The Beauty of Darkness (48 page)

I swallowed my pride and approached him. I had told Lia I had already made my peace with him. Now I actually had to do it.

 

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KADEN

I didn't hear him coming until he was upon me. I startled and turned. “What do you want?” I asked.

“I'm here to talk about—”

I swung, catching him in the jaw, and he flew backward and fell, the sword buckled at his side clattering on the stone floor.

He slowly got to his feet, his expression livid, and he wiped the corner of his mouth, blood staining his fingertips. “What the hell is the matter with you?”

“Just preempting a shot from you. I seem to recall that the last time you snuck up on me wanting to talk, you punched me, then slammed me up against the barracks wall, accusing me of all kinds of delusional things.”

“Is this a preemptive strike or a payback?”

I shrugged. “Maybe both. What are you sneaking around for this time?”

He studied me, his chest heaving, rage sparking in his eyes. I knew he wanted to take a swing, but somehow he managed to keep his hands at his sides. “One, I wasn't sneaking,” he finally said, “And two, the reason I came was to thank you for staying by Lia's side.”

Thank me?
“So you can take her back to Dalbreck now?”

The anger drained from his face. “Lia is never going back to Dalbreck with me.”

I was suspicious of the sudden turnaround in his demeanor almost as much as his declaration.

“I'm betrothed to another,” he explained.

I huffed out a disbelieving breath.

“It's true,” he said. “The news has been heralded all over Dalbreck. Lia will never be going there.”

It was the last news I expected to hear. He was moving on? “Then why are you here?”

His lips quirked in an odd way. He didn't look like the arrogant farmer or emissary, or even the prince I had known.

“I'm here for the same reasons you are. The same reason Lia is. Because we want to save the kingdoms that matter to us.”

“They all matter to Lia.”

His expression darkened. “I know.”

“And that pains you.”

“We've all had to make hard choices—and sacrifices. I recognize the one you made helping us escape from Venda. I'm sorry I didn't say it before.”

The words came out stiff and practiced, but were still an apology I never expected to hear. I nodded, wondering if he was still going to take a crack at me. There hadn't been time when we met up at the cottage. Finding Lia, Pauline, and Gwyneth had been all that mattered.

I reached out cautiously, offering my hand. “Congratulations on your betrothal.”

He took it with the same caution. “Thank you,” he answered.

Our hands returned to our sides in the same measured moves. He continued to eye me as if there was more he wanted to say. I had heard him come in last night and saw him when he quietly left the room. For someone betrothed to another, he didn't hide his feelings well.

“I'll see you out in the plaza,” he finally said. “What she faces there today will be harder for her than the traitors she confronted last night. She won't be facing those she needs to throw in prison, but those she needs to rally. She'll need us both there.”

He started to leave, then glanced down the dark stairwell and back at me. “Don't do it,” he said, his gaze meeting mine. “The time will come, but not now. Not this way. You're better than him.”

And then he walked away.

*   *   *

I left my weapons with the guard before I entered the cell. My father's eyes locked onto mine, and immediately all I saw in them was calculation again. It never ended.

“Son,” he said.

I smiled. “You really think that will work?”

“I made a terrible mistake. But a man can change. Of my sons, I loved you the most, because I loved your mother. Cataryn—”

“Stop!” I ordered. “You don't throw people you love out like garbage. You don't bury them in unmarked graves! I don't want to hear her name on your lips. You've never loved anything in your life.”

“And what do you love, Kaden? Lia? How far will that get you?”

“You don't know anything.”

“I know that blood is thicker and more lasting than a fleeting affair—”

“Is that all it was with my mother? The one you claim to have loved so much? A fleeting affair?”

His brows pulled together, plaintive, sympathetic. “Kaden, you are my
son.
Together we can—”

“I'll make you a deal,
Father.
”

His eyes brightened.

“You sold my life for a single copper. I'll let you buy yours back right now for the same. Give me a copper. It's little enough to ask.”

He looked at me, bewildered. “Give you a copper? Now?”

I extended my palm, waiting.

“I don't have a copper!”

I withdrew my hand and shrugged. “Then you'll lose your life, just like I lost mine.”

I turned to leave but stopped to tell him one last thing. “Since you plotted with the Komizar, you'll die by his justice too. And just so you know, he likes those facing execution to suffer first. You will.”

I left and heard him calling after me, liberally using
son
in his appeals, and I knew if I hadn't left my knives behind, he would have been dead already, and that would have been too easy an end for him.

 

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“Sit,” I ordered.

“Where?”

“The floor. And don't move. I want to speak with her alone first.”

I looked at the soldiers who had accompanied me. “If he moves so much as a toe, you are to cut it off.”

They smiled and nodded.

*   *   *

I walked through my parents' living quarters and opened the door to their bedroom chamber.

My mother lay in a disheveled heap at the foot of the bed, looking like a child's rag doll that had been emptied of its stuffing. My father lay in the center, pale and immobile. Her hand rested on the bedcovers that swallowed him up, as if she lashed him to this earth. No one, not even death, would sneak past her. She had already lost her eldest son, her other sons were missing and in grave danger, and her husband had been poisoned. How she had managed to gather the strength to stand with me yesterday I wasn't sure. She had drawn from a well that looked empty now.
There is not always more to take
, I thought. Sometimes so much can be taken that what is left doesn't matter.

She sat up when she heard my footsteps and her long black hair fell in disarray over her shoulders. Her face was gaunt, her eyes veined from tears and fatigue.

“It was you who ripped the last page from the book,” I said. “I thought it was someone who hated me very much, and then I realized it was just the opposite. It was someone who loved me very much.”

“I didn't want this for you,” she said. “I did everything I could to stop it.”

I walked across the room, and when I sat beside her, she pulled me into her arms. She held me fiercely, a quiet sob lifting her chest. I had no tears left, but my arms locked around her, holding her in all the ways I had needed to in these past months. She said my name over and over again.
Jezelia. My Jezelia.

I finally pulled back. “You tried to keep the gift from me,” I said, still feeling the hurt. “You did everything you could to guide me away from it.”

She nodded.

“I need to understand,” I whispered. “Tell me.”

And she did.

She was weak. She was broken. But her voice grew stronger as she spoke, as if she had told this story in her own mind a hundred times. Maybe she had. She told me about a young mother and her child, a story I had only seen from my vantage point.

Her tale had seams I hadn't seen; it was colored with fabric in shades I'd never worn; it had hidden pockets heavy with worry; it was a story that didn't hold just my fears, but hers too, the threads of it pulling tighter each day.

When she had arrived in Morrighan, she was eighteen, and everything about this new land was foreign to her—the clothing, the food, the people—including the man who was to be her husband. She was so filled with fright she couldn't even meet his gaze the first time she met him. He had dismissed everyone from the room, and once they were alone, he reached out and lifted her chin and told her she had the most beautiful eyes he had ever seen. Then he smiled and promised her it would be all right, that they could take their time getting to know each other, and then he delayed the wedding for as long as he could, and he courted her.

It was only for a few months, but day by day, he won her over—and she won him over too. It wasn't exactly love yet, but they were infatuated. By the time they married, she was no longer looking at the floor but happily meeting the eyes of everyone—including the stern gazes of the cabinet.

Though the seat of First Daughter on the cabinet had been ceremonial for centuries, when she told her new husband she wanted to be more active in her role at court, he heartily welcomed her. She was known to be strong in the gift, sensing dangers and folly. At first the king considered everything she said. He sought her advice, but she sensed a growing resentment among the cabinet at the king's attentions toward his young bride, and she was slowly, but diplomatically, pushed aside.

And then the babies came. First Walther, who was the delight of the court, then Regan and Bryn, who added to their happiness. They were allowed every freedom, which was new to her. She came from a household of girls, where choices were limited. Here she watched her young boys nurtured and encouraged to find their own strengths, not just by her and the king, but by the whole court.

Then she became pregnant again. There were enough heirs and spares, and now everyone waited with expectation for a girl, a new generation to carry on the tradition of First Daughter. She knew I was going to be a girl before I was ever born. It filled her with immeasurable joy—until she heard a rumble, a growl, the hunger of a beast, pacing in the corners of her mind. Her misery grew each day, as did the thump of the beast's footsteps. She feared that it stalked me, that it somehow knew I was a threat, and she felt strongly that this was because of the gift. She saw me being torn away from my family, from everything that I knew and dragged across an unimaginable landscape. She chased after me, but her steps were not as swift as the beast that had ripped me from her arms.

“I vowed I wouldn't let that happen. I spoke to you as you grew in my belly and made a daily promise that I would somehow keep you safe. And then on the day you were born, in the midst of my fears and promises to you, I heard a whisper, a soft, gentle voice as clear as my own.
The promise is great, for the one named Jezelia.
I thought that was my answer, and when I looked into your sweet face, the name Jezelia fit you best above all the others the kingdom had placed on your tiny shoulders. I thought the name was an omen, the answer I was hoping for. Your father protested at the breach of protocol, but I wouldn't back down.

“Afterward, it seemed I had made the right decision. From the time you were an infant, you were strong. You had a lusty cry that could wake all of Civica. Everything about you was vibrant. You squalled louder, played harder, hungered more, and thrived. I gave you the same freedoms as your brothers, and you ran freely with them. I was happier than I had ever been. When your formal schooling began, the Royal Scholar tried to tailor your lessons to nurture the gift. I forbade it, despite his protests. When he finally confronted me, asking for a reason, I told him the circumstances of your birth and my fear that the gift would bring you harm. I insisted he focus on your other strengths. He reluctantly agreed. Then, when you were twelve—”

“That's when everything changed.”

“I was afraid and had to enlist the help of the Royal Scholar to—”

“But the Royal Scholar is exactly who you needed to be afraid of! He tried to kill me. He sent a bounty hunter to slit my throat, and he's secretly sent countless scholars to Venda to devise ways to kill us all. He conspired with them. However you may have trusted him once, he turned on you. And me.”

“No, Lia,” she said, shaking her head. “Of this much I'm certain. He never betrayed you. He was one of the twelve priests who lifted you before the gods in the abbey and promised his protection.”

“People change, Mother—”

“Not him. He never broke his promise. I understand your mistrust. I've lived with it ever since you were twelve years old. It made me conspire with him all the more.”

“What happened when I was twelve?”

She told me the Royal Scholar had called her into his office. He had something he thought she should see. He said it was a very old book that had been taken off a dead Vendan soldier. Like all artifacts, it had been turned over to the royal archive and the Royal Scholar had set about translating it. What he read disturbed him, and he consulted with the Chancellor about it. The Chancellor had initially seemed disturbed too. He read it over several times, but then declared it barbarian jibberish, threw it into the fire, and left. It wasn't unusual for the Chancellor to order barbarian texts destroyed. Most made no sense, even when translated, and this one was no different, except for one key thing that had caught the Royal Scholar's attention. He retrieved it from the fire. It was damaged but not destroyed.

“I knew when he handed me the book along with the translation that something was very wrong. I felt queasy as I began to read. I heard the heavy steps of a beast once again, but by the time I got to the last verses, I was trembling with rage.”

“When you read that my life would be sacrificed.”