Page 76 of Lady of the Drowned Empire

Asherah came to me. I’ve been gifted with a vision of the Goddess Asherah, it is she who has been visiting me all these months.

The journal cut off, and her next entry was after my birth.

It’s her. I gave birth to her. The vision of my dream. Her hair upon birth was a bright, fiery red. Like the goddess. And then after the nurses cleaned her up and brought her to my breast, the color left, replaced by a dark, beautiful brown. Like Harren’s hair.

I think it’s a sign—though I’m afraid to say of what.

A few days passed. She wrote of sitting in the Council meetings with a pillow behind her back on the Seat of Power as she held Court and nursed me at the same time. She’d done the same with Meera and Morgana, and whenever they’d finished, they’d slept in her arms as most babies did after feeding.

According to her journal, I was like any other baby except in Council meetings. After I fed, I sat up, alert. She said I looked like I was listening, my eyes following the flow of conversation and debates. Like I was preparing to rule. She saw me as High Lady and Arkasva even though I was third.

Then she took me outside and discovered my hair was still red but only in the direct light of the sun.

Then Gianna died. She didn’t write much. The pen seemed to fall across the parchment as if she were too sad to complete her script. She dated the parchment a few times, like she had an intention of writing something more but couldn’t.

Then I came upon a single entry.

I no longer trust her.

My gut twisted as I read the words again.

Arianna. It had to be Arianna.

There was not another word about it or whom she was referring to. The parchment continued with more daily tasks—Morgana taking her first steps, Meera sleeping through the night in her own bedroom in the Heir’s wing.

There had been a visit from the Imperator, whom she’d intensely disliked. Apparently, that had been rare in those days.

And then….

I haven’t spoken to anyone. But the dreams won’t stop. You’d almost think I have vorakh with these visions. Gods. I shouldn’t write such things. I am not afflicted. But they are constant. And now I’ve been invited up north, to visit with Imperator Hart. A rare opportunity. I have yet to cross the northern border of the Empire, to see his country.

In my condition, the healer does not advise it. I’m still nursing Lyriana. But I must.

The snow. The mountains. I have to see for myself. Is this the place?

By the Gods…. I started reading faster.

My mother left me behind with my father and our nursemaids and traveled by ashvan, flying out into the night with her guard, including Aemon, surrounding her. Motivated to get there and return, they flew nearly non-stop for three consecutive days and arrived in the early hours of the fourth.

The Imperator’s son is quite adorable. The greenest eyes I’ve ever seen, and beautiful dark curls. He clings to his mother in the hall, always reaching his tiny little hand to hold hers. It’s so sweet to see. I think I would like a son.

Fingers tightening over the reading stick, I bit my lip, the backs of my eyes burning.

She’d met Rhyan when he was a child. And she’d adored him, the little Rhyan who was lonely, who only wanted a pet gryphon to care for and be his friend. My chest tightened. I felt simultaneously touched by her words and sick over her initial observation of him—clinging to his mother. Already fearing his father. He would have just turned four. Poor Rhyan.

Imperator Hart has interest in a marriage with Lyr. I assumed with the young Lord Rhyan, but he is far more interested in her marrying one of his nobles when she comes of age.

I can see no reason why we would agree to this. I would never arrange a marriage for my daughter before she could speak and decide if she wanted this for herself or not. I simply would not arrange a marriage. These things have never been done in Bamaria. But the Empire’s ways of men keep trying to creep their way in.

I stretched my neck side to side, feeling a cramp after having sat and read so long, but my mind was racing. Rhyan’s father had been trying to win my hand in marriage far longer than I’d ever suspected. He’d asked my mother for my hand and tried to take control of me when I was a baby. Had he known about me? How could he have, when my mother had barely suspected it?

I kept reading, my eyes moving more quickly across the parchment.

Then my mother gave me the answer I’d needed for days, for months.

It’s Glemaria. My vision, my dream. It’s Gryphon’s Mount. The shape of the mountains, the fall of the snow.

A seraphim of white moonstone lays atop the mountain, partially covered in layers of snow that’s frozen over. The seraphim was sculpted much in the way of the Guardian, resting on its belly, but its head lifted and alert, looking out toward the Lumerian Ocean.