Kingsbane

“So you took Atheria and flew,” Audric said. “And this upset you?”

She pressed her face to his neck. “The empirium spoke to me. It showed me…”

After a moment, he prompted her. “What did it show you?”

“Horrible things,” she whispered. “Things that make me doubt my own mind. Things that make me want to run far from here and never stop running, not until I fly apart.”

And if she did, the dark part of her mind whispered, if she did run, if she disappeared into the far world where no one could find her, not even Corien, then Audric could be a king without distractions, and she could be free of his court, his city, the people who wanted her and hated her all at once.

“Stay with me,” he murmured, as if sensing her conflict. He touched his brow to hers. “Stay with me, Rielle.”

“I’m here,” she said, her voice thin, and then she had to duck her head to hide her face from him, for she could not bear to see the love shining so plainly in his eyes. If he looked for much longer into hers, he would see the truth of her laid bare—the lives she had taken. The lies she had told.

The doubt growing like a restless storm in her heart.

Her mind slowly tearing itself in two.

• • •

Rielle hurried out of the Hall of the Saints into one of the surrounding small anterooms, her bewildered guard following her as discreetly as was possible for seven soldiers outfitted in gold-plated armor.

As soon as the door shut behind her, closing away the glittering finery of Audric’s coronation, she ran to a corner of the room, sank to her knees, and vomited. Her back to her guard, she wiped her mouth on the edge of her sleeve.

It was not the first time she had gotten sick in the last several days. At first she had assumed the cause was from sheer exhaustion; she had hardly slept these last weeks. Corien visited her every night, and Ludivine hovered always at the edges of her mind, and the streets near the castle filled daily with people clamoring for her death, her touch, her body, her blood. They came from the capital; they came from all over the kingdom, and more arrived every day.

And then there was that vision of the strange girl on the mountain, a memory that walked beside her always. She could not shake it. When she did sleep, she saw the girl in her mind’s eye. Her fear, the square set of her jaw.

Rielle closed her eyes, fisting her hands in the fine golden embroidery of her gown. Every night, she laid with Audric in his bed, or hers. Every night, they moved together, each of them utterly wrung out. Their days had been full: preparations for the coronation; endless meetings with advisers, the Magisterial Council, the Archon; reports from their spies on the missing Kirvayan queen, reports from Mazabat on the quakes rattling their southern cities, reports from the Celdarian Obex on the vicious storms tearing across Meridian.

And the Obex themselves were no help at all. They refused to help Rielle find Saint Katell’s casting. They refused to introduce her to the marques in their employ and request of them passage to Meridian, or Astavar, or Ventera—one of the kingdoms on the far western side of the world, where Rielle could continue her search for the remaining castings. When she raged at them, they reminded her of those she had killed in Mazabat. When she threatened to kill them as well, they told her calmly that then Saint Katell’s sword would truly be lost to her.

“You would save yourselves before you allow me to save everyone else?” she had snapped at them, during one particularly contentious meeting.

Their speaker replied at once. “Lady Rielle, it is our judgment that, as things currently stand, keeping Saint Katell’s casting out of your hands is exactly the thing that will save us all.”

That night, she had stormed into Audric’s room, the walls and windows trembling at her approach. Though her eyes had burned from lack of sleep, and her body had still been sore from the previous night, she found him dozing by the fire, a stack of petitions on the table beside him, and climbed at once into his lap. She woke him up with her mouth and her hips and held onto him tightly as he drove into her. But even then, afterward, as they lay sweating and exhausted, she could not sleep. She returned to that black northern fortress; she ran through unfamiliar dark hallways, both chasing and fleeing the sound of Corien’s voice, both ignoring and seeking the comfort of Ludivine’s arms.

And the girl on the mountain followed her every day, every night, a tenacious ghost.

Rielle knelt on the carpet, fingers shaking against her mouth. Her head pounded, bolts of pain slicing through her temples. Neither Corien nor Ludivine were ever really gone from her. The sounds of their eternally crashing swords vibrated her every bone.

Her vision flickered gold, then dull. The sounds of Audric’s coronation filtered through the closed door—the choir singing the “Song of Saint Katell,” the Archon intoning the coronation rites, the buzz and hum of the hundreds of people gathered to watch Saint Katell’s golden cloak tied around Audric’s shoulders and his mother’s crown placed on his head.

Evyline stepped forward carefully. “My lady, what can I do?”

After a moment, Rielle stood. A terrible fear was climbing up her body, warming her sweaty brow. From inside the hall, Ludivine reached out to her, but Rielle ignored the urgent press of her thoughts. She sensed Ludivine moving toward the anteroom, and felt a sudden, frantic urge to get away from her. There was a Ludivine fighting Corien in her mind; there was a Ludivine rushing through the Hall of the Saints. Rielle’s mind was full of her and was never her own.

“I need to see Garver Randell,” she said hoarsely, fingers pressed against her temples. “Take me there quickly. We cannot be seen.”

• • •

Her guard stood scattered along the street, unobtrusive in common clothes and traveling cloaks. Inside Garver’s shop, Rielle told him everything she had been feeling, and then, under cover of a quilt, she lay on a small bed in a back room of his shop, and he examined her.

Simon stood silently beside her, holding her hand, and once Garver had finished and bid her gently to sit up, Rielle saw the look on his face and knew at once what he would say.

“I’m with child,” she said flatly. “Aren’t I, Garver?”

He smiled a little. “You are, my lady. I’d thought this might happen. It’s been some time since you’ve come to see me. I had the maidsright sent up to the castle, but perhaps it did not arrive.”

Rielle stood, shaky. She wiped her sweaty hands on her skirts. “It did. I’ve just been rather busy of late. I haven’t been thinking. I’ve been careless. Oh, God.” She held her head in her hands. Ludivine pressed against her mind, calling her name over and over. She was hurrying through the city; soon she would be at the shop door.

Oh, Rielle, came Ludivine’s voice, full of tenderness. I had been wondering.