Page 27

Chapter Twenty-Seven

I kept scanning the words on the page before me over and over, as though they might spell out something different if I stared at them for long enough.

‘Is something the matter, princess?’ Lord Faucher asked me, offering me a kindly smile as I glanced over at him. ‘We’ve been over the terms many times now. I assure you there’s nothing in there you ought to worry yourself over.’

I bit my lip, preparing myself to disagree with him, with all of them, as I glanced at the door again. Where was Rhiandra? When she’d said she didn’t want me to agree to the engagement to Tallius, I thought she would help me find an alternative way forward. But she’d left me in the middle of the chaos the invasion of Port Howl had caused, and now suddenly the pressure to sign off on this alliance was at a boiling point and she wasn’t here. Was she trying to teach me a lesson? I was the one who was going to have to be queen, after all. Maybe she wanted me to figure this out alone.

I put down the pen that had been poised above the paper and cleared my throat. ‘Isn’t there a way we can secure Oceatold’s support without the engagement to Tallius?’ I asked, my voice painfully tentative. Around the room, faces turned stony.

‘King Esario demands the security of an engagement if he is going to expend the effort and the resources it will take to help resurrect the Brimordian throne,’ Dovegni replied from next to Lord Faucher, his smile twitching slightly at the corner.

Something about that claim was starting to sit uncomfortably with me. I remembered what Rhi had said the day before, about the cards I held. ‘I think I have more to offer than that.’

‘With all due respect, Your Highness,’ Dovegni drawled, ‘you do not. The princess of a dismantled kingdom is hardly a prize for any prince. Your value rests entirely on—’

The door sprung open, severing the end of his sentence. It slammed against the wall with a force that sent a ripple of startled motion through the gathered nobles. Rhiandra strode in like she belonged here, like she wasn’t an uninvited storm ripping through carefully laid plans. Her scarred face was unreadable, her dark eyes sharp with purpose as she swept her gaze over the room as the air seemed to thicken and pop, like she was a surge of static and barely constrained energy.

Behind her, two guards stepped forward as if to intercept her, but she barely glanced their way. ‘Try it,’ she murmured, and something made them hesitate.

Lord Faucher rose stiffly from his seat. ‘This is an official—’

‘I need to speak with Princess Gwinellyn. Alone.’

Murmurs rippled through the gathered council. Dovegni scoffed, leaning back in his chair. ‘You’ve stormed in here like whatever you have to say is more important than a full-scale invasion.’

Rhiandra didn’t even acknowledge the comment. Her focus remained on me. ‘It’s urgent.’

I excused myself as I rose to my feet and followed Rhi into the hallway. ‘I’m so glad you’re here. They want me to sign off on the alliance, and I…’ My words faltered when I realised how shaken she looked, her eyes red and her cheeks blotchy with colour. Had she been crying? ‘What’s the matter?’

‘I need you to see something.’ She extended a hand, revealing a metallic glimmer. Jewellery. A heavy whirl of gold set with odd stones that were grey in colour, though one or two gleamed brilliant red. The gold was blackened in places, almost corroded.

‘Is it a necklace?’ I asked, tucking my hands under my arms without touching it. Something about it made me hesitate to pick it up.

‘There’s magic in them. They can show you a glimpse of another time or place, and they just showed me Prince Tallius ordering the murder of the mother of his child.’

I cringed away from them now, digging my hands deeper into my arms. ‘Oh Rhi… that’s… I don’t… why do you want me to see that?!’

‘Does your alliance with Oceatold still hinge on your marrying Tallius?’

‘Of course it does! It‘s been made perfectly clear that I have no other options! You don’t really think he could—'

Rhi snatched my hand, tugging it from beneath my arm, and pressed one of the stones into it. Instantly, my vision darkened. My head spun, and the strangest sense came over me, like I was leaving my body, whirling away from it through a dizzying space that I couldn’t see but could feel as a deep emptiness all around me. Light broke before me, clearing away the black, and I was standing in a bedroom, watching Prince Tallius speaking with a slight blond woman I was sure I’d seen somewhere before. I sucked in a loud breath, shaken and stunned at the sudden scene change, but they showed no sign of having heard me.

‘Don’t leave here tonight. I need to keep everyone together,’ he said to her.

‘Of course.’ She took his hands and pressed them to her mouth. ‘Thank you, Tallius. Thank you.’

‘I’ll have someone draw you a bath,’ he replied, withdrawing, and I felt my own fingers squeezed as I suddenly realised Rhi was still standing next to me, clasping the necklace between our laced hands.

The woman traipsed into the adjoining room on nimble feet, singing to herself in a voice high and sweet as Tallius opened another door and spoke to a guard standing there dressed in Oceatold livery.

‘In the bath. Make it quick,’ he said. The guard nodded, entering the bedroom to wait by the bathroom door. The floor seemed to shift beneath us, the space shrinking to carry us along, until we were in the bathroom. Time seemed to speed up as we watched the blond woman flit about the room far too fast to be possible, her hands almost a blur, as a maid filled the great copper tub in a matter of moments. I averted my eyes as she undressed and slipped below the water, leaning back with closed eyes. When the guard entered the room, still moving at an impossible speed, I cried out to warn her, but she couldn’t hear me. In a blink, he was by the tub. In another, his hands were on her, pressing her down below the surface, her arms thrashing about. Her head broke the surface for barely a glimpse, then she was under again, clawing at him as she tried to get free. The next moment, he was straightening. Her arms hung limply over the sides. And the scene went dark.

I spun, whirled through a vortex of space, to come crashing back into my body. I staggered, my stomach churning, and for a moment I thought I’d be sick. Rhi steadied me as I doubled over, gasping. When I finally straightened, my eyes were wet with tears.

‘Wh-why would you show me that?’ I stammered, voice thick.

Rhi’s expression was tight, her eyes hard. ‘Because you cannot marry that man, Gwinellyn. This is the turning point. This is the place where the path diverges. You can keep doing as you’ve always done and let those entitled pricks rule the world, amassing piles of collateral damage like Senafae and the Yoxvese in pursuing their pleasures and ensuring they stay on top of the heap. Or you can go into that meeting this afternoon, look that smug, smarmy prick Tallius in the eye and tell him to go fuck himself.’

I chewed the inside of my cheek as stress began to buzz in my fingertips and blur the edges of my vision. I took a few deep breaths, blowing them out noisily, trying to manage it, trying to keep the terror and the fit that would follow it at bay.

She watched me with her brow crumpled in consternation. ‘What are you so afraid of?’

‘Tallius,’ I managed to choke out as I steadied myself against the wall.

‘I don’t understand.’

Of course she didn’t. She couldn’t understand how terrified I was of standing against him. How much I’d dreaded his visits when I was younger. She wouldn’t understand my fear, not when she’d lived through such terrible things, far worse than anything I had experienced. Tallius’s cruelty would seem petty and childish in comparison. What would I say? That he’d liked to pinch me until I cried? That he’d laugh and whisper while shooting looks my way when I was in the room? That once he’d told me a story about a headless ghost who roamed the palace, then he’d tricked me into the panty in the kitchen on the pretence of finding me a treat to make me feel better, pretending he wanted to be friends, only to lock me in there all night? I could tell her how I’d cried, how afraid I’d been of the strange sounds and the spectre of the headless ghost, how I’d had my first fit there in the dark and had returned to consciousness all alone, with no one to tell me what had happened. The cook had screamed when she’d found me in the morning as the scullery maids scampered about in a panic. I’d never told anyone Tallius had locked me in there.

The thought of that pretty, blond woman came back to me, of her singing so sweetly. Of… of the way she’d struggled as she was held beneath the water.

‘I know it isn’t easy,’ Rhi said, her voice gentler than I’d ever heard it. When I looked up at her, her eyes had softened. ‘I know you’ve been taught to be quiet and doubt your voice. But I’ve seen your determination and your compassion and your dream for a different world. You’re worth so much more than as a silent key to the castle. And if standing up for yourself isn’t enough of a motivator, then stand up for Elias and your friends and the Living Valley. Stand up for the woman drowned in a bathtub for being an inconvenience.’ She lowered her voice, bringing the energy back down, and there was something desperate in her intensity now. ‘Stand up for me.’

I held her gaze, feeling the words all the way to my bones in a way that felt similar to the night we’d danced with Baba Yaga, surrounded by drums, our feet bare and something wild and powerful running through me. This was why I’d come to Oceatold, wasn’t it? Because that night, I’d got the sense that I had more strength and nerve than I’d ever thought I did. I’d been able to feel it, thrumming deep down inside me, this fierce energy that I’d spent my entire life beating down. And maybe she was right and I couldn’t do it for just myself.

But I could, I would , do it for my friends.

‘But how do I get them to listen to me?’ I asked, barely beginning to entertain a ray of hope that the future I’d been dreading might never need to come to pass.

A slow smile unfurled across Rhi’s face as she took me in, the light of triumph gleaming in her eyes. ‘Actions have consequences,’ she said. ‘Why don’t we give them a taste of the kind of monsters they’ve been creating?’