Page 8 of The Shattered King

Two weeks after my arrival in Rove, I finally understood the shattered pattern of Prince Renn’s legs—the pattern they would have had if not so completely torn apart.

The pattern they would have had were I called in right after they’d broken, or if the rest of the prince’s lumis weren’t such a mess.

I carefully knit and glued and balanced bits of blue baubles together, creating a sort of twisting, kaleidoscopic path from the lumis floor.

I did not need to coax the pieces to hover midair; that seemed where they wanted to be.

I not only had to test the fit of fragments, but puzzle out where in the air they wanted to be—how close to the ground, how far in from the edge of the mess.

I dared not say anything as the bones took form, for fear I would return and see them fragmented again.

That was another oddity with the prince; my administrations did not hold.

At first I thought that due to personal error, but it seemed more and more likely the prince’s lumis was just as obstinate as he was.

But while the pieces did deteriorate between dowsing sessions, they did not collapse quicker than I could rebuild them.

Until, on day sixteen, I pulled myself out of Prince Renn’s lumis around lunchtime.

The queen was there again, watching me, her yellow diamond pendant glinting through the cutout of another refined dress, as though any of us might forget who her husband was.

I waited for the prince to look up from his book. “I think you should be able to stand.”

The book fell from his fingertips.

“Pardon?” The queen stood and rushed over to me. “Stand?”

I glanced at the prince. “His bones are precarious, and I imagine his legs will be, too, since he’s spent so much of his life abed. I wonder if some exercise won’t help strengthen the muscles, and then reflect in his lumis. Make it easier to work.”

“But you said stand,” Prince Renn reiterated. Hope flared in his eyes so brightly that, for a brief moment, they seemed to glow.

I nodded.

The prince gripped either side of the sofa and pushed, trying to get to his feet.

I reached out to help him, but the queen shoved me away, causing me to nearly trip over my stool.

She motioned, instead, for the guards to aid him, Sten on one side, and the obtuse and unhelpful one with the paper—Ard—on the other.

They lifted the prince like he was a nearly empty bag of flour. His blanket fell to his ankles; his legs were weak and thin, but they were straight. No one remarked on their straightness. No one thanked me for my work. I almost didn’t notice; I was just as invested in the prince’s health as any.

And, though he had to grip Sten’s arm to do so, he stood.

“Marvelous!” The queen’s eyes teared, and she pressed her fingers flat to her cheeks. “Oh, my boy! This is marvelous!”

And, for a moment, the gloomy royal suite took on a fleeting air of happiness.

I could not have slept more than an hour before my bedroom door banged open. I started, the tendrils of a dream pulling on me, my eyes heavy. I shielded my eyes from torchlight, and the queen’s shrill voice pricked my ears.

“He can no longer stand.”

I blinked, taking in her and the two guards with her. Stifled a yawn. “Perhaps he should rest, seeing as how it’s the middle of the night.”

“Petulant girl,” she spat. She motioned, and one of the guards—one I’d not yet met—came in and hauled me from my bed, twisting my arm.

Heart lodged in my throat, I tried to pull away from him. “What are you doing?”

“ Fix him, ” the queen demanded.

“I can repair his lumis in the morning!” I shouted. “It’s still fragile—”

But my pleas, unsurprisingly, went unheard.

The queen’s men half dragged me back to Renn’s suite, where he was on the sofa, wincing in pain, though he schooled his features upon our arrival.

For a moment I saw a mix of shock and pity in his eyes as he recognized me, but that, too, he wiped from his features.

Maybe it was my utter weariness, but I found myself on the brink of crying.

“This is inhuman,” I said, though it came out scarcely a whisper, the way my throat was closing.

I met none of their eyes and dowsed into the prince’s lumis, forcing myself to focus, to stay awake.

The pieces I’d placed were still mostly there; only a few had fallen, and I returned them to their designated spots easily enough.

I pulled on that extra bit of magic, magic that wasn’t mine, for I had so little left to give. It took me a minute, maybe two.

Back in reality, I stood from my stool. “May I leave?”

Ignoring me, the queen gestured to the prince. “Help him stand.”

She spoke like he was a toddler taking his first steps, not a man of twenty.

The guards stationed in the suite did so, and he stood, assisted.

Yet this did not satisfy Winvrin Noblewight. “Why isn’t the healing holding?”

I shook my head. “I’ve yet to discover that, Your Majesty. I don’t think you understand just how horribly shattered he is.”

The back of her hand clapped against my cheek as she struck me. I was so tired, it took a moment for my mind to register it.

“Do not speak of my son that way,” she snapped. “You will fix him.” Then, to the men who’d brought me, “Take her back to her room.”

This time, I was happy to let them drag me.

Still, left in the dark of my tiny chamber, where I had not even a pitcher and basin to wash myself, where my cheek pulsed from the queen’s hand, the tears fell, pattering against my knees.

“It isn’t fair,” I whispered.

“ No, it isn’t, ” Ursa replied, and I could almost hear the disdain in her voice. “ But you’ve done so much. The end must be in sight. ”

“It isn’t.” I wiped my knuckles across my eyes. “And I spoke truth—none of our theories explain why the healing isn’t permanent. If I can’t get it to stick, I’ll never go back home.”

“ Lissel is strong. ”

“But how long will her strength last?” I asked. Mine is failing me, I didn’t say.

I fell onto my mattress, too tired to carry on the conversation. And yet, as though to further hurt me, sleep was a long time coming.

Sten had to shake me awake at dawn.

When I arrived in the prince’s suite, he was already on his sofa, coughing violently not into a handkerchief, but into a bowl. His pallid skin sank around his eyes; the blood made his lips too red.

I waited for him to finish. The queen had not yet arrived to survey my work, which apparently was much more important to her than running a kingdom. I dowsed into Prince Renn’s lumis, touched up what I’d done the day before, and emerged again.

“You need to walk,” I said, clipped and angry.

He shook his head. “I can’t. I can barely stand.”

“Then stand until you can walk,” I retorted, uncaring if he scolded me for my forwardness. “You need to build up the muscles in your legs. I can’t do it all myself.”

The prince frowned. “I’m aware of how the human body works. Whitestone said you are not. You could be wrong.”

Whitestone. The name of the castle physician only stoked the fire burning in my gut. “And how much has Whitestone helped you thus far?”

The prince set his mouth into a hard line. Glanced at my face, perhaps thinking me ugly or common, or noting the bruise I’m sure the queen left there. I didn’t know; I had no mirror to check, and I hadn’t taken the time or energy to dowse it away.

“Fetch your doctors if they’re so important to you, then,” I quipped, “and walk.”

He did call upon Physician Whitestone. He, along with every other doctor within the castle walls, piled into the suite, pushing me out of the way and putting their hands on the prince, checking his legs, his vitals, his everything, then carefully helping him to stand as he had the day before.

None seemed to notice the immense discomfort on the prince’s face.

I didn’t know if it stemmed from pain or from something else, but I couldn’t bring myself to care.

I took my stool to the farthest corner and sat, leaning against the stone, trying not to doze off but occasionally failing.

Whitestone had the prince standing, then sitting, then standing again, on repeat, when the queen arrived.

She mentioned nothing of the doctors’ work.

Made no assumptions, chided not a single action.

I occupied myself imagining her falling from a castle tower and breaking against the bailey below.

And then, if she didn’t perish upon impact, refusing to heal more than was absolutely necessary for her to live, letting her ail for the rest of her life.

I looked at the prince, who had ailed , inside and out, all his life, and shame wound through my spine. I ignored it—I didn’t want to deserve the guilt. But it brewed there all the same.

They called on me twice, when the prince grew weak, to check his lumis. The first time, I replaced a few glasslike pieces. The second, everything was still in place. “He’s fine,” I announced. “He’s just tired. As humans tend to be.”

The next day, we repeated the sequence. I inspected the prince, then the doctors made him sit and stand, sit and stand. The day after, with much aid, Prince Renn took a step, and then another, and there was much rejoicing, even among the guards.

That evening, after the physicians left, I dowsed into him again, repairing what had broken, picking through some of the rest in hopes of discovering something new to heal, for all the activity had worsened the prince’s blood-laced coughs.

When I came back to the present, Prince Renn asked, soft as goose down, “What do you see, when you’re in there? ”

He didn’t meet my eyes.

“A lot of colors,” I answered. “Like a great chandelier has fallen and broken in every way. But a few pieces are together, now.”

He nodded once, jaw tight.

I regarded him a moment. “It is improving, Your Highness, albeit slowly.”

He didn’t answer.

I pushed my luck. “How long has it been? For your legs. I know the other ailments were since birth—”

“Not since birth.” His voice was quiet, low, tired.

“But I was a babe. Not yet walking. As my mother describes it, my health changed overnight. The physicians have offered more and more absurd explanations over the years, but I believe none of them. The rest ...” He glanced at his legs.

“When I was ten, I fell down the stairs of the castle. North tower.”

So those rumors were true. Every set of stairs I’d seen in this castle was built of cold, hard stone.

They could do a lot of damage. And while Whitestone was correct in that I was not formally trained, even I knew that breaking a bone before one was fully grown could lead to other issues.

If Renn’s legs were so badly shattered in childhood, it was no wonder he struggled with them so.

“But a craftlock healer should have been able to mend them. You’ve had many healers at the castle.” Or that was what I’d heard. I didn’t actually know how common crafters were, given the laws repressing us. “Could they do nothing for you?”

Now he did look at me, his eyes cool, almost like his elder brother’s.

“Perhaps they could not pick the bones from the rest of the shattered chandelier , as you put it. Unlike you, there are some who wish desperately to serve here, who tried when they should not have. Hem knows what else they might have broken.”

I considered this. Were his legs hurt badly enough, amputation might have been his fate.

“Alm knows,” I corrected.

He narrowed his eyes. “Pardon?”

“You said Hem knows, but Alm is the god of health.”

He snorted, seeming genuinely offended. “And Hem is the god of kings, and the god over all of them, so what does it matter?”

The door opened then, and I knew the queen had arrived; even the guards assigned to the prince’s chambers knocked. She strode in, her legs fine and hale, and said, “I heard there has been much progress. Whitestone promises me that while recovery will be painful, it will ultimately—”

She paused, nose wrinkling, and cast a scornful look at me. “You, how can you stand yourself?”

I stood and bowed, but before I could ask what she meant, the queen answered.

“You smell ungodly .” She curved her palm over her nose, the motion shifting the diamond at her breast. “Have you been subjecting my son to this filth? Forcing him to breathe the bad air rolling off of you? There are standards in this castle, Nym Tallowax!”

The anger simmering over the last few days bubbled up from my stomach, burning my throat. “I beg your forgiveness, Your Majesty,” I forced through gritted teeth, “but were I given time and a means to bathe, I happily would have by now.”

A faint flush dusted her cheeks. I did not know why—I had not truly insulted her, not as she had done to me. And so her next words truly shocked me.

“Take her to the dungeon.”