Stain

by A. G. Howard

  However, a few months into this blissful new life, Lyra was conceived, shocking and delighting everyone in the kingdom but Griselda. The child’s birth would cost her everything she’d murdered, lied, and strategized to gain. Elusion offered to help, but later disappeared when the sylph elm’s leaves bled to a brilliant crimson in the garden.

  Over the last twelve years, Griselda had wondered upon the synchronicity of the two events. And today, the witch had given confirmation. He was tied to the ground now, paying the price for luring innocent Queen Arael to prick her finger upon the tainted roses . . . for being the seductive voice whispering on the wind in her ear.

  Ironic that Arael lived long enough thereafter to give birth to the king’s heir: a proper little princess, seen but never speaking, who would soon sit the throne without any effort on her part other than being born—despite that she was a girl. All the rules had changed when Kiran spawned a daughter.

  That thought shook Griselda from her reverie. She rose from the dungeon cot, refusing to be nostalgic. Elusion chose his path. She didn’t force his hand any more than he forced her to commit mariticide. Now she had his wings upon the sylph elm in the garden. She could play that card if necessary, but for the time being, there was work to be done.

  She felt her way out of the cell—hands skimming across sticky walls. A powdery grit caked between her fingers and under her nails, and her hem tore from snagging upon the chains in the floor. She gagged to think she would be filthier than Lyra by the time she managed to find the stairs.

  After taking the first step, she ascended in a dizzying spiral, her grimy hands leading the way along stones bulging from the retaining wall. Her malicious little niece had snuffed the torches. Every unidentifiable sound reverberated in her pitch-black trek and crept up her spine like icy fingertips plucking an out-of-tune harp.

  She’d had the perfect strategy to win the crown for her daughters: dig up Nerezeth’s stairway, kill King Orion; then a few days later, stage a counterstrike by supposed “Night Ravagers” on Eldoria’s castle in which Lyra would be assassinated. But the witch’s confession rendered it impossible.

  A peace treaty, signed in blood by both Kiran and Queen Nova, would be undeniable proof that Nerezeth did not order her brother’s death. As much as the gloom-dwellers needed sunlight, they wouldn’t dare endanger such a beneficial alliance.

  Griselda narrowed her eyes, nails scraping the stones until her manicure was in shreds and blood seeped from beneath the broken white tips. She’d managed at last to punish Tristan Nicolet for not loving her. But once again, her brother had fouled her chance for the crown.

  Or had he?

  Griselda had slipped a precise mixture of wolfsbane, castor plant, and snakeroot into her husband’s hunting flask so many years ago. While he was out with his retinue, he became convinced he’d swallowed a hive of bees that broke loose inside his gut, stinging from the inside. Crazed and delirious, he threw himself into a wild stag, bathing its antlers in his blood and entrails. Only Griselda knew that he wasn’t crazed; he had been desperate to staunch the intestinal and mental agony she’d thrust upon him with the help of the grimoire.

  Within the same book, there was another more elegant recipe with traces of baneberry; the effects made one drowsy and stopped their breath within a matter of hours once they slept. As frail and odd a creature as her niece was, no one would question the grief-stricken Lyra slipping away while she slumbered.

  Griselda took the final dark flight of stairs as if floating on air. She arrived at the top where the stairwell opened to a quiet corridor. The drapes had been drawn on every window; blue globes covered the sconces on the walls, softening the candlelight. The cessation course had begun and everyone in the castle was abed.

  Her niece’s reign of shadows and vermin would end this very day.

  She paused to wipe her hands on her skirts upon hearing a scramble of footsteps. Sir Erwan and Sir Bartley appeared from around a corner, breathing heavily. Their expressions tightened upon seeing her.

  “We heard there was a prisoner,” Erwan, said, straightening from a deep bow. Black hair swung across his wide, tawny forehead. He nudged the strands aside, revealing panic in his deep-set, sharply angled gray eyes.

  “And that she had information on King Kiran’s final moments,” Bartley added, his auburn hair, pink flush, and freckled snub nose reminding Griselda of her late husband.

  “The witch escaped and is no longer a concern.” She held out her hand so they might both kiss the queen’s ring on her finger.

  Bartley pressed his mouth to the ruby, then drew back with his brow raised—as if there were more.

  “What? Has she been recaptured?” Griselda asked, hoping against hope she hadn’t.

  Both men shook their heads but exchanged worried glances, their ears blushing to match the crimson sun embroidered upon their white surcoats.

  Griselda waved her hand to dismiss their worries. “Yes, she has Sir Nicolet’s final memory intact within her. But all she wanted was to return to her home in the ravine. As long as we leave her be, she’ll not set foot here again. She has nothing to gain by it. She can do no damage lest she imprints the memory upon someone living in Eldoria.”

  “Your Grace.” Erwan chewed on his puffed-out lower lip. “She already did.”

  Griselda almost lost her footing. Each knight grabbed a hand and dragged her to the wall to prevent her toppling into the dark stairwell behind.

  “A page boy saw a stooped female figure in a hooded cloak corner the constable by the stables,” Bartley explained. “She touched either side of his face, as if to kiss him. When the figure left, the page boy swore he spotted horns simmering with white sparks beneath her hood. The constable’s face was aglow, as if he’d been struck by lightning. The boy followed him as he found a town crier. The news is traversing from home to home. Soon all of Eldoria will know.”

  Griselda’s blood turned cold. “Will know of our conspirings?”

  “No.” Erwan grasped her elbow gently in comfort. It was far too familiar a gesture to be showcased in public, regardless that the corridor was abandoned. Bristling, Griselda jerked free. His focus shifted to his polished boots. “They know of your niece’s role in the kingdom’s future, Your Grace. The crier is forecasting the prophecy. Nothing more, but it is enough.”

  Bartley nodded. “The fear we’ve instilled by framing the Night Ravagers has been effective indeed, for the commoners were terrorized by thoughts of the battle moving into the village and castle gates. Now people are rising up, insisting the princess is the kingdom’s most precious commodity. Lyra is to be protected and revered as such until her coronation, when she comes of age to marry.”

  Griselda tasted smoke on her tongue as the embers of her newest plan snuffed out. Her niece would be under constant supervision. For five years.

  Should anything happen to her, accidental or no, Griselda would be held responsible as the kingdom’s regent. The prophecy specified Lyra by its very description. And as superstitious as this kingdom was, no one else could fulfill the requirements. Only a silver-haired princess with violet tears . . . with a song in her throat her only sound.

  As was the way of such matters, within the week, Nerezeth would use their alternate path into the day realm through the ravine, sending a delegate to publicly address the court’s council and assure the pact would be upheld.

  “We must call off the attack on Nerezeth,” Griselda said. “The soldiers who found Nicolet’s body today can attest that the witch was responsible for the murder of Kiran’s first knight, and logic will dictate she slayed the king as well. We’ll keep close watch on the ravine’s borders. Should the witch set one foul foot toward our kingdom, we’ll capture and hold her imprisoned in hiding, so she can wreak no more havoc.”

  Griselda was surprised the prisoner had chosen not to share all that the memory had contained. She suspected the witch had some ulterior motive for harboring the details of her brother’s and Sir Nicolet’s dea
ths, but couldn’t dwell on it. There were enough things to fret about.

  “Then what should we do, Your Grace?”

  “We sleep,” she answered through gritted teeth, glancing down the empty hall. The stress of the climb from the dungeon and her confrontation with the witch had resulted in memories that weighed heavy on her bones. “On the morrow, I will think of a new plan.”

  The knights escorted Griselda to the queen’s chamber three flights up. She secured the door, shutting out their worried faces. Other than fresh water in the pitcher, the room was just as she’d left it when the two soldiers sent for her earlier: heavy drapes drawn shut; wardrobe door hung askew; jewels, gowns, and goose feathers scattered across the marble floor; broken knickknacks and gimcracks; and most beautifully of all, the scarlet footprints of her daughters where they’d tromped across Lyra’s royal heritage.

  Griselda took off her jewelry, scrubbed and rinsed the dungeon filth from her skin, changed into her nightclothes, and brushed her hair. Breathing in the scent of jasmine and lavender, she studied the room in the soft blue glow cast by the wall sconces. She’d barred the servants from cleaning while she was away. She had wished to look upon her spoils again.

  However, the small red footprints looked more like harbingers of the king’s blood Griselda had spilled, the same blood that pulsed through Lyra’s veins . . . the one thing standing between Griselda and her greatest victory. Sighing, she pulled back the covers to attempt sleep, curious if the mattress had been stuffed with lamb’s wool as she’d commanded. She would have the chamberlain’s head if it hadn’t.

  Then she saw them: tiny, eight-legged, creeping things set loose in her bed. Infestation.

  A scream burned inside her. She stumbled backward, almost bumping into the wardrobe. The hanging door flung open from within, and moths swooped out. Griselda ducked left and right, wracked with revulsion.

  There in the wardrobe, in the moths’ wake, stood Lyra, commanding it all. With one arm, the princess hugged the potted rose. With the other, she pointed to the chamber door, a demand for Griselda to leave.

  She was claiming Queen Arael’s room and possessions as her own.

  Griselda moaned and moved toward the entrance, dodging the flying and scrabbling bugs. She opened the door and tottered backward from the room. She stalled in the empty hallway, staring at the whirlwind of moths and shadows. Their gusts and wings formed a strange rustling whisper, unmistakable in its message: Not . . . my . . . mother.

  Lyra’s hair rippled in the downdraft like a cascading silvery waterfall, and her plump, frosty lips pressed to a scowl. Her eyes flashed amber-bright in triumph as her obedient shadows rushed to slam the door in Griselda’s face.

  Loose tendrils of Griselda’s own hair flapped about her temples and cheeks. She trembled, leaning against the door to trace the ruby knob, even as her frown lifted to a sneer.

  The little princess had grown a spine. Griselda was almost impressed, but—even more—pitied the irony. For a spine served small purpose to a corpse.

  6

  A Compendium of Poetry and Blood

  Over the next week, Lyra’s subjects abandoned superstition and welcomed her with open arms. It was a feeling she’d never experienced, and one that at times overwhelmed. All of the castle’s servants, even those who had once been strangers, rallied around her, devoted to her comfort. Not a curtain anywhere was left open. Even the east, west, and south sides lingered in perpetual darkness, brightened only by the harmless glow of candlelight. New glass panels were crafted for the tower windows, tinted with blue dye. When a cloudy sky presented itself, drapes were opened so Lyra could look out safely upon her muted kingdom.

  Joyful shouts arose as Lyra peered from behind the curtains of the dormer window in the southern tower’s turret, high enough to be seen by the commoners. She looked down at the sea of waving hands, caught a breath, and jerked back into hiding. In her childhood, the one time she reached a finger toward a window, she’d been scalded by the sun. Those who stood in the light had always been separate from her. That had changed with her betrothal to the night prince, Nerezeth’s evening star.

  Lyra tried to picture Prince Vesper with only the prophecy to go by: a star-boy forged of sunlight. It was breathtaking to imagine—golden rays gleaming from his eyes . . . his flesh and hair as dazzling-bright as the sun glinting off water like in the paintings that decked the castle’s halls and corridors.

  She would barely even be able to look upon him, much less touch him. Despite how she might long to, for in her most secret heart, she had never stopped loving the sun, even though it hated her.

  A few weeks into this new life, Mia arrived one morning to awaken the princess. The maid removed the blue globes from the candles to brighten the room, then prodded Lyra’s feet gently, as was her ritual, in memory of how Matilde used to tickle her toes with goose feathers. Lyra awoke with a smile that flitted away as quickly as the moths darted toward the rising flames on the wicks. Mia had settled at the wardrobe to pull out Queen Arael’s dresses.

  Lyra threw off her covers to stand, her feet chilly on the marble floor. Mia glanced across her shoulder as she folded a velvet gown. The princess shrugged—an unspoken query.

  “Something astonishing ’as happened.” Mia’s face beamed with happiness. “The townspeople . . . they’re changing. Oh, how ’is majesty your father would’ve loved to see it.” Her round, full cheeks flushed. “The children of the kingdom are pretending to be made of moonlight. The girls are coating their hair with the silt that oozes beneath the silvery pebbles along the banks of the Crystal Lake . . . slopping their brows and lips with cream made of crushed periwinkle pearls. Some are even using ’oney to glue molted goose feathers upon their eyelids as lashes. And they’re playing games with their brothers in the root cellars, commanding shadows by waving candles in the air and casting silhouettes along the walls.” She chortled deep in her chest. “Wouldn’t be surprised if they trade their pet cats and dogs for sparrows. They’re all imitating birdsongs, in ’opes to sound like you—though none could ever capture the purity of your voice.” Mia winked.

  Lyra’s cheerful friend pulled out a damask gown. The princess’s eyebrows drew tight in question again as she pointed to the folded clothes piling up next to Mia’s feet, still confused about what this had to do with her mother’s things.

  “Oh, this.” Mia sighed—a relieved sound. “I will only take out a few and store them safely away. But I must make room. You’re about to receive a new wardrobe. We all are! The clothiers are scrambling to meet demands for tunics, gowns, chemises, and corsets in lightweight fabrics like yours. The deeper hues are being cast out for shades of blush and pastel. They say it better pays ’omage to the blooms of spring and summer.”

  Lyra fashioned part of her hair into a hasty side braid—the symbol for her aunt Griselda that she’d been using for years with her father and Mia.

  Mia laughed again. “Ah, well, ’ere was the grand regent’s reaction . . .” She stuck her nose in the air and flapped about the room, holding an outdated gown in front of her. “Tsk. I simply cannot understand why it took everyone so long.” Mia parodied Griselda’s commanding voice and snooty mannerisms to perfection. “I’ve always said Lyra’s ensembles are breezier than the weighty velvets and brocades of the past. This kingdom would run so much smoother if everyone listened to meeeeee!”

  Lyra slapped a hand across her mouth, but not fast enough to stifle a bubble of musical laughter. Mia placed one of Arael’s ruby rings to hang loosely on Lyra’s thumb. “You see, my little delight, you’ve given the kingdom a reason to be curious. A reason to wonder upon what we’ve been missing all these centuries. You’re paving the way for your night prince to bring back the moon to our skies. Come five more years, and they’ll be laying out white-gold bricks for his feet to trod upon when he comes to claim your hand.”

  Lyra winced. She returned her mother’s ring to its satin-lined box, her fingers yet too small for such precious gems. She
knew little about marriage. Both her father and aunt had lost their spouses early. But she’d read enough romantic poems to know that courting involved the touching of lips and hands and fingertips. Skin pressed to skin. To be bound to a man as bright as the sun would mean a life of excruciating pain.

  Should it come to that, she would choose to suffer the agony of his sunlit touch. She’d had enough of loneliness in her past to know she didn’t want it in her future.

  Mia released the princess’s hand and began folding clothes again. Lyra reached over to help her smooth out the wrinkles in the heavy fabrics, though she couldn’t straighten the crimp in her forehead.

  “I know what you fear,” Mia said, her intuitive, dark eyes tender in the candle glow. “But perhaps the prophecy isn’t literal on the prince’s end. Though your part is, undeniably.”

  Lyra hadn’t tried to hide her new friendship with the night creatures. The curtains always being drawn enabled her shadow attendants to accompany her everywhere, even during court sessions, meals, and the occasional formal banquet or ball. People accepted the strange sight—for this was the prophecy. However, Lyra didn’t miss the uneasy side glances when her shadows rose tall and spindly from the corners, so she kept them shrunken small; she wanted her human subjects to be comfortable with her, too.

  She also kept her creeper bugs well hidden. Since they feared getting trampled, following Lyra’s new daily routines with people frightened them. Also, Griselda turned into a mass of quivering bones at the sight of any night creatures, so having them guarding the queen’s chamber was the best way to keep her mother’s things safe.

  Lyra had yet to show anyone else, even Mia, how her pets could be used as a mouthpiece when in the room with her. It was something she kept secret between herself and Griselda, to shock and command attention once more should the day ever prove necessary. After all, Lyra wanted to honor her father by being a great ruler—like him and her mother. She needed power for that, and her odd attendants offered this. But there was more to being a majesty than power; she needed to learn how to make day-to-day decisions for the kingdom and was invited into council by Prime Minister Albous to learn.