Page 15 of The Summer War

But Elithyon had been watching the whole time from his throne, flanked by a rapt audience of summerlings; many of them were applauding, even cheering, as if they’d all forgotten the purpose of the challenge, or were simply overwhelmed by admiration, and Elithyon himself looked as though he would have liked to join in.

When the thirteenth knight was borne off the field, Elithyon looked at Argent and then stood up and abruptly announced, “The sun grows high; the next challenge must wait for the heat of the day to pass,” and as if he’d given the sun a nudge, it was rising over the trees and blazing heat down into the courtyard as he spoke.

“Let all the challengers be given refreshment.”

A murmuring swelled through the court, but not of the objections that his people might sensibly have made to Elithyon giving an enemy more chances to kill them.

Instead the summerlings all seemed pleased by their prince’s graciousness, even the other knights who were waiting for their chance to fight.

A cool breeze came suddenly blowing out of the trees, and ruffled through Argent’s hair and left it smooth and dry and curling again, as if even the forest approved, and a flock of summerling servants went hurrying eagerly towards him, offering him a cup of water to drink, guiding him to a pavilion standing in a small shady grove of trees.

Celia’s heart was still beating with fear; she felt like a condemned prisoner with a brief stay of execution granted. She sat down heavily on the cool, low bed and then slowly stretched out and fell into a half-drowsing sleep herself.

But after the sun dipped below the trees on the other side of the forest, the fighting started again.

Argent killed another thirteen knights before Elithyon called another halt for the night.

Argent was led to the pavilion again, and came out bathed and in fine summerling feasting garb, and was taken to the tables; Elithyon had him seated by his side, and even poured his cup full and served him from the platters with his own hands, showing him all the grace that a summerling host could offer.

But Argent only ate steadily through the food and didn’t look at him.

At the end of the feast, as they all rose, Elithyon burst out in frustration, “You have done great honor to your blade, but you must see that soon you will fall. Will you not withdraw your challenge and be named a guest-friend of my court, welcome to come and go, and see for yourself that the sorceress lives yet?”

Argent said only, “No,” and turned to look up at her window and smiled, before he strode away to the pavilion they’d given him.

She could see him in silhouette inside, a light glowing as he sharpened his sword and oiled his armor.

Below, Elithyon stood watching his shadow too, with the unhappy, half-wincing expression of a man watching a priceless vase teetering on the edge of a shelf, about to be smashed to pieces.

When Argent finished and lay down to sleep, the light softly faded and then went out, and Elithyon turned and glared up at her before going away into the palace, as if he blamed her for it all.

Most of the summerlings had drifted away to sleep already, but a few of them wandered into the woods and the gardens, and from her high window, Celia heard two different summerling musicians softly singing to themselves as they worked on rival versions of a lament for the Knight of the Woven Blade, the greatest knight in all the world, who had taken up a hopeless challenge to try and avert the vengeance of the Summer Prince, with a line for every knight he’d met in battle, trying out rhymes for different numbers of the fallen, guessing how many would die before Argent was killed himself.

She listened with her face pressed against her knees, and when at last the last of the musicians had fallen silent, she got up and went to stand at the wide-open window.

She looked out straight ahead and tried to pretend that the edge wasn’t there.

Just one step, and a short fall, and it would be over.

Argent wouldn’t have anything to keep fighting for, and Elithyon would be glad to let him go.

And maybe Argent would have to live out his life in the shadow of the curse she’d left on him, but at least he would live.

And then—Argent would leave the Summer Lands and go back to Father and tell him and Roric what had happened.

And they would kill Gorthan and the king, and find some way to lure Elithyon back out of the Summer Lands and kill him, too, and avenge her death.

That was a better story than just living miserably in the power of a proud, cruel man, who was determined to only ever say no when you asked him to care. Eislaing hadn’t been stupid, after all.

Except that Celia knew how that story ended: in a century of war and sorrow. After her father and her brothers had avenged her, what summer lord would decide that Elithyon’s murder had to be avenged in turn, for the trick that had broken the peace? And how many people would he slaughter?

She looked down into the pale marble courtyard.

There weren’t any bloodstains left on the ground; all of them had vanished.

All those summer knights dead, and the summerlings weren’t angry about a single one of them, because they’d died with honor.

They were making songs about Argent killing them, and more knights were lining up eagerly, thinking nothing of the risk of death next to the chance to be part of a truly glorious story.

The same way they thought nothing of the people they killed every summer in Prosper.

Those people didn’t have stories that lived after them.

They were just ordinary people: farmers and bakers and weavers, shepherds and millers.

They lived and died unseen by the world, forgotten without ever being known by anyone.

Anyone except the people who cared for them, the people they cared for.

And the kings of Prosper didn’t think about the ordinary people of Prosper any more than the summerlings did, with much less excuse, because they did want to live.

King Morthimer had been handed a victory in the summer war, and all he’d thought about was making sure that Father didn’t take his throne.

Likely he hadn’t wanted the war to end, Celia realized, thinking about it now.

The lords of Prosper couldn’t afford to squabble amongst themselves when there was a war going.

If one of them grew too powerful, the king could just put them in a keep that would be easily overrun, and so what if three villages were slaughtered afterwards?

And surely Elithyon hadn’t even really wanted to win the war himself.

He’d wanted to keep avenging Eislaing, over and over.

As long as he still had to avenge her, she’d stayed in his mind, in his memory, a story that wasn’t finished yet.

He’d only really invaded Prosper after Father had started defeating his lords decisively, killing so many summerlings, and threatening to force an ending that Elithyon couldn’t live with.

Celia wanted that story to end. She didn’t want to be the next chapter, the cause of another round of senseless war.

But the only other ending she could write was the one where Argent died trying to save her, on the blade of the thirty-ninth or forty-third or seventy-first summer knight, and she did step off the tower afterwards, instead of starving slowly to death.

Then no one else would ever know the truth.

Father might guess that Gorthan was lying about the summerlings kidnapping her away from him, but he wouldn’t be able to do anything about it, so he’d go home and turn his face to the wall and die, with the two children he’d cared about gone forever.

Gorthan and Elithyon would both be crowned, and likely enjoy long and prosperous reigns, reaping the rewards of the summer peace made on the backs of her family.

Celia was her father’s sensible daughter, but she was also a descendant of the kings who’d been proud enough to keep a war going just to hang on to their thrones.

She’d once swelled with a rage and agony furious enough to make sorcery with, and the story she really wanted was to live, and get out of this tower, and use her sorcery to tear Gorthan and Elithyon both into little pieces.

It was their fault, the whole war was their fault: Gorthan and his father following in Sherdan’s footsteps, and Elithyon chasing after his own hungry vengeance, with all the same selfishness and pride.

She wanted them dead, not satisfied and crowned with power; and if she couldn’t kill them herself, she did want someone else to kill them.

But she had a second brother. And if she did save the peace, Roric would get the same chance she’d be giving all those other people of Prosper: to make a family that could grow in peace.

Roric would take that chance and use it.

He’d marry, and have children, and he’d love them all.

And he wouldn’t avenge Celia, but he’d remember her instead.

She saw it as clearly in her mind as if she were there: Roric and his wife and children, all together in the warm, glowing sitting room in Todholme Castle, and he’d tell them stories about the sister he’d loved, and who had loved him.

Celia took one step and then another back from the edge. She had promised to care, and she would keep her promise. She’d care about Roric, and she’d care about the people of Prosper, and she’d even care about the summerlings, and give them a chance to write new stories of their own.