Out the carriage window, a thick wall of clouds divided the sky between a pool of sparkling stars and dark haze. The cool spring air stung Kelena’s face. She smiled into the icy gust.
It was a rare event for the king to ride ahorse, especially in lands like these, where invading Helat were said to hide behind every dip in the land and deserters formed desperate bands of raiders that preyed on travelers. Kelena feared attack for Izak and Alaan’s sake, as they would be called on to defend her and Etianiel, but she was also concerned for the king. She may hardly know her father, but Kelena hated the thought of anyone suffering.
And there was the kingdom to consider, as well. Whatever else he might be, Hazerial was a strong sovereign. The realm would suffer if he died.
Still, Kelena couldn’t deny that she breathed easier without her father’s suffocating presence in the carriage. On the seat across from her, Alaan was more relaxed than he ever was with the king provoking him.
Ever since the night the pirate had told her that rage no longer served him, he spent carriage rides deep in thought. He remained aware of the dangers and threats that might affect her, but the majority of his focus had turned to calculation.
Calculating what, she couldn’t say. Alaan never spoke of it, not even with Izak, but through the grafting Kelena got the sense that he was trying to untie an enormous, impossible knot.
At least he was well-rested, and his thoughts clear. The sleeping chest he’d made had proven a great success.
The first day out of Siu Rial, she had been sweating and anxious when they made camp. All she could think of was climbing into the chest and watching the lid close on her.
As Alaan had handed her in, he promised, “If you cannot bear it, it will not be used.”
“I can.” She had to, for his sake. He was strong, but he couldn’t stay awake for the entire fortnight to the border. That didn’t bear thinking about.
“Just because we have come this far on one course does not mean it is the only solution.”
“But it is the only one we’ve got right now,” Kelena had pointed out.
Mother would have slapped her bloody for such insolence, but Alaan wasn’t angry at her, just stubborn.
“If it does not work, for any reason, we will find another way.”
Trying to swallow her fear, Kelena sat down in the chest and tucked a blanket around her legs. The cushions were nowhere near as soft as the bed in the tower, but neither was it hard wood soiled with things she didn’t want to think about. When she stretched out, she found she had plenty of room to turn or shift.
She had pulled up the blanket to her chin, wondering if the air would go stale and fetid as soon as the lid closed. And if the chest would ever open again. No buzzing nettles twisted beneath her skin yet, but what if they started to as soon as she was trapped in the darkness?
Before she could fall to begging, she nodded at Alaan. “Close it.”
But she couldn’t watch. She shut her eyes tight until she heard the gentle thud of wood on wood.
Short, sharp breaths whistled out of her lungs, amplified by the close quarters. Sweat poured off her, soaking her day clothes. Her heart stuttered and seized in her chest.
A strange sensation flowed through the grafting. Calm like deep, dark waters.
When first he had been grafted to her, Alaan’s limitless fury had terrified Kelena. Now she saw that the opposite side of that rage was an ocean of strength, and he was offering it to her.
Drawing on that, Kelena opened her eyes.
And gasped.
“It’s gorgeous!” She didn’t know whether he could hear her outside, but she knew he felt her delight.
The darkness wasn’t total, nor was it suffocating. Methodical ventilation allowed the air to flow freely through the sides.
The material Alaan had upholstered the interior with was dazzlingly patterned in a score of bright colors. She’d thought it a bizarre choice when he had tacked the gaudy fabric in place. Lying inside the chest with the lid shut, however, pinpricks of light shone through the walls all around her—shades of indigo, jade, purple, amber, gold, magenta, and a dozen others—like distant gemstones or vibrantly painted stars in a foreign sky. They looked so far away, yet she could touch every one of them. She ran her hands over the wall, watching the stars flicker out and return.
She had never felt satisfaction from Alaan before, not even when he’d forced a draw in the match with Etian, but her admiration of the beauty he created had pleased him in a way none of her empty compliments could.
Even in the carriage nights later, remembering that surge of pride put a lump in Kelena’s throat.
When her Thorn turned his questioning gray-green glare to her, she just shook her head. They had already agreed on the wisest course of action, and she had taken that to include speaking about these sorts of things.
But that didn’t mean she couldn’t admire the pirate’s ability to create beauty where she had expected only darkness.
***
“While he was at court, you and Lord Clarencio spent a considerable amount of time together.” Hazerial eyed his younger son’s scarred visage as they rode. “Is that why you hesitate? Because you consider the cripple a friend? Or is there some loyalty between those blessed by Josean that we are unaware of?”
“If the strong gods want Lord Clarencio dead, why can’t they kill him with their fruit of a thousand hells?” Etian demanded.
“More than likely they will. But when all else fails, they turn to their favored warriors to finish the job for them.”
Etian tongued his back teeth as if Hazerial’s order had lodged there like a piece of gristle.
It wasn’t often that his younger son’s stubbornness reared its ugly head, but when Etian began to forget whom he served, Hazerial always had a ready reminder.
“A man with the backbone to lock up a screaming, hysterical child and leave her to rot ought to be able to stomach anything in the name of ultimate victory.”
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
The crown prince’s jaw hardened.
“Has Kelena thanked you for it yet?” Hazerial asked pleasantly. “She may have protested then, but she’s obviously grown to see the merits of her confinement. You’ve no doubt heard that she has the pirate lock her away in a chest every time we stop?”
How gratifying it was to see a mighty Josean-blessed warrior bend to his Eketra-blessed king. The natural order of the strong gods at work. Hazerial never tired of it.
Etian glared at the empty northern horizon as if his glasses allowed him to see the Helat’s distant palace.
“Lord Clarencio won’t make it back from the imperial city,” he agreed.
***
In Siu Rial, the servants had happily spread the rumor to the courtiers and the city beyond that Prince Etianiel slept in the same bed with the beautiful and willing Seleketra every day. What they didn’t see—what they had missed on his wedding day, when he first realized he could never fall asleep in his wife’s arms without putting her in harm’s way—was the fitful and often violent slumber the crown prince suffered.
Pretty had learned fast to scramble out of bed at the first sign of Etian’s stirring. A close-rat who had to be hit twice to learn a lesson didn’t live very long.
But Seleketra had never been in danger while the crown prince was awake.
That day, Etian came to her as soon as her pavilion was up and her couch laid. He was always an intense lover, but this time there was a ferocity to his touch that she had never experienced. His gaze was horrible and unseeing, and all of Seleketra’s talent and coaxing could not bring him back. Not until he lay on her shuddering with aftershocks, his breath returning, did Pretty realize how frightened she was.
Slowly, Etian’s dark eyes cleared. He frowned at a discoloration growing on her tattooed shoulder.
“Did I…?”
His glasses had come off early on and been left where they fell. As he leaned closer, some hopeful part of Pretty thought he was about to kiss the bruise his brutal grip had left behind, but the crown prince only squinted and stared.
She tried to sit up, but his fingers dug into her soft upper arms, holding her in place and marking the flesh to the bone. He was a hundred times stronger than she was. A thousand. If he didn’t stop, he would break her arms. And what if, after that, he moved his hands to her throat?
“Please,” she whimpered. “Please, Your Highness, you’re hurting me.”
She hadn’t pleaded with the unseeing thing, but then she had known instinctively that it couldn’t be reached. There was still some flicker of Etian in the gaze that pored over Seleketra’s skin, if she could only get him to hear her.
“Etian! Prince Etian, please!”
He blinked. Like a cut bowstring, his grip released, and she dropped back onto the bed. He was up and out of the couch in a heartbeat, raking his hands through his dark hair.
Naked, he paced to the wall of the tent and back. Corded sinews rippled beneath his skin, a reminder that she couldn’t have stopped him. If her begging hadn’t reached him…
The door of her pavilion whipped aside and Sister Tiri and Sister Anesha raced in, swords drawn. Tiri was chewing and Anesha had a splash of wine on his robes, as if the eunuchs had heard Pretty’s whimpered cries while in the middle of dinner. Tiri put himself between the crown prince and her, while Anesha went to her side to inspect her injuries.
They would have saved her. They would have been in time. Surely they would have saved her.
Belatedly, Pretty started to shake.
“I’m well,” she told Sister Anesha in an airy voice. She drew her blankets around her shoulders. “All is well.”
Etian let out a puff of air that could have been a laugh or a scoff. He started to say something, then stopped.
“Here.” Pretty swallowed, then gestured with a trembling hand. “Take those to His Highness. He needs them.”
The hulking eunuch plucked the glasses from the rug with a plump thumb and forefinger, then stalked to the crown prince, satiny, wine-stained robes hissing like a threat.
Silently, Etian slid the smoked lenses on. His eyes darted over Pretty again, something like fear in them. Then he grabbed his clothing and boots and ducked out of the pavilion into the daylight.
Both eunuchs descended on her then, one holding her and comforting her, while the other spread salves on her bruises. This was not the first time the Silent Sisterhood had tended to a hurt and frightened courtesan, but it was the first time Pretty had needed tending since she’d been saved from the Closes.
Athalia had warned her never to let a man have her when the Sisters were out of reach. Pretty felt like such a fool. She apologized to Tiri and Anesha and hugged them close, thanking them for protecting her and promising never to let it happen like that again.
***
Thorns came from all sorts of rough pasts. To their minds there was nothing strange about having day terrors. And because most of them were reluctant to speak about anything they may have done before they’d received Thornfield’s blanket pardon, they never asked questions when someone else had day terrors near them.
Izak was the only one who had ever voiced any concern about his brother’s fitful sleep, but Etian had been able to stop the questions early on by claiming that the disturbances were only memories of taking back Siu Ferel from the Helat the summer before.
Thankfully Izak was nowhere in evidence that day, probably off with Kelena and the pirate, so Etian had no cause to worry that his brother might question him for bedding down under a wagon with his men for the first time since leaving the City of Blood.
Whenever Etian shut his eyes, he saw again the black nonsense sigils etched into Seleketra’s pale skin squirming, trying to take on a new shape.
For one heart-stopping second, in writhing black and white lines, he had seen a locked chest with fingernail gouges inside the lid.
Imagined I saw it.
I hurt Seleketra because I imagined something.
That shouldn’t matter. The courtesan was just a piece in a game.
Like Kelena is just a weapon in the strong gods’ war?
He wondered whether Izak already knew. Kelena had obviously told the pirate what Etian had done—what he’d had to do. It was common knowledge among the guard that anything Izak knew, the pirate shortly would. Did the same apply the other way around?
Izak would never understand that Etian hadn’t had a choice.
“You are not your brother.” Hazerial’s words, but he was only echoing what Etian had already known. Izak was strong and Etian wasn’t.
In contrast to the damp, chilly day air, a memory of a stifling childhood summer came back to him, alive with the smells of heat and straw and kittens. Etian had found them in the Siu Patanal stable late one day when he was supposed to be sleeping, but nightlong training had left him restless and looking for entertainment other than more bladework.
Three tiny mewling things, fuzzy and new. He’d snuck them back into the nursery and hidden them in the box bed. Their noise had woken Izakiel in the upper level, and he’d clambered down to Etian’s level to see what it was. The boys had spent the rest of the day playing with the kittens instead of sleeping.
That was the summer of the fleas.
A chamber maid found the vermin-infested kittens when she was cleaning the next evening, but the besotted princes refused to give up their new pets. Word had to be taken to the king. Uncle Ahix didn’t hear about it until after Etian had been made to cut the head off each little furball and toss them in the midden fire himself; the Commander of the Royal Thorns was the only one who might have been able to turn aside Hazerial’s orders.
Afterward, Etian had been so sick that he’d gone straight back to bed. Covered to his elbow with scratches from tiny needle claws, angry at their father, angry at the maid for tattling. More than anything, angry at himself. He could sweep tournaments, defeat grown men. Why couldn’t he save a few helpless kittens?
Well after midday, Izakiel had climbed into the box bed on Etian’s level and shut the doors in spite of the sweltering Siu Patanal heat.
“When we grow up, I’ll be king,” he’d said as if he couldn’t tell that Etian had been sniveling like a baby for the last hour, “and I’ll make it a law that the king’s brother gets to have as many kittens as he wants. Anybody who says you can’t gets his head cut off, even if he is the stupid Chosen of the Strong Gods.”
And then Izakiel’s doublet had mewed.
Grinning, the elder prince had shaken out a furball even younger than the ones Etian had found, a tiny calico that didn’t even have its eyes open yet. Izakiel had spent all night looking for another one for him.
That was the first time Etian had realized just how unafraid Izak was of their father. It had taken Hazerial longer, but eventually he had come to the same conclusion: he couldn’t control Izak.
The king’s solution had been to give the crown to the son he could control, and to magically enslave the son he couldn’t with an enchantment that prevented taking action on any patricidal notions.
You thought you were so clever, didn’t you? But letting me graft Izak was your first misstep. Did you honestly think I’d go on fearing you with my brother at my side? You cut your own Eketra-blessed throat.
