throat as she answered my unvoiced question. Had she saved me from one death only to lead me to another? “How can you stand it?” I asked. “Knowing the future?”
Shale shrugged. “I am the Mödatal. That is my blessing and my curse.” She sipped her tea. “I suppose it is better that I am here where my gift can be used. And I am glad it is me who got to see you. So many have looked for so long without answer.”
I stared down into the tea that remained in my cup. “I guess I owe you my life. You seem to have saved it several times over the last few months.” I wondered again if I was a lamb saved only to be led to the slaughter.
“Your life is not mine. It is Valemar’s. Your blood was joined in this very Cair.”
“But it was your vision that brought me to him.”
“And then he stood and offered you his protection.”
“Because you told him that I was the Moon Princess.”
“He didn’t have to believe me,” Shale said. “And you didn’t have to agree. You freely accepted the protection that he freely offered.”
“Because I didn’t want to die and it was clearly pointed out to me that I would.”
“But the choice was still yours.” I growled in frustration, and Shale continued. “And the choice was still his. He’d been looking for you ever since his father signed that treaty when Valemar was a boy. Long before the outsiders came. He has been drawn to you ever since he first heard the tale.”
“Oh, it’s a tale now, is it?” I muttered.
Shale shrugged. “A prophecy is just that — a tale. Until it becomes true.”
So Valemar had spent years imagining what I would be. “He certainly didn’t know what he’d be getting with me.”
Shale gently laughed. “No, he didn’t. But is it the myth or the woman he loves now?”
It was me. Something that still astounded me. “I wish …”
Shale brought her cup to her lips and glanced down at the floor, hiding her eyes. Hiding any answer that might be lurking in them. I sighed.