by Sam Farren
“What are we doing here?” Castelle asked in a whisper as Eos returned to the cart, collecting the last of her bags. “Why have we stopped? Is this—is this where you meant to bring me?”
Eos placed her bags at her feet and gestured for Castelle to climb out of the cart. She did so, but only because people were watching. She had scarcely spent so much time surrounded by commoners who didn’t work for her and had no idea how the world outside the castle, outside the forest, worked. Who could imagine what lowlifes would drag themselves from the tavern, much less the makeshift temple.
Eos headed to a merchant selling compasses, knives, and all manner of trinkets. She leant forward and pointed to her cart. The man cocked his head and pointed to the horse. Eos shook her head. Shrugging, the man handed over a small pouch. He caught Castelle’s eye as his gaze darted back to the cart, and she stood straighter, taking a step away from it.
Gods knew what Eos had told him. Eos could merely be the first leg in this awful journey.
Eos took the horse’s reins and headed towards the bridge.
“Do we not need the cart anymore?” Castelle asked, once they were out of earshot.
Eos nodded.
“Yes, you’re right, Castelle, or yes, we need it?”
“You are correct, Princess,” Eos said.
From a distance, the bridge was nothing. It was wood and rope, only as thick as Castelle’s finger against the landscape. Two stone pillars jutted from each side of the fjord, rising cliffs arching towards one another, and ropes branched the breach, holding wooden planks hundreds of feet over the deep blue water. It remained as wood and rope, but it meant so much more in the face of hundreds of years of erosion.
The bridge was wide enough for two carts to pass one another, yet still rocked in the wind. Castelle took a step back. The last time she’d crossed the bridge, she’d been in the dark of a carriage, protected from the outside world.
She certainly hadn’t done it on foot.
“We’re not… crossing it, are we? In the dark?” Castelle asked.
“We are waiting, Princess,” was all Eos would say.
It brought no comfort.
Eos stood a distance from the bridge, ever at her horse’s side. She folded her arms across her chest, watching everyone who passed, and Castelle didn’t move a muscle. One step in the wrong direction and she’d topple into the fjord.
The sun set. Eos watched the roads. The tavern lights cast a soft orange glow in the distance, and the merchants packed up their stalls to spend their earnings for the day.
“Eos!” came a familiar voice.
Castelle’s heart rose into her throat.
A woman jogged over, path neglected, and Eos stood straighter.
“I’m sorry I’m late!” she said, catching an exaggerated breath. “I was terrified you wouldn’t pull it off, but look! Here you are! And I suppose we had to wait for the rain to stop, didn’t we?”
Castelle didn’t need the woman to pull her hood back. She’d heard that voice every day for years.
“Rhea?” Castelle heard herself ask.
Rhea’s smile flickered, then faded.
“Princess—Castelle. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” Rhea said, taking a step closer to Eos. “It’s not what it looks like, Castelle. I promise.”
The night was no longer dark. Starlight fell upon the land, and all that it hit burnt red. Rhea reached for Castelle’s hand and squeezed it, but Castelle felt nothing. She watched Eos and Rhea exchange whispered words and didn’t take a single one in. Rhea was there, at the fjord. Rhea was there, talking to Eos. Calling her by name. Rhea had planned to be there with the woman who’d kidnapped her.
“What… what about your sister? Her baby?” Castelle asked.
Rhea turned from Eos, head tilted to the side. She’d hated lying, but Castelle was the one who’d betrayed them both by daring to believe it.
“I don’t have time to explain. Eos will tell you everything she can, I…” Rhea said, trailing off. “It wasn’t meant to be like this, but you can trust her. Trust her as you trust me.”
“Trust you?” Castelle said, words filling the night. “How can you say that, after you’re here? After I—”
She couldn’t finish her sentence. Couldn’t humiliate herself by admitting she’d believed anything Rhea had told her. She stared at Rhea and could only think of her lying beside her in bed, shushing her after another nightmare, stroking her hair and listening to every word she breathed.
All of it had been for—what? Castelle didn’t understand anything that was happening. All she knew was that Rhea had lied to her, and it wasn’t a coincidence she’d been alone the night Eos had dragged her through the forest.
Castelle clasped both of her hands.
“What are you doing?” she demanded. “You are my Lady-in-Waiting, Rhea. This is treason. You understand that, don’t you?”
Rhea pulled her hands away, stopping short of clutching them to her chest.
“Castelle, please, I only—”
“Princess,” Castelle hissed. “I am your Princess. Do not presume to forget that, Rhea.”
“Princess,” Rhea said, lifting her chin. “I work for your family. Always have, always will. You’ve always trusted me, and I know how bad this looks, but… but I need you to go with Eos. I need you to listen. I need you to understand. Please.”
No response rose in Castelle’s throat. Her eyes blazed like Brackish in the wrong hands, and Eos stepped between them before anything else could be said.
She passed the reins over to Rhea.
“Thank you,” she said.
“I wish I could’ve done more,” Rhea said, shaking her head. “This will buy you days. Maybe even a week. The Captain will be out of your hair, at least.”
Eos nodded. She turned to the bridge, draped in darkness, and there was nothing to stop Castelle’s gaze meeting Rhea’s. She’d trusted her. She’d trusted her as she’d trusted no maid, no friend. She’d trusted her, in spite of what had happened to her family at the hands of those they’d trusted.
Castelle couldn’t speak. Couldn’t think. She couldn’t look at Rhea.
She charged after Eos.
The bridge groaned beneath her feet, wet with rain.
She grasped the rope stopping her from plummeting towards the deep waters and shouted after Eos.
“What does she mean? What happened to the Captain? What did you do to her?”
Eos kept walking.
“Answer me!” Castelle cried, grabbing Eos’ shoulder. “What did you do to the Captain? She has children, Eos. Children!”
Freezing, Eos stared at Castelle’s hand until she removed it.
“The Captain is safe, Princess. Distracted, at worst,” Eos said. “No blood has been shed.”
“No blood has been shed!”
All Castelle could do was repeat her words back to her.
She marched after Eos. The distance to the cold, still water beneath was nothing. The wet wood, slick with rain, was as nothing. Let the wind rise. Nothing could alter her course.
“You planned this with Rhea, didn’t you? Tell me. Tell me who else was involved in this.”
“Princess, please,” Eos said, voice quiet. “We must get to the other side. It will start, soon.”
Castelle didn’t care where they were. She stormed past Eos, forcing her to pick up her pace. Once they were on the other side of the bridge, tavern lights faded starlight in the distance, she ran her fingers through her hair and breathed in the night air. It wasn’t cool enough. It gathered in her lungs, clouded her mind.
“You need to tell me what’s happening, Eos. You need to tell me now,” Castelle said. “That is an order. Do not mistake it for anything less.”
Eos dropped a bag to her feet. She knelt without acknowledging Castelle and emptied the contents across the grass. The food Eos had brought was bundled safely in another bag, and she moved a long, narrow parcel the length of her arm into it.
All that re
mained was torches, bottles, and kindling. Eos sent sparks flaring through the darkness and lit a torch before Castelle understood what she was doing. She uncorked one of the dark glass bottles with her teeth, and the stench of alcohol made Castelle’s eyes sting.
“No!” Castelle said, latching onto Eos’ arm. “No, don’t you dare. You can’t do this. You can’t!”
Jaw set, Eos thrust her arm back, throwing Castelle to the ground. She headed to the edge of the fjord, poured the liquid onto the ropes, and when she held out the torch, the night sky inhaled, air replaced by a puff of flames.
“Stop!” Castelle cried, fingers digging into the ground, pulling out handfuls of wet, useless dirt to throw on the flames.
The orange-gold blaze spread. Eos tossed the last of her bottles onto the bridge, and from the other side of the fjord, Rhea spread a fire of her own.
Chapter Six
Flames engulfed whole wings of the castle. Bricks crumbled like handfuls of wet sand, and there was nowhere to run. Forget the swords, the arrows, the maces and hammers; black smoke would be the end of them all, choking Castelle from within. They’d thrown blankets over her, held them to her face. She wasn’t breathing in the smoke that blinded her, but she wasn’t taking down air, either. She fought her way free, taking a sharp breath, and inhaled the stench of rancid blood.
Castelle blinked.
The fire had reached the centre of the bridge from both sides and she’d stood there, frozen. Dirt stained her fingers, hands refusing to tremble, and black smoke blotted out the stars.
The world glowed with something beyond light. It was force and fright, power that would burn through whatever it touched before it consumed itself.
Eos sat on a rock, watching the bridge burn.
“How could you?” Castelle demanded. She threw out her arms, daring to turn her back on the fire. “Do you have any idea what this means for the people of Laister? That bridge is a lifeline, it connects the land to itself, the island to the archipelago, and you burnt it down. And for what?”
“It will put us several days ahead, Princess,” Eos said, fingers knitted together.
“It will lead them right to us!” Castelle said. “I thought you were being smart about this, but now you’ve given my fathers a beacon to follow. I suppose I ought to be thanking you, but this? How dare you! The harm you’ve done here may well be irreparable.”
Eos tilted her head to the side.
Something in her gaze made Castelle want to back into the flames.
Eos shook her head. Whatever passing thought had given her reason to pause fled.
“I am Yrician. I am noticeable,” she said. “Your fathers would have our trail followed, with or without the fire. This is the only path we could have taken. Come.”
Eos slung her remaining bag over her shoulder and headed down the path.
She didn’t wait. Didn’t look back.
Castelle had survived fire, before. The fjord bisected Laister almost in its entirety, but it wasn’t all sheer cliff sides. The land fell away in places, and the fjord became but a collection of oversized boulders surrounding still waters. She could scale the sides, given time, and then—what? Swim across the fjord? There’d been a clear blue lake behind the castle, but Castelle hadn’t submerged in much more than a bath in fourteen years.
“Eos!” Castelle called, edging away from the fjord. “Eos, wait!”
Eos kept to her pace. Castelle ran after her. The fire burnt brightly behind them, and she couldn’t succumb to fear. Couldn’t let the hollow feeling scouring her gut rise into her chest, couldn’t let her eyes sting with tears. There was no time to collapse, to break down. The crown was certain to weigh heavier in her heart than this, and it was all but a test.
Queen Marcella would never have backed down. She wouldn’t have accepted what’d happened, wouldn’t let her questions go unasked.
“How do you know Rhea?” Castelle demanded. “How? Answer me!”
“Through a mutual acquaintance, Princess,” Eos said.
“And she was in on this scheme? She helped plan my abduction? All this time, throughout all these years, she was a traitor?”
Eos shook her head.
“She has only been involved this past year.”
Castelle struggled to keep pace with Eos and keep her breathing steady.
She had shared so much with Rhea, secrets and a bed alike. Rhea was the only one she spoke of her siblings to, the only one who understood how frequent the nightmares truly were. Rhea had always listened with a smile or sympathetic frown whenever Castelle had spoken of Layla, had held her trembling hands and nudged her side when neither of them could stop laughing.
“A year,” Castelle said. Enough time to sow the seeds of a pregnancy. “What were her reasons? Why did… why did she betray me? Was it money? Was someone taken hostage?”
“She is loyal to you, Princess,” Eos said, veering off the path. “To you, and not the Lords.”
Castelle followed Eos, hard-packed dirt turning to long grass and wildflowers.
Having her marched across Laister with a Yrician, bridges literally burning behind her, wasn’t loyalty. Castelle understood what it was too keenly. Her parents had been betrayed by those closest to them, too.
Her fathers had been right to warn her about Rhea, to discourage her from showing too much familiarity. They were right, they were right! They always were, always would be.
“I was foolish enough to believe Rhea was my friend,” Castelle muttered.
Eos slowed her pace to catch Castelle’s eye. Again, curiosity crossed her face, gone as soon as it appeared.
Behind them, the fire was an ember in the dark. The bridge was gone, along with the livelihoods of all the merchants, barkeepers and innkeepers that gathered there.
She would make amends for that. As soon as the throne was hers, Castelle would ensure none of them ever wanted for anything.
Eos led her downhill. The flames were but another memory to turn over and over. There was no other forest like the one surrounding the temple on Laister, but there was a stretch of woodland a quarter-mile deep ahead of them.
Laister Temple, the valley Eos had dragged her through, the fjord, the woodland; Castelle threaded them all together, pressed them to the maps she had obsessed over so often in her mind. There was only one place it made sense to head.
“We’re going to Yaros Bay, aren’t we?” Castelle asked as they approached the woodland. “You intend to leave Laister with me. Don’t think there is anything subtle in your plans.”
The trees hadn’t clustered together, there. Moonlight was enough to go by.
“There is a village, beyond the woodland,” Eos said. “We will rest there for three hours, then make our way to the bay at dawn. From there, we will get on a boat.”
Castelle faltered. She feared tripping over the plan laid at her feet. That much information was a trap in itself. Either that or Eos did not care how clever she was, how much she deduced. It didn’t matter what she knew. Nothing could change the way of things.
“Three hours,” Castelle scoffed. “Can you afford to waste three hours, after going to such drastic lengths to buy time?”
“The boat departs at midday, Princess. Those three hours will be wasted, whether we are asleep or not.”
“And where will this boat take us?” Castelle asked, not backing down.
“Llyne.”
“Llyne? You do know that Llyne has sworn fealty to me, do you not? Perhaps this has all been one big misunderstanding, and you are on my side after all.”
Eos stopped for a single step but said nothing.
The silence would’ve suffocated Castelle, if not for the woodland around her. The chirping of insects filled the night, and small creatures scurried through the undergrowth. If she closed her eyes, she’d be back in the temple, listening to the world around her from an open window. But why close her eyes? She was in the woodland now, not staring at the trees that’d been taken from her for her own good.<
br />
“Eos?” Castelle asked. “Why did the dogs not attack you? Why didn’t they stop you?”
“The dogs knew I was not a threat, Princess,” Eos said, and it was all she would say.
The dogs were there to protect Castelle. They’d been born and bred for that sole purpose, and spirits galvanised their duty within them. It had to be a fluke. A mistake. They’d always torn apart assassins, but Eos had a year to prepare for this. She’d had help from the inside. The dogs could’ve been driven away, distracted by a feigned intrusion from the other side, poisoned or worse.
Eos had burnt down a bridge, had dragged Castelle through the forest. There was no saying what else she’d do, no telling what she’d done to deserve her scars.
Eos came to a halt in front of her. She held out a hand and Castelle stopped, certain her thoughts had flooded over to words, moved by exhaustion.
Eos didn’t look at her.
“What is it?” Castelle asked.
Eos waved a hand, hushing her.
“Do you hear that?” Eos asked, voice dropping to a whisper.
Castelle strained to listen. So much life swirled together in the woodland that it was difficult to pull the layers apart. It took long seconds to hear what Eos had picked up over the sound of her own footsteps. Soft wheezing rattled through the air, shrieking and whimpering when the safest thing to do would’ve been to give over to silence.
The poor, injured creature must’ve been beyond sense, beyond hope, to cry out.
Eos crouched low, slowly creeping towards a tangle of bushes. The woman who’d lured her from the temple, bound and dragged her through the forest, and burnt bridges to get ahead, gently parted the foliage and knelt over a fox kit.
It was a wretched thing, all skin and bones, fur missing in clumps, one ear torn and both eyes missing. Castelle’s chest tightened. The creature didn’t have the strength to crawl away from what was sure to be the end of it.