Page 39 of The Shattered King

The magic swirled in my hands, warm and crystal, forming a tiny bauble. I was experimenting with size, making the spheres larger and smaller. However, even the smallest one, as I held it now, fizzled out. I frowned, staring at so much unfinished lumis before me.

“Your sister,” Renn said distantly, from the other side of the not-walls, “is she the reason you’re so fast?”

I pulled some of my focus from the green bauble pieces in my hands. “Pardon?”

“You’re fast,” he explained. “Faster than the other healers. Than the one who comes in from the city, from time to time.”

“Brekk?”

A pause. “Is that his name?” He sounded sheepish.

I nodded my physical head. Sorted through the glass for about a minute, before the questions started anew.

“Is she there right now?”

I sighed. “Well, she’s not sitting next to me.”

The prince had taken a marked interest in Ursa, which I did not mind, since he’d asked his guards to step outside. They did not like not being in the room with him. Ard seemed to blame me for the dismissal, given the glare he cast as he strode out.

“What does she look like?”

I started sorting through more glass. “She’s my identical twin , Renn.”

“Oh.” A pause. “For some reason I was picturing her as a redhead.”

I rolled my projected eyes. “None of my siblings have red hair.”

“Mine, neither. Is she like you?”

I set the shards down and shifted back into reality.

There wasn’t much point in puttering around his lumis if he was going to be so distracting.

“Yes. And no. We did ... everything together. But Ursa was more soft-spoken than I am, more timid. Kinder. More pious.” I gave that some thought.

“She would not have been thrown in the dungeon, were she called here.”

For a moment, I imagined my sister still alive. Imagined us conscripted together, working as a team to heal the prince. How much quicker the work would go. How much less lonely it would have been, in the beginning.

“ You were smarter, ” Ursa said. “ Cleverer. ”

I huffed. “I was not.”

“Pardon?” Renn asked.

I shook my head. “Ursa was being self-deprecating.”

“What did she say?”

“I’m not repeating it.”

“ But I was more graceful. More obedient, surely. ”

I frowned.

Renn sat up straighter. “Is she talking right now?”

I swiped my open hands in front of me, signaling cutting off the conversation.

“I cannot function as a human being with the both of you talking to me at once.” I eyed Renn.

“She is not always present. She is ... like the internal voice we all have, but stronger. And ...” I hesitated.

“She is ... personal. Private. In truth, she is as much a shadow to me as I am to you. And she must stay that way.”

He looked chagrined. “Of course, Nym. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to pry.”

“You did nothing wrong.”

“Will you tell me more about the others?” He leaned forward, truly intent on listening. “Lissel, and ... Heath, and ... I’m sorry, there are so many I can’t keep track of their names.”

That warmed a smile from me. “Brien, Lissel, Dan, Colt, Heath, Pren, and Terrence.” I worried about them—letter delivery to and from Fount was already slow, but the winter would make the mail even slower, encasing roads in snow and swelling the seas.

Would Lissel remember to consolidate the hives and check the queens before it got too cold?

I’d shown her how to insulate the hives while allowing the bees movement, and how to guard against mice, but still .

.. if winter preparations weren’t done perfectly, the bees could be dead come spring. Our income would die with them.

I talked a little about my family, focusing on the younger children.

Renn had become familiar with Lissel. I fretted over her the most, and she penned all the letters to the castle, which I always shared with him.

I shared my thoughts on the apiary; he asked me how I didn’t get stung, how I retrieved honey from the combs, why wasps would attack a beehive.

I must have worn my concern on my face, for he said, “They will not starve. I’ll make sure of it. I promise.”

I believed him.

Sten opened the door then, and Queen Winvrin swept in, quickly enough that her skirts billowed around her. She frowned at me, likely upset that I was chatting and not dowsing. But as I lifted my hands to continue my work, she snapped, “Not that. Move this sofa. We need space.”

The queen had taken note of Renn’s avoidance of dancing at his birthday celebration, which made her all the more determined to ensure he participated in the winter ball.

Every winter the Noblewights hosted a ball for local nobility as well as upper-class craftsmen, such as Verdanian Truline, at Rove Castle.

It was their way of fighting back the dreariness of cold and long nights or, in my opinion, a way of showing off that their food stores were so high they could afford to waste them on parties while the peasantry rationed and prayed for spring, even during the onset of war, apparently.

She’d already changed the draperies and tapestries in the Great Hall, replacing the Noblewight black and red for shades of blue and white, bringing the colors of winter indoors as much as was comfortable.

They clashed with the red phoenixes, but those tapestries would never be taken down.

“Why are your guards in the hallway?” She shot a dark look at me.

“Nym needed to ask some embarrassing questions about my symptoms,” he lied smoothly.

His dance instructor arrived, lingering at the door. The queen sat primly in a chair pushed to the wall, hands folded over her knees.

“I’ve never attended before,” Renn explained softly. “They will not miss me if I do not dance.”

“You are required to dance,” she retorted.

“You have always been required to dance, but now it is a requirement you are able to fulfill.” She glanced at me, setting that expectation on my shoulders.

“Now, let’s work on your four-step. Lady Ash is bringing her nieces with her this season, and I’d very much like you to meet them. ”

A sore spot grew on my chest, and I rubbed it, wondering if I had indigestion.

Touched the agate pendant hidden behind my bodice.

At the same time, I wondered when Renn would marry.

He or one of his siblings might be used in a peace bargain with Sesta, though King Nicosia had no children that I knew of.

A cousin, perhaps, though with how rigid King Grejor had been in his negotiation meeting with King Nicosia, I didn’t think he’d yield a single grain of sand from Canseren soil.

Still, if Renn was bargained, and he were to go to Sesta .

.. surely I would be expected to go with him.

Surely I would never see my siblings again.

And I imagined stepping into a dim bedroom first thing in the morning to dowse into him while another woman occupied his bed, and the indigestion grew a little sharper.

To Renn’s credit, he wasn’t particularly gifted at dancing. He could follow the steps well enough, but he lacked grace in the movements, something both his instructor and his mother pointed out relentlessly.

“Perhaps I should have you take up ballet,” the queen said, entirely serious. “It would help.”

Renn looked at me pleadingly, as though I could somehow pluck him from his torment, but I merely added, “It would help build muscle.”

In the weeks leading up to the ball, Renn began reaching out to his sister, Princess Eden, who was two years my junior but carried with her the maturity of an old soul.

I shadowed Renn on these visits and found I greatly liked her.

She never said anything ill-considered or obtuse, actually discussing King Nicosia’s threat of war and its effects on Cansere, and she genuinely cared about her brother’s well-being and seemed pleased every time he sought her out.

Breakfasting with her became routine. On our third visit, she invited me to sit with them, even asked me about myself and my family, and how I’d come into dowsing.

Kind, reserved, and soft-spoken as she was, I wondered how she could possibly be a full-blood sibling to Prince Adrinn, but I never dared ask.

As the days grew colder and the nights longer, I became increasingly grateful Renn had moved my room, for my old one did not have a fireplace.

Even with a fire, I huddled down under my covers at night to stay warm; I would be freezing in the old place, especially without the thick blankets of my too-large bed.

Always I wore the agate necklace around my neck, taking it out sometimes first thing in the morning or near the fire at night, watching the light play off its smooth surface, feeling as though I held the universe in my hands.

A few days before the ball, King Grejor caught a chest cold, and so he sent for me.

Renn, trapped in dance lessons, did not hear the messenger at the door, and I knew he’d want to come with me if only to escape his duties, so I slipped out quietly and followed the messenger higher into the castle, to a suite that occupied the whole of the upper floor.

He left me at the door. I knocked softly, but no one answered, so I let myself in.

The salon within burst with the warmth of two fires.

Not an inch of stone was to be seen; carpets, tapestries, and drapes covered the whole of it.

Several narrow windows with thick glass let in light, though I noted they didn’t have the same bars over them as Renn’s did.

Odd. Short hallways branched off the salon like petals on a flower, all leading to even more rooms. I wondered if the queen slept here as well, or if she had her own suite elsewhere.

I was surprised not to see a guard present, but they were likely either fussing over the king’s health or helping the already arriving nobles.