by Anna Holmes
“Hmm.”
There had been something here, something I need to tell her. Something that sits deep in my chest, leaps in my stomach when she lifts her face to me, gets lost on the way to my tongue, because words won’t do it. “Caelin,” I say at last. “Just that.”
She pauses for a moment. Without pulling away from me, she reaches up to her ear, unfastens the earring, and slowly folds it back into a band. Her hands shake a bit, but her lips still turn up as she regards the ring for a moment, then presses it into my hand. “Ask me now,” she says softly.
Oh, gods. After all the practice, after all three times I’ve gotten close, I still feel horrifically unprepared. I’m in my bathrobe and she looks—well, like a queen.
But she waits calmly despite the jump to her heartbeat, watching me encouragingly. I look down at the emerald glinting in the light. She’s right. Now.
I lift her left hand, take in a shuddering sort of breath. “Caelin,” I manage, “Will you—?”
She throws her arms around my neck and presses her mouth to mine. I stumble a little backward, but manage to to brace myself on the good leg and hoist her up by the waist, her heavy skirts encompassing the both of us. It’s a good kiss, unconcerned for my fragility, her appearances, any of it. Hells, if anyone cared to look up right now, they’d see the deservedly storied, impossibly kind, admirably deliberate Queen of Elyssia indelicately attached at the face to a commonborn, traitorous, lazy affront to the natural world.
They had best get used to it. Someday, I will too. But for now, I can only take it all in in wonderment. “Yes,” she says when we part at last. “Yes, yes, and yes.”
“You should probably go to vigil, shouldn’t you?” I ask, breathless. Despite the question, I’m still holding her tight, my fingers wound gently into her hair. The light she sheds is everything.
“That’s probably the worst thing I could do right now,” she laughs. “I’d just want to tell everyone.” She pauses, pulls back slightly. “We are going to have to. Tell everyone.”
I can feel the place where my dread of that sort of public thing usually lives, but today, it just doesn’t sit as heavy. I laugh in spite of myself. “Can I change my clothes first?”
“No, dearest, I mean that we’re going to have to time that correctly,” she says, biting her lip. “Your mother is coming tomorrow.”
Damn, so I didn’t manage to sleep through that. Just my luck. Well, I’m lucky to be alive, so I shouldn’t complain too much, although now that I think about it, my neck sort of hurts and I’m not sure why. I should ask about that. First things first. “Probably not the most diplomatic thing, to announce that you’re going to marry the prisoner she wants you to turn over.”
“After she’s left,” she says resolutely.
“Without me, hopefully.”
“It’s a little hard to marry you if you're in Rosalia.”
Marry. It’s odd to hear that word aloud. Terrifying and strangely freeing, like the moments of freefall in the middle of a dive. Caelin locks eyes with me, and though I can’t see my face, I imagine we’re gawking and grinning at each other in the same way. She throws her arms around me again, and much as I’d like to pick her up and swing her around with the same abandon others use in a ballroom, we settle for clinging to each other and making a lopsided giggly circle in place.
“Caelin,” I say at length.
“Mm?” She asks, arms still dangling over my neck.
“You’re shivering. Perhaps it’s time to go inside.”
She tilts her head up to look at the snow from underneath. It dances around us as though on invisible threads, threads that seem to pull us as much skyward as they pull the flakes down. Her brightness—my brightness when I had none of my own left—only grows stronger even as her shivers do. She smiles at me, at the world, at whatever force connects us. “A moment more.”
Moments end, unfortunately, even moments that stretch the way we stretched ours. I roll over and kiss her bare shoulder in the cold morning light. Caelin stirs, pulling closer the blanket I really only keep on the bed for her. “It is not morning.”
“As far as I know,” I tell her softly, playing with her wild, loose waves stretched on the pillow before me, “Being queen doesn’t let you pronounce the time of day, Your Drowsiness.”
She groans. “Since when do you get up before I do?”
I wrap my arm around her and find her hand, the ring newly placed on it. “Since I never went to sleep.”
“Alain—”
“I slept for three whole days and woke up with the vague feeling I could hear crickets half the world over.” I still sort of have that feeling. Her skin is satin beneath my fingertips, and I can feel her heartbeat in my own chest. Not quite as acute as it was yesterday, but enough to keep me awake.
“Fair enough, I suppose,” she sighs, covering my hand with her other one. “That, uh, isn’t going to keep up forever, right?”
“I don’t think I’m going to be exempt from sleeping. I’m not that much of a freak yet. I hope.”
Caelin gives my hand a gentle slap. “Stop calling yourself that.”
“What? I think it’s appropriate.”
I think I could hear the eye roll even if my senses weren’t heightened. “You’re right. You’re extremely odd.”
I grin and kiss the curve of her neck. “Well, it can’t bother you too much. You’re here.”
She rolls over, setting her hand to my chest. Her eyes linger a little on the scars, then travel up to mine. “Not for much longer, I’m afraid. I have to go meet your mother.”
“Ah.”
“I have perhaps a stupid question,” she begins carefully.
“No. I don’t want to see her.”
“Not for any sentimental purpose,” Caelin persists, searching my face. “Answers. Justice.”
I hold a breath for a moment, my gills on the left side still aching slightly. It’s tempting. Gods, it’s tempting to use the illusion of diplomacy to force her to sit there and take my words the way she force-fed me hers. But whoever and whatever she was before the Legion got their scalpels in her, there aren’t any words— hers or mine— that will change things now. I shake my head. “It’s—honestly probably best if you see her alone, as strange as that sounds. She can’t…get in your head and play around like she’s used to doing to everyone else.”
She nods and sets her hand to my face. “She’s not taking you,” she promises. “Not while I’m alive and able to do something about it.”
“Just—try not to start a war.”
“Any advice on that front?"
“Leverage,” I answer. “Everything with them is leverage. We were attacked here. Use it if she starts pretending she has the high ground. And she will.”
That was always her way. With me, with Father in arguments I wasn’t meant to overhear. I assume it’s that proclivity that’s gotten her elevated so highly. Misdirection. I learned it from her. Something still doesn’t sit right, thinking of a woman who honed even her attitude into a weapon in charge of preserving peace. Caelin searches my face again. “Do you trust me?”
“With everything I have,” I tell her. “I don’t trust her. Just—listen. For what she doesn’t say. What she tries to gloss over.”
She nods slowly, her gaze off somewhere behind my left shoulder. At length, she shakes herself and smiles. “I did it with their Archon after the war. I’ll do it now. But just in case….”
I kiss her forehead. “I’ll be nowhere near the castle.”
“Good,” she says cheerfully, patting my cheek. “Wish me luck.”
Wishing seems woefully inadequate, but what else can I do?
The answer to that, apparently, is work. In what should not be a surprise to me, my thesis has not composed itself in my absence. Somehow, it’s still disappointing. I sigh and shut the door to my glorified closet of an office. It hasn’t dusted itself, either. I skitter a few crumpled drafts into the bin at the edge of my desk, sit, sweep a bit
of the dust away from me, and get writing.
It’s still all rubbish, but without the nagging feeling that I’m going to collapse about it, it’s a little easier to deal with the frustration. With the snow falling outside, it’s almost peaceful.
Until Elle walks in and plops down at the edge of my desk. “Look who’s finally awake!”
“Is it you?”
“I think we both know it’s you, you great halibut.” She leans over. “And whose doing was that?”
I crook up the corner of my mouth.”Kai Nuthatch’s.”
“And?”
“Gavroth Rye’s.”
“And?”
“Much as I hate to admit it….” I sigh, thud an elbow against my desk, and drop my chin against my fist. At last, I have to finish, “Riley Bannon’s.”
“Ughhh, you are the worst!” She picks up one of my pens and bounces it off my forehead. The pen’s wood body kind of tinks against the crystal still spread over the skin. “And I don't know what I’d have done if you died, so, you know, don’t.”
“Ever?”
“Well, if you can help it,” she says, looking around the dim room, my disorganized shelves, the papers that missed the bin. “This is where you work? I thought you were a prince.”
“Here I’m just a teacher, and I like it that way.” I tilt my head. “Besides. Well—perhaps I shouldn’t say anything. You can't keep a secret, after all.”
Her face scrunches up. “I can too, you bottomfeeder.”
“Are you sure? Because this one is something of a big one.”
“I can dissolve your shoes with three components in this room,” she threatens.
“I’m not going to be a prince too much longer.”
She frowns. “What? I like Caelin. Why are you—?” I tilt my head forward, watching her put two and two together. Her mouth drops open. “Oh. Oh! And she said yes?”
“What do you mean—? Of course she said yes. Do you really think I’m that overconfident?”
She shrugs. “You’ve always been cocky.” She pauses. “Does that make me a princess?”
“No.”
“A duchess?”
“You really don’t know how inherited monarchies work, do you.”
“I am twelve,” she reminds me pointedly.
“Ah. Right. I’m just so used to you knowing everything else.”
I smile, and her irritation morphs into a sort of pouty smile of her own against her will. She leans over and hugs my shoulders. My hand finds her back and I hold on, grateful for the chance to do so. “Thank you,” I tell her. “I am alive because of you.”
She doesn’t answer, but her shoulders tremble a little and something wet drops into my hair. After a moment, she sniffles not terribly subtly and sits back. “I’m happy for you,” she says. “You deserve something good. It is good, right?”
“It’s very good.”
“Good. Just checking. Papa doesn’t speak too highly of marriage.”
“Do you blame him?”
She shakes her head and glances up at the big grandfather clock, left in the corner of the room by the previous occupant. “Which reminds me. I came to say goodbye. I’m going home.”
I close my journal around my pen, leaning back in my chair in surprise. “By yourself?”
She giggles. “I know, yeah? I expected him to come down here and march me back himself.” She fishes a letter out of her pocket and sets it on top of my journal. “But he said that I’m old enough now to take care of myself.”
I pick up the paper and unfold it. It’s his writing and undeniably his paper. The smell of his study wafts off of it. “Huh,” I say, unbidden.
“You think he’s wrong?”
“No, I just—it’s not like him. He’s always been protective.”
She folds her hands and swings her legs some more. “Well, maybe my putting you back together showed him he doesn’t need to be anymore.”
Unlikely, but if I say so it’ll only upset her, so I don’t. “When are you going, then?”
“I have a ticket for an hour from now.”
“An hour? Best get going.”
Elle nods and hops off my desk. On her way to the door, she stops and turns. “Don’t be gone so long this time. And don’t only come home if you’re dying.”
“I promise.”
She looks down at the floor fiercely. I can’t help it. I jump up and wrap her up. “I’ll write,” I tell her.
“It’s not enough,” she mumbles into my sternum.
“I’ll visit. And hey, now that you’re old enough to take care of yourself, you can come visit me when business is slow.”
She nods, still not emerging from my tunic. I set my chin on top of her head and close my eyes. Oh, kid. It’s too much like when I went off to war and she clung to me. Only then I wished she’d get off so I could get going already. I don’t know when I’ll discover the floor of my previous idiocy, but it doesn’t feel like any time soon. I hug her tight enough for now and then, and when she’s ready to let go, I let her linger as long as she needs this time.
It’s hard to return to work. The office, usually comfortable in its seclusion, feels empty. I lean back in my chair, look out the window, and try to convince myself to write for a few solid minutes. It’s something I’m supposed to be good at, so why does it feel like someone is pulling these crystal bits off of my skin to make myself do it?
I creak my way back around to my desk and find the letter from Father still laid on top of my notebook. I pick it up, feel it between my fingers. The same sort of paper that's been on his desk since I was too young to write. I fidget with the edge, looking at the neat, slightly slanted hand, so practiced from the plans for his boats. At the bottom, something catches my eye.
I hold the paper up to the light. Therrick Flynn. He’s signed with his full name. Not Father, or even Papa.
He has never once done that in the many letters I’ve received from him.
I shove the chair back and rush for the still open door. “Elle!”
A glance up and down the hallway leaves me with nothing and nobody. Of course not. I'm the only fool who goes to the University on the day after Winters-meet. Carpet. No footprints to illuminate. I run down the hall toward the grand staircase. Surely she’d have taken that.”Elle,” I yell. My voice gets thrown back at me, tumbling up the wide, shallow stone stairs.
Still no answer. I rake my hands through my hair and try to think in between my heartbeats. The ship doesn’t leave for an hour. If I find some patrolmen, have her intercepted….
Behind me, a door creaks open. “Your Grace,” Professor Thorn says, emerging from his office. “Is everything all right?”
“No—my sister….” I twist, look over my shoulder at the large wooden doors. “I have to get to my sister. Excuse me.”
“Your sister—young girl, dark hair, white blouse, blue skirt?”
Involuntarily, I grab him by the arm. “Yes! You saw her? Where did she go?”
He chuckles slightly. “She seemed a little turned around, so I sent my personal guard with her to help her get where she's going.”
Oh, for gods’ sake, of all the times for him to be kind. I drop his arm and start away. “I need to stop her.”
“Your Grace—“ He steps in front of me and frowns, looking me over. “You seem unwell. Please, allow me to escort you back to the castle.”
“I’m fine,” I thunder. “Please get out of the way.”
“I can’t allow you to go charging out of here in your state, Your Grace. You’re clearly flustered.”
“I swear to gods, Professor, if you don’t move, I will move you myself.”
The great doors open behind us. He turns ever so slightly. “Ah. Here she is.”
My head snaps up. She turns out not to be Elle, but a gray-clad woman whose face causes my heart to catch in my throat. I see now why she needed the mask. The former Queen looks very much like the current one, with the terrible exception of the blue poison running
just under her skin all along the left side of her face. It pulses, practically hums with some energy that I have never noticed in Caelin's poison. Thorn asks, “Did the little girl find her way?”
She nods, not even looking in my direction. “Back safe with her mother.”
My insides clench. “No—!”
Thorn lifts his eyebrows in pointed surprise. “Is there no safer place for a child than with their mother?”
“Not with ours. Move.”
“Your Grace, I must insist that you return to your chambers—”
The soles of his shoes squeak against the floor as I nudge him out of the way with a bit of magical help. He sighs in a long suffering do you see what I have to put up with sort of way as I start running. A strange electric crack splits the air and the Queen shrieks. I turn to see her clutching her head, Thorn's hand outstretched. “Detain him,” he orders.
Unnaturally smoothly, she unsheathes one of the two swords at her sides and moves for me. The ferocity of her movement seems unmatched with her face, which is neither furious nor determined. Instead, it’s pulled taut in pain, her eyes wild, as she charges for me. I dart out of the way and listen. That odd energy behind the poison is sharper, more distinct, and connected directly to Thorn. The poison is a set of hooks he's using to string her along like a puppet. “You are mad,” I gasp, ducking away from her again.
He shrugs. “Possibly. But that’s what they say about anyone making strides in our field. It’s been said about you.”
“All right, then,” I say warily, watching for the Queen's next move, “Let’s go with evil.”
It’s going to take a lot to separate her from his pull. If I’m not careful, I could wind up driving the poison further into her brain. And since he’s using her own ether, knocking him unconscious will do nothing to stop her last directive. She’ll keep at it until she dies or accomplishes her goal.
Well. That might just be it. But I can’t tip my hand, or he’ll give another order. So I dodge her next attempt to grab for me and fix him with a glare. “So that’s it,” I growl. “You poisoned them so you could control them.”
“Soren was weak,” he answers. “Ill-suited for rule. This was the easiest way to correct that. And the fact that he didn’t survive the process? Further proof that the measure was needed.”