Rogue, Prisoner, Princess (Of Crowns and Glory—Book 2)

by Morgan Rice

  Today, though, Thanos had no time for such distractions.

  “You’re here because of what I said to you,” Cosmas said, emerging from behind his piles of books and scrolls.

  “Yes, I want to know more about—”

  “Wait,” Cosmas said, and Thanos saw him go to the doors of the library, pushing them shut with a grunt of effort. He locked them too, using a large brass key that Thanos doubted had been used in a long time. Certainly, Thanos had never found the doors locked before.

  “Now we can talk,” Cosmas said. “The library is designed to be quiet. No one will overhear.”

  Thanos looked over to the scholar. “You said before that you knew something about who had tried to kill me and why?”

  Cosmas nodded, gesturing for Thanos to follow as he headed into the shelves. “I can guess at the why,” he said. “The who may come from that.”

  Thanos waited while the old man took out a book almost as large as he was, bound in calf-skin and edged in silver. Thanos helped him to carry it, but Cosmas was the one who fussed and cleared a space on one of the library’s tables, then opened it to find the page he wanted.

  Thanos looked down to find himself looking at a family tree. He recognized it instantly as the succession of the Empire. King Claudius was there, and Queen Athena. Lucious was there, with Thanos and his parents off to one side, where…

  “Do you see it?” Cosmas asked.

  Thanos saw it. There was an annotation in the margins.

  “Ericthus, IV, 14-16? What does it mean?” he asked Cosmas. If there was anything written in the library the old man couldn’t understand, Thanos hadn’t found it yet.

  “I believe Ericthus was a minor playwright in the reign of King Harrath,” Cosmas explained.

  “Two hundred years ago,” Thanos said.

  “Ah, so you did take in some of your studies after all.”

  Thanos doubted that a long dead playwright had anything to say about him, though. At least, not directly. But maybe someone was trying to say things indirectly, in a form that most people would just ignore.

  “Do you have his plays here?” Thanos asked.

  “Somewhere,” Cosmas said, with a sweep of one wizened hand that took in the vast array of books scattered around. “I seem to remember them being next to a tome on the plant life of the outer islands.”

  Thanos suspected that wouldn’t help much, but he set off hunting through the library anyway. Sometimes, even when a cause seemed lost, it was still worth trying. Like with Ceres. He would find a way to get her back. He had to.

  For now, though, he dug through books and scrolls, trying to make sense of a system that probably only existed inside Cosmas’s head. There was no method to it. He dug through works on the proper construction of aqueducts, philosophical scrolls, treatises on geometry… Finally, just as Cosmas had promised, he spotted a work on rare plants, and next to it, he saw a slender, leather-bound volume.

  “I’ve got it!” Thanos said, holding the book aloft like it was the grand prize at the Stade after all that searching. He took it to the table, opening it to find an inscription inside.

  Olivia, may you find as much happiness in Ericthus’ work as I have. C.

  Thanos froze at the sight of that name. His mother’s name. And the initial, could that be… no, he couldn’t think it.

  Rather than stare at the inscription, he made himself turn to the fourth chapter, seeking out the first sixteen lines. They seemed to be a part of a speech by one of his characters, a noblewoman:

  And should I hide the truth from all

  That what should be done by my husband’s hand

  Has fallen instead to that of my king?

  Thanos stared at the lines. Like the ones at the start of the book, they refused to sink in.

  “This has to be some kind of joke,” he managed at last.

  “Not a joke,” Cosmas said. “A reminder of another old story. Although this one isn’t written down. King Claudius saw to that.”

  “What old story?” Thanos asked.

  “That there was a midwife in the city who had heard things from the princess of the Empire she attended about her baby.”

  “You’re talking about my mother,” Thanos said. He’d never known enough about his mother or father to even imagine them. There were paintings in some of the galleries of the castle, but even those were stiff, formal things.

  Cosmas nodded solemnly, his bald head dipping briefly so that Thanos could see the top of it.

  “There have always been hints and stories,” the scholar said. “But they faded, and you were just the king’s nephew again.”

  “You’re saying… you’re saying that I’m the king’s son.” The enormity of that hit Thanos then. Everything he’d thought about the world seemed to unravel, all at once. All his life, despite everything, he’d known where he fit in, and who he was. Now, neither of those things seemed to be stable anymore.

  He looked over at Cosmas, and a note of accusation crept into his voice. “If you know these stories, then you could have just told me.”

  “But then you would not have seen it for yourself. You do not just seek knowledge, Thanos. You seek proof.”

  Thanos still wasn’t convinced. “You could have told me years ago.”

  “Some things are best left in the past. You were safer not knowing.”

  “But you don’t think everyone has left them there,” Thanos guessed.

  Cosmas spread his hands. “I think someone found the book, and decided to remind themselves of their bloodline. They found a note in the margins, and they were more persistent than I could give them credit for. They learned about the old rumors. Perhaps they saw the beginnings of something they didn’t want to happen.”

  “Who?” Thanos asked.

  Cosmas smiled slightly. “You understand that I cannot say for certain. A wise man understands the limits of what he knows, and there have been many people in my library of late.”

  “Cosmas.” That was sharper than Thanos intended. “I’m sorry, but my life’s at stake.”

  “A lot more than your life, I think,” Cosmas replied. “And to answer your question, Prince Lucious has been more diligent than usual with his studies.”

  Lucious again. Wherever he looked, it seemed as though Thanos was finding his name. The evidence was stacking up, but none of it seemed to be final.

  “You said something about a midwife?” Thanos asked.

  Cosmas nodded. “I didn’t tell Lucious this part, but I was able to locate the woman. She lives in the city.”

  “I will need the address,” Thanos said.

  “Of course.”

  Thanos felt as though he was finally getting somewhere with his attempts to find out what was going on. He took the address from the scholar and practically ran from the library.

  He forced himself to slow to a walk as he headed down to the stables, determined to ride down into the city and find the woman. He didn’t want people to guess that something was wrong. He forced himself to make his way through the castle courtyard as calmly as if he were heading out for a pleasure ride, even though his every instinct said to run for the nearest horse and ride hard.

  The stables were noisier than Thanos would have expected as he approached. Normally, there would have been the occasional whinny of the horses, a few good-natured shouts from the stable hands. Now, the horses sounded as though something had spooked them, clattering their hooves at the walls of their stalls, refusing to settle.

  Thanos hurried to the stable doors, surprised to find them half open. No responsible stable hand would leave them like that. He looked inside, trying to make sense of it. The stables seemed to be empty of stable hands, the horses left to mill about in near panic.

  In the middle of it all, Thanos saw the reason why.

  “No,” Thanos said, as he saw the body lying there. It was on its back, and Thanos instantly recognized the stable boy he’d interrogated earlier. The boy lay with his limbs spread wide, his eyes
staring emptily upwards. There were bloody holes in the front of his tunic, but no slashes on his arms. He hadn’t defended himself. Instead, someone he trusted had walked up to him and stabbed him.

  No, not someone. Lucious was behind this. Thanos was sure of it. Anger rose in him, and a deep kind of sadness behind it. If he hadn’t come to see this boy, would he still be alive? Had he brought this about? No, this was Lucious’s fault. Everything pointed to Lucious.

  Now, Thanos needed to find a way to prove it.

  CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT

  Ceres stared up at the ziggurat of the forest folk. It was huge and ancient, obviously built long before their village, but still looking as though it belonged there. Beside her, Eoin stood waiting.

  Steps led up the side, leading to the different levels of the structure. On each, one of the forest folk stood, or sat, or moved in elaborate dance fights with the air itself.

  “What am I supposed to learn here?” Ceres said, and then caught herself. “I know, I know, everyone learns their own lessons. But how does this one work?”

  “It’s simple,” Eoin said. “When you can meet me at the top, you will be ready.”

  “Ready for what?” Ceres demanded.

  Eoin shrugged, with a smile that was far too infuriating. “I’ll tell you that at the top.”

  He ran up the steps and Ceres made to follow, but the woman on the lowest tier of the ziggurat moved in front of her.

  “First, you have things to learn. Do you know how to kick? Kick me.”

  Ceres thought she did, but the moment her foot struck out, the islander parried it away almost contemptuously. Her answering kick almost knocked Ceres from her feet. Ceres struck back, and again, she found it batted aside.

  “This is all you can do?”

  Ceres struck out again, and again. Each time, she missed, or found it blocked. Each time, a foot or a shin struck her. Before, she’d complained about not getting to fight. About having to move slowly and practice the movements over and over. Now, with her arms throbbing with bruises, Ceres was starting to wish for the dancelike slowness of the training before.

  “Concentrate!” the forest woman in front of her snapped, making her point with a kick that whipped up to ruffle Ceres’s hair.

  Ceres guessed that she was supposed to copy and react, but when the forest folk were so much more skilled than her, it felt as though all she could do was get hit. A sideways kick slammed into her stomach, and Ceres gasped for air.

  “How am I supposed to learn all this?” Ceres demanded. “You’re not even showing me what you’re doing.”

  “We show you every time we move,” the woman countered. She spun, her foot flicking up again, and Ceres barely leaned back out of the way in time. “The world shows you with every breath.”

  Ceres did her best to copy, throwing kick after kick. She tried to mimic the form of it, but that didn’t seem to be enough for her opponent.

  “The outer skin of it doesn’t matter,” she snapped, kicking out at Ceres again. Ceres forced herself to push harder, hoping it would be enough.

  Eventually, reluctantly, the woman let her pass. By the time she did, Ceres felt as though she could barely stand, and the act of pulling herself up to the next step took all she had. She wasn’t even sure how much she’d learned from the endless, exhausting repetition.

  And that was just the first step.

  There was a man on the next who jabbed at the body’s vulnerable points with bark-covered fingers. Ceres threw one of the kicks she’d learned at him, and he struck down painfully on her knee.

  “That is not what you are here to learn.”

  So she had to start again, with the only way to learn her own pain. She copied as best she could, but it still seemed like forever before she could haul herself to the next tier, then the next. There was a woman who threw her effortlessly to the ground, a man who struck with his elbows and knees, impossible to retreat from.

  She didn’t see the point of it. She couldn’t learn all this in one attempt, no matter how much she’d been training with Eoin. All she was doing was getting so bruised that she could barely make it from one tier to the next.

  She stood, ready for her next opponent, her next teacher, and found herself facing a girl barely older than Eike, so deeply enmeshed in the islanders’ curse that her skin seemed more bark than flesh.

  “I’m supposed to fight you?” Ceres asked.

  The girl laughed. “It’s not about fighting, silly. No wonder you’re getting hit so much. It’s about understanding. You know, I bet I could push you right off this ziggurat if I tried.”

  She tried, and Ceres had to dodge out of the way of the push. Then the girl caught her arm, twisting, and Ceres had to roll to take the pressure off.

  “Can you feel the forest?” the girl asked, in between pushes. “Eoin says you will, but I don’t know. You’re getting hit a lot.”

  She kept attacking, in a strange mixture of pushes, trips, and twisting joint locks that meant Ceres could never quite get her balance, never quite attack.

  “You’ve got to learn the lessons the world has,” the girl said, with another laugh. “You’ve got to be part of it. Relax.”

  Ceres did her best, even though it seemed strange to take lessons from someone so much younger than her. She managed to twist out of the way of the next push, but the one after that caught her, sending her to the edge of the step she was on. For a moment, she teetered on the edge, looking out over the village and the jungle below. It was a surprise to see just how high she’d climbed by then, with the rest of it spread out like some green carpet.

  She felt the breath of the wind there, seeming to hold her against the side of the ziggurat as it came in off the jungle. It felt as though the whole thing was breathing like one giant organism, pulsing with life.

  “Don’t think, move,” the girl said, and aimed a push at Ceres that would have sent her off the edge to tumble to the forest below if she hadn’t stepped aside.

  She was so tired by now that she did it without thinking, energy rising within her automatically. It felt then as though she could feel everything around her. She could see the flow of the next push, timed in rhythm with the endless pulse of the jungle. Ceres fit into the flow of that push, moved neatly into the space it created, and timed a push of her own that sent the girl spinning and laughing.

  “Good. You can go up.”

  The next step had a massive man whose legs were halfway to being tree trunks, and who threw punches Ceres suspected would have killed her if she hadn’t been flooded by the power that lay within her. She struck back, and although her opponent didn’t move, he seemed satisfied.

  The one after that was a woman who grabbed Ceres, dragging her to the ground. Ceres felt the opening and rolled, coming up behind her, throwing an arm around her opponent’s throat and squeezing.

  On and on it went. Each of the forest folk seemed to have a different skill, but Ceres was starting to see that they weren’t so different after all. Whether they punched or kicked, danced around her or charged forward to grapple with her, all of the islanders moved in tune with the world around them, no thought or form to it beyond that of the moment. With energy flooding through her, Ceres found it easy to relax into the same moment, and one by one they let her rise up the slopes of the ziggurat.

  Finally, Ceres climbed to the top of the structure, where Eoin was waiting. Up here, Ceres could see a ribbon of water that poured down the rear slope of the ziggurat, coming from a spring that arched over a block of stone, tumbling down in a waterfall easily as powerful as the one they’d trained beneath before. Ceres couldn’t see beyond that curtain of water, but she was certain there was something.

  Eoin stood before the wall of water. He stood there looking as perfect as a statue.

  He gave her a questioning look. “Do you understand yet? Can you feel it, Ceres?”

  Ceres nodded. She could feel the whole world around her as she stood up there. She could see the island spread out
below them too, looking even more beautiful from here than it did at ground level. She could see the streams and lagoons there, the inlets and the beaches that edged onto the jungle. This high, she could feel the wind whipping around her too, swirling as they stood there together.

  “The first time I saw you, I knew you had power,” Eoin said. “I thought that our ways might lead you to it.” He smiled. “And now I see that I was right.”

  Ceres stood there, and she could feel the energy pulsing from within her.

  “There are some things that cannot be controlled,” Eoin continued. “You might as well try to control the jungle. But you do have a choice. You can choose to develop the power within you. Or you can choose to let it disappear.”

  Ceres frowned at him then. “Why would I do that?”

  Eoin sighed.

  “Because the power within you is a dangerous one,” he said. “It is a very old gift, and if you choose to accept it, it will grow within you. You will hurt or kill all those who attempt to harm you. Anyone who touches you with malice will turn to stone.”

  Ceres thought back to the moments in the Stade when her power had come to her, killing creatures that had been on the verge of tearing her to pieces. She thought of the creature that had attacked their ship, and the way it had recoiled from her.

  “That doesn’t sound like a bad thing,” she said.

  “Perhaps not,” Eoin replied. “But it is like keeping a wild animal to protect yourself. It might be fiercely loyal, but you will not be able to hold it back from others. It will strike at anyone who touches you in anger, whether you want them to be hurt or not. It could hurt those you love. And once your power has been revealed, it cannot be contained.”

  That was a harder thing, and it was enough to make Ceres pause.

  “Do I have to do this?” she asked.

  Eoin shook his head. “You’ve already learned a lot about fighting from us. Perhaps that’s what you were brought here to do. Perhaps it’s all you were brought here to do.”

  “But you don’t believe that,” Ceres guessed.

  Eoin held out his hand to her. Ceres took it, feeling the mossy smoothness of his skin where they touched.