The Essence (24 page)

But when I opened my mouth, there was nothing. Just silent longing that I couldn’t explain.

“It’s you,” he said, finally breaking the spell. “Isn’t it?”

I knew what he meant.

Sabara. He meant that
I
was Sabara.

“No.” But I was nodding my head, my actions at odds with my denial. “I mean, sort of.” I fumbled over an explanation, but there was no time.

He closed the distance between us, and in the light that came from behind him, I could see that his eyes glittered from something other than the cold and his hands closed around mine as he fell to his knees before me. His voice, when it found its way out, was barely a breath. “I knew you were in there.”

My heart nearly broke. This time I was shaking my head. “She’s here,” I tried again, even as my hands clutched his harder than they should have. “But
I’m
not her.”

His head fell forward, over our shared grip, as if he was praying. To whom, I had no idea. And then his shoulders started to shake, and my stomach fell, plummeting in a way that made me feel choked.

I tried to untangle my hands from his, to pull away so I could breathe again. His pain was almost more than I could bear.

He threw his head back then and laughed, so loud I swore the ground beneath me rumbled. Or maybe it was my own heart. “I knew you were in there. I knew you weren’t dead!”

“Shh!” I admonished, glancing around to make certain we were still alone. Being discovered in my nightgown would probably be frowned upon in any land, but I’d have an even harder time explaining my knowledge of a hidden passage. “That kind of talk will get us both in trouble. Besides, even though she’s in here, doesn’t mean I’m not still me.”

He rose, then, lifting my icy fingers to his lips. His golden eyes held mine. “It doesn’t matter, it means she’s not gone either. Not really.”

I frowned, pulling my hands away. “Who are you? I saw you in my . . . in her dreams. But who are you really?”

A chill ran through me, colder than any warning, and I realized that chill was Sabara.
He’s no one,
she argued, even though I recognized her lie.
You were confused. You saw nothing.

Her denials only made me more certain. “Tell me how you’ve known her for so long.” My eyes narrowed as I watched him. I could see that he was trying to decide how much I knew, and how much to reveal to me. And then I said the name I’d heard when I’d been sleeping, the name Sabara had called him. “Thaddeus.”

He closed his eyes, inhaling sorrowfully as if I’d just said the sweetest word ever spoken. I was glad he could no longer see me, because just saying the name—
his name
—made my throat ache like it had been dragged from the very pit of my soul.

When he looked at me again, his gaze was clearer, his golden eyes—the same as ever as far as I could tell—were filled with resolve.
“I shouldn’t have to tell you. You should know everything,”
he said in a language that was even more ancient than the one I’d heard in my dream. Its mysterious cadence embraced me, filling every crevice of my being, making Sabara ease out of the shadows and strain toward the surface.

I struggled to keep her at bay.

“I-I only remember some of it.” I answered truthfully in Englaise, the only language—other than Parshon—that
I
could speak. “Only bits and parts.” I looked at him. “But I remember you. And what you meant to her. I saw what the two of you did, to her queen—
her sister
—in this very palace,” The words were bitter on my tongue. “So she could sit on the throne.” I closed my eyes against the images of the knife. Of Sabara trying to force the older girl to say the words:
Take me instead.

But there’d been no blood. Sabara hadn’t needed the knife, even then. She’d simply lifted her fist, never even laying a finger on the other girl, and squeezed her windpipe closed using only her will.

Sabara hadn’t held that girl—that sister—as she’d lain dying. Not the way she had her real sister, the one by the river. She’d simply stepped over her limp form and slipped away, eager to take her place as queen.

Why?
I’d silently asked Sabara just as I was awakening after the dream, just as I regained control of my thoughts once more.
Why does it matter? Why couldn’t you let her live?

But she hadn’t answered me.

“Why?” I asked Niko now.

His fingertips lifted to stroke my cheek, a feather’s touch. Against my will, I leaned in closer, letting his hand cup my face.
“You still don’t know?”
he asked, again in that strange, swirling language.
“You still don’t get it, do you? It was so we could be together. So I could be with you one more time.”

“Not me,” I said, and now I turned away from his touch. But even as I did, I could feel my body resisting. “Her.”

“One and the same, it seems.”

“No. Not true,” I corrected. “So, who are you?
What
,” I amended, “are you?”

His lips curved, but his smile was wistful.
“Does it matter?”

I nodded. It did. Right now it was all that mattered.

“I’m like you. Like her.”
He turned away from me, and the part of me that was Sabara followed him.

“That doesn’t make sense.”

When he turned back, we were face to face
. “I know,”
he said, and behind his back I saw flashes coming from the windows. The storm, I thought. It must be the storm the ferryman had warned us about.

“
It’s strange to explain this. Again. To you. To
her.” This time he corrected himself as he switched to Englaise. “There was a time when not all royal heirs were female. It was rare, but there was an occasional male born capable of taking the throne.”

“You mean they were born with magic?” I asked breathlessly, my eyes wide.

He nodded at my incredulous expression. “I was one of those anomalies, as was my twin brother, Tobias.” His gaze grew distant. “I haven’t thought of him in . . .” His voice trailed off. “Well, forever, really.”

I waited silently, but something sparked in me. A memory—like déjà vu. I remembered hearing this before. I knew these words and the cadence of this voice.

He’d told Sabara this same story, once upon a time.

“My brother’s gift was useless. He could move things just by concentrating on them.”

“Like the Canshai masters?” I asked.

A reluctant smile pulled at his lips. “Exactly like them. My guess is that they, too, were some sort of ancient descendants of a male line of royals who were once magic. Now . . .” He shrugged. “Now, they’re extinct. Like my brother.”

“What about you? What could . . .
can
you do?”

He faced me, his gaze direct and unwavering. “Me?” he asked, his brows raised sardonically. “Haven’t you figured it out? I’m immortal.”

It was impossible. Even with magic, it couldn’t be true. I wanted to say as much, but all I could manage was to shake my head. Yet even that was unconvincing.

Because I remembered him, the way I’d seen him in my dream. The same way he was now.

“Yes,” he asserted, stepping closer and scooping my hands up once again. “And you know it. Deep inside, you remember me, and you know it’s true. I was with you, not once . . . not twice . . . but we’ve shared lifetimes, again and again.” He moved so close I could feel heat coming off of his body and finding its way beneath my nightgown . . . infusing me with liquid pain.

“So why weren’t you with her all along? Why were you with Queen Vespaire?”

He shook his head. “I could never stay anywhere for too long. Look at me, I can’t do what you—
she—
can do. I can’t change identities. I have only this body, and it never changes. I don’t age. People notice that. People start to question why everyone else grows older while I remain youthful.

“Eventually I have to leave. To wait until”—he tipped his head, his brow furrowing as if he wasn’t sure how to continue—“until there’s a new host. Someone who can
invite
me back. And then we can be together again. For years, usually, before the questions start again. But this time . . .” His voice drifted off. “This time it was too long. There was no word of a new queen. No new host.” Pain filled his face as he looked at me with so much longing I wanted to reach out and hold him.

No, I insisted, not me.
She
wanted to reach out and hold him.

“We were apart for too long,” he finished sadly. “But now you’re here again. I knew I’d find you.”

“No.” I shook my head, trying to break the spell I was under. “Not me.
Her
.” But this time there was less fight in my voice, and even I wasn’t sure what I believed. Every cell in my body responded to him; every nerve bundle, every muscle fiber reacted to his nearness.

“You,” he insisted, leaning down and letting his breath graze my ear.

Sabara’s voice on the other side of my ear kept repeating,
Just let me have this. Just let me have this. Just let me have this. . . .

I felt myself close the distance between us, a gap that barely existed in the first place, as I eased myself against him, all the while arguing back with her,
No, no, no!

His lips brushed my neck just as I felt a tear slip down my cheek. Just as frustration like nothing I’d ever known before welled inside me.

I’d never been so powerless.

“Um, I’m guessing this isn’t what it looks like.” Brooklynn’s voice came from behind me and I jerked away from Niko’s touch, from the feel of his lips against my skin, as I spun toward her.

She stood in the open doorway, the one I’d just come through, and she, too, was wearing a nightgown. Yet she still managed to look fierce and unstoppable.

I fumbled for an explanation, my mind reeling with possibilities, none of which explained the open hatch in the floor of our bedroom, or the fact that I’d been about to let Niko kiss me. “I—uh—I—”

“Save it,” she interrupted. “All I wanna hear is that we’re going back to our room, and that whatever that . . . that
thing
in our floor is will not be used again. Understood?”

I glanced nervously toward the unlit tunnel, wondering if Zafir was somewhere behind her.

Her eyebrows ticked up as she crossed her arms. “No. I didn’t tell him,” she answered before I could even ask the question. “He still thinks you’re asleep.” She cocked her head. “In your bed.” Then she turned to Niko. “And you . . .” She took a warning step toward him, her arms falling to her side and her hands balling into fists. “I have no idea what’s going on here, but I’m warning you: Stay away from her.”

“Brook—” I tried to interrupt, to take command of the situation, but she cut me off with a glare so cutting the words slid back down my throat.

Then she grabbed my arm, both of us in nothing but borrowed nightgowns, and she dragged me into the passageway, slamming the door behind us.

“What were you thinking?” Brook asked as I stared out at the flashes of lightning that came again and again, almost without pause.

I wished I could explain it to her, but how could I make her understand? How did I tell her that the ghost of a dead queen was leading me around through underground passageways to rendezvous with her long-lost lover?

Even I thought it sounded like madness.

Instead, I shrugged and kept watching the storm outside.

Brook sighed and joined me at the window. “Did you know the palace doors are barricaded for the night? Because of the storm. No one comes or goes. On Queen Neva’s orders.”

“Why would she do that?” I wondered aloud.

“Ice storm,” Brook explained.

We stood there together, staring out, trying to see past the crystalline blooms of frost that formed on the outside of the glass panes. “It’s similar to an electrical storm, with flashes of lightning,” she said at last. “Only here, they’re far more dangerous. See how the pulses come up from the ground, rather than from the sky? Almost as if they’re made from the ice itself? Before you arrived, we were warned about the danger of the ice storm, that those pulses are drawn toward natural heat, making humans and animals easy targets. Basically, the charges search out anything with a pulse.” As if on cue, a huge flash sparked in the distance, illuminating the black sky beyond the walls of the palace.

Brook’s breath fogged the glass as she leaned closer.

“The lightning strikes have been known to burn an entire person to the ground,” she added.

“Impossible.” But I wasn’t entirely convinced it was an exaggeration. I’d heard the tales too, legends of arctic storms so powerful that entire populations had been blown away on the wind, disintegrated to ash. I’d always thought they were the stuff of fables, though.

After a moment, she spoke again as another blaze ignited the sky. “Apparently, the storms only strike after dark, and this one is unseasonably early. They don’t generally come until the dead of winter. From what I hear, Queen Neva’s decision to barricade us inside is best for everyone.”

I could practically hear her thoughts. She felt the same way about being locked up in here—rather than in the gatehouse with her soldiers—as she did about being asked to surrender her weapons. Miserable.