Authors: Kate Sparkes
“Did you think I wouldn’t notice that you two were sneaking around?” he asked. “That I wouldn’t expect it? You gave up far too easily for me to believe you’d given up at all.”
“She had a nightmare and needed me. Nothing else. What would you have had me do?” I matched my expression to his. Just a father and son engaged in pleasant contemplation over royal business. “I’ve tried to act according to your wishes, which I still don’t fully understand. You won’t listen to me when I try to explain—”
“There is no acceptable explanation for your disobedience.”
I kept my voice even, though his bull-headed insistence on blind loyalty made me want to lash out, or to turn and walk away from him. “Very well. We lied to you. I lied when I said I would end things with her, and I did it to keep you happy.”
He gave me no answer save for a dark look that said he’d never trusted me.
“I see no reason why I should give up the only thing keeping me sane right now amidst—” I stopped myself, but too late.
My father glowered. “Amidst the shit I’m putting you through? Get used to it. This is far bigger than you or your petty troubles, and always has been.”
He walked beside me through the village, nodding to people who greeted him, keeping an eye on those who didn’t. When an older woman dropped into an awkward curtsey, he replied with a slight, formal bow and a smile. He would win them over.
He turned toward the woods and motioned for me to follow. I resigned myself to the conversation, if not to my fate.
“You’re allowing yourself to be manipulated,” he snapped, “sneaking around like a whipped dog, disobeying me because you’re too selfish to see beyond your own needs. It’s only going to get worse. If you’d listened to a damned word I said to you when you were younger—”
“I listened,” I growled through gritted teeth, then forced myself to be calm. He wanted to get a reaction from me, and I wouldn’t let him have it. “I tried to fight it. Every time I felt something for her, I fought.”
“I find that hard to believe. You’ve always been desperate for approval and acceptance, ever since you lost your mother. I saw that, even from a distance.” His face twisted as though he’d smelled something foul. “Severn saw it, and used it. And now it’s got you into this mess.”
The words cut as deep as if he’d accused me of betraying him to Darmid. The fact that I was beginning to think he was right only made it hurt more. I’d been starved for so many things, and become a glutton when Rowan offered them.
Nothing would change my mind about her, or about my future. My resistance seemed childish, but the thought of the alternative made my throat close as though a noose had tightened around my neck.
Tied to the throne. No Rowan. No freedom. The weight of a kingdom on my shoulders.
“Say something,” he barked, eyes wide. I saw a glimmer then of what Rowan had described—mistrust that went beyond reason, a sideways slip of his mind into irrational fear.
I pressed harder against his defenses, not caring whether he sensed it. His anger at my betrayal washed over me, and beneath that I uncovered shame at his capture and his mistrust of every person in camp. Before I could dig deeper his magic pushed back, closing the chinks in his mental armor, pushing me out. The last thing I felt was his rage at the invasion.
My father stepped closer, lips curled into a snarl. The air pulsed with his magic, dark and cold as my own.
That’s the father I remember,
I thought, almost relieved to feel strength from him.
“Gods, you’re worse than I thought all these years,” he snarled. He took another step, forcing me back. His shoulders tensed as he raised his loosely clenched fists. “Not only weak, but disloyal and completely unfit to be king. If I had any other choice in my heir—”
The raw power he held within him became nearly palpable as he drew on it, preparing to attack. I ducked out of the way as he released a blast of magic that narrowly missed me and sent a tree behind me crashing to the ground, splintered where the magic had turned the middle into sawdust with its sheer force.
I glanced back at the tree and pretended my heart wasn’t pounding as memories of Severn’s first attack on me flashed through my mind. The pain, the fear. Magic breaking bones, tearing flesh.
Ulric’s expression went blank, and his breath wheezed as he inhaled. He collapsed as though he’d taken a hit to the gut. Bent double, he rested his hands on his knees as tremors overtook him. Barking coughs racked his body until he fell to his knees and spit out blood that soaked into the dry dirt. I started forward, more from concern for protecting my own future than from compassion for the man who had just tried to kill me, but he waved me off.
He wiped his mouth on his sleeve. “I bit my tongue,” he said.
“Is that so?”
He searched my eyes as he looked up at me, and found nothing. No concern for his well-being. No fear. I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of either. In that moment of openness, though, I felt his confusion, and how he hated himself for being so weak as to lose control of his emotions. He regretted his action, but I had no expectation that he would apologize.
His skin had lost all of its color, and he’d aged years in only moments. I’d been at least halfway right about his condition, and it was far worse than I’d suspected.
“This is why you’re so concerned with my situation, isn’t it?” I asked. “Your magic is failing. You can’t win this fight.”
He climbed to his feet, and any trace of openness disappeared. “Not failing. It’s as strong as it’s ever been, but when I use it, I feel it might kill me. The Darmish didn’t destroy my magic, but I believe they broke whatever it is that protects us from the damage it might cause us. Gods damn them. They may not have intended it specifically, but this is their doing.” He brushed the dirt from his pants.
“Then what do we do about it?”
“I am recovering. It’s nothing for you to concern yourself with.”
You’re not
, I thought,
and it is
. “You need to tell someone else. Someone who can help.”
He shook his head. “This is one more thing you must learn. Strength is important, but even before that comes the appearance of strength. You never show weakness or fear, never let your people doubt you. If I go to Nox and the old Potioner figures out what she’s up to, she’ll tell Laelana and Goff. We’ll lose our support.” He wheezed again. “I’ll get my strength back. You know the power of our healers in Luid.”
The noose tightened again. “And if you don’t, what then? Even if you manage to take the throne back by law, even if Severn steps down, the first person who challenges you will take the throne.”
“And so you must be prepared to take it from me first. You are strong enough to hold it. It’s simply a matter of training you in the proper skills.”
My chest constricted. “I’m not ready for that. Even if I wanted it.”
My father smiled bitterly. “I know you’re not. And it’s good that you know it, too. I will get through this.”
I watched as he leaned against a tree, gathering his strength. “Nox wouldn’t tell anyone.”
His jaw tightened. “She’s inexperienced.”
“She’s good. She could at least try.”
“But would she?” A hint of sadness touched his voice—or perhaps it was only the lingering effects of his collapse.
“Not for your sake. But if it meant removing Severn from power, absolutely. That’s why all of us are here. Rowan included.”
He leaned against a tree and closed his eyes. “I haven’t changed your mind on anything, have I?”
“No. I’ll ask Nox to help you find your strength, and do what I can to help you. I will respect your wishes for the time it takes to return you to Luid. But you’re wrong about Rowan.”
He opened his eyes, and for once he dropped his act. He looked pained, uncertain. “Maybe Rowan is smart. Maybe she’s clever. Maybe we even need her. But make no mistake.” He coughed again and cleared his throat. “She is a threat. You can’t do what’s best for Tyrea when a Darmish Sorceress rules your heart, and you can’t be king if you don’t follow the laws of marriage and succession. Don’t fail in this. You’re Tyrea’s only hope.”
I was about to assure him I wouldn’t fail him when he added, “Gods help us all.”
Words like a knife in the back. I’d almost forgotten how effortlessly he wounded those closest to him.
I turned and left the sick old man in the woods. He’d find his way back. The bastard always did.
“Aren!” he called after me.
I turned back.
“Laelana agrees that the people need to move, even if it means giving up the safety they’ve found here. She’s instructing them now to pack up for the journey to somewhere with more water.”
“Toward Luid?”
He nodded. “I’ve had to make her many promises, but I think we have her support. I need you to make sure we have it from the people your grandfather sent from Belleisle. They trust you more than they do me. Convince them of the fact that our victory is theirs. If Severn’s got Tyrea’s strongest magic-users inside the city walls, we’ll need support outside.”
I bowed slightly. Formally. “I’ll see what I can do.”
He sat down hard on a rock, and I left him. If I spent one more moment with the man, I was going to lose my mind. As I made my way back to camp, I couldn’t help thinking about what he’d said before. He was wrong about Rowan being a threat. He was right about her potential, but she didn’t want to rule a country any more than I did.
No, but you will if it’s the only way to save your people, won’t you?
whispered a slick, silky voice at the back of my mind.
Who’s to say she wouldn’t make the same sacrifice, or greater, for hers?
I shook the thoughts off before my father’s carefully-chosen words could sow doubts.
I needed to talk to Nox again. There had to be something she could do.
If there wasn’t, an entire nation’s problems were about to become mine.
11
NOX
M
ama Bunn wasn’t especially warm, and didn’t go out of her way to make me like her.
Fortunately, I didn’t care about that.
The only real teacher I’d ever had was an arrogant horse’s arse who thought he was the greatest Potioner in the land because he had memorized the four books on his shelf and had a decent knack for feeling a substance’s potential. He knocked me to the floor when I tried to be better at it than him, dismissed my ideas if they didn’t line up with what he knew so well from his leather-bound tomes, and expected me to sit and listen like a good student even when I knew he was wrong. It wasn’t until I married, moved away, and started working on my own that I discovered what I was truly capable of.
Mama Bunn may have been hard on me, but she respected my gifts. She’d allowed me to assist with preparing potions, and had taken my suggestion of adding a simple mix of pine and griproot extracts to her healing potion to dull her patients’ pain. It was an unusual natural reaction and not well-known, one I’d sensed out myself, and she’d seemed pleased.
“It’s obvious that you have sharp instincts,” she said to me as she sorted through the herbs I’d picked up that morning. There hadn’t been many to find, and there was plenty of room for her to spread them out over the work table. “That doesn’t mean you have nothing left to learn.”
I held back a sigh. “I know that, Mama.”
When she narrowed her eyes, they disappeared in folds of wrinkled flesh. “Do you? You seem pretty damn cocky to me.”
I continued stringing up stems and hanging them from a high shelf. “I apologize if I’ve offended you. You have far more experience than I have.” I couldn’t guess how much more. The woman had seen many years pass, but it was hard to tell exactly how old she was. Potioners didn’t experience the life-extending benefits of magic as Sorcerers did, but we had ways of maintaining health and beauty. Either Mama Bunn had rejected these completely, or she’d lived so long that even her potions couldn’t keep up.
“Indeed,” she said, not sounding like she believed my false humility. “Instincts are important, but so is living. Reading. Learning from the mistakes others have made, and making our own. If you do all of this, you have potential to become one of the great ones. And with your connections, perhaps to change things for us. Get Potioners the respect we deserve from Sorcerers.”
I remembered Aren’s attitude when we first met, his ideas that a Sorcerer’s power was far more important than anything I could do. “That seems an ambitious dream,” I observed.
She shrugged. “I’m old and tired. Dreams and my memories are what get me through the day.”
Her knife flashed so quickly it became invisible, slashing through tender leaves and tough stems with equal ease.
“Can you teach me how to do that?” I asked.
She smiled, and her eyes disappeared again. “There you go.”
She demonstrated more slowly, and I mimicked the angle of her knife on my own subjects. Still, I couldn’t match her. She watched for a few minutes before she took a jar off of the shelf. “Try this.”
I opened the jar and sniffed at the odorless blue substance inside. “What is it?”
“Dip your knife, rub it in with the cloth. Yes, there you go. Rub harder, don’t leave the blade wet. Now try.”
The knife slipped through a woody branch as though it were a blade of grass. “Incredible,” I whispered. I’d never seen anything like it.
“It took me twenty years to perfect this. You don’t want to use these knives on food now, at least not on anything you’ll be consuming in the next few days. No good on meat, it’ll rot it immediately. But for herbs to store, this is perfect.” She watched me work. “Good. I’ll teach this formula to you. But you still could use some work on your cutting technique. You just crushed the juice right out of that one.”
“Thank you, Mama.”
I spoke respectfully. If there was one thing I knew, it was how to hide the way my pride objected to correction. Hiding my irritation had saved me from beatings on more than one occasion.
A knock sounded from the front room. Mama Bunn glared at the door—or rather, at whoever had disturbed us. “Come in!”