Her Cruel Redemption (The Dark Reflection #3)

Chapter Twenty-Five

B reathe.

Calm.

Pull yourself together, you nervous idiot.

What I was about to do shouldn’t have been wrapping me so tightly with tension that my stomach churned and my hands shook. It was just a service at worship. There was no battle to fight, no risk to my life. I just had to walk to an altar and submit.

Perhaps that last part was the bit rattling me. Submit. I was doing far too much of that.

The door opened, letting in a rush of sound. Gwinellyn shut it behind her, washing the antechamber in muffled quiet again.

‘How many people are out there?’ I asked her.

‘Well… it’s hard to tell while they’re all still moving around.’

I swore, cursing the cunning king of Oceatold and his misleadingly benign priest.

‘It’s not their fault,’ Gwin hurried to add, visibly reacting to my cursing with a furrowed brow. ‘People are curious.’

‘They should never have opened the service to the public,’ I snapped. ‘There was no need for it.’ Except to subject me to public humiliation. I supposed there was always a need for that when there was a woman who overstepped her place.

‘Esario thought it would build trust in you and boost morale to see someone so close to the Usurper renouncing him.’

‘Or he wants to prove he’s in control and show us we’ll be subjugated to his will,’ I retorted, irritated that she was so set on believing in his good intentions. A habit she couldn’t seem to break. I wondered if that would change if I told her about the cream laced with stolen magic he’d had Vic Gedelli deliver.

Gwin wrung her hands together, wrinkling her white gloves. She was dressed all in lilac apart from those gloves, the fabric glossy, hems trimmed with creamy lace. ’You’re not going to go through with it?’ She looked so… disappointed. I wondered how much of her faith in me had become tied up in this formality, this annulment .

‘Of course I’ll go through with it. But for you, not for them.’

‘And for you,’ she said. It was almost phrased as a question.

‘Yes, and for me.’ I flicked the veil I’d insisted on wearing over my face. Black. Like I was going to a funeral for my marriage. I was going to clash spectacularly with Gwinellyn, in her youthful pastels, a fact I was sure the spectators would love. But the veil was to keep their curious eyes off my face. I was going to be enough of a spectacle without baring my scars for them to gawk at. Vic’s cream had blurred and softened them a little, but they were still very visible. If Gwin had noticed the change, she hadn’t mentioned it, though I’d caught her studying me when she thought I wasn’t looking.

‘It won’t take long,’ Gwin assured me, though I was certain she and I had very different definitions of the word long as far as worship services were concerned. ‘And when you walk out of here, you’ll be free of him. If you face him again, it won’t be as his wife.’

I didn’t reply. The comment was absurdly optimistic, as though some priest flicking soil at me and muttering some verses would somehow wipe me clean of all the memories, all the tumultuous feelings and regrets and wishes and needs entangled with my marriage to Draven. But Gwinellyn clearly needed to believe it, so I wasn’t going to dissuade her of the notion.

I tried to gather the nerve to walk through the door but it was difficult to take that step knowing how eyes would be on me, ready to weigh and measure, to declare me a traitor or a victim. I didn’t much like the idea of either label. I reached for that comforting fizz of magic in my blood, growing more and more familiar to me, a reassuring reminder that I was powerful in ways they could only dream of. Spreading a hand before me, I watched sparks crackle along the lengths of my fingers.

‘Rhi!’ Gwin admonished in a gasp. ‘Someone might see.’

My fingers curled into a resentful fist as I was forced to hide the only part of me I wanted them to see. Then I pushed through the door.

The cavernous space beyond was shot through with bright light, shafts of it cutting into the smoke of incense burning around the room. I could have done with a lot more smoke and a lot less light as hundreds of pairs of eyes turned to me, the talk dying away slowly, leaving behind a brittle silence in its wake. My heartbeat was hardly a beat at all, more like a fluttering rush as the nerves I’d been battling rose up and consumed me. I was frozen with the stares. I couldn’t put one foot in front of the other. Move, you idiot, move!

Then Gwinellyn was beside me, her head held high, thick dark hair glossy in the white light, upright and elegant and gleaming, and she took my hand. ‘I’m right here with you’ she said softly. And my astonishment muffled my nerves as this quivering teenager led me forwards like she was born to walk before a crowd, so unaffected and graceful in her sure-footed steps, her smile kind, but still above it all somehow. Almost like she was unaware of the whispers beginning to break around the room like the hissing of a pit of snakes.

… killed her husband after he rescued her…

… bold as brass…

… the living curse…

… doomed her country….

… the Blood King’s whore…

… thinks she’s entitled to refuge…

We found a space on the floor near the front of the room to kneel, a place reserved for those who wished to ask favour or clemency from the gods. Empty today except for us.

Unlike the clandestine beginning of my marriage, its end was a full service in a packed room. The room was a circle divided into seven sections, one for each of the sacred helper animals who had assisted Aether in his rise after the fall, and at each section a priestess rose to her feet, dressed in white robes and holding bowls of soil. Row by row, the worshippers stood and made their way to the priestess closest to them, plunging their hands into a bowl and then passing their hands through the smoke from one of the many incense cones, paying homage to Aether, god of sun and sky and Madeia, goddess of the earth, at once.

‘Come on,’ Gwin urged when it was our turn, and I joined the line reluctantly. The priestess’s face was cold and unsmiling when I approached her, and I got the whole business over with as quickly as possible before returning to the floor, secretly cursing Aether and Madeia in my head as I did, which I was sure would have made Gwinellyn blanch pale as a sheet if she knew. For some reason, it made me feel better. Perhaps it was the challenge I was issuing to gods I wasn’t even sure I believed in. If they had an issue with my unholy thoughts, let them step forth and make themselves known.

Perhaps they might take on more than they bargained for.

When Paptich Carrick stepped before the altar, I was too busy imagining a future where I had full control of my magic and could wield lightning with enough precision to smite the altar to pay attention to his lecturing. So it took Gwinellyn nudging me before I realised it was time for me to stand. I didn’t want to do it. I felt sick to the stomach to do it. But I did. Any murmuring that had begun to creep into the quiet room cut out, and I had the sense that every eye in the building was trained intently on me. Carrick gave me just the barest of smiles, and for a moment I felt stupidly grateful for even that whiff of kindness in this hive of hostility.

‘State your name, child,’ he said.

If I was on the edge of utter panic, I wouldn’t let them know it. ‘I am Rhiandra Soveraux,’ I said without even a waver, my voice clear and loud. ‘I come seeking the annulment of my marriage to the King of Ashreign.’

Several gasps popped behind me, followed by a buzz of furious talk. The paptich cast a stern glare across his audience, and the buzz settled into a low hum.

‘On what grounds?’

I licked my lips, my mouth as dry as the Shifting Plains. ‘Enchantment.’

Carrick nodded sagely. ‘You were enchanted into an arrangement of marriage?’

My throat seemed to narrow until I could hardly breath, but I managed to choke out one word. ‘Yes.’

The voices were loud now. People were calling out to each other, to me, some calling me a whore, a liar, others demanding an explanation, one voice shouted for everyone to shut up so they could hear what else I was going to say.

‘Enough,’ Carrick said, raising his voice only slightly, but it cut through the air and silenced the crowd. ‘I have been satisfied with the sincerity of this woman’s claims. Any who do not agree with my decision ought to ask themselves why they do not trust he who their gods have deemed worthy of trust.’ He surveyed the room again, as though seeking out any opposition, and I had to admit the display was impressive. His flock clearly respected him, for if there was any more dissent, I didn’t hear it. He beckoned me closer, gesturing to the floor. ‘Kneel child.’

I turned and faced that hostile, ravenous crowd. The probing looks, the suspicious expressions, the curled lips and pointing fingers. My shoulders were squared, spine so straight it might have been welded that way. And the idea of kneeling, kneeling , before them all sat in my stomach like acid. I focused on Gwinellyn instead, right there in front of me, and she smiled with warmth and encouragement. I’d come too far to embarrass her now by such a little thing as refusing to kneel. Carrick cleared his throat. With some difficulty, I forced first one knee, then the other to bend, sinking to the ground while my furious gaze remained turned on the crowd.

‘You ought to lift your veil,’ Carrick said quietly.

‘No.’ Absolutely not. There, I drew the line.

‘It would make you a more sympathetic figure if you revealed your face,’ he continued, his voice a low murmur. I didn’t even respond. The priest sighed but didn’t ask again. He proceeded to offer a long string of prayers referencing falling and ascending to the sky, but I had tuned him out, instead hyper focused on the movement of the seven white-robed priestesses as they formed a line behind me. I saw the one on the end out the corner of my eye as she approached holding a length of white rope. When she stood before me, there was malice in her expression.

‘Do you submit yourself to Aether’s will?’ she asked in a thin, reedy voice.

‘Yes,’ I answered through gritted teeth.

Her mouth twisted as she extended the rope, waiting for me to prove my submission by relinquishing my freedom. After a moment, I jabbed my hands towards her. She all but pounced on them, binding them together so tightly, far more tightly than necessary. I gasped as she yanked on her knot to secure it and it bit into my skin. I was so fixated on the evil woman that I almost didn’t notice the priestess on the end of the line as she scooped a hand into her bowl.

When the first handful of soil hit me, I flinched violently, ducking my head. The priest’s voice continued unabated, now reciting a verse about the blessing of Madeia’s flesh. The second handful of dirt hit me between the shoulder blades, the third on the side of the head. Dirt sprayed the air with each strike, and no matter how I tried to hold still, I recoiled each time, barely breathing through the horror of it, of the dirt pouring off me, hitting my head, my veil, my back, like I was being buried. And the crowd watched on, some nodding as though in agreement with the treatment, some leering, some looking faintly concerned, but all fixated by the spectacle of a former queen bent before them, being doused with filth, struggling against the too-tight rope binding my wrists, pulling at it to try and find some give.

Finally, Carrick himself stood before me. Slowly, he tipped water over my head from a goblet in a steady stream, turning dirt to mud, which ran in rivers down my face. When he was done he took the end of the rope from the wicked witch who’d tied me and bid me to rise, smiling like he’d just done something wonderous to me.

‘Go forth into the world as a woman unencumbered by profane magic and those who use it,’ he said, his voice loud enough to carry. ‘What is your new name, child?’

‘Tiercelin,’ I spat, and there was some relief in saying that name, because whatever my resentments of the people I‘d inherited it from, at least it was mine. ‘Rhiandra Tiercelin.’

‘Then Rhiandra Tiercelin, I return you to Aether and Madeia. Go forth in grace.’

I had the presence of mind to at least incline my head, to keep my steps measured as I took the end of the rope from him. I walked away and he continued the service. What I wanted to do was run. No, what I wanted to do was send bolts of lightning into the crowd, removing the onlookers in a blast of light and energy until there was no one left who could remember this. Shame heated my face as I kicked the door of the antechamber shut behind me and leaned against it, trying to breathe normally again. My wrists were still tied so tight my hands were changing colour. But it was done. I was no longer Draven’s wife. All it had cost me was a few minutes of humiliation.

Manoeuvring my bound hands, I swiped the veil off my head and threw it to the floor. Across the room, a tarnished mirror reflected a sight that would be burned into my memory; a dark-haired woman in a slim black dress covered in grit, clinging in places where the water had soaked the fabric, skin streaked with mud. And her face was already a challenge for me to look on with the scars ruling the left half of it, but the streaks down my cheeks looked like muddy tears. I looked like a beggar. An urchin. A spectre of my past. I snatched at a nearby curtain, rubbed the dirt from my face, not caring in that moment where I was leaving filth. Only caring that I had to get the stuff off me. I needed to find something to cut the damn cord off my wrists.

‘Rhi?’ Gwinellyn called through the door, and I immediately went to it, leaning against it to hold it shut.

‘I’m fine,’ I said, though my voice sounded too high-pitched.

‘Can I come in?’

‘I said I’m fine, Gwinellyn. Give me a few moments of peace,’ I snapped. In the silence on the other side of the door, I regretted my harsh tone. And I regretted not asking her to come in and help me. But I didn’t want anyone seeing me like this for one moment more than I had already endured. Had I really been a queen? It felt like a dream I’d had a long time ago, one where I’d been powerful and beautiful. Annulling my marriage was supposed to make me feel more powerful again, like taking one of Draven’s pieces on a game board, but I felt no different. In fact, I felt worse, because in my mind’s eye I could see him leaning against the wall, shaking his head at me. Could hear the words he would say as clear as if he was really in the room. Look what has become of you.

I waited a long time before I opened the door. When I did, the sanctum was empty, the rows of seating now standing vacant, the candles on the altar gone out. All I wanted to do was return to my room and have a long bath. What I wanted even more than that was for Leela to be waiting to draw that bath and pull up a seat beside me as I soaked, perhaps indulge in a drink with me as she had when I’d returned from the Yawn. I realised how bitterly I missed her, especially now that I was once again in a court surrounded by enemies and schemers. I missed her insights and her steadfast belief in me. The thought of her clawed back a little of my frayed resolve, doused a little of the shame. I had not just gone through the annulment for myself or because Oceatold’s king had bullied me into it. I’d done it for Leela.

‘Rhi.’ Gwinellyn stood from her place on a bench, startling me.

‘You’re still here,’ I said, surprised she hadn’t gone and found something better to do.

‘Of course. I was worried.’

‘I’m alright. You don’t need to worry about me.’ Aether’s teeth, why did she do this? Why invoke these tender feelings for her? They grew too raw as they rubbed up against my guilt for the lies I’d told and the wrongs I’d done her.

‘Well, then I thought you might need help.’ She held up a small pen knife. Shamefaced, I held out my hands. She sawed at the cord, cutting one piece at a time until it finally came loose. My hands prickled with pins and needles as the circulation returned and I rubbed at the raw skin, already shadowed with bruising.

‘How… how tight did they tie it?’ Gwin’s gaze was fixed on my wrists, her fingers touched to her mouth, eyes wide.

‘Tight. But never mind. It’s done.’ We walked towards the exit to the sanctum, down the stone steps and into the street, where thankfully there was a carriage waiting to ferry us back to the palace. I didn’t want to walk through the streets like this.

When we’d settled into the carriage, she spoke again. ‘That seemed difficult for you.’

I shifted my weight in my seat, not meeting her gaze. ‘It was.’ And then I realised that she might assume the difficulty was in the annulment part and draw some conclusions I didn’t want her coming to, so I added, ‘I lived on the streets when I was younger. I was always covered in dirt then. I don’t much like reliving it.’ I could have added bits to play on her sympathies. Perhaps about the cupboard my mother sometimes kept me in even before the streets that left me covered in worse than dirt. She had always panicked when we’d clashed, my mother. When she’d thought I was too unruly, too aggressive, too little like the high-born lady she had been, despite the fact that I was growing up in a very different world to the rich estate she’d known. In her world bellies were always full and the nights weren’t scary and people had time free from deep bouts of depression to love you. Not so in mine. A locked cupboard was a solution she’d discovered when I was small enough that she could manhandle me into it. And then she’d drink herself into a stupor and only remember where she’d put me when she’d come out of it again. Then she’d sell another of her girlhood possessions in a fit of guilt to buy me a present or a feast of some ridiculously fine food, as though that would make up for the hours I’d spent scared and alone. It would have been easier if she was always cruel. The unpredictability of her, her feast and famine style of mothering, made it so much worse. Especially when she ran out of things to sell and stopped coming out of the stupors.

‘I’m so sorry,’ Gwin said softly, reminding me she was there. ‘Your life… it seems like it’s been so difficult.’

‘It was a long time ago,’ I said, shaking the dark memories from me and coming back into the carriage. ‘I’m perfectly fine. Just don’t ever ask me to do something like that again.’ I took a breath, shut the box firmly on my past and turned my thoughts to the future. ‘So I suppose they can set a date for this negotiation now.’

‘Well… Esario still hasn’t decided if he wants to agree to it.’

A beat of silence. I stared at her. ‘Then what was all that for?’

‘I think he’s likely to go ahead, but he wants to settle the terms of our alliance first.’

‘And those terms will be what exactly?’

‘I know you think I should… assert myself more,’ Gwin replied, folding her arms around herself and looking uncomfortable. ‘But I don’t have much to offer them outside of a marriage.’

‘What about your Yoxvese friends?’ I asked. She shot me a puzzled look. ‘Come on, you must have thought about it. You’d be the first monarch who has some sort of relationship with them. You know there’s a dearth of magic in Oceatold. Draven won’t be facing that same problem. You could make the Elders of the Living Valley earn this revolution you’re offering them.’

‘I’m not going to make them get involved in a war,’ she replied. ‘That’s not why I offered to end the blood trade.’

‘It isn’t why you did it, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t expect them to help you fight for the future they want.’

She only frowned.

‘Gwinellyn, you’re going to have to learn to play some of the cards you’re clutching if you want to get through this with any agency at all,’ I continued. ‘You could be a force to contend with. Your stint on the road almost got us captured, but at least it means word will be circulating that you’re here and you’re ready to fight for your throne. The rate of refugees crossing the border will only increase because there will be people ready to fight with you. You could also call in a flesh-and-blood wyvern to terrify everyone if you wanted to. You also have me.’

‘But you can’t control your magic.’

‘Maybe not, but they don’t know that.’ A smile spilled across my mouth. ‘I could scare them.’

We rolled through the gates to Bright Keep, the white stone of the castle walls looking dreary and grey in the miserable weather, and Gwinellyn turned to looking out the window without responding to the suggestion. I didn’t push her again. Let her play at being meek and compliant for a while and see where that got her. Then maybe she might change her mind.