Coulter’s head was down. “We’ll guard this place. Maybe he’ll come here, and we’ll can get him then.”
“Maybe. Or maybe he’ll go to the Eccrasian Mountains, get someone to murder Gift, and send someone else here. We’ll lose everything that way, Coulter. Because you’re being cautious.”
He didn’t answer her. She could hear his breathing, rapid and fast as if he had been running. The river seemed faint behind it. Finally he sat on the bench. “Is this why you come here? To plan revenge against Rugad?”
“Revenge?” Arianna asked. “Against a man who violated me and who now threats the entire world? That’s not revenge, Coulter. That’s survival.”
Coulter’s head was still bowed. He was silent for a long time.
Finally, she said softly, “Why won’t you even try, Coulter?”
He ran his hands over his face. His entire body seemed to fold in on itself, and she saw, perhaps for the first time, how he must have looked as a child. Frail and vulnerable and unloved, a captive of the Fey, a curiosity that they held onto because he was Islander and had magick.
“Because I’ll fail, Ari,” he said.
The comment startled a laugh out of her. “You don’t know that.”
“Yes, I do.” His hands dropped from his face. He clutched his knees, staring down as he did so. “The first time I ever fought with my magick, I killed a hundred people to save five. And they didn’t die fast either. I didn’t do the spell right—”
“You didn’t know how.” Gift had told her this. He had thought Coulter a hero.
“—and they all died horribly. Then I helped your father attack Rugad’s army with that beam of light, and he turned it back on us, and Adrian, the only father I ever had, died. I saw the light come back and I didn’t stop it. I didn’t do anything until he was already dead.”
“He knew the risks, Coulter. He was fighting just like we were.”
Coulter still didn’t look at her. “And the spell that could still hurt us—the one that could ruin everything—is the one I did first.”
She frowned, waiting.
“When your mother died, her Link to Gift hadn’t been severed and he nearly died. I saved him, and wrapped us up together. We’re Bound.”
“I know,” she said. “You’ve told me.”
“But you don’t seem to know what it means.” Finally he looked at her. His cheeks were still red, his lower lip trembling so slightly that she almost didn’t notice it. “It means that if I die, Gift will too. And if you happen to be inside my head at the same time, all of us will die. I’ll kill you and Gift, and where will Blue Isle be then?”
Where would the Empire be then? she thought. Strange that he only mentioned the Isle.
“You’re frightened,” she said.
“Of course. Who wouldn’t be?”
“You’re frightened of yourself.” She sat beside him on the bench. “You tell all the children who come to your school to trust their own abilities, to believe in themselves. You tell them that if their magick frightens them it will eat them alive, and yet you do none of those things.”
“How do you think I understand them?”
She let out a long breath of air. She had let his fear infect her. Or perhaps the fact that they had shared his mind had made his emotions bleed into hers. For six months, she had been idle because she had listened to Coulter. For six months, she had let Rugad gain control of her Isle, her Empire. Her body.
It was time to fight back.
“I’m going after Rugad,” she said, “and I want you beside me.”
Coulter shook his head. “It’s a risk…”
“We need to take risks.”
“Some risks aren’t worth it.”
She stiffened. “Maybe not to you, but this is my life we’re dealing with. My identity. My entire world. I have to fight for it. Whether or not you’ll be beside me is up to you.”
He didn’t say anything. He turned back toward the river. The diamonds of light continued to play on his face.
“Fifteen years ago, you said you loved me. I’ve been inside your mind. I know it’s true.”
“Don’t,” he whispered.
“Would you ask me to sacrifice everything to stay beside you? Because you’re afraid? Well, I can’t, Coulter. And besides, you made me a promise in the palace garden the day you left me. Do you remember it?”
He looked at her. “I said I’d always be your friend.”
He had, but she wasn’t referring to that at all. “You said, ‘Every Visionary needs an Enchanter at her side. I’ll be yours.’ Remember?”
His lips thinned.
“I need an Enchanter. I need my Enchanter. I need someone I can trust.”
“You could be dooming us all.”
“Staying here will doom us all. I’m going to give us a fighting chance.”
He leaned back, a grimace on his face. “And what if we fail?”
“Then at least we’ve tried.” She took a step closer to him. “Coulter, I can’t feel anything in this body.”
“I know. But I think I can find some way to fix that.”
“I love you,” she said and his eyes widened. She hadn’t said that to him in fifteen years. “I want to be with you. I want to make love to you. I want to have children with you. I can’t do that like this. Please, Coulter. If I stay here, I lose everything. I even lose you.”
His face had gone white. He apparently hadn’t realized what she meant, or how she felt. Or perhaps he hadn’t believed it. They had shared themselves more intimately than most people ever did. He had to know, on some level, that she was telling the truth.
He swallowed, rubbed his face, then took a deep breath. “We need a plan,” he said.
THREE
BRIDGE TOOK the last bite of his lunch and sipped water from the tankard in front of him. The eating nook in the family suite was large and cold, but Bridge knew better than to complain. Arianna would taunt him as she had before. She thought him weak and stupid, and she wasn’t afraid to say so.
Arianna sat across from him, her posture cool and regal. She rubbed at the birthmark on her chin as if it itched, then finished the last of her bread and cheese. She hadn’t said much to him all lunch and he knew that she was wondering where his daughter was.
Lyndred hadn’t come to lunch or breakfast either. She had become more withdrawn the longer they spent at the palace. Bridge got the sense that his daughter was frightened of something, but she wouldn’t tell him what.
One of the Islander servants bowed and refilled his water glass. Bridge had stopped drinking spirits here. He felt that he needed to keep his wits about him. As the weather had gotten worse, he started drinking more root tea, even though Arianna called it the beverage of peasants, just as his grandfather Rugad used to. Sometimes Bridge got the sense that Arianna was his grandfather come back to life.
The very idea made him shudder. Rugad may have conquered more land than any other ruler, but he was an arrogant man who seemed to respect no one but himself.
“You will tell me where Lyndred is before the day is out,” Arianna said. It wasn’t a request. It was a command.
“I haven’t seen her,” Bridge said. “Perhaps the servants know.”
“You haven’t even bothered to look for her? Perhaps she’s ill.” Arianna’s concern for Lyndred wasn’t unusual. Arianna seemed to have taken to the girl.
“I don’t think she’s ill,” he said. “I think she probably wanted some privacy. Lyndred’s not used to life here on Blue Isle.”
“Or in the palace,” Arianna said. “I suppose you raised her in that awful Bank of Nye.”
He started. Arianna had never been off Blue Isle. There was no way she could have known that the Black Family’s palace on Nye had once been its central bank.
She startled him like that daily. There were things Arianna should not know and yet did. Things about the family, phrases that Rugad used, histories that no one should have been able to impart to her. Her mot
her, Jewel, had died when Arianna was born and her father was an Islander. Arianna was raised by Islanders, not Fey, and yet she seemed to be the purest Fey Bridge had met.
“I raised her in Nye, which was my mistake,” Bridge said. “Nye is a weak country with little to recommend it—”
“I know. It always surprised me that you stayed there as long as you did.”
“You told me to. I offered to come here when you became Queen, but you told me to stay in my position.”
She raised her eyebrows slightly which he had grown to recognize as a sign of surprise. “And you listened to me?”
But he knew that wasn’t what surprised her. She didn’t remember sending that message. She didn’t remember a lot of things. Islanders sometimes had to introduce themselves to her more than once, and then, when they left, they would remark on how poor her memory had become.
He had heard from some of the servants say that she had suffered severe headaches just before he had arrived, and that she had actually been in bed unconscious for several days. Her Healers had not been able to help her, and some thought it a magickal attack.
When she awakened, Arianna blamed Seger saying that Seger had tried to kill her. Seger had disappeared from the palace, but Arianna had not tried to find her. His niece was a strange mixture of ruthlessness and carelessness that he didn’t pretend to understand.
“Well,” she said after a moment. “Find Lyndred. She’s not used to Jahn. She could have gotten herself into trouble.”
Knowing his daughter, that was too accurate for comfort. He stood. He wouldn’t bring Lyndred to Arianna as he had been commanded, but he would make certain his daughter was all right.
He had almost made it to the door when Arianna said, “How long do you plan to stay on Blue Isle, Bridge? Until I die and you can make your daughter Black Queen?”
That had been awfully close to the original plan, until he had arrived and realized that his young daughter was no match for Arianna. So Bridge didn’t answer her, nor did he turn so that she could see the truth in his face. Instead he opened the door and left.
Arianna’s suite of rooms was on the farthest wing. For some reason, she had moved from the rooms she had occupied since she was a child to ones higher up and more protected. She had adopted other new habits as well, including taking most of her meals in her chambers alone or with her family.
He found the meals both inconvenient and intriguing. Inconvenient because he had to climb six flights of stairs, and intriguing because he never knew how Arianna was going to act.
He took the stairs down now, feeling the stone walls close in on him as he entered the older parts of the palace. He reached the second floor and walked past portraits of round, blond people who had apparently ruled the Isle since time immemorial. The portraits were done in different styles, but the faces all looked alike until he came to Jewel’s. His sister’s portrait, done when she was not much older than Lyndred, looked startling like his daughter’s face. Arianna had blue eyes, and too much roundness in her cheeks to look like her mother.
Arianna had given Lyndred her old rooms on the second floor. They had a lovely sitting area in the front, and a bedroom in the back, all of which overlooked the garden. Not that the garden mattered much now. The winter had set in and everything was gray and bleak.
He paused in front of his daughter’s door, then knocked. It took a long time before Lyndred pulled it open.
She looked drawn and tired, with circles beneath her eyes the size of fists. He didn’t remember the last time she had eaten well.
“Are you all right?” he asked, his careful planned speech abandoned at the sight of her.
She nodded.
“You don’t look all right,” he said. “What’s going on?”
She took his arm and pulled him inside, closing the door behind them. The room was too hot; the fire that burned in the grate seemed unnecessary. The windows were closed and shuttered, making everything dark.
“Have you even eaten today?” he asked.
She shrugged, which was apparently a no. Her clothing was scattered about the chamber. A servant hadn’t been in these rooms for a long time.
“What’s going on?” he asked again.
“You’re not going to tell her anything, are you?” Lyndred asked.
“You mean Arianna? Why should I?”
“I thought you came here because she asked you to.”
“She did, but I really came because I’m worried about you.”
Lyndred put a hand on his arm. “Let’s go home, Daddy. Please. Let’s get out of here.”
There was a desperation in her voice that he had never heard, not even when he spoke of coming to Blue Isle and she had done everything she could to stop it. She had Seen his death here, she said, and she had Seen herself having a child by a blond man, a man who somehow broke her heart.
“What happened?” he asked again. “Did someone hurt you?”
“No.”
“Then what?”
“I just don’t like it here. Please, Daddy. Let’s go home.”
He wished Lyndred was still a little girl so that he could pick her up and hold her. She was in such distress he didn’t know how to take care of her now. So he did as he would with any woman who was upset. He put his arm around her, led her to one of the chairs, moved some clothes off of it, and helped her sit. Then he took the nearest footstool and sat on it, pulling it close.
“Tell me what you’ve Seen.”
She bowed her head. “You sound like her. She makes me tell her all I See.”
“That’s normal, honey. Visionaries compare Visions.”
“She’s never told me what she Sees.”
“That’s her right.”
Lyndred raised her head. “You don’t understand, Daddy. I don’t think she Sees anything. I think her Vision is gone.”
Bridge took a deep breath. That made sense. The headaches, the long sleep, the lack of memory. He’d seen that happen to some of his older friends. Sometimes they lost the power of speech too, or the use of an arm. Perhaps something had ruptured inside Arianna’s mind. And while she seemed awfully young for that to happen, she had an unusual heritage. And the Fey had never seen a cross that had resulted in a Shifter and a Visionary in the same person. Perhaps that dual magick had taken a toll of its own.
“Why does that frighten you, that her Vision is gone?”
“She can’t lead with no Vision. And she can’t continue to use mine.”
Now they were getting to it. “Why not?”
“Because it’s not right. I See my Visions, not hers.”
That was technically true, but in those words there was a desperation that had nothing to do with ruling the Fey Empire and everything to do with Lyndred.
“And what did you see in your Vision?” he asked. “What don’t you want Arianna to know?”
“Oh, Daddy.” Lyndred bowed her head, but not before he saw the familiar look of surprise in her eyes. She was still his little girl, amazed that he could see through her.
“I won’t tell her,” Bridge said. “That’s entirely your decision.”
Lyndred rubbed her eyes with her forefinger and thumb, then shook her head.
“You should discuss it,” he said. “I am a Visionary, even if I’m a small one. A shared Vision—”
“I know.” She sounded irritated, but it was mostly reflex.
He waited. She gave a shuddery sigh, then said, “I watched her die.”
His breath caught. “We all die, Lyndred. Sometimes we see that Vision.”
She nodded. She knew that. He had made certain she was educated about her abilities. “She...crumbled, like sand does in someone’s fingers.”
He frowned but kept his hands on her shoulders, careful not to change the pressure. “Was she old?”
“She looked the same as she does now. Only grayer.”
“Like stone?”
“I guess.”
He didn’t say anything for a moment,
and neither did she. There was already one Golem on this Isle. He had heard of it long before he came. It was named Sebastian and it had been formed by Gift, but it had a life greater than Gift’s. Like the Golems of old, the ones that were said to house the souls of dead Black Kings—
He shuddered, and Lyndred felt it.
“What is it?” He could hear the concern in her voice. “What did I say wrong?”
“Have you ever touched Arianna?” he asked.
“All the time. She puts her hand on my arm, or pulls me forward. It’s strange, really. I mean, it’s like she feels we’re sisters or something.”
He wasn’t going to be sidetracked by that observation. He’d seen Arianna’s attachment to Lyndred too, and had been unable to fathom it. But for the moment, he wanted to concentrate on Lyndred’s Vision.
“How did her skin feel?”
“Like skin.”
“Not too cold or smooth, like rock?”
Lyndred made a face of disgust. “No.”
He let out a small breath. A Golem—even one with a life of its own—could be discovered by touch.
“Why?” Lyndred asked.
He shook his head, not quite willing to let go of the image. It would have explained so much: Arianna’s oddly prescient knowledge, her use of Rugad’s phrases, her similarities to him. But she was clearly her own person—and that person had a bit of Rugad in her.
None of Bridge’s remaining siblings had any of their grandfather’s personality. Nor did any of Bridge’s children, or his nieces and nephews, at least the ones he had met on Galinas. Only Arianna seemed to have any bit of Rugad in her.
If she was like this, then what was Gift, the child raised by the Fey? He must have been very gentle, to want to be a Shaman. Or was he gentle only in comparison to his sister?
“You’re being very quiet, Daddy.”
“I was thinking,” he said. “Was that all there was to your Vision?”
Lyndred sighed and her lower lip jutted out slightly. The expression was nearly a pout, but not quite, and not intentional. He’d seen that all her life. It was the expression she got when she didn’t really want to share something, but saw no choice.
The Black King (Book 7) Page 3