by Ellyn, Court
“Here, Mother, come in out of the cold.”
She ignored him. “I know where he is. He’s with them. Your father’s ancestors.” She pointed with her hands still twisted in her cloak, indicating the far horizon, where a dark smudge rose out of the wet, gray haze. “I think that’s where they live.”
“The … elves? In Avidan Wood?”
She nodded briskly. “They’re safe there, as long as they keep frightening us humans away.”
“They’re aren’t any elves left.”
“Etivva thinks otherwise. If they are in Avidan Wood, Kieryn went there because he doesn’t want you to follow. He doesn’t want you to find him.”
Kelyn pretended to be inured to the shame. “You think he’s still alive then?”
She looked up at him. “Don’t you know it?”
He considered the bond between himself and his twin, how Kieryn had felt the pain of his wounds. “Yes,” he admitted at last. And here he had sat up every night, mourning a brother he feared he’d driven to his death. “What if … what if he never forgives me?”
“Then you spend the rest of your life making it up to him.”
He opened his hands in a gesture of helplessness. “How?”
Alovi didn’t bother replying. Perhaps she didn’t trust what her mouth might say. “He wouldn’t forgive her either, I take it. He won’t take her back?”
Damn you both and your bastard! “No.”
“Then ask him if you should.”
“What? Mother, the woman I love is waiting down south for me.”
Her eyebrows jumped. “You may no longer have any choice, son. There’s too much riding on your reputation now.”
“If I’ve not already destroyed it.”
“True.” She sighed, reeling in her temper. “Whatever happens, you’ll be the wiser. Remember this pain, Kelyn, and be chastened by it. In the meantime, Kieryn will remember his love for you, you’ll see.”
“Maybe. And what do I tell Lissah?” He glanced south across the rippling gray flow of the river.
His mother wrapped an arm around him. “Whatever you tell her, I hope she’s the forgiving kind.”
~~~~
“Eat, damn it,” Laniel said through his teeth. Three days of ordering hot food and having it taken away again cold. Laniel devoured his portion, praising it, but even this failed to entice Kieryn. The fire in his veins burned steadily, but between bouts of delirium he seemed aware of his surroundings and who his caretaker was. With the next breath, however, he might curse Laniel as if the dranithi were his betrayer and tormentor.
Laniel tried one last time, filled the spoon and said, “Don’t make me bind your jaw open.”
Kieryn jolted off the pillow, swiped the bowl from Laniel’s hand and tossed it. Broth splattered the wall; crockery shattered. “No one holds me!” he cried and swung a fist. Laniel restrained it, only to receive a knee in the ribs. Breathless, he doubled over. Kieryn flung himself out of bed, stumbled around, panicked, as if the room were strange to him and he couldn’t find the door.
“You fool,” Laniel grunted, finding his breath. “Get back in bed.”
Kieryn tore drapes from windows, found the doors to the balcony. They’d been shuttered against the winter air. He threw aside the glass doors and shutters both, stood for a moment in the icy night wind blasting up the tower. Saffron darted about his head, pleading. He ignored her, or perhaps in his delirium he couldn’t hear her. He ran for the rail.
Laniel lunged after him and hauled him back.
“Curse you!” Kieryn cried, fighting and lurching, but Laniel pinned him with arms and legs skilled at climbing trees. Kieryn failed to free himself and, at last, loosed a cry of such anguish that Laniel felt as if his heart was torn out with it. The fire in the hearth, the flames in the lamps, flared blue. The room became a furnace, then an icehouse. Kieryn’s cry gave out, and the flames vanished, as if a great hand slapped them out.
Kieryn went limp. His skin grew rapidly cooler.
Saffron hovered close. “He finally let go.”
Of everything, Laniel feared, but in Saffron’s golden glow he saw the pulse in Kieryn’s throat quicken.
He gasped a deep breath and his eyes opened. Laniel released him but put himself in front of the long fall to the gardens. Confused, Kieryn asked, “Falconeye, what in hell are you doing here?”
Laniel chuckled, relieved. “Making sure you don’t take a leap. You’re more rock than bird, aurien.”
“Ah,” Kieryn sighed, glancing past Laniel at the gulfs of twilight. “So it wasn’t a nightmare.” He waved a hand. “I’m fine now. You can go.”
“Go? I don’t think so. Saffron, find someone to put bars on the balcony door.”
She winked out.
Kieryn swore, and he meant his words to sear like acid, but Laniel stood his ground. At last, Kieryn rolled back into bed, faint and chilled. Shortly, Laniel’s sharp ears heard the scuffling of feet against the tower wall. A pair of Elarion swung down from the floor above. Metal bars clinked from their harnesses. They chipped at the stone and hammered the bars into place, six of them stretching across the door.
Curious, Kieryn peered out at them and saw what Laniel dreaded he would see. Those bars were as pale and shiny as silver. Baernavë. Kieryn laughed bitterly at the irony, then kicked out the glass.
~~~~
Lyrienn found her brother draped across a chair, as if the arms were two tree branches. She shook his shoulder. Startled from sleep, he looked up at her with bloodshot eyes. “I had to see for myself,” she whispered, frowning at the bed. Kieryn lay on his stomach, sleeping peacefully at last. His feet, free of the weight of the blankets, were bloody but bandaged. The shutters to the balcony were closed and a heavy tapestry hung across them to keep the cold from gusting in.
Laniel sat up, rubbed a crick in his neck, and said, “His fever broke just after dark.”
“I know.”
He scowled a question.
“The lights throughout the palace and half the city went out, Laniel. Lamps, ovens, forges, everything.
He glanced at his friend. “Goddess’ bosom.”
“It took us a while to decide what happened, but Aerdria asked the fay and they confirmed her suspicions. She’s having to dampen the truth. She doesn’t want the people to fear him more than they already have.”
“Good idea.”
“He’ll be all right now, you’ll see.”
Laniel shook his head. “He’s been up and about, doctored his feet, bathed, but he refuses to eat anything.”
“He’s content to waste away?”
“Were he full Elari, I think he would’ve asked Ana-Forah to take him into the Light.”
“Oh, Laniel, no.”
“I don’t know what to do,” he admitted.
Lyrienn’s heart hurt for him. The one human in a thousand years on whom Laniel decided to take a chance was determined to give up and die. And so soon after he’d lost Lothiar. “You need rest,” she said. “How many days since you’ve been in your woods? You’re starving as much as he is. You’ve seen him through the worst. I’ll take the next watch.”
“I don’t want you to be alone with him. He may go into another fit. He belted me in the face more than once.”
She turned his face to the lamplight. Bruises swelled on his lip and cheekbone. “Bastard! Did you hit him back?”
“Of course not.”
She planted a fist on her hip. “I would’ve. He swings at me, I’ll swing right back and bludgeon some sense into his head.”
Laniel bit off a grin. “I believe you would. And what if he takes offense and burns down the whole palace?”
“He wouldn’t dare. Would he?”
“Anymore, I don’t know. He’s broken to pieces inside. How to mend him?”
“A piece at a time.” Lyrienn tugged his hand. “Up you go. Out. Don’t worry about it. Your troop is waiting for you, and you can help Kieryn best by keeping your eyes open for Lothiar. Besid
es,” she added, grinning, “you’re hardly the ideal nursemaid.”
For a moment, Laniel seemed to take offense, then he broke into quiet laughter. “You’re right. But as soon as he turns—either way—send for me.”
“Even before Aerdria,” she vowed and closed the chamber door after him.
~~~~
Kieryn woke in the middle of the night to the sound of soft shuffling and muted thumps. He rolled over and shaded his eyes from the bite of firelight. For an instant, he was sure he was dreaming. Rhoslyn knelt on the hearth, rearranging the logs and placing some atop the embers. Her long golden hair fell in soft curls down her back, and she hummed softly. He almost called out to her. But when she climbed to her feet, he saw that she owned a height and a willowy slenderness that belonged to someone else. A delicate gown of pale yellow silk, lovely as a buttercup, swirled about her legs. Tucking her hair behind a pointed ear, she saw him looking at her. “Evening,” she said dryly.
Kieryn fell back to the pillows. “I thought you were someone else.”
“You thought I was her,” she said, dusting off her hands. “And that she had come all this way to find you.”
“Just go away,” he muttered.
“No.”
Kieryn growled, but Lyrienn was not daunted. “Laniel is gone. He grew tired of you. Now you’re in my hands.”
Groaning, he heaved himself out of bed and limped to an armchair.
“Dinner’s on the side table for you,” she said in an offhand manner. He ignored the invitation. His body ached from days of shivering with fever. And his damned feet. Goddess, they throbbed. He unwrapped them, examined them in the light of the fire, pinched a sliver of glass from his heel.
“Serves you right,” Lyrienn said. “It isn’t everyday we can have new glass brought in. We should move you to Zellel’s rooms.”
“No! Stop mothering me, damn it. Get out!”
“So you can lie here and starve yourself to death? You’re pathetic. I lost my brother, too, but you don’t see me hanging myself. You’re a coward to give up like this.”
He hurled the dinner tray at her. Cold soup sprayed her skirt. She grabbed the silver tray and flung it back. Kieryn batted it aside. “That’s all you’ve got!” she shouted. “Self-pity and brute force. Just like any spoiled child.”
He rushed at her, shoved her into the wall. Time and again, Laniel had entrusted him with her protection, but Laniel was no longer here, and Kieryn didn’t feel like playing nice. Lyrienn had picked the wrong battle, and the fear in her eyes as she glanced at the door told him she knew it. He pinned her, heels of his hands bruising her shoulders. “I will do as I please, and if that’s to lay here and die, who are you to tell me to do otherwise? You bloody Elarion, trying to convince me living is better. Rot in the Abyss, every last one of you!”
Lyrienn drove her palm across his face. Stunned, he released her. “How dare you,” she said. “All we’ve ever been is good to you, Aerdria and Laniel and I, when we had no reason at all to trust you. Are you blind to everything good left in the world?”
“There is nothing left!” he shouted. “They took it!”
“Then you let them.”
His fist arced in a backhand. Lyrienn reeled, palm to her cheek. “Leave!” he roared and sank into the armchair, too dizzy to stand. The images he’d seen in Kelyn’s mind and in Rhoslyn’s darted through his head like arrows. He was sure this pain would kill him before the lack of food did. Lyrienn glided softly toward him. Ah, Goddess, why didn’t she leave him alone? Her fingers touched his face, so tenderly. He didn’t understand. How could she endure him? What did she want? Everyone wanted something from him. Da had wanted obedience and something Kieryn couldn’t be. Kelyn wanted admiration, praise, and in the end, submission. Rhoslyn wanted him on a string, never far out of reach, ever at her bidding. Lothiar wanted his death. Laniel wanted him to laugh and just be all right. But he wasn’t, and he wouldn’t pretend to be. And Lyrienn, what did she want?
She stooped and kissed his forehead, his eyelids, his mouth.
He grabbed a fistful of her hair. “Don’t think you can use me.”
A wave of pain, from her scalp and the keen edge of his accusation, sped across her face. She spat at him.
The feral thing inside him shuddered against its cage, and Kieryn turned it loose on Lyrienn. He hauled her by her wrist to the bed and took her hard. She didn’t fight as much as he expected, and he hated her for it. Hated her for having hope and insisting he have hope, too. He hated himself for what he was doing, but he told himself he didn’t care. Everything for his own satisfaction, everything to destroy her hope for him.
It didn’t work. He felt sick afterward. Lyrienn tried to hold onto him, hold him close, but he couldn’t stand it. He rolled away. The air hissing through the broken glass chilled the sweat on his face.
Lyrienn leant over him and touched his shoulder. “Talk it out, Kieryn. Talk to me. Please.”
“Don’t call me that.”
“But—”
“I don’t know who I am anymore.” He slept.
By morning, he expected her to have fled, but he found her sitting before the fire, working away with needle and thread. A curtain was drawn aside and late morning light spilled across his blue velvet robe pooled in her lap. “I think I’m wasting my time,” she said when she heard him stirring. “Some of these tears … it might be best to make you a new one.”
She spoke as if nothing had happened. He decided to pretend the same in the hopes that he’d been hallucinating again. He crept out of bed, lightheaded from lack of food and fetched fresh bandages from the dressing room for his feet. Returning, he glimpsed the bruises on her face. He dropped the roll of linen and sank into the facing armchair, horrified.
She set the robe and needle aside and squeezed his wrist. “Don’t,” she said. “This isn’t you.”
“But it is!” he cried. “This monstrous thing is down inside of me and it did this to you.”
She released him, considering. Objective as a sage issuing him a challenge, she asked, “What will you do with it?”
The monstrous thing didn’t want to go meekly back into its cage. He liked it, even while he loathed it. “I don’t know,” he replied.
“Well, I know one thing,” Lyrienn added, rising, “ogres are nasty when their hungry. I’ll fetch us something.”
“No.”
Lyrienn sighed as if to say, Back to that again, are we? Instead, she said, “Suit yourself,” and pulled the bell rope. She dined alone in the parlor between the avedrin’s rooms. Was she resigned to let him die at last? Aye, she had gotten what she wanted out of him, like everyone else.
He lost track of how many times Lyrienn dined without him. She stopped stitching the tears in his robe; neither did she bother starting a new one. Once her bruises lightened, she returned to her duties as Aerdria’s handmaid, visiting Kieryn only at mealtimes and after Aerdria retired. She insisted on dining in his suite and sleeping in his bed, to keep him company, she said. Rather than food, she brought him books. “Might as well do something while you wait to die.”
He found it nearly impossible to concentrate on the words he read and finally tossed the books aside. He felt as if he floated from room to room. The idea of food disgusted him. Yet one afternoon, he stood in the parlor doorway watching Lyrienn nibble on one of those honeyed peaches he loved while she read from a battered book of poems. The sunlight slanted across the table and glowed in her hair; she looked radiant with a drip of honey on her lower lip. Absently, she smeared it away and sucked it from her finger.
She repeated this over and over again. Bizarre. The drip of honey turned to blood.
Kieryn shook himself. He was having nightmares though he was awake and on his feet. He was so tired. Tired of hurting. Tired of running. What was starving himself to death but the ultimate act of running? Sagging against the doorframe, he laughed at himself. Let them rot, Kelyn and Rhoslyn and their bastard child, not he.
He started for the table and the tray of food, resolved to force himself to eat. The sunlight grew so bright it blinded him. He swayed and fell. Lyrienn’s voice followed him into the darkness.
A pinprick of light grew until clouds of light surrounded a beautiful face. Lyrienn’s hand was hot on his clammy skin. “I thought you’d gone,” she said.
He started shaking, not from fever this time. “I’m scared. I don’t want to die.”
She smiled. “I know.”
He drank every drop of the broth she gave him. But his body had accepted the death he’d chosen, and shortly after finishing it, he ran to the bathing room and retched it all back up again.
Over the next couple of days, Kieryn’s belly remembered how to take in sustenance, and he grew stronger, but neither happier nor saner. Unpredictably that feral thing lurking inside him stalked free, and those times Lyrienn retreated to the parlor or to Aerdria’s side, allowing Kieryn time alone to wage his private war inside his head. They fought for dominance, the feral thing and its gentle opposite. During his hours in the dark, the Sailor’s Song echoed from some sunny place, and he heard Rhoslyn’s voice singing:
“The lover tossed a new love found
And slept in the seamaid’s arms.
He in her golden hair she bound,
He kissed her long and breathed her charms.”
In the bright hours, he knew he would find peace again only if he learned to balance the two, master them as he would the flame, while giving them both room to breathe.
What do you believe in? A gentle voice echoed in his head. In my family. What do you do when all you believe in can no longer be trusted? Can you let go of it so easily? When you turn away, what is left? There is only darkness. How do you move forward? Kindle your own flame. When half your own soul is torn out, with what do you fill the void? Light, there must be a light. A place of quiet in the raging buzz of this void, this turbulent blackness. But how to see? A light. Kindle your own flame.