He killed his brother and his mother. Marith. My husband. He killed them.

He blames his uncle Selerie. Says Selerie did it. Perhaps Selerie encouraged him. But he killed them. His brother. His mother.

And then I married him.

The storm calmed and we sailed. We entered Morr Town harbour to a thousand voices raised in joy. The town was ruined. Storm-soaked. We rode through the town. “My home,” Marith kept whispering. “My home.” He looked ahead of him, so eager, he had to keep himself from urging his horse into a run. We came into the fortress of Malth Elelane. The storm had blown all the banners of the towers down, washed the gold from the roof of the Tower of Despair. The diamond set at the top of the tower flashed for us, shone like a star, shone with every colour like a rainbow. “Eltheia’s diamond,” Marith said when he saw me looking. “And you, now, come here as the new Eltheia.”

Ah, yes.

The doors were thrown open for us, lords and servants kneeling; half the soldiers there had killed the rest, showed the bodies proudly as though we should be glad. Marith paled, halted. His home, running with blood he has caused to be spilled. His eyes went very bright. Glittering. His face was flushed.

There was a pause then, a silence. Embarrassed. Afraid. All of us, the lords, the servants, all waiting. Knowing. He is come home, and he is waiting for them to come to him, his family, welcome him, and he knows, he knows …

“Where is she?” he said. “The queen? And my brother?” He stepped forward, looked around him, held out his hands, as though he expected them to come and embrace him.

A stir in the people there kneeling. Servants looking at each other, nervous, trying not to be the ones to speak.

He said, “Bring them.”

It was like the time I had to punish Ausa, in my Temple. Like the way the priestesses looked at me then. She sinned against the God, Lord Tanis. I punished her, and it must be done, and they all looked at me, and knew.

You will say that he is monstrous.

You will say that I am monstrous.

I chose to spare him. Remember that. I chose to let him live.

They brought them in to us. His brother and his mother, bound and under guard. His mother was injured. Her dress was wet with blood. Marith’s face went white as ashes, when he saw the blood.

“She tried to kill herself, My Lord King,” one of the men holding her said. “When she saw that it was lost.”

Marith put out his hand. Stepped forward and touched the blood on her dress. Touched his bloody right hand with his scarred left hand.

“Marith,” his mother whispered. “Marith. Please.”

His brother spat at him. “Filth and murderer!” his brother screamed. “They were right! You were right! You should have died long ago! Father should have killed you!”

They looked so alike, Marith and Ti.

“I can’t do it,” Marith said. His eyes were like his mother’s wounds. The whole room was screaming, running with shadows. He paced round and round, staring at them. His mother’s blood on his hand. He rubbed at his eyes and cried out as the blood was rubbed onto his face.

His mother said, “Please. Marith.”

“What else will you do, then?” Selerie asked him.

Marith looked at me. Looked at Selerie. Looked at the walls. At the blood.

“Get out,” he said. “Everyone.”

“Stay,” he said to me then. “Please, Thalia, no, you stay.”

I pitied his mother, his brother.

I stayed.

I did not stop him doing it.

It took a long time to do it. His uncle Selerie helped him to do it. His uncle Selerie made it take longer. That much is true.

And now it is done.

Hilanis the Young skinned his older brother alive. Such are the stories of his family. The customs of his kingdom. What is done. What it is, to be a king.

His father abandoned him. His mother hated him. His brother replaced him. They all three wanted him dead.

What do you expect him to do? Forgive?

He got drunk and cried about it afterwards. Sat in the hall where he had done it, with his sword in his hand. Screamed as loudly as Tiothlyn did as he died. And I thought of Ausa, and the way that she had screamed. All night, he sat there. In their blood, with their bodies at his feet. I hoped and feared, dreaded, that he would kill himself.

The next morning he came out as though nothing had happened. Did not speak of it.

I did not speak of it.

“I love you,” he said to me.

The next morning again we were married.

Our hands were bound together with silver ribbons, in the great hall of Malth Elelane we stood before a blazing fire and cast grain and fruits and oil into the flames. Burning. Oh how much they like to make things burn. Do you worship the fire? I asked him once, watching the way he watched the flames in the desert night in the dark that is not like the dark here. He laughed and said no, not worship, only that they find it beautiful. Perhaps, he said, it is only because it is so damned cold on the Whites. But everything here is on fire. We cast offerings into the fire for our wedding. We burn the dark away with bonfires. We burn the town clean. What comes of burning? But I thought then of my Temple, filled with light where the candles burn. We went for blessing to the Amrath chapel, carried on litters of bare white branches, our hands still bound together so that we were pulled together and twisted apart. It made me think of the long slow walk down the corridors of my Temple on the day I was consecrated, half carried in high copper shoes to keep me from touching the ground. Such strange rituals, I have had done to me. And all to the same end. If he stared at the walls where the bodies are hanging, if he closed his eyes in pain, if he stared at his uncle Selerie with hatred, we ignored these things. If he jerked and cried out when a voice shouted that we be blessed with many children, we ignored these things.

Days pass. Selerie praises him, embraces him, hails him as king, departs. Marith’s eyes are perhaps easier. He stares less often towards the bodies hanging in the gates. A sudden joy bursts over us all. Wild and mad and bright. We hold the fest of Sunreturn. We celebrate our victory. We do not stop. The hall runs with music and dancing, we go out on the ice to race horses, feast all night and into the next morning, dance by torchlight in the snow. I am enthroned by his side in ice palaces or fur lined tents or under bare trees hung with silver stars. I am dressed in cloth of silver, crowned with winter leaves brown and pale golden and skeletal, fragile as silk net. Gold and gems and treasures shower down on me, more jewels than I can wear in a lifetime, gifts from Marith and from all the lords and ladies of the White Isles. He goes out riding with Osen, comes back laughing to order a feast laid, finally collapses into sleep then orders another feast laid as soon as he wakes. Our hearts are filled with wonder. Time and order are lost, no one cares whether it is day or night, the days are so brief here in the heart of winter that all time is lost in the snow. So long ago it seems, already, what we had to do to reach this. We do not think now of the dead.

I try not to think of the dead.

I try not to think of killing him.

Of not killing him.

So now I am a second Eltheia. I have so many glorious things. Power. Pleasure. Wealth. Love.

At fifteen I was dedicated to Great Tanis the Lord of Living and Dying, the One God of the Sekemleth Empire of the Golden City of Sorlost. I was veiled so heavily my vision was blurred and buried, wrapped in gold and silver like a burial cloth. I knelt before the High Altar. I walked into the Small Chamber and killed the High-Priestess-that-was with a holy knife. My life then was pleasant enough, I suppose. I could have lived in my Temple, stepped out the rituals, said the words, sung the songs, served the God, done what must be done. I had some little power: in my hands, in the knife; I was the Chosen of God.

To give that up, it must be for something glorious.

I have something glorious. You cannot say I do not.

Power. Wealth. Worship. Pleasure. Love. Living.

Desire.

Disgust.

I have so many glorious things.

Of course I married him. What else do you think I would do?