The Dark Throne (3 page)

“Much has changed,” said Sage.

I frowned against a sudden bout of dizziness. “Vell is Queen now.”

“She is
one
of the Queens,” the Sidhe healer corrected me with a raised brow. He set rolls of bandages and a steaming basin on the bedside table. “I must tend to your hands, my Bearer.”

“How bad?” My voice wavered. Luca’s hand found my arm again. I leaned into his comforting touch.

Sage hesitated for the space of a breath before answering. “Your hands were burned badly. You will have scars, but you should be able to hold a sword again.”

“
Should
be able to hold a sword?” I felt my eyes widen, panic lacing my words.

“Sometimes it is difficult to tell with burns,” Sage said gently, reaching for my left hand. I barely paid him any attention as he began unwrapping the outermost layer of bandages.

“I might never hold a sword again?” Then I took a breath and clenched my jaw. Despite my tattered memory and wounded body, I was still the Bearer of the Iron Sword. “Then I had better be able to nock an arrow to a bow.” The Caedbranr hummed approvingly, the sheath vibrating against the headboard.

“Or you could leave the nocking of arrows to those more skilled at the task.”

I looked up sharply. Vell stood in the doorway, hands on her hips. Then the ghost of a smile tugged at her lips and Beryk pushed past her knees, bounding into the room gleefully. I smiled in return. Kianryk abandoned his post by my bed to leap on Beryk, a playful growl rolling through the room.

Sage touched two fingers to his forehead in obeisance to Vell, and then tempered his gesture of respect by asking forbearingly, “Must I have wolves wrestling around my charge?”

“Yes,” said Vell and I at the same time, though my word was more like a croak that tailed off into a cough. Amusement glimmered in Sage’s eyes as he turned back to unwrapping my hand. There was more movement at the doorway and I glimpsed Gray, bright golden hair bound back with dark strips of leather. But Vell made a motion with her hand without turning toward the door, and Gray gave a little nod, shutting the door with a quiet click.

“I have two new shadows tripping over each other to
guard
me,” growled Vell, stabbing the air with her fingers to emphasize her displeasure. She looked at me, golden eyes flashing. “As if protecting the Bearer wasn’t already enough of a headache.”

I smiled a little and then hissed in pain as Sage reached the last layer of bandages around my hand. Tears stung my eyes and when I opened them again, Vell was at my side. “I will do this.”

“Your Grace,” protested Sage with lowered eyes, “you are the High Queen, surely this is a task better suited for a…member of your company.”

“You are correct about one thing,” said Vell. The air in the room flexed and hummed with sudden power. “I am the High Queen. And you are tending to the Bearer of the Iron Sword, who, in case you have forgotten, is responsible for saving the life of Queen Titania
and
crowning me.”

“I have not forgotten, Your Grace.” I could barely hear Sage’s voice and I felt a pang of sympathy for the Seelie healer. He bowed deeply to Vell and strode gracefully from the room. When the door closed again, I tilted my head at Vell.

“Poor Sage,” I said quietly, “I think you frightened him.”

“Good,” Vell said darkly as she smelled the steaming basin and made a face. As quickly as the air in the room had tightened with power, it faded as she set to work uncorking little glass vials and unrolling leather pouches of dried herbs. She glanced at the parchment, shook her head and tucked it behind the row of glass jars at the back of the table, muttering something to herself about ridiculous notions of reinventing the wheel. Though she held herself differently now, with a bit more authority than I remembered, she still wore plain dark breeches and knee-high boots. The simple golden circlet created by the Crown of Bones gleamed against her dark hair, bound up in its customary intricate braid. Rather than her usual white shirt, she wore a deep scarlet shirt that gleamed in the candlelight, but the only touch of decoration that I glimpsed was a new belt at Vell’s waist, worked with complex designs in silver and gold.

Beryk disentangled himself from Kavoryk and trotted up to the bed, nosing at my elbow and inspecting me with uncannily intelligent golden eyes. I raised one hand to show him that I couldn’t easily scratch behind his ears, as he was silently asking, I was sure; he inspected the gauze, sniffed at my hand and promptly sneezed. Vell murmured something to him in the Northern tongue and he grinned his wolf-grin, tongue lolling.

“What did you say to him?” I asked. My left hand still throbbed even from the small motion of unwrapping the bandages most; I wasn’t looking forward to whatever it was that Vell was going to do.

“Oh, I just told him that Seelie herbs will make him sneeze like the silly pup he is, and he should have more sense than that,” Vell replied. She looked sharply at Luca while she ground herbs in a bowl. “When’s the last time you ate?”

“I have been bringing him food, my Queen,” said Farin, diving out from her hiding place behind Luca’s ear. She turned a pirouette and then bowed deeply to Vell.

“Thank you, Farin,” Vell replied. “It seems the smallest among us have the most sense, lately.”

Luca merely shrugged good-naturedly.

“All right.” Vell put the bowl on the stand by my bed and looked down at me. “This is going to hurt.”

“I figured,” I said with a grimace.

“I could give you something to make you sleep, if you’d like,” she continued quietly. As she worked by my bedside, I could feel a difference in the air around her, a quiet hum of power. The crisp scent of pine needles and new-fallen snow trailed behind her movements like a subtle perfume.

“I’d rather not go to sleep again if I don’t have to,” I replied.

Vell tilted her head. “I could make sure you do not dream.”

“Sage already pulled that trick with me. It’s a tempting idea, but…I like being awake. I want to know what’s going on.”

“Some things never change,” the new High Queen remarked.

“So you’re not….you’re not angry with me?” I blurted as Vell reached for my left hand. She took my hand gently by the wrist, pausing.

“That depends. Are you worried I’m angry at you for crowning me High Queen?”

“Yes,” I whispered. “Liam warned me you might…you might hate me.”

Vell frowned. “I could never hate you, Tess. You have been one of the truest friends I have ever known. And it wasn’t your choice to crown me High Queen.” She raised her eyebrows. “It was fate, or destiny, or some nonsense of that sort.” She paused. “I was angry, I will say that much. When we first escaped Brightvale, when I truly understood what had happened…it was not something that I expected. So I was angry.” She took a breath. “I was angry at you, yes.” Then a small smile touched her lips. “But it’s difficult to stay angry with a friend who lingers between life and death.”

“So if I’d been able to defend myself you would have challenged me to a duel?” I raised my eyebrows, my attempt at humor punctuated by a dry little cough.

Vell chuckled. “Perhaps. My two new Knights were hard-pressed to satisfy me during training sessions.”

“You didn’t hurt them, did you?”

Vell raised her eyebrows at me. “Worried about Finnead?”

A hot blush rose unbidden to my cheeks and I became painfully aware of Luca’s presence in the room. “Not particularly. Just wondering how absolute your authority is as far as being High Queen goes. I’ve heard stories about Mab that aren’t too pleasant.”

“Well,” Vell said, taking the kettle from over the fire to fill a bowl with steaming water, “I
could
hurt them, if I wished.” She looked at me with serious golden eyes. “It would be within my rights to kill them, for no reason at all other than they displeased me.” As the words passed her lips, Vell’s voice took on an otherworldly quality. It was as though more than one entity spoke through her, and a strange light shone in her eyes. I recognized the power of the Crown of Bones—now the power of the High Queen—asserting itself. Was that what I looked like when the lineage of Bearers used me as a mouthpiece?

I cleared my throat. “I’m glad they were able to give you an outlet for your anger.”

Vell shook her head slightly and blinked. “Yes.” She sprinkled the powdered herbs into the steaming bowl. “And so,” she continued, “to go back to our original topic…I’m still a little angry at you.” Her smile was wolf-like. “But that will fade, with time. And I’m still your friend, same as I was before you crowned me.”

“Liam said you were the only one left with the right blood.” The words poured from my mouth like a confession.

She nodded. “I know.”

I glanced at Luca in confusion, but he watched Vell intently.

“It isn’t so hard to understand, Tess,” Vell said. “I’m the only female
herravaldyr
left alive. For one reason or another, the Crown of Bones chose me as the High Queen.” She waved a hand. “Or I was anointed from birth and the fates watched over me or however it works.” She smiled. “I thought you’d know, Daughter of Gwyneth.”

I smiled a little sheepishly. “I’ll be honest, I’m still figuring it out as I go.” The Caedbranr vibrated with something like a chuckle.

“Aren’t we all,” said Vell. She raised her eyebrows. “Have we settled to your satisfaction that I don’t hate you for being the conduit for the Crown of Bones to anoint me as the High Queen, because I’d like to change these bandages.”

I nodded and smiled, though I felt a bit uneasy at Vell’s admission that she was still angry with me. My smile quickly turned into a grimace as I bit down on the gasp of pain struggling to escape from me.

“Breathe through it,” Luca said, his hand warm against my other arm.

“Keep talking to me,” I gritted out through clenched teeth.

“It’s good that it hurts,” Vell said as she peeled away the last stained layer of bandages.

“Why is that?” I asked, fighting a terrible curiosity.

“You can look. I’m going to ask you to move it soon anyway,” the High Queen said, placing a small pillow under my forearm. “It’s good that it hurts because it means that the burn didn’t reach deep enough to sear the feeling out of your hand.”

“Burn the nerve endings,” I agreed in a short burst, some remnant of my anatomy and physiology classwork surfacing in my brain. “So I’ll be able to hold a sword again?”

Vell looked sharply at me. “Of course you will, probably after about a fortnight or perhaps a little sooner.”

I breathed a tight sigh of relief and then shifted my gaze to my hand, forcing myself to absorb the sight. A patchwork of red and white covered my palm, wrapping around the back of my thumb where the outward-spreading flames had kissed my skin. I swallowed and remembered the heaviness of the Crown of Bones, the brightness of the flames. Blisters formed a constellation on the webbing between my thumb and forefinger, and my fingers were swollen. Wet red flesh gleamed at the center of my palm, where I’d held the great ruby as I channeled its power into Vell; it almost looked like a blood-red eye in the center of my hand.

“Your left hand isn’t as bad as your right hand,” Vell said, cursorily checking the pulse at my wrist. “There hasn’t been any issues with blood flow or tightening of the skin, so that’s good.”

Luca stood and watched intently as Vell turned my hand, examining the skin.

“Why the difference?” I took a deep breath. The pain wasn’t really so bad, now that the dressing was gone. Or at least that’s what I told myself.

“You must have overlapped your hands when you held the Crown of Bones,” Luca said. “Right over left.” He demonstrated with his own hands.

“You did,” Farin informed me seriously. “I was watching.”

I smiled a little at that. “Thanks for the confirmation, Farin.”

Vell turned my hand over and gently set it on the cushion. “Now, move your thumb for me, just so.” She demonstrated, flexing her thumb over her palm.

“This is going to suck,” I muttered, ignoring the bemused expression on Luca’s face at my slang. And it did. Bright pain lanced from my hand, creeping up my forearm in fiery tendrils, as I moved each of my fingers in turn at Vell’s command. Then we moved on to rotating my wrist, which wasn’t so terrible, and then flexing my entire hand, which was even worse than moving my fingers. By the time we were finished, I was soaked in sweat and tears ran down my face despite my effort to control them. Luca began unwrapping my right hand as Vell applied a cool salve to my left hand.

“That feels good,” I murmured to Vell. Then I turned my head to Luca. “And if the left one isn’t as bad as the right one….this is
really
going to suck.”

The Caedbranr hummed a bit of encouragement, which I appreciated as I began the same set of exercises with my right hand. Vell was right: the blisters on my right hand ringed my entire palm and stretched in a feathery trail down my wrist, and the large red almond-shaped burn in the center of my hand bled a little, reminding me again of an eye—but this time an eye weeping tears of blood. I shivered and goosebumps raised the hairs on my arms. By the time I finished the exercises, I was shaking and sick to my stomach.

“Well done,” said Vell quietly as she applied the salve to my right hand. She dampened the first layer of bandages with a solution that smelled sharply of mint and some other bright herb.

“I’m guessing this will happen at least twice a day,” I said.

“Yes,” Vell said.

“I don’t expect you to be here every time.” I closed my eyes against a particularly vicious wave of nausea, then opened them at Vell’s hand on my shoulder.

“I
will
be here every time,” she said, her golden eyes fierce.

My throat tightened at her combative loyalty. “Don’t you have…well, I don’t know…High Queen things to do?”

“We are training and scouting and waiting for others to heal,” Vell said.

“There haven’t been any attacks?”

“The Sentinel Stones have held,” she replied simply, sweeping the soiled bandages into a bundle and organizing all the herbs on the larger side table. “There haven’t been any attacks on
us
.”