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“Fifty then, stubborn child.” Valma’s hand came to rest on Dawsyn’s other cheek to warm it. “Garjum did not always live in the water. Once, before humans lived, he walked the ground. But a great storm brought a wave that reached the sky and crashed into the forests, up the mountain, and dragged Garjum back into the ocean’s belly. It never let him go. Garjum has lived there ever since. He still tries each day to reach the land. He uses his mighty arms to grab the shore, pulling at the water, but the ocean is too strong. Each time Garjum pulls the tide back, the ocean breaks away, and the waves crash back onto the shore again. Garjum and the ocean battle over and over, even after thousands of years. Still, Garjum never surrenders. Each day he wakes in that prison and faces the battle once more. He knows that each pull of the tide is one closer to reaching the ground. Each fight he loses, is one less until victory.”

“Why does Garjum not want to live in the ocean? It sounds beautiful,” Dawsyn mumbled.

“Beautiful? What about it sounds so beautiful?”

“It’s blue,” Dawsyn said. “And not frozen. I wish I could see it.”

“Perhaps someday you will.”

Dawsyn turned her face to her grandmother. “And Garjum?”

“And Garjum,” Valma nodded.

Dawsyn seemed to consider for a moment, her eyes heavy. Then she turned back into her grandmother’s arms, burrowing down in her hold. “Garjum might give up by then.”

“Nonsense,” Valma told her, smiling thinly. “Garjum does not belong in the ocean. All things find a way back to their home.”

Even young Dawsyn knew what a lie that was. How many people had disappeared over the Chasm or into it? Not one had walked out again. But the words, true or not, did their job and Dawsyn slept, cradled against Valma before the hearth while the wind battered the Ledge outside. It would be seventeen years before Dawsyn found the ground, found the kingdom of Terrsaw, saw the ocean. It would take a little longer though, for her to realise that her grandmother, the crown princess of Terrsaw, was right after all.

She would find a way back home.

CHAPTERTHREE

Even with her title, Ruby is not permitted to wander the palace at will. The guards at each entry will not allow even the captain of the guard to pass without Queen Alvira’s permission. She trained them as such. The kitchens, she taught them, are the only exception.

Ruby lifts the visor of her helm. Beneath, her eyes show the wear of long days, and even longer nights. The guards, every one of them, are walking the line between exhaustion and duty. Since the night Dawsyn Sabar and her Glacian friend returned to the palace, the Queen has ordered more sentries, more archers, more presence throughout the Mecca than ever before. Ruby has had little time to sleep between her watches, recruit training, strategizing meetings, and, though it risks her position, slipping extra food to a certain prisoner.

She does away with her helm altogether and rubs her hands against her much-abused brown cheeks. The places where the body armour presses against her bones smart. Her feet are blistered and bandaged. Her head is heavy.

“Look after this, will you?” she says to one of the cooks, placing her helm on a chopping board. The palace kitchens are below ground, and thus, the Queens rarely venture near. Ruby and some of her more trusted comrades often find sanctuary within its humid walls, stealing morsels from the cooks and resting their legs.

One such cook nods to Ruby as she swipes an unattended serving tray from the counter. “And where yeh be taking that tray, miss?” asks Darius.

“Never you mind.”

“That be for Queen Cressida. You gon’ make her go hungry?”

Ruby scoffs. “Her majesty has yet to spend a single moment hungry.”

“Then you’ll make a poor man double his labour?” Darius whines, his forehead spotted with soot from the brick ovens. Ruby has come to pilfer a tray every day for a week, and she knows for a fact that he purposefully left this one out for her. A man with a missing ear and barely enough words to string together, but detrimentally kind. Ruby has taken advantage, of late.

“Leave off, Darius. These feet haven’t had respite in a year. I’ve earnt the meals of ten Queens.”

“You ain’t eating no Queens’ meals. You be scurrying to the dungeons to feed that Ledge woman!”

“Shut up!” Ruby spits, her eyes wheeling to the other cooks. Thankfully they are too absorbed in their tasks to notice. “I hear you speaking lies like that again and you won’t have a tongue left to tell them!” she hisses.

Darius smiles, the gaps in his mouth more prominent than usual. “Aye. Stop yer squealing, Ruby. I ain’t gon’ tell nobody. Just you be careful, sneaking round underground where you ought not be. And I ain’t looking after no helm. Take it with yeh. You never know who be waiting to knock yer head off.” Darius winks.

Ruby smiles at him. As captain, she should reprimand him, remind him of his place, but she finds when it comes to friends, her authority takes its leave. Ruby pats him on the shoulder, replaces her helm to her head, and leaves with her Queen’s supper tray in her hands.

She takes the stairwell to the dungeon at a torturous pace, stepping as lightly as her garb allows. The armour at her thighs and chest clatters nonetheless and the sound is lobbed from wall to wall, higher and higher. There is nothing so indiscreet as a Terrsaw guard. Queen Alvira and her wife, Queen Cressida, will be in their living quarters at this time of night; but still, Ruby grows nervous. She thinks of her years of training, the years of grovelling and grinding in a world made for men. The small tray in her hands could very well make all that for naught, should someone become wise to it.

And still, she carries it. She descends the steps into the dank and the dark – to the woman of the Ledge, the one with the name of a royal. But by no means do the girl’s current holdings infer anything of the sort.

A guard stands sentry before the gate to the cells, half asleep and slumped, but when Ruby rounds the corner, the man straightens. It is Grayson, this evening.

“C-Captain?”