Echoes of Silence (7 page)

My heart raced as the door closed behind me. Not from standing in this new foyer on an upper level of the compound, not because I already knew who Bo was, and not because I had no idea what I could say to the Prince that could hold his attention until lunch.

But because Castillo had called me
his
raven-haired princess.

#

Bo turned out to be as abrasive as his name. He wore the same standard soldier uniform as Castillo, but his indicated special training. Probably the kind that required him to deliver death with a single blow. The fabric flowed like dark water over his muscular body. His shaved head caught the light, and his gruff voice ordering me to follow him without so much as a simple hello set my nerves on edge.

His boots barked against the stone, obscuring the tapping of my low heels. He led me down yet another passage and through a garden. I stalled among the plants, admiring their vibrancy. I fingered the leaves of a potted strawberry before Bo snapped at me to, “Hurry up.”

I quickly followed him into a sunroom filled with white, wooden furniture. With the garden behind glass, and a wall of windows in front of me with a view of the Burisia River, I paused. I’d seen this picturesque scene in my momentary vision last night, but this real-life version stole my breath.

I’d never seen the river from this height. Its movement mesmerized me, flowing from north to south, with eddies running across and around the water. In the distance, the paths to the river carved wrinkles in the earth, and I picked out people as they moved along the scars.

Blue sky stretched down to meet the river, and so captivated was I with the scene that I didn’t notice anything else in the room. I’d somehow moved to the windows and had both palms pressed against them as I surveyed the scene below.

“You love the outdoors,” a voice like velvet spoke, and while I felt nothing but relief that it wasn’t Bo’s harsh snap, a tremor of unease swept through me.

I turned to find the Prince grinning at me from a seated position at an oblong table. He held a cup of coffee in one hand and sipped it as he lounged against a row of plush pillows.

I raised my chin and tried to appear ladylike. “I do love the outdoors. Do you, Your Majesty?”

“Oh, yes,” he said. “I breakfast here every morning so I can watch the river.” He stood, joined me at the window, and settled into a posture of sophistication. “There’s just something . . . magical about it. Don’t you think?”

Indeed there was. Water possessed a powerful magic, and few there were in this world who could control it, or so Oake’s tales claimed. Castillo’s revelation about His Majesty’s love of magic weighed heavily in my mind as I considered how to respond.

“It’s lovely, yes,” I said. “But not magical. True magic resides in the life the river sustains.”

The Prince examined me. I felt like he was trying to peel back my brain, layer by painful layer. I held his gaze for a few seconds before I realized I wasn’t breathing. I looked away and drew a deep breath as slowly as I could. I swallowed hard, wishing for an icy sweet tea to drink. Heat raced across my skin as the silence lengthened.

“True magic resides in life,” he repeated.

I watched a flock of black birds land in a distant field. “I believe so, Your Majesty.”

“Cris,” he said. “You may call me Cris.”

“Oh, I may, may I?” The words caused the Prince to choke in surprise. “I mean, I’m sorry, Your Highness. I think I—” That was just it. I did
not
think. Regretfully, I turned away from the window. “Excuse me.”

I’d taken two steps when His Majesty latched onto my arm. “No,” he said. “Don’t go. I find you . . . refreshing.”

“Impossible.”

The Prince laughed again. “That’s the second time you have made me laugh,” he said. “And that is something that hasn’t happened in a very long time. Come, sit, eat.”

He gestured to the table, which was now set with breakfast foods. I hadn’t seen a servant enter or exit, hadn’t heard anything but the pounding of shame in my head. I forced my body to the table. I plucked a raspberry scone from the basket and nibbled on it.

His Majesty—Cris—poured a cup of coffee for me and chattered about springtime in Nyth. “The tulips will be out by now. I miss the yellow blankets of them. Are there any flowers like them here?” He looked at me for confirmation.

“No,” I said, delighted to have found common ground among the flowers. Wild tulips grew along the forest edges near Iskadar, and Grandmother’s rose bushes had been the envy of every widow in the village. “The city proper doesn’t have many bulb flowers, but the bushes flower. The bleeding heart is my favorite. It’s more of a summer bush though.”

“Bleeding heart,” he repeated. “I shall remember that. Do you have a bleeding heart in your garden . . . ?”

“Echo,” I say. “My name’s Echo.”

He took my hand and clasped it in his own. His fingers were long, warm, the spaces between them filled with mine. He led me away from the table, away from the delicious breakfast foods, away, away, away.

And I went. I went because I wanted to be near him. I wanted to know more about his name, and about his homeland of Nyth, and why he wore such a suffocating jacket on such a fine early summer morning.

Out on the balcony, behind the glass that protected me from the river, he stopped. Somehow, he held two cups of coffee in his free hand, and he offered me one.

I took it without looking away from his face. His cheeks seemed hollowed now that he was away from the crowds and gas-powered light in the ballroom. His jaw was square; his teeth straight and white; his hair the color of the rich brown rug in my bedroom.

“Echo is such an unusual name,” he said.

“Strange, I know.” I wrenched my gaze from his face to look over the water, suddenly thinking of Grandmother. Before I could stop it, a sigh escaped.

“Let me guess. You named yourself when you were five years old and . . . screaming for help at the bottom of a canyon.”

I didn’t answer as I sipped my coffee. I didn’t normally tell complete strangers how I named myself, a village custom in Iskadar most outsiders thought primitive. But Cris eyed me, his expression open, unassuming, despite his sarcasm.

“My grandmother let me play outside a lot,” I started, testing him. His attention remained on me. His eyes danced with life; he listened eagerly.

“We had a large garden, and I would follow her out there. As she worked, I filled bucket after bucket with dirt and dumped it out. When I laughed, the sound got caught in the metal.”

I broke eye contact as I lost myself in the memory. I heard Grandmother’s throaty laugh, smelled the earth on her fingers, the pollen in the air. I missed her beyond anything imaginable.

I swallowed a mouthful of scalding hot coffee so I could continue. “When she heard me, she told me it was an echo. That was when I chose my name.” I wondered what Grandmother’s garden looked like now, desolate and unattended as it had been these past many months.

“How old were you?” Cris asked.

“Two.” I cleared the emotion from my throat. “What about you?”

“What about me?”

“Is Cris a family name?”

“Something like that,” he said, his words fading and his mouth turning down. He reached out and brushed a curl of hair off my face. “Your hair is lovely.”

I stepped back, and his hand dropped to his side. “Thank you, Your Majesty.”

“Cris,” he corrected.

“Cris,” I said, wanting to put more distance between us until I better understood his motives. The silence stretched, and everything I could think of to say seeped into dangerous territory. My stomach squeezed tight.

Finally, Cris said, “Tell me, Echo, what you know of magic.”

My heart struggled against my ribs. My thoughts spun with stories of Nythinian hunting parties, the rumors of orange-eyed sorcerers who hummed hedges into warriors, and the realities of Princes who brought hundreds of young women to his compound in order to choose a wife.

What kind of wife? A magician-wife?
I didn’t know and found it impossible to replace the fear coiling through my system with frustration.

I tried desperately to play his question off as nothing by waving one hand nonchalantly at the river. If he could sense my pulse, though, he would find it galloping. “Nothing of consequence.”

Cris nodded, but a new edge had entered his eyes. One that spoke of mischief, of little boys who had buckets of ribbiting frogs in their mother’s kitchen sinks. “I know a little magic.”

A smile sprang to my lips, surprising me. Ten years seemed to melt off his face when he spoke of magic. “Oh? Royal tutors, I suppose.” Nyth kept its magicians closely monitored, and surely the High King would only allow the best to teach his son.

He drained the rest of his coffee as the youth left his face. “Yes, they tried. But most of what I was able to learn, I gained from trial and error.”

I waited for him to continue, to tell me how powerful he was, but he didn’t. He studied me, as if I might snap my fingers and send a funnel cloud into the sky. I’d accomplished elemental magic in Iskadar, but I didn’t want him to know that.

I suspected he knew already—after all, I’d fought his guards when they’d come to collect me—but I wouldn’t confirm it. If he was in Umon to find and control magicians the way his father did in Nyth, he was just as dangerous as the High King’s hunting parties.

Yet the silks I wore testified that as the Prince’s wife, I would never want for anything. I didn’t know if I could truly marry him simply for his money. It felt much the same as him marrying me for my magic. Neither option felt genuine, or remotely right.

I glanced at him, but found him admiring the river in the distance. I couldn’t make the pieces of Cris fit together. Here from Nyth, a country that had been expanding its empire through magical means, yet the Prince admired the landscape of Umon. The High King of Nyth had a reputation as dark as night, polluting magic and using it against his own subjects, but the Prince discussed magic as if it was normal breakfast conversation.

“Why are—?”

Bo interrupted my question with his harsh voice. “Your Majesty, your next appointment is here.”

“Sit here.” Bo pointed to a straight-backed chair and left. I’d been rushed out of the sunroom, down a hallway and into this closet of a room. It held a bare desk with a cushioned chair on one side and the hard one Bo had indicated on the other. Drapes held the sunlight hostage, casting the room in shadows and fear.

I barely had space to turn around, let alone smooth my skirts to sit in the chair.

“Sit, sit,” Bo said again as he re-entered the room. Another man followed him, and I wanted to shrink into the wall to avoid the sight of him. He wore a uniform that spoke captain instead of soldier, and his dark eyes broadcasted so much coldness I actually shivered. He was the second man from my rebound.

“You have made the initial cut,” he said. I supposed he could have been congratulating me, but it sounded more like an execution order. “His Majesty has appointments with several girls today, so after we take care of a few of the finer details, you’ll be free for the day.”

Free for the day sounded fantastic. I sat up straighter and pasted on a smile to show that I’d do anything to cooperate.

“My name is Gibson, and I make sure we know everything about the girls.” He sounded like he’d been through this process several times before, and my suspicions about the Prince and his bride-finding excursions reared. Gibson dropped a thick sheaf of parchment on the desk in front of me. “I’ll need you to fill this out.”

I flinched as he flicked a quill in my general direction. He waved his hand and a pillowed recliner sprang into existence. The sizzle of his magic set the silence in the room on fire.

I felt a ribbon of magic tying him and Bo together.
Bonds?

Gibson settled into his recliner, leaning away from Bo in a subtle yet distinct manner. I glanced at Bo, catching a scathing glint in his eye as he glared at Gibson. If they were bonds, they were definitely not friends.

Dangerous
drifted through my head now. Bonded magicians who disliked each other usually meant one thing: They’d only bonded to gain power. They didn’t love magic, didn’t want to use it to heal the lands the way the magicians of Relina had intended, or bring relief to the weary the way the weavers of Relina did, or introduce calmness into the chaos the way the ancients expected mages to do.

They simply wanted to possess as much power as possible and climb the ranks in the High King’s court. If magicians didn’t act as Bo and Gibson did, they were imprisoned. Living in the Prince’s suite surely outranked the dungeon.

Since magicians couldn’t choose who they bonded with, I didn’t need to cast a song to know why Bo and Gibson had paired up. They were bonded magicians simply to advance their careers—and yet they were enemies.
Dangerous
now screamed through my mind as I scratched out answers on parchment.

#

An hour later, with my stomach rumbling and my nerves raw from the silent interrogation of Bo and Gibson, I walked toward the exit. The desperation to leave clouded my thoughts, but when Gibson leaned in close enough for me to smell his breath, I seized on the threshold.

“If I find that you have lied in the slightest, girl, you will have me to answer to.”

His breath smelled like he had eaten raw meat for breakfast, and I had no doubt that he would hunt me to the edges of the lands if it meant he could advance to the next level.

A vein of tension stretched between us, his eyes growing angrier. I struggled with what to say, though Gibson clearly waited for something.

He motioned to the door, a fast flap of the hand that said
Get out now!
I fumbled for the door handle behind me, and when I found it, I spilled into the hallway.

I stood there for a moment, collecting my thoughts. I expected Matu to emerge from behind the tapestry and take me to lunch. When he didn’t, every instinct told me to find a way out of this place. I’d taken three steps down the hall when someone came up the spiraled ramp.

Castillo appeared, his arm linked with a platinum-haired beauty with her head thrown back in silent laughter. As they advanced, she whispered in his ear, her lips much too close to his, and his face showed a hint of a blush while his eyes sparkled with laughter.