by Jenny Moss
She had known we were coming.
Ingen wandered in, moving about the hut. Kenway and I sat beside each other on one bench. He ate the dark grainy bread and sipped the fish soup and drank the ale. Wind whistled through the cracks in the walls. Kendra sat across from us. We watched one another.
“You are like your mother,” she said to me. “I’m surprised no one saw it.” Out came a weary laugh. “People see what they want.” She looked at Kenway. “Noblemen only see things by…rank. Is that right?”
Kenway studied her warily, no longer deferential.
But I was drawn in. “You knew my mother?”
“I knew her.” Her eyes were no longer green, but now a jarring blue. “Anne.”
My heart thumped fast. “Anne?”
Kenway leaned impatiently over his mug of ale. “Who are you? Are you related to the queen?”
She stared at me, not him. “I am the mother of the girl who was poisoned.”
“Queen Audrey’s mother?” he asked. “That’s not possible.”
“No, not Audrey’s mother.” With that, she left. Through the open doorway, I could see her staring at the sea. Her robes snapped violently in the high wind.
I saw the truth, but didn’t want to see it. It could not be so. I closed my eyes, trying to piece it all together, while my heart pounded in my ears. I felt as if I moved through mud and could not think.
“Kendra looks like the queen,” said Kenway. “But she’s not Audrey’s mother. Queen Anne was her mother.” He was suddenly quiet.
I thought back on all my years, and the clues I had missed. The sameness of our pasts. Both mother and father dead. Or so I had thought. Her mother was here. Mine was truly dead.
The old men including me in all her lessons, pushing me to understand what she could not. The leaders of other countries. The number of their ships. The size of their armies. All while the queen looked out her window at Sir Kenway riding his steed in the lists.
Eldred, always watching. He’d been protecting me, not her. Not protecting me from jabs, slaps, pokes, and loneliness. Only from death. I was to live. And I had lived, while she died. She was sacrificed for me. My eyes stung. My cheeks hurt. They had all been sacrificed.
All that I knew was false.
I’d only had my imagination to create a mother. In my mind, she was a simple woman, of lowly station, who loved the baby she had to leave. But now I knew my mother wasn’t a scullery maid buried in an unmarked grave. She’d been a queen.
I felt at once hot and cold, panic rising. I’d always kept myself apart from others, for others only caused me pain. But how could I do that now? The world was reaching in, grasping for me, just as those townspeople had done. A queen? A queen? It could not be.
Kenway took my hand. “Your mother was Anne? Who was she?”
I pulled away, not wanting to be touched.
Ingen was then beside me, standing close, but not touching me.
Kendra came back into the cottage and sat across from us again. Her face was bruised and puffy, like a plum. She saw that I knew.
“You are clever,” she said. “Eldred said that it was so.”
“What was your daughter’s name?” I asked her. I had to know her real name.
“Devona,” she said.
“Protector,” I whispered. I thought of her perfect face. “Did she know?”
“No.” Kendra’s eyes were cold.
“And so, my name is…?” I could not say it.
“Audrey.” She said it with a dead voice.
Audrey. Not Shadow.
Kenway stood up, knocking over his ale. The amber drink flowed across the table. He stared at me. “She’s the queen?”
“She is our queen, your queen,” said Kendra. “But she’s more than that.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
“Your mother’s spirit left her body before you were switched with my Devona.”
“Who switched her? Eldred?” Kenway asked. He was back beside me on the bench, stunned. He stared at me as if he didn’t know me. Ingen was on my other side, looking at me as if she’d known these secrets all along.
Kendra went to the window and opened the shutters. The cold wind whooshed in, sending her hair flying. The ocean opened up before us. “It was Larcwide.”
“Larcwide?” Kenway asked. Then he nodded. “Yes, I can see him doing such a thing.”
I could believe it, too. Larcwide was the most scheming of all the advisers. Silken words slid out of his mouth into Eldred’s ear.
“He was my husband,” Kendra said.
Larcwide was Audrey’s father? Devona. Devona’s father. I didn’t doubt he’d want his own daughter as queen. It must have given him such pleasure to watch her order us all about.
“I was the one who suffered. Not only did I have my daughter taken from me, I was the reason for it.”
I felt her grief in the wind, flying through the air, pounding at us. The dishes flew off the table, crashing against the wall. I gripped my fingers around the bench, waiting. The wind subsided.
“I told Larcwide I had foreseen your death. It would happen before your sixteenth birthday. He wanted to know how it would happen, who would do it. I tried, but I couldn’t see it. He and Eldred had a plan.”
“You’re a witch?” Kenway asked. He watched her closely.
“A prophetess. I see and hear things. Know things.”
“But you make the wind move,” I said, trying to slow down her story. I did not want to hear it.
“Nature—the waves, the wind, the clouds—senses my feelings and reacts. I cannot control it. I cannot control anything.”
It grew dark in the cottage. I could hear the sea slapping the cliffs. The fire glowed low.
“Larcwide brought me back to this cottage where I’d grown up. He told me if I returned to take Devona, they would kill me and she would be motherless. But, if I waited, when the danger had passed, they would bring her to me.”
Grabbing candles, she lit them in the fire and placed them on the table. “They promised to keep her safe.” She sat down and leaned toward the light. Her eyes were growing black, from corner to corner.
“I’m sorry,” I said, feeling the words like cold stones in my mouth. She was accusing me, I knew. I lived while her daughter had died.
She put her hands to her face. “I saw her death.” The words seemed to weep as she spoke. “I saw her lying still. I saw you touch her.”
The wind was dead now. The flames of the candles did not flicker. I felt Devona’s coldness on my fingers.
“Larcwide gave up his daughter for his kingdom. But I betrayed her by letting him use me.” Her eyes grew even blacker.
“What’s wrong with your eyes?” I asked her.
“It’s your own feelings you see there, not mine.”
“It was not my doing, Kendra.”
“You are alive and she is dead. Now you must do what you were meant to do.”
Whatever she thought I must do was not my desire, I knew that much.
“You cannot escape it,” she said.
She was wrong. I was free of duty. I had left that at the castle.
“It’s my choice what I do,” I told her.
“You sound like your mother.” She spat the words. “So selfish.”
I stared at her with hard eyes. “You may call me selfish, but I don’t think my mother deserves that.”
“She is more selfish than you.”
Is? I dragged my fingers across the grooves on the table. A splinter pricked me.
“Queen Anne is dead,” said Kenway, almost laughing.
“In a sense,” Kendra said.
“What…do you mean?” I asked slowly.
“Your mother was not that human form. That died, but her spirit still lives.”
I stood up, suddenly trembling.
Kendra came at me, poking my chest with her long nail. “You feel her.”
Kenway rose, grabbing her hand and thrusting it back at her, but she kept h
er eyes on me.
“She comes to you. She’s in the trees, the rivers, the wind.”
I stepped away from her, back and back until I bumped against the wall. I wanted her to stop saying these things. An hour ago, I was a queen’s shadow with no mother or father. Now I was to believe this? I shook my head at her. She was a liar. I wanted to believe she was a liar.
“Listen to me, Audrey.”
I flinched at the use of the name. I’d yearned for a real name, given to me by a loving mother and father. But I didn’t want this one.
“You feel her, Audrey,” she said.
I sucked in a painful breath, knowing the truth of it. I did feel her. I’d always felt her.
“You’re mad!” Kenway yelled. “That’s why Larcwide left you here.”
“Then why did Eldred send you to me, boy?”
“Queen Anne lived!” he said. “She married. She birthed a child. She died.”
“Audrey’s mother took a human form to marry the king. That was her first selfish act. When she did so, our kingdom began to die.”
“What was she then, if not human?” I asked, finding my voice.
“You don’t believe her!” Kenway said.
“You know already, Shadow,” said Ingen. “She is earth and sky. She is the air we breathe and the water we drink. She nourished us and fed us.”
“Then she saw your father and loved him more,” said Kendra. “But her king died.” She gave Kenway a wicked smile. “Murdered by Fyren when your father turned his back.”
Kenway’s hand went to his belt as if there were a sword still there.
“Oh, I know he didn’t mean to. None of us meant to be in this place. There’s guilt enough for all of us.”
I collapsed on the bench. “Erce,” I said. She’d been coming to me. Even when I was in the castle, I had sensed her there. I looked at Ingen, into her dark eyes, and knew she was indeed here because of Erce.
“She grew weak when your father died,” said Kendra. “Her human form wasn’t strong enough to survive your birth. So her spirit went back where it belonged.”
“Then why is the country still dying?” Kenway asked, not giving in, not believing.
“She hides away, not giving us what we need. Except she left us one who can make it right.”
I turned to Ingen. “You’re her priestess.”
She smiled. “It’s not me Kendra’s talking about.”
Kendra reached down and grabbed my hands, but I jerked away. “Think of who you are, Audrey. The union of nature and man. You’re our connection to the Earth and to one another.”
“No,” I whispered, feeling the fear of the villagers inside me again.
“Only you can unite us. Only you can bring your mother back to us. When you do that, we’ll be able to defeat Fyren.”
Her words squeezed my lungs. I sucked in air.
“Fyren raises an army as we speak!” yelled Kendra. “You know he’s the one who kidnaps the villagers, whose soldiers slaughtered those in Erce. If anyone refuses to go with Fyren’s soldiers, he is killed. Fyren doesn’t care for Deor’s people, Audrey. He only wants more power.”
“It is not my concern,” I said in a voice that felt no part of me.
She grabbed my shoulders, shaking me. “He will send Deorian troops in ships to attack our friends to the south, to try to take their lands. His evil will bleed out beyond Deor.”
I yanked away from her. “I don’t want to hear any more.”
“Fyren believes in Erce, just as his mother did,” Kendra continued. “He is seeking priestesses to reach her. He attempts to gain more control through Deor’s goddess.”
I looked at Ingen and back to Kendra.
“Yes,” said Kendra. “Ingen is the last priestess. There was another, but she died in the queen’s castle not many days ago.”
“Maren,” I said.
“I felt her spirit leave her body,” said Ingen. “You did, too, didn’t you, Audrey?”
I trembled, remembering.
“He seeks to reach Erce, by any means,” said Kendra. “He wants Ingen. Thankfully, he does not know about you.” But her voice was filled with despair, not relief. “Eldred and Larcwide succeeded there.”
“I am…sorry for it,” I said, trying to just breathe. “But I…cannot help you, Kendra.”
“Fyren killed your father!” She came to me, trying to stroke my hair; her fingernails were like claws on my scalp. “You and Erce will defeat him, Audrey.”
“Not I,” I said.
“You have no choice.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
I left the cottage, desperate to be out of that closed-in space. Too many thoughts swirled in my head, making it pound and ache.
I was the daughter of King Alfrid and Queen Anne. Had the king known his beloved Queen Anne was a goddess? Had he loved her still?
What had he been like, my father, murdered before I was born? Eldred had assumed the murderer was Fyren, but had no proof. Fyren had been powerful even then, with many lords loyal to him. He was also the cousin of the king—the only son of King Alfrid’s dead aunt, who’d died not long after being denied the throne by her father.
Fyren was to be crowned king, but history turned as it is wont to do: My mother discovered she was with child. I could imagine the ire Fyren must have felt at that bit of news—to have the throne, which he saw as rightfully his, finally given to him, only to be taken away again.
He’d seized the role of regent, until Queen Audrey—I—could rule. On my sixteenth birthday, I was to be crowned.
The country was in turmoil. Many lords thought I should be passed over for him. I was a baby, and a girl, after all. Many thought his mother should never have been pushed aside. But Lord Leofwine insisted I be queen. His loyalty to King Alfrid extended to me. Eldred and the other advisers gave their support as well. I was the king’s heir. Later, Fyren had Leofwine banished from the castle, starting the rumor it was he who had killed the king.
From the saddlebag, I took out the forgotten medallion. I brushed the dirt away and looked upon it in the fading light. A woman’s face, still covered with dried blood. I chipped it off her eyes, her lips. This was Erce. My likeness to her gripped me tight in the chest.
Hot tears filled my eyes. These were mad tales Kendra told, but I knew them to be true. I was Erce’s daughter. I reached out to her now, but she ignored me. Ignored me! Not coming when I called for her, but instead only when she wished. And then just as whispers in the wind. Selfish, just as Kendra had said.
King Alfrid, my father. I had seen his portrait many times. It hung over the hearth in the great hall. He stood so confidently, with his hand gripping his silver sword, looking as if he might jump off the wall at any moment to reclaim his kingdom. Now his murderer ruled his country.
Fyren’s red apples. I still felt the taste, so sickly sweet, on my tongue. I’d taken fruit from the hand of my father’s killer. My stomach turned. I had liked my father’s killer.
I looked out over the cliff. Such wildness here. The dark gray cliffs. The ocean, a blue I’d never seen. It looked not of this world. The waves crashed onto a beach below.
I found a rocky path, somewhat steep. I put the medallion in my pocket and made my way down, moving too fast, hearing the roar of the ocean in my ears.
Something was changing inside me. In that other life, my life as Shadow, I had resisted those who reached out to me. Like Piers. Now, guilt that I had tried to hold at bay rushed over me. I shut my eyes tight, but his little face wouldn’t disappear. I had abandoned him. I’d left him behind. Agony flooded my heart.
Just as Erce had left me behind. Was I so like her?
Piers had saved me, really. He had kept my heart from withering, and I repaid him with disloyalty, adding to his mother’s and father’s abandonment.
The sand was fine, so white. I knelt down and ran my fingers through its cold softness. The salty spray of the waves settled on my lips. Sea birds with large cupped beaks flew overhea
d in communion. I envied their peace so much it hurt my heart. I could stay here, live here. Push all the madness away.
I climbed onto a black rock jutting out into the sea. Yanking out the medallion, I hurled it out into the blue water. Once back on the sand, I closed my eyes, trying to push it all away.
“Do you think you can rid yourself of her so easily?”
I whipped around. It was Kendra, yelling above the sound of the waves crashing on the shore.
“She disposed of me that easily.”
She came close to me, looked at me with those bewitching eyes. “You know nothing of a mother’s pain.”
“I don’t believe motherhood was in her schemes,” I said. “She wanted a king, not a daughter.”
“You didn’t know her.”
“Then tell me: What was she like? Like nothing I have imagined, I am sure.”
“You imagined a frail human mother whose body couldn’t survive your birth? That was an easier mother to love.”
Tears pricked my eyes. “An easier one to understand, at least.”
“You look so like her. Your eyes, your hair, the way you move. Even your voices are the same.”
“And were any of those things a part of Erce?” I looked toward the waves. “Did she create a body out of the sea? What does it matter if I look like that body she made?”
“It is true your humanness is similar to a body not truly hers. But that resemblance is uncanny. It is as if I stand before her again, sixteen years ago.”
I eyed her then. “You were friends?”
She laughed. “No. We weren’t friends, Audrey. I’m a peasant—it was a scandal that Larcwide had married me at all—and she was the queen and more like my Devona in her manner. Proud. And, yes, selfish.
“You’re the exact image of her, but your strong spirit matches your father’s. A perfect blend of nature and man. You were meant to be queen, no doubt. Destined for this moment.”
“No. I’m plagued with weakness.”
She studied me. “You are confused, not weak.”
But she didn’t know the cause of my agony. It wasn’t only my feelings that haunted me like ghosts. Everyone’s feelings emptied into me as if I were a vessel made just to contain misery. But I was a weak vessel, cracking, drowning.